When the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes ran their 28 Pages story in early April, they brought the issue of possible Saudi Arabian involvement in the 9/11 terror attack on the United States back into the public consciousness.
This triggered a debate on whether the 28 pages of classified material that were removed from the 9/11 Commission Report should be released.
For those who missed it, the entire segment can be viewed here.
As important as the piece was for raising the issue in the public consciousness, there are a few significant points that the 60 Minutes segment left out.
With President Barack Obama currently in Saudi Arabia and 2016 presidential frontrunners both talking about the controversy— Donald Trump has called for the material to be released while Hillary Clinton has refused to say whether she even read the material while she was the Senator from New York — a much deeper look at the issue is required.
In a brief recap on the 60 Minutes story The Hill reported:
Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who helped author the report, told “60 Minutes” the classified information outlines a network of people he believes supported the hijackers while they were in the U.S.
He said the hijackers were “substantially” supported by Saudi government, as well as charities and wealthy people in that country.
“I think it is implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom never been in the United States before, many of whom didn’t have a high school education — could’ve carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States,” Graham said.
The 28 pages were cut from a report on the 9/11 terror attacks in 2003 by the George W. Bush administration in the interest of national security. Porter Goss, who was Graham’s co-chairman during the inquiry, said the FBI refused to declassify the information at the time.
The Clinton Cash Connection: It’s Not Just About George W. Bush
Although much of the reporting on the 28 Pages has focused on the Bush family’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, liberal media bias has soft peddled the long-standing and significant financial connections between Saudi Arabia and the Clintons.
These ties are significant not just for historical value, but because they also exist today. They raise serious questions about Hillary Clinton’s ability to provide an unbiased opinion on whether the 28 pages of material should be open to the public, especially given the Saudi Arabian government’s recent threats to wage economic war on the United States if the material is released.
While the Bush family clearly has troubling and significant ties to Saudi Arabia, as the New York Times detailed in 1993, so do the Clintons:
The conventional wisdom in Washington in the election last year was that George Bush was the great friend of Saudi Arabia — after all, he went to war to defend the kingdom.
It turns out that Bill Clinton was hardly unknown to the Saudis.
One of President Clinton’s college classmates at Georgetown University was Prince Turki bin Feisal. Today Prince Turki is the head of the Saudi Arabian intelligence service. The two stay in touch, an Administration official said.
As Governor of Arkansas, Mr. Clinton worked hard to secure a multimillion-dollar Saudi donation to a Middle Eastern studies program at the University of Arkansas, said Bernard Madison, the dean of the university’s Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.
Those Saudi connections continued while Bill Clinton was president. As Breitbart News detailed in an exhaustive two-part piece recently, the White House tradition of holding a Muslim Eid dinner began with the Clintons and the events were hosted by Hillary Clinton herself. Hillary Clinton’s closest aide and advisor on Islamic issues, Huma Abedin, was raised in Saudi Arabia and as Breitbart reporting showed, came into Mrs. Clinton’s life midway through the Clinton administration in 1996.
After Clinton left the presidency, Saudi Arabia continued to be a major benefactor for the Clintons through organizations such as the William J. Clinton Foundation. As CNN reported about a list of donors released after President Obama nominated Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State:
The governments of Kuwait and Qatar are also on the list, as is Saudi businessman Nasser Al-Rashid, who has close ties to the Saudi royal family. Saudi Sheikh Mohammed H. Al-Amoudi, reputed to be one of the richest men in the world, is among the donors as well. Both Saudis contributed in the $1 million to $5 million range. A group called Friends of Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Foundation appear in the same category.
Just today, The Daily Caller reports that that the Saudi Arabian government is paying $140,000 a month to lobbying firm The Podesta Group, in the account being personally handled by the brother of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager and longtime Clinton ally John Podesta:
But documents recently published by the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act show that Clinton campaign financier Anthony Podesta is one of the several lobbyists at his firm personally handling the Saudi account.
