• Due to ongoing issues caused by Search, it has been temporarily disabled
  • Please excuse the mess, we're moving the furniture and restructuring the forum categories

Saudi Arabia really might have funded 9/11

Oystein said:
Now waiting for corroboration...
Click to expand...

I mean, there’s plenty of other evidence from a wide variety of sources supporting at least some level of Saudi state involvement in 9/11.

Granted, any such support cannot be divorced from the broader context of the House of Saud trying to square the circle of close relations with the United States on the one hand and their constant need to appease the Kingdom’s “Wahhabi”/Salafi religious establishment and members of the broader Saudi elite - of which Osama bin Laden was comfortably a member before 1990 -, many of whom are decidedly not on board with being friends with the “Crusaders” who support Israel.

So: “It’s complicated.”
 
“Khashoggi was killed not because he was a dissident, but because of his contact with us,” said James Kreindler, a prominent New York attorney who represents thousands of 9/11 family members and survivors who are suing Saudi Arabia.


So if true, we should expect lots of murders of people in contact with James Kreindler.

Poor guy, gonna lose a lot of friends.
 
Don't people think if Khashoggi had dirt on financing 9/11 it would have been public by now?

How many Saudis were on those planes? Where did binLaden come from? Isn't there overwhelming evidence a fair number of very rich Saudis are funding Wahhabism: charities, madrassas, and yes even terrorists?

I don't see how Khashoggi plays any role here except in the usual CTs.

Feel free to provide evidence of anything more.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Don't people think if Khashoggi had dirt on financing 9/11 it would have been public by now?
Click to expand...

Yes. He had an editor and probably a lawyer. Journalists who investigate dangerous subjects often back up their files and keep them under lock and key as well as briefing their editor and lawyers and friends about what they are working on...in case something happens.

And by the way, he walked into that embassy freely because the idea that he'd be murdered on embassy grounds is beyond stupid and amateurish that if you saw it in a movie it would be condemned as unreal. These are the masterminds behind 9-11? Don't think so. Dumb enough to give money to Al Qaeda without asking what their targets were? Probable.
 
Axxman300 said:
Yes. He had an editor and probably a lawyer. Journalists who investigate dangerous subjects often back up their files and keep them under lock and key as well as briefing their editor and lawyers and friends about what they are working on...in case something happens.

And by the way, he walked into that embassy freely because the idea that he'd be murdered on embassy grounds is beyond stupid and amateurish that if you saw it in a movie it would be condemned as unreal. These are the masterminds behind 9-11? Don't think so. Dumb enough to give money to Al Qaeda without asking what their targets were? Probable.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. You have to wonder about the sympathies of different factions of the House of Saud and the broader Saudi elite, not to mention all of the mid-level and lower-level people within or connected to the Saudi government (e.g. people working in Saudi-sponsored Islamic charities). Yet I’d never accuse rich Saudi donors (or many rich donors elsewhere for that matter) of keeping close track of where exactly their money is going.

The Kingdom’s sponsorship and tolerance of terrorist sympathizers (and mentors?) has been reduced since 9/11 and especially since the al-Qaeda attacks within Saudi Arabia in 2003 and 2004, but problems remain, as we all recently saw by that Saudi military officer who shot up the base in Florida. Still, that was just one low-level guy who unfortunately slipped through the cracks of both Saudi and US vetting. That was a joint security failure.

More worryingly, the tensions with Iran encourage the sectarian/anti-Shia side of Saudi “Wahhabism” (and make life even worse for Saudi Shia - most of whom live in the Eastern Province, ie. where the oil is. My understanding is that Shiites make up most of the Saudi-born labor force at ARAMCO, especially the lower-paid jobs).

Of course, I’m dancing around the brutal authoritarianism and illiberalism of the Saudi regime in general, and the supposedly “tolerant modernizer” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a reckless power-hungry kid who is being indulged by an aging father who some suspect is suffering from dementia. Not great.

Nitpick: Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in a Saudi consulate, not an embassy.
 
Last edited:
Allen773 said:
Fair enough. You have to wonder about the sympathies of different factions of the House of Saud and the broader Saudi elite, not to mention all of the mid-level and lower-level people within or connected to the Saudi government (e.g. people working in Saudi-sponsored Islamic charities). Yet I’d never accuse rich Saudi donors (or many rich donors elsewhere for that matter) of keeping close track of where exactly their money is going.

