The Saudi connection to 9/11

Saudi Arabia Admits To John Kerry That It Created ISIS... But There Is A Twist

 

Zero Hedge,

20 April, 2016

On the day Barack Obama is kowtowing to his Saudi allies, and just days after a senior Obama administration finally made the admission that has been a "conspiracy theory" for years namely that "a lot of the money, the seed money if you will, for what became Al Qaeda, came out of Saudi Arabia," the FT is out with another stunning revelation.

The FT has written an article that supposedly focuses on the US sources of growing diplomatic antipathy between the US and Saudi Arabia. The source of disagreement: the treatment of Iran.

As US President Barack Obama arrives on a valedictory visit to Saudi Arabia this week, that 70-year-old bargain looks frayed by fractious relations with a ruling House of Saud that is coming under unpredictable new management. The shale-based energy revolution meanwhile shows the potential to liberate the US from dependence on Saudi and Gulf oil. Mr Obama’s main foreign policy achievement, the nuclear deal struck last year between international powers and Iran, is abhorrent to Saudi Arabia, whose virulently sectarian Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam abominates the Shia Islam of Iran and its Arab network of co-religionists from Baghdad to Beirut.

But it was not just Iran.

"Even when the Iran deal was only at an interim and fragile stage in 2013, the Saudis were so affronted they rejected a seat for which they had vigorously lobbied on the UN Security Council. But differences between Washington and Riyadh had been steadily accumulating — starting with the fact that it was mainly Saudi terrorists, on orders of the Saudi Osama bin Laden, who struck America on 9/11."

However the real reason for Iraqi fury at Obama goes further back. In fact, it appears that all current events are shaped by the disastrous foreign policy of Obama's early years, namely the US intervention behind the Arab Spring:

The Saudis could never reconcile themselves to the US-led invasion of Iraq, not because it toppled Saddam Hussein but because it led to Shia majority rule in an Arab country. When Hosni Mubarak was toppled by Egypt’s popular revolt in 2011, Riyadh accused Mr Obama of betraying a US ally. Saudi perceptions of US complacency in the face of Iran’s advances in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen are a grievance far outweighing western perceptions of Isis jihadism as the main threat in and from the Middle East.

But the punchline: Saudi's admission that it itself crea

ted Daesh, or ISIS. As for the twist: as the late Saudi foreