{"id":308504,"date":"2021-09-12T11:50:23","date_gmt":"2021-09-12T11:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/09\/9-11-attacks-saudi-arabia-government-ties-cover-up-war-on-terror\/"},"modified":"2021-09-13T11:17:26","modified_gmt":"2021-09-13T11:17:26","slug":"twenty-years-ago-the-saudis-got-away-with-the-crime-of-the-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/09\/12\/twenty-years-ago-the-saudis-got-away-with-the-crime-of-the-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty Years Ago, the Saudi Government Got Away With the Crime of the Century"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Despite copious evidence of Saudi complicity in the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration and its successors have spent twenty years shielding the country\u2019s elite from accountability while making war on an ever-growing list of other Middle East countries.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n One World Trade Center collapses on September 11, 2001. (L. Busacca \/ WireImage via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

One of the still unsolved mysteries of the September 11 attacks is how the foreign government that was by far the most responsible for that atrocity got off completely scot-free \u2014 and, in fact, proceeded to be lavishly rewarded by Washington for years to come.<\/p>\n

If 9\/11 was a modern Pearl Harbor, then imagine that Franklin Roosevelt had responded to that attack by covering up any evidence of Japan\u2019s involvement, blaming and invading the Soviet Union instead, and then spending the next two decades selling the Japanese Empire billions of dollars in weapons, regularly wining and dining their leadership, and helping them commit war crimes in other parts of the world. This is basically what happened between the United States and Saudi Arabia since that day in 2001.<\/p>\n

Even before the attacks, it was understood that, as part of the delicate balance of power<\/a> keeping the royals in place at the top, the Saudi government was helping fund and export<\/a> Islamic extremism around the world, in line with the wishes of the radical clerics by whose assent they ruled. The Saudi government was a distinctly<\/a> unhelpful<\/a> force in previous terrorism investigations<\/a>, stonewalling<\/a> US attempts to get Osama bin Laden and refusing US requests<\/a> to arrest or execute him when Sudan offered to hand him over. According to one US counterterrorism official<\/a>, that would\u2019ve meant \u201cwe probably never would have seen a September 11th.\u201d Then there was the fact that most of the hijackers were Saudi nationals, as bin Laden himself was.<\/p>\n

Since the release in 2016 of the redacted \u201ctwenty-eight pages\u201d of the 9\/11 Commission report George Bush had tried to keep secret, Saudi government culpability for the attack has gone from mere smoke to a wildfire. We found out<\/a> that, in 1999, two Saudi nationals who claimed their tickets from Phoenix to Washington had been paid for by the Saudi Embassy they were traveling to, and who the FBI later determined had \u201cconnections to terrorism,\u201d did a \u201cdry run\u201d for the attacks, forcing their plane to make an emergency landing because of their suspicious behavior.<\/p>\n

We also found out that the eventual hijackers \u201cwere in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government,\u201d including workers at that embassy, a Saudi diplomat in Los Angeles, and at least two possible Saudi spies. One of these alleged spies was paid directly out of the account of the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, and by the charity his wife ran. Meanwhile, a year before the pages were declassified, the government quietly declassified another document<\/a>: an Al Qaeda operative\u2019s US pilot certificate, enclosed in a Saudi embassy envelope. That same operative would later claim<\/a> that, while recruiting him to carry out an attack on the United States, a Saudi religious figure used the term \u201cYour Highness,\u201d while discussing his jihadi qualifications with a man over the phone.<\/p>\n

There was more than enough evidence to warrant a comprehensive investigation, with the results released publicly \u2014 and, at minimum, serious diplomatic and even economic consequences for the House of Saud if their complicity was confirmed beyond doubt.<\/p>\n

Instead, the American public\u2019s fury and the vast military resources of the US government were immediately directed against the impoverished and backward government of Afghanistan. And, perversely, the Bush administration, and the media that worked lockstep with it<\/a>, turned Saudi Arabia into a trusted partner to prosecute Bush\u2019s \u201ccrusade\u201d against terrorism.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re going to need support from places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and others,\u201d retired Air Force major general Perry Smith told NPR on September 13 about waging war on Afghanistan. Nine days later, a New York Times<\/em> editorial praised<\/a> Bush for \u201cwisely\u201d realizing \u201cthe importance of enlisting major Muslim nations like Pakistan, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia in the antiterrorist coalition.\u201d \u201cSaudi Arabia possesses an array of assets that can be critical in the war against terrorism,\u201d read<\/a> another op-ed.<\/p>\n

Even the proto-Trumpist Pat Buchanan, who opposed the Afghanistan war, included Saudi Arabia in a list of \u201cour Arab allies\u201d that would be negatively impacted by a war on Afghanistan. A Honolulu Star-Bulletin<\/em> column taking vengeful callers to task the day after the attack chided one who called for bombing Saudi Arabia, claiming that \u201cthe Saudis usually are on our side.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the grand and utterly delusional plans Bush officials and pundits immediately drew up after September 11, just about every Middle Eastern state was listed as a future target for regime change or attack: Syria, Algeria, Libya, the Palestinian Authority, and, of course, Iraq and Iran. Saudi Arabia was never even mentioned, except as a reliable partner for Washington to pursue this madness.<\/p>\n