The Kingdom’s sponsorship and tolerance of terrorist sympathizers (and mentors?) has been reduced since 9/11 and especially since the al-Qaeda attacks within Saudi Arabia in 2003 and 2004, but problems remain, as we all recently saw by that Saudi military officer who shot up the base in Florida. Still, that was just one low-level guy who unfortunately slipped through the cracks of both Saudi and US vetting. That was a joint security failure.

More worryingly, the tensions with Iran encourage the sectarian/anti-Shia side of Saudi “Wahhabism” (and make life even worse for Saudi Shia - most of whom live in the Eastern Province, ie. where the oil is. My understanding is that Shiites make up most of the Saudi-born labor force at ARAMCO, especially the lower-paid jobs).

Of course, I’m dancing around the brutal authoritarianism and illiberalism of the Saudi regime in general, and the supposedly “tolerant modernizer” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a reckless power-hungry kid who is being indulged by an aging father who some suspect is suffering from dementia. Not great.

Nitpick: Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in a Saudi consulate, not an embassy.
Click to expand...

Here's the bottom line: The US is Saudi Arabia's guard dog.

For Desert Shield/Desert Storm the USAF flew into a state of the art military base and airfield complete with hardened hangars built exclusively for the day we were needed. President Carter set this into motion when he declared the free flow of oil was in the interest of American National Security. The Saudis can't fight effectively above the platoon level just like every other Middle Eastern country and without our protection they'd last ten days against Iran or just about any aggressor in the region.

Everybody in the region hates the Saudis so it's not like they can look for regional help. So why would members of the royal family risk at the very least abandonment by the US by knowingly sponsoring an attack like 9-11.

And yes, the new has been cleaning house is this regard.
 
Axxman300 said:
Here's the bottom line: The US is Saudi Arabia's guard dog.

For Desert Shield/Desert Storm the USAF flew into a state of the art military base and airfield complete with hardened hangars built exclusively for the day we were needed. President Carter set this into motion when he declared the free flow of oil was in the interest of American National Security. The Saudis can't fight effectively above the platoon level just like every other Middle Eastern country and without our protection they'd last ten days against Iran or just about any aggressor in the region.

Everybody in the region hates the Saudis so it's not like they can look for regional help. So why would members of the royal family risk at the very least abandonment by the US by knowingly sponsoring an attack like 9-11.

And yes, the new has been cleaning house is this regard.
Click to expand...

“Knowingly” is the keyword there. No, I don’t find it plausible that senior Saudi officials and royals knowingly funded 9/11.

Of course, the royal family has thousands if not tens of thousands of members; granted, relatively few have real power or influence within the Kingdom. But with that many people in the family, and with all of the money they individually and collectively have, and given what we all know about the role and form of Islam that predominates in Saudi Arabia and how much Saudi royals, religious figures, businessman, and others donate to all kinds of individuals, organizations, and causes at home and abroad (charity is one of the five pillars of Islam, after all...), I find it very easy to believe that a lot of Saudi money has ended up in al-Qaeda’s hands and supported their operations. Some donors were more witting than others, I suspect, but hard to prove.
 
Allen773 said:
“Knowingly” is the keyword there. No, I don’t find it plausible that senior Saudi officials and royals knowingly funded 9/11.

Of course, the royal family has thousands if not tens of thousands of members; granted, relatively few have real power or influence within the Kingdom. But with that many people in the family, and with all of the money they individually and collectively have, and given what we all know about the role and form of Islam that predominates in Saudi Arabia and how much Saudi royals, religious figures, businessman, and others donate to all kinds of individuals, organizations, and causes at home and abroad (charity is one of the five pillars of Islam, after all...), I find it very easy to believe that a lot of Saudi money has ended up in al-Qaeda’s hands and supported their operations. Some donors were more witting than others, I suspect, but hard to prove.
Click to expand...

The flip side to this is that Al Qaeda had a clearly stated goal which was centered on targeting the US. It would be like me donating money to the PIRA and hoping they don't attack British targets...or not caring...
 