The Prince Bandar Money Connection
One way money seems to have flowed to the terrorists was through the wife of a man well known to both the Bush and Clinton White Houses: Saudi Arabian Prince Bander.
As the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2002:
Haifa is the youngest daughter of the late King Faisal and is married to Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Al Jubeir, along with an advisor to Prince Bandar, said the embassy has been scrambling since Friday night to try to reconstruct the princess’ records of payments to needy Saudis in the United States.
Specifically, embassy officials were trying to explain how money from the princess went to Saudi nationals Omar al Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, and how they in turn gave financial assistance to two of the hijackers: Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi.
We Let Terror Planner Anwar al-Alwaki Slip Through Our Fingers
After the 9/11 attack, the commission has suspicions about American-born, Yemeni raised Muslim cleric Anwar al-Alwaki, who had connections with a number of the 9/11 hijackers.
Today, we know for sure that Anwar al-Alwaki was a terrorist recruiter and helped plan terror attacks for Al Qaeda. The U.S. killed al-Alwaki in a drone strike in 2011.
Al-Alwaki’s involvement in 9/11 is reportedly part of the 28 pages that is being kept from the American people. History Commons summarizes:
According to phone records, four calls take place between imam Anwar al-Awlaki and Omar al-Bayoumi on February 4, 2000. This is the same day 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar move into their own apartment in the Parkwood Apartments complex in San Diego
An FBI agent who investigated the calls will later say that he is 98 percent certain that the phone is being used by Alhazmi and Almihdhar at the time. The phone will call al-Awlaki on February 10, 16, and 18 as well.
Even in death, al-Alwaki has become an inspirational figure for jihadists; the attackers behind last year’s slaughter in San Bernardino are said to have watched al-Alwaki’s videos.
As a detailed internal FBI document, however, published by the New York Times in 2002 shows:
The bureau’s assistant director for counterterrorism asks James Baker, the head of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review at the Justice Department, for approval to use evidence gathered for intelligence purposes for a criminal prosecution. The memo shows that officials considered charging Awlaki, who left the United States earlier in 2002, for traveling from his Virginia home into Washington to visit prostitutes. The cleric returned to the United States only once more, for a visit in October 2002, and he was never charged.
Still No Serious Investigation of Saudi Arabian Agents of Influence
If the media is now considering the possibility that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia had elements that were funding and supporting a terrorist operation within the United States, then you’d think that they would also look into allegations that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was also supporting political influence operations by using insiders placed at the highest levels of both Democrat and Republican administrations.
However, the mainstream media has shown massive resistance to any serious investigation of these charges. Despite overwhelming direct evidence, the press has rejected inquiries into top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and longtime establishment Republican lobbyist Grover Norquist, considering them Islamaphobic fever dreams.
The case that both Abedin and Norquist were put into place as influencers on either side of the aisle in the late 1990s isn’t the stuff of tinfoil hats, though.
As Breitbart News previously outlined in detail, Saudi Arabian-raised Huma Abedin went from being a college student to almost overnight becoming one of Hillary Clinton’s most trusted aides and longtime companions.
Grover Norquist — currently facing a recall vote from his position on the board of the National Rifle Association over these allegations — had influence around the same time through a group he co-founded called the Islamic Institute. It’s also beyond question that GOP operative Grover Norquist was an influence on the Bush administration in the immediate wake of 9/11, where his Islamic Institute helped organize events such as George W. Bush’s now infamous “religion of peace” speech held at a Washington DC area mosque. You’ll see Norquist’s Executive Director Khaled Saffuri to Bush’s right in the video.
http://youtu.be/cCZTzOsV_ck
How The Saudi Arabian Influence Game Works
Another example of Norquist’s influence came just a week after 9/11, when two associates of Torquiest were featured as part of a public relations campaign where C-SPAN aired a coproduction with the Saudi Arabian owned ANA Television Network.