Every now and then in the weeks after the attacks, hints of the truth briefly shone through. Saudi Arabia and Gulf states are \u201chome to financial backers and recruits for terrorist networks,\u201d reported the Washington Post<\/em>, citing US officials who charged they \u201chave not been completely forthcoming in the past, some U.S. officials say.\u201d \u201cIslamic experts and diplomats say that the reasons for the large numbers of Saudis implicated in the hijackings aren’t completely understood,\u201d noted a different column. Ten days after the attacks, on page A15, the Post<\/em> ran a report<\/a> on the country\u2019s \u201cinternal problems\u201d (read: its links to extremists), noting that Saudi authorities had resisted US efforts to interview suspects in an earlier anti-American terrorist attack and quoting a 1998 State Department study that charged \u201cUS intelligence on Saudi Arabia suffers from misunderstanding the radical nature and underestimating the power of the religious establishment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fishy stuff, to say the least. And yet, intent on flexing US military muscle by toppling the Afghan government, Bush officials like Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld shamelessly courted the Saudi leadership, which soon cut ties with the Taliban, backed the US \u201cwar on terror,\u201d and begrudgingly allowed the US military to use the country as a base for its attack, ironically one of the major issues that had animated bin Laden and his ilk to attack the United States to begin with. It was only on the very day that US troops invaded Afghanistan that the Chicago Tribune<\/em> saw fit to run a report on Saudi Arabia\u2019s links to Wahhabi extremism: \u201cTerrorism finds foot soldiers in Saudis<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was as if everything that should have made Saudi Arabia a target for American ire had simply been transplanted onto Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

There are many reasons why this happened, most of them stemming ultimately from Saudi Arabia\u2019s status as home to the world\u2019s largest oil reserves. But let\u2019s not ignore Saudi officials\u2019 hard work in co-opting the US elite. The same Prince Bandar implicated in the twenty-eight pages was a close friend of the Bush family<\/a>, to the point of earning the moniker \u201cBandar Bush\u201d and being the first person Bush Jr talked to when mulling a run for president. He was also racquetball buddies<\/a> with Bush\u2019s future secretary of state, whom he gifted a 1995 Jaguar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia is consistently<\/a> one of the biggest spenders<\/a> on US lobbying \u2014 foreign meddling done openly and legally \u2014 and courts both parties, as well as the press<\/a> to secure positive coverage. It\u2019s not surprising that inexplicably influential New York Times<\/em> columnist Tom Friedman, who rewarded<\/a> the country\u2019s awful<\/a> new crown prince with lavish praise in exchange for equally lavish trips to the country, was also one of the loudest voices<\/a> in favor of hitting Afghanistan after September 11 (\u201cGive war a chance,\u201d he wrote<\/a> a month into the invasion).<\/p>\n

So whatever the truth is about the role Saudi officials played in the attacks, it was buried. According to John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy who investigated the attacks as part of the 9\/11 Commission, the Bush administration was \u201crefusing to declassify anything having to do with Saudi Arabia,\u201d even when he presented them with evidence of Saudi officials\u2019 links to the hijackers, and \u201canything having to do with the Saudis, for some reason, it had this very special sensitivity.\u201d Before hiding the pages that implicated the House of Saud, and his family friend in particular, from public view for nearly fifteen years, Bush tried to put the Saudi-connected Henry Kissinger to head the Commission. Its cochair, former senator Bob Graham, accused<\/a> the US government of \u201caggressive deception\u201d in regard to the Saudi role in the attacks.<\/p>\n

But maybe things are starting to change. Barack Obama famously declassified the twenty-eight pages under pressure from the families of September 11 victims, and Joe Biden has now ordered<\/a> the declassification of more documents related to the FBI\u2019s investigation into the attacks, which could well reveal even more about Saudi government involvement.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll see what this means in practice. The order still leaves some wiggle room to hide inconvenient truths, creating an exception to declassification \u201cwhen the strongest possible reasons counsel otherwise.\u201d But Saudi officials themselves are certainly nervous<\/a> about what the US public and world might learn in the coming months.<\/p>\n

The war on terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq should never have happened, for reasons entirely unrelated to Saudi government culpability for the attacks: they were not only counterproductive<\/a> and catastrophic but an immoral collective punishment of millions of innocent people for the sins of a few, the same twisted logic<\/a> embraced by the terrorists Washington has spent this century hunting. But the evidence we have of Saudi involvement makes the military adventurism of the past decades especially, tragically absurd. With twenty years having passed since the attacks, it is high time there was some accountability for those responsible.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the still unsolved mysteries of the September 11 attacks is how the foreign government that was by far the most responsible for that atrocity got off completely scot-free \u2014 and, in fact, proceeded to be lavishly rewarded by Washington for years to come. If 9\/11 was a modern Pearl Harbor, then imagine that [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1445,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308504"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1445"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308504"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309524,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308504\/revisions\/309524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}