Axxman300 said:
The flip side to this is that Al Qaeda had a clearly stated goal which was centered on targeting the US. It would be like me donating money to the PIRA and hoping they don't attack British targets...or not caring...
Click to expand...

Well, clearly not everyone in Saudi Arabia was on board with the Saudi-US relationship, least of all Osama bin Laden. Saudi Arabia (and other Gulf monarchies) for that matter) at every level from the royal and religious elite down to ordinary pious Saudis had showered Osama and his Afghan Arabs with donations and other support for his anti-Soviet jihad. Not that he was a particularly important actor in Afghanistan, but it was enough that a young man from an incredibly wealthy and prominent Saudi family gave up a comfortable life in the Kingdom to go help his Muslim brethren in Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden was a rock star as far as Saudi Arabia was concerned in the 1980s. After such a massive, decade-long investment not just in bin Laden's efforts but the broader anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan (with the Saudis funneling money, with the help of Pakistani intelligence as well as more directly, to the most hardline of the mujaheddin), it seems unlikely that the conservative and risk-averse House of Saud would have done a complete about-face (covertly, not overtly). Epecially once bin Laden and some of his battled-hardened Saudi volunteers returned to the Kingdom after the Soviets were driven out and King Fahd made the incredibly controversial decision to station American troops in Saudi Arabia ("we don't need the help of the American infidels to defend the Kingdom from Saddam!", bin Laden vented to Saudi officials, to no avail).

By the mid-1990s, when bin Laden really started to escalate his newer anti-American (and anti-Saudi royal family) jihad, the House of Saud was too fractured and internally divided to fully control the Islamist dissidents (many of whom, again, had previously enjoyed massive support - people like Osama bin Laden). King Fahd was paralyzed from a massive stroke in late 1995, jealously guarded by his wives and sons, while Crown Prince Abdullah struggled to crack down on corruption and make headway with other cautious reforms and the King's full brothers, in charge of the Interior Ministry (Nayef), the Defense Ministry (Sultan), and Riyadh Province and the Royal Court (Salman, who is now King of course) were opposing Abdullah at every step of the way.

The projection of unity and consensus within the House of Saud and Wahhabi religious establishment to the outside world masked bitter internal divisions and power intrigues, especially, I argue, in the 1990s and early 2000s. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden - with many ideological sympathizers within the Kingdom and across the Islamic world (though very few outright endorsed his tactics, let alone joined al-Qaeda or similar groups) - was escalating his rhetoric and his operational planning, leading to many plots, most of which failed; but a few obviously succeeded, including the biggest one of all on the American homeland.

I hope that makes sense.
 
Last edited:
I must read the NYT piece.

Been saying for ages Muller knows everything.

I read a while back that the 9/11 families were being told of the royal/government Saudi links to the Al Qaeda funding.

I sometimes wondered in the past year if a type of gun nutter in Saudi Arabia killed Kashoggi.

... someone who thinks that the Saudi donor/s for "freedom and guns" for whatever Al Qaeda / ISIL does needs to be protected from non-muslim retribution/assassination.
 
When Bin Ladin arrived in Afghanistan, he relied on the Taliban until he was able to reinvigorate his fund-raising efforts by drawing on ties to wealthy Saudi individuals that he had established during the Afghan war in the 1980s.

Al Qaeda appears to have relied on a core group of financial facilitators who raised money from a variety of donors and other fund-raisers, primarily in the Gulf countries and particularly in Saudi Arabia. Some individual donors surely knew, and others did not, the ultimate destination of their donations. Al Qaeda and its friends took advantage of Islam's strong calls for charitable giving, zakat. These financial facilitators also appeared to rely heavily on certain imams at mosques who were willing to divert zakat donations to al Qaeda's cause.

Al Qaeda also collected money from employees of corrupt charities. It took two approaches to using charities for fund-raising. One was to rely on al Qaeda sympathizers in specific foreign branch offices of large, international charities-particularly those with lax external oversight and ineffective internal controls, such as the Saudi-based al Haramain Islamic Foundation. Smaller charities in various parts of the globe were funded by these large Gulf charities and had employees who would siphon the money to al Qaeda.