The two-hour program— archived in full here by C-SPAN— followed a pattern that has now become familiar and recently is carried out by groups like CAIR.
Here’s the pattern: shortly after a terrorist attack, a group of Muslims come out, claim that they condemn the terror attack that just happened, but then immediately pivot and discuss how the terror attack is leading to “hate crime” against the Muslim community.
The C-SPAN/ANA production is notable because it contains two people with direct connections to longtime establishment Republican lobbyist Grover Norquist: Khaled Saffuri, executive director of Grover Norquist Islamic Institute, and Abdou Reimann Alamoudi. one of the Institute’s funders. In fact, Norquist himself is mentioned early on in the program, as this video highlight in the program shows.
The video is a chilling example of duplicity, especially since we now know that one of the participants, Abdurahmann Alamoudi, is currently in prison for his role in funding terrorism. Alamoudi, who can be seen in the video trying to reassure Americans that all Muslims oppose terrorism, was arrested in 2003. Just a few years earlier, he had written the check to Grover Norquist that helped form the Islamic Institute, as Breitbart News has detailed.
If you have any doubt about the beliefs of the people behind the ANA Television Network, just look at the conduct of the ANA network’s chairman, Saudi Arabian businessman Abdullah Masry.
What was Masri’s justification for kidnapping his own children and hiding them away in Saudi Arabia? Sharia law.
As The Telegraph reported in 2004 about the man behind the broadcasting company trying to reassure Americans in the wake of 9/11 that Muslims were just like us:
An Arab businessman ordered to pay Britain’s biggest divorce settlement after he abducted his four children claimed yesterday that the award was “the most pyrrhic of victories”.
Lawyers representing Abdullah Masry, 56, who was ordered by the High Court two years ago to pay his former wife £26.3 million, said there was “no realistic prospect of her enforcing it or getting any benefit from it”
Mr Masry, who is said to be worth £150 million and refuses to leave his native Saudi Arabia, is calling for the settlement to be overturned.
Timothy Scott, QC, told the Appeal Court that his client would not pay the award because he considered himself subject to Sharia law, which did not recognise the divorce.
Masri was able to get away with kidnapping his children because he knew he had the backing of the Saudi Arabian government.
This anecdote puts a human face on the vast differences between Western culture and our supposed ally Saudi Arabia. It also exposes Hillary Clinton’s vulnerability over her hypocrisy in accusing Republicans of waging a “war on women.” Even the New York Times was forced to admit this last year, writing:
But the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation has accepted tens of millions of dollars in donations from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Algeria and Brunei — all of which the State Department has faulted over their records on sex discrimination and other human-rights issues.
The department’s 2011 human rights report on Saudi Arabia, the last such yearly review prepared during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure, tersely faulted the kingdom for “a lack of equal rights for women and children,” and said violence against women, human trafficking and gender discrimination, among other abuses, were all “common” there.
Saudi Arabia has been a particularly generous benefactor to the Clinton Foundation, giving at least $10 million since 2001, according to foundation disclosures. At least $1 million more was donated by Friends of Saudi Arabia, co-founded by a Saudi prince.
The Road Ahead: Combating Media Silence
The 60 Minutes story, while incomplete, is an important media milestone because it brings the troubling truth about Saudi Arabia into public focus. However, it’s also clear that the news media will tend to cover for both the Democrat and Republican establishments.
Anyone who wants to avoid seeing Hillary Clinton win the White House in 2016 needs to recognize that the news media will not be hammering on Hillary Clinton every day about her Saudi Arabian connections. It’s up to Republican candidates, pro-liberty organizations, and the grassroots to become informed and vocal on these issues.
The influence of Saudi Arabia on American politics goes beyond party loyalty; it’s a populist issue that cuts to the heart of the dangers of foreign governments influencing both political parties and undermining America’s national sovereignty.
Follow Breitbart News investigative reporter and Citizen Journalism School founder Lee Stranahan on Twitter at @Stranahan.
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