Obama Responds To Saudi Threat To Dump Treasuries If Its Role In Sept 11 Is Probed
18
April, 2016
This
weekend's biggest, and most shocking story, was
the report that
in response to a proposed Congressional Bill that would allow a probe
into the Saudi role behind the Sept 11 terrorist attack, Saudi Arabia
had threatened the US with dumping its roughly $750 billion in
Treasury holdings.
What
was curious about the story is that while Saudi Arabia implicitly
admitted it had a role in the September 11, the Obama administration
was actively doing everything in its power to prevent the Bill from
passing, and thus to keep the truth under wraps, leading many to
wonder if Obama was more concerned about his own people or a handful
of uber-wealthy Saudi princes.
Moments
ago White House spokesman Josh Earnest chimed in, and validated all
of those fears.
- EARNEST: BILL WOULD OPEN U.S. TO GLOBAL LEGAL VULNERABILITIES
- WHITE HOUSE SAYS IT IS CONFIDENT THAT SAUDIS RECOGNIZE THE SHARED INTEREST WITH THE U.S. IN PROTECTING STABILITY OF INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM
- EARNEST: DON'T KNOW IF BILL WILL BE TOPIC ON OBAMA SAUDI VISIT
And
the punchline:
- EARNEST COMMENTS ON BILL TO ALLOW LAWSUITS BY SEPT. 11 FAMILIES
- EARNEST SAYS BILL TO ALLOW LAWSUITS AGAINST SAUDI CONCERNING
- EARNEST: OBAMA WOULDN'T SIGN SUE-SAUDI BILL AS DRAFTED
In
short: whether due to the Saudi threat, or just because of its
default position on the matter, Obama will block the Bill and no
further probes into Saudi involvement in the Sept 11 tragedy will be
allowed.
And
with that any concerns about whether the US president represents not
only the interests of the Sept 11 victims and their families, but all
all American people, and is intent on discovering who the real
culprit behind the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil, as opposed
to the interests of few Saudi billionaires and would much rather have
the truth remain suppressed in 28 top secret pages and certainly in
the public domain, were just answered.
9/11 families hit Obama for ‘siding with Saudi Arabia,’ want secret report declassified
18
April, 2016
President
Barack Obama is facing increased pressure due to a renewed effort to
make a secret Congressional report public that may describe links
between Saudi Arabia and the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.
Over
the past week, families of 9/11 victims have criticized President
Obama because of reports stating that his administration is lobbying
Congress to block a bill that would allow terror victims to sue
foreign governments connected to attacks on American soil. The
criticism comes as Obama prepares to travel to Riyadh for the fourth
time in his presidency.
Saudi
Arabia has threatened to sell some $750 billion in US assets if the
bill passes, fearing it could leave the country vulnerable in US
courts, the New
York Times reported.
Many relatives of 9/11 victims believe Riyadh played a role in the
attacks, particularly since 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi
citizens.
Officially,
the 9/11 Commission Report “found
no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior
Saudi officials individually funded the organization.” However,
a previous Congressional report, which the Commission followed up on,
features 28 pages that more closely detail the hijackers’ sources
of money and funding, and those documents have been kept classified
for more than a decade.
Families
of 9/11 victims have tried to sue Saudi Arabia in court over the
country’s possible role in the attacks before, but US law grants
foreign governments protection in domestic courts. Last year, a
federal judge dismissed
a lawsuit claiming
that the country had provided material support to the terrorists,
ruling that Riyadh had sovereign immunity. Saudi attorneys argued in
court that there was no evidence directly linking the country to
9/11.
“If
someone you loved was murdered and the person was just able to go
away Scott free, would you be okay with that? I don’t think anybody
would,” Loria
Van Auken said to CBS
News.
Van Auken’s husband Kenneth worked in the North Tower of the World
Trade Center and died in the attacks.
RT America
Another
9/11 widow, Mindy Kleinberg, told the New York Times “it’s
stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its
own citizens.”
Now,
the families of 9/11 victims are trying once again to have the
classified pages of the Congressional report released to the public
as part of a lawsuit against the Saudi Arabian government. The
documents may also contain details on a support network for the
hijackers that featured the involvement of the Saudis.
“There
are a lot of rocks out there that have been purposefully tamped down,
that if were they turned over, would give us a more expansive view of
the Saudi role,” Bob
Graham, former chairman of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, said to CBS.
“The
Saudis know what they did. We know what they did,” Graham
said.
Graham
has also been pushing the president to release the 28 pages, and he
told Fox
News last
week that Obama will make a decision on the matter within the next
two months.
Pressure
on Obama is also growing from current members of his own party.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) said the president should
declassify the documents even before he travels to Saudi Arabia this
Tuesday.
“If
the president is going to meet with the Saudi Arabian leadership and
the royal family, they think it would be appropriate that this
document be released before the president makes that trip, so that
they can talk about whatever issues are in that document,” she
said to 60 Minutes.
In
addition to seeing whether Obama will release the pages, Americans
are also waiting to see how the president will react to Riyadh’s
threat of financial retaliation. The Obama administration has argued
that stripping sovereign immunity from nations over terror attacks on
the US would endanger Americans and spark similar legislation against
the US.
Relations
between the US and Riyadh have already been strained by the Iranian
nuclear deal and unflattering comments made by Obama in an article
that appeared in The Atlantic, in which he criticized the Saudis
as “free
riders.” Since
news of Saudi Arabia’s financial threat came to light, however, the
president has been urged by many Americans to take a tougher stance.
“If
the President allows himself to get pushed around this way in front
of the world, then he earns every bit of the anger being directed at
him by the extended family of September 11,” wrote
Mike Lupica in a New York Daily News editorial.
“This
is about turning his back on the dead of Sept. 11 and their
survivors, and letting his country down at the same time. He is like
all the others who held his office before him, more desperate than
ever in the late rounds to be remembered as a great President. Be one
now.”
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