In addition, entire charities, such as the al Wafa organization, may have wittingly participated in funneling money to al Qaeda. In those cases, al Qaeda operatives controlled the entire organization, including access to bank accounts. Charities were a source of money and also provided significant cover, which enabled operatives to travel undetected under the guise of working for a humanitarian organization.

It does not appear that any government other than the Taliban financially supported al Qaeda before 9/11, although some governments may have contained al Qaeda sympathizers who turned a blind eye to al Qaeda's fundraising activities. Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization. (This conclusion does not exclude the likelihood that charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship diverted funds to al Qaeda.)

Still, al Qaeda found fertile fund-raising ground in Saudi Arabia, where extreme religious views are common and charitable giving was both essential to the culture and subject to very limited oversight. Al Qaeda also sought money from wealthy donors in other Gulf states.
Click to expand...

https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch5.htm

When it's in the main body of a chapter in the 9/11 Commission Report, then it's not really a conspiracy theory, is it?
 
Last edited:
Allen773 said:
https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch5.htm

When it's in the main body of a chapter in the 9/11 Commission Report, then it's not really a conspiracy theory, is it?
Click to expand...

I think you're equivocating. I think the actual question is whether Al Qaeda received funding for the 9/11 attack from the Saudi government, as an official (secret) policy of that government. Identifying unofficial sources of funding from people and groups in Saudi Arabia is not the same thing as showing a conspiracy by the Saudi government to carry out terrorist attacks on US soil by proxy.
 
theprestige said:
I think you're equivocating. I think the actual question is whether Al Qaeda received funding for the 9/11 attack from the Saudi government, as an official (secret) policy of that government. Identifying unofficial sources of funding from people and groups in Saudi Arabia is not the same thing as showing a conspiracy by the Saudi government to carry out terrorist attacks on US soil by proxy.
Click to expand...

No, I'm not saying that the Saudi government knowingly conspired to commit a terrorist attack on US soil. What I am saying is that they were negligent and reckless in both funding Wahhabism throughout the world and in terms of not engaging in oversight as to where those funds went.

The al-Saud are not competent and uncompromised (as in, not corrupt) enough to justify the amount of money they have and spend in general, which makes their willingness - at least, historically - to fund all of these byzantine and corrupt Islamic charities (quotation marks) throughout the world rather problematic, don't you think?
 
Allen773 said:
No, I'm not saying that the Saudi government knowingly conspired to commit a terrorist attack on US soil. What I am saying is that they were negligent and reckless in both funding Wahhabism throughout the world and in terms of not engaging in oversight as to where those funds went.

The al-Saud are not competent and uncompromised (as in, not corrupt) enough to justify the amount of money they have and spend in general, which makes their willingness - at least, historically - to fund all of these byzantine and corrupt Islamic charities (quotation marks) throughout the world rather problematic, don't you think?
Click to expand...

I think you're making a point that everyone already agrees with, that doesn't answer the central question of the thread, and that is largely irrelevant to that question.
 
theprestige said:
I think you're equivocating. I think the actual question is whether Al Qaeda received funding for the 9/11 attack from the Saudi government, as an official (secret) policy of that government. Identifying unofficial sources of funding from people and groups in Saudi Arabia is not the same thing as showing a conspiracy by the Saudi government to carry out terrorist attacks on US soil by proxy.
Click to expand...

I think that since Saudi Arabia is a kingdom that contributions by individual members of the royal family may count as well as contributions from the government itself.
 
theprestige said:
I think you're making a point that everyone already agrees with, that doesn't answer the central question of the thread, and that is largely irrelevant to that question.
Click to expand...

How is it irrelevant? The 9/11 Commission Report's conclusions are damning enough. I cited them.

If I sent money to people who in turn sent money to other people who in turn engaged in a conspiracy that resulted in mass murder, bodily injury, property damage, emotional distress, am I automatically off the hook if I say "I didn't know that they would do that? I had no idea?'"

The House of Saud knew damn well that bin Laden was a serious threat to both them and the United States and its allies (they did take away his passport, then helped successfully pressure Sudan to kick him out after a few years). He had orchestrated or inspired several terrorist attacks before 9/11.

