The Saudi Connection: Inside the 9/11 Case That Divided the F.B.I.
A small team of agents spent years investigating whether one of Washington’s closest allies was involved in the worst terror attack in U.S. history. This is their story.
The Sept. 11 attacks, and U.S. visas for Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.Credit...Photo illustration by Mark Weaver
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By Tim Golden and Sebastian Rotella
Jan. 23, 2020
This article is a partnership between ProPublica, where Tim Golden is an editor-at-large and Sebastian Rotella is a senior reporter, and The New York Times Magazine.
On the morning of Sept. 11 last year, about two dozen family members of those killed in the terror attacks filed into the White House to visit with President Trump. It was a choreographed, somewhat stiff encounter, in which each family walked to the center of the Blue Room to share a moment of conversation with Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, before having a photograph taken with the first couple. Still, it was an opportunity the visitors were determined not to squander.
One after another, the families asked Trump to release documents from the F.B.I.’s investigation into the 9/11 plot, documents that the Justice Department has long fought to keep secret. After so many years they needed closure, they said. They needed to know the truth. Some of the relatives reminded Trump that Presidents Bush and Obama blocked them from seeing the files, as did some of the F.B.I. bureaucrats the president so reviled. The visitors didn’t mention that they hoped to use the documents in a current federal lawsuit that accuses the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia — an American ally that has only grown closer under Trump — of complicity in the attacks.
The president promised to help. “It’s done,” he said, reassuring several visitors. Later, the families were told that Trump ordered the attorney general, William P. Barr, to release the name of a Saudi diplomat who was linked to the 9/11 plot in an F.B.I. report years earlier. Justice Department lawyers handed over the Saudi official’s name in a protected court filing that could be read only by lawyers for the plaintiffs. But Barr dashed the families’ hopes. In a statement to the court on Sept. 12, he insisted that other documents that might be relevant to the case had to be protected as state secrets. Their disclosure, he wrote, risked “significant harm to the national security.”
The families were stunned. They knew that the success of their lawsuit might well depend on access to the F.B.I.’s investigation into possible Saudi involvement in the plot by Al Qaeda. In a federal courthouse in Manhattan, near where the twin towers once stood, the fight over evidence had already dragged on for more than a year. Now, as the judge prepared to rule on what documents would be disclosed, the Justice Department was digging in. ...
I would be more surprised if he kept a promise.......Even Donald Trump reneged on a promise to 9/11 victim families to release classified information on Saudi involvement.
what a load of rubbish.
I recall at the time 9/11 happened I was sitting on my couch reading a Tom Clancy book about terrorists flying a plane into the White House ...
the thing everyone else forgets is that not all terrorists are illiterate goat herders from farkoffistan, many are educated and read the same books.
Conspiracy theorists think EVERYTHING is a conspiracy. No matter how ridiculous or outlandish their claims, for some reason they see that as more plausible than reality
... We’re reminded often to remember 911. One part of 9/11 is the plane that supposedly crashed in Shanksville Pennsylvania; Shanksville’s mayor said they were called to a plane crash and he was surprised there wasn’t evidence of an airplane anywhere.
Here’s the mayor’s interview around the time of the incident.
The official explanation is that there wasn’t any debris, bodies, luggage or anything showing because the ground was so soft it swallowed the plane completely: Boeing-757 coming down full speed and the soil is so soft it swallows the whole plane: everything, like a whale swallowing a fish, except a ‘hijackers’ passport, which escaped his pocket and the plane: how’s that for luck. What drugs was the individual who came up with that involved with? Perhaps it was a fortuitously well placed ‘Acme’ quicksand patch. If the ground was so soft, how come the trees in the vicinity didn’t topple over?
Look at the actual impact crater. Here’s one photo. http://911review.com/errors/phantom/imgs/crater1.jpg
That hole, we’re told, is where the 757 disappeared. Here is another view, https://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7508/1605/1600/crater13.gif
Where are plane parts you always see, like engines, landing gear or the tail, anything?
This is one ‘smoking gun’ of 9/11. There are many. You can’t explain away the lack of airplane debris. ‘Consumers’ could demand accurate answers but don’t as they inhabit the Matrix. Many ‘consumers’ can’t imagine government would lie, except of course they do all the time: WMD anyone? Americans are like spousal abuse victims, in that despite all of the continual lies, new ones are accepted because ‘this time its different’.
How many ‘laws of physics’ defying coincidences can fit in a single event: 9/11 is full of them. Ask your friends who’ve studied physics about the chances of three towers collapsing in an identical fashion, in one day, without historical or scientific precedent.
Their flight teacher said they “couldn’t even fly a Cessna” but we’re expected to believe they crashed commercial airplanes into the most secure buildings, in the most secure airspaces, in the country with the ‘greatest’ air force, in an impossible flight trajectory for even the most experienced pilots, in a section that was empty due to construction work. Drones anyone? Here’s a picture before the roof collapsed, after a 757 allegedly hit it. You’ll notice no windows were broken where wings would have hit the building. ...
Right. Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania shortly after the passengers attempted to take control away from the hijackers.I recall seeing where the Pentagon was attacked, and there was aerial footage of a crash site.. quite close to a river. That IS the one where the passengers took over, isn't it.?
I wasn't asking you, Pink. I was asking Squire.Who planned it.? You ask ME.??
It seems obvious, but my logic is not evidence.
I didn't mean you couldn't answer. Ugh! The written word is just not good communication sometimes.well you got me.
Free speech and all...
George W Bush and Dick Cheney know that answer.@Squire
"I don't know how to fake the killing of 4000 people, so we will have to do it for real". From the movie The long kiss goodnight.
What happened to the crew and passengers of Flight 93?
Who do you think planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks?
I don't know which question you were answering, so I'll ask them one at a time.George W Bush and Dick Cheney know that answer.
Why did George W Bush oppose the 9/11 commission and then pervert it with his nominees?
Why would any decent person oppose a commission into such a major act of terrorism?
Why is the US government still withholding from the public its investigation of Saudi government involvement when 14 of the 19 'purported' hijackers were Saudi nationals?
... According to information supplied to Newsweek by the National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH), part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 3,946 members of the World Trade Center Health Program, which supports first responders and survivors on-site during and after the 9/11 attacks, have died.
The spokesperson for the organization couldn't confirm whether the deaths of these members was related to their 9/11-related conditions, but Newsday reported that more than 125,000 people, including 79,000 first responders, have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Program, and at least 18,000 have been diagnosed with a 9/11-related cancer.
If you tell me their names I will tell you what happened to them.I don't know which question you were answering, so I'll ask them one at a time.
What happened to the crew and passengers of Flight 93?
If you tell me their names I will tell you what happened to them.
Were they drugged and disposed of after they got to the airport? They were on the flight manifest, so was it after they got to the airport, but before they boarded?"I don't know how to fake the killing of 4000 people, so we will have to do it for real".
They were drugged and disposed of in a manner that would preclude identification, such as incineration.
No remains were found at any of the sites, especially Shanksville because the US government made people believe the earth swallowed the plane.