Their best defense is that they were reckless, negligent, corrupt, and willfully stupid in how they distributed funds to Islamic "charities" and whether they paid any attention to what their Wahhabist clerics at home and abroad were doing - who were they funding? Did the senior princes in charge of the Saudi government know? Did they want to know? Did they care? Did they have any idea what Saudi imams said about America in their sermons, or what official Saudi school textbooks said about Jews, Christians, and others?

Regardless of how direct or indirect, official or not it was, "Saudi Arabia really might have funded 9/11" is a plausible - very probable, in my estimation - claim to make.
 
Last edited:
Lupus said:
It could be any country which had it's best interests in Iraq being invaded.
Click to expand...

That would be Iran.

The problem is, and stop me if you've heard this before, none of the 9-11 hijackers nor Al Qaeda's leadership were Iraqi, or had funding from Iraq. Prior to 9-11 Saddam was an Al Qaeda target. Iraq grew a soft spot for them after 9-11 and took in some of their people who needed hospitalization. Since Al Qaeda is a Sunni organization Iran wasn't a big fan prior to 9-11, and even though they now shelter Ayman al-Zawahiri they keep him under tight security to protect themselves even as they take Al Qaeda pay-offs.

So in the end there was Saudi money and other funding from a variety or sources. None of which were Iraq or Iran.
 
Axxman300 said:
even though they now shelter Ayman al-Zawahiri they keep him under tight security to protect themselves even as they take Al Qaeda pay-offs.
Click to expand...

I wonder if the Iranians have any incentive these days to hand him over to us, considering current tensions.

Maybe we can compromise and they can discreetly send him back to Pakistan - then, someone tips us off to his location, and we send in some JSOC operators to kill or capture him before he gets set up with protection from Pakistan’s own favored jihadists (and Al Qaeda allies) like Lashkar-e-Toba (sp) and their handlers in the ISI Deep State. Would make things simpler and quicker than was the case for Osama.

Just an idea...
 
Allen773 said:
I wonder if the Iranians have any incentive these days to hand him over to us, considering current tensions.

Maybe we can compromise and they can discreetly send him back to Pakistan - then, someone tips us off to his location, and we send in some JSOC operators to kill or capture him before he gets set up with protection from Pakistan’s own favored jihadists (and Al Qaeda allies) like Lashkar-e-Toba (sp) and their handlers in the ISI Deep State. Would make things simpler and quicker than was the case for Osama.

Just an idea...
Click to expand...

Not going to happen.

First, Iran doesn't admit anything. Second, they would protect Moshe Dayan if they thought we wanted to arrest him. Pakistan really doesn't want him because Al Qaeda has attacked their government in the past, but doesn't have the balls to kill him themselves.

Old will get him in the end.
 
Axxman300 said:
That would be Iran.

The problem is, and stop me if you've heard this before, none of the 9-11 hijackers nor Al Qaeda's leadership were Iraqi, or had funding from Iraq. Prior to 9-11 Saddam was an Al Qaeda target. Iraq grew a soft spot for them after 9-11 and took in some of their people who needed hospitalization. Since Al Qaeda is a Sunni organization Iran wasn't a big fan prior to 9-11, and even though they now shelter Ayman al-Zawahiri they keep him under tight security to protect themselves even as they take Al Qaeda pay-offs.

So in the end there was Saudi money and other funding from a variety or sources. None of which were Iraq or Iran.
Click to expand...

That would Be the Russian Republic.
 
Axxman300 said:
and even though they now shelter Ayman al-Zawahiri they keep him under tight security to protect themselves even as they take Al Qaeda pay-offs.
Click to expand...


Coming back to this:

From two months ago:

The leader of al-Qa’ida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is with a small group of terrorist fighters in eastern *Afghanistan and poses a threat to the peace deal signed between the US and the Taliban, the head of the US Central Command says.

General Kenneth McKenzie cast doubt on whether the Taliban had ended links with al-Qa’ida in Afghanistan, which could delay the timetable for reducing the number of US troops in the country to zero by May next year.
Click to expand...

General McKenzie said that Zawahiri, who has a $US25m bounty on his head, was with a “very small” number of al-Qa’ida terrorists at their “home base” in eastern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan. He said they were holed up in the same province as a small group of ISIS fighters known to be in Nangarhar.

“He doesn’t have the ability to talk much but we think he’s probably physically up in that area somewhere,” General McKenzie said. “The threat to the United States is not the Taliban — it’s never been the Taliban — it’s the entities they allow to live in *Afghanistan that threaten us and we’re really talking about ISIS and al-Qa’ida.”
Click to expand...
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/peace-deal-at-risk-as-head-of-alqaida-ayman-alzawahiri-is-in-afghanistan/news-story/801c01eae4bdf3d7d8dbef3831162057

If CENTCOM is right, then presumably the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Network, LeT, and elements of the Pakistani ISI/Deep State (which is a REAL "Deep State", not an imagined one like in the US) are involved in keeping him very well protected.

If OTOH Zawahiri is in Iran then the IRGC Qods Force is directly guarding him (we know they've been doing this with many members of al-Qaeda post-2001, including many members of Osama bin Laden's family, and Iran still harbors a number of key senior Al-Qaeda guys).

Either way, he's very well-protected.
 
Allen773 said:
Coming back to this:

From two months ago:




https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/peace-deal-at-risk-as-head-of-alqaida-ayman-alzawahiri-is-in-afghanistan/news-story/801c01eae4bdf3d7d8dbef3831162057

If CENTCOM is right, then presumably the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani Network, LeT, and elements of the Pakistani ISI/Deep State (which is a REAL "Deep State", not an imagined one like in the US) are involved in keeping him very well protected.

If OTOH Zawahiri is in Iran then the IRGC Qods Force is directly guarding him (we know they've been doing this with many members of al-Qaeda post-2001, including many members of Osama bin Laden's family, and Iran still harbors a number of key senior Al-Qaeda guys).

Either way, he's very well-protected.
Click to expand...

How does Imran Khan fit into this?
 
Allen773 said:
His statements about Osama aside, from what I understand Khan was/is supported by significant elements of the Pakistani Deep State.
Click to expand...

I don't see it.

It'd be all over the news.

That sounds like a Hindu nationalist conspiracy theory.
 
How's that "extreme vetting" working out for us?

In the Saudi military, candidates for foreign training programs are typically nominated by their squadron commanders, who send the nominations up the chain of command in the kingdom’s Defense Ministry. As a prospective trainee in the American flight program, Lieutenant Alshamrani was supposed to have been thoroughly screened by Saudi security forces before his name was even put forward.

Saudi authorities had no access to the lieutenant’s cellphone data, unlike the F.B.I. after the shooting occurred, but at this point they should have been aware that the lieutenant’s public Twitter account was following online figures whom the Saudis considered dangerous extremists, said Mr. Clarke of the Soufan Center, who wrote an analysis of the case for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.
Click to expand...

One problem was that he was applying for a diplomatic visa as part of the elite training programs that are often important components of multibillion-dollar arms sales. In the last five years alone, Saudi Arabia has bought more than $45 billion in American weapons and training.

Although the State Department had cabled all embassies at Mr. Trump’s orders earlier in 2017 to step up screening of visas, the extra scrutiny was applied to immigrant visas and not to diplomatic applications, a senior American Embassy official in Riyadh said.
Click to expand...

In mid-January, Attorney General William P. Barr announced that Lieutenant Alshamrani had most likely acted alone. Still, 21 other Saudi military students were expelled from the United States after investigators found that many had links to extremist organizations.
Click to expand...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/politics/saudi-gunman-vetting.html


Hmm...

Prior to September 11, 2001, it was State Department policy that Saudi citizens, as a group, had overcome the presumption under section 214(b) of the INA that every alien is to be considered an immigrant “until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer, at the time of application for a visa . . . that he is entitled to nonimmigrant status.”51 This presumption applied to any concern that Saudi citizens were at risk of becoming economic immigrants to the United States. One consular officer who issued a visa to a 9/11 hijacker said, “It was factual, as far as our statistics showed, that they just weren’t economic immigrants, they went, they spent a lot of money, they went on their vacations, they loved to go to Florida and then they came back.”52

Consular officers were not given written guidance that the 214(b) presumption had been overcome,53 although the policy was recognized in written materials about consular work produced in Saudi Arabia before September 11.54 Consular officers in Saudi Arabia were advised of this policy orally when they arrived at the post.55 They were told that Saudi Arabia met the criteria for inclusion in the Visa Waiver Program because of its citizens’ low visa refusal rates and that the country had applied for inclusion in the program. But, like the UAE, the Saudis refused to reciprocate and allow U.S. citizens to travel to Saudi Arabia without a visa.56 Thus, although Saudi Arabia was not technically a part of the VWP, consular officers were told it was unwritten State Department policy to consider Saudi Arabia a “virtual visa waiver” country.57
Click to expand...

Implicit within the policy decision to consider Saudi Arabia a virtual visa waiver country was an assumption that Saudi citizens were not security risks. Inclusion in the actual Visa Waiver Program before 9/11 required that both the State and Justice department weigh not only visa overstay and refusal rates but also the security risks posed by citizens of the particular country being considered for inclusion in the program. By treating Saudi Arabia as if it were in the Visa Waiver Program, State arguably had arrogated to itself that portion of the visa waiver calculation. And even before 9/11, evidence was accumulating that this assumption was in error. The CIA had analyzed and reported on Saudi Arabia’s Islamic awakening as early as 1993.60
Click to expand...

Inspectors from Orlando, Los Angeles, and Dulles International airports all recalled an unwritten policy of preferential treatment enjoyed by Saudis prior to September 11. In these airports, which admitted eight hijackers and refused one, Saudi travelers generally received less scrutiny. They were often escorted to the front of the immigration lines by airline personnel.
Click to expand...

Citizens of wealthy Persian Gulf nations or third country nationals from the Middle East with established lives in Germany were seen by State as good visa risks because they rarely overstayed their terms of admission or sought to work in the United States. The U.S. foreign policy interest in stable relations with the oil-rich Gulf countries also played a role. Even though al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Ladin had held Saudi citizenship, Saudi funding for terrorism was well established, and CIA personnel working shoulder to shoulder with State consular officials were well aware of the presence of Saudi extremists in Saudi Arabia, State Department personnel in Saudi Arabia and in Washington never acted to increase the scrutiny given Saudi visa applicants.
Click to expand...

Ultimately, the individual consular officers who adjudicated visas for the 9/11 hijackers were following State Department policy. They were not trained to spot terrorists. They were told not to give great scrutiny to applicants with the hijackers’ socioeconomic backgrounds. They believed their job was to deny visas to intending immigrants and to check all applicants against the terrorist watchlist, and they did these tasks scrupulously.
Click to expand...

https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Ch5.pdf
 
There’s an awful lot of circumstantial evidence implicating at least some parts of the Saudi government in 9/11...but I’ve never found any real reason for why they would support a massive attack on their greatest ally and protector. Can someone smarter than me feel me in?
 
Allen773 said:
There’s an awful lot of circumstantial evidence implicating at least some parts of the Saudi government in 9/11...but I’ve never found any real reason for why they would support a massive attack on their greatest ally and protector. Can someone smarter than me feel me in?
Click to expand...

to direct the anger of their radical religious hatemongers against the West instead of their own corrupt and morally degenerate rulers.

But let's be clear that providing funds for whatever to stay on the good side of the nutjobs and the nutjobs using those funds to do terrorism is not the same as actively endorsing said terrorism.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
to direct the anger of their radical religious hatemongers against the West instead of their own corrupt and morally degenerate rulers.

But let's be clear that providing funds for whatever to stay on the good side of the nutjobs and the nutjobs using those funds to do terrorism is not the same as actively endorsing said terrorism.
Click to expand...

Whatever they did or didn’t endorse, the result was the same.
 
Mycroft said:
I think that since Saudi Arabia is a kingdom that contributions by individual members of the royal family may count as well as contributions from the government itself.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that's not how monarchies work. A duchess doesn't speak for the crown just because she happens to be the queen's sister, and has royal income of her own that she invests in her personal interests or even "in the interests of the crown".

Historically, royal family seems to be a source of conflict and rebellion as often as not. But I admit I haven't examine the Royal Charter of Saudi Arabia, or whatever doctrine of entitlement establishes the kingdom and its authorities. Maybe being born into the House of Saud actually does make one a minister of the crown. But that's not the way it is in the UK, is it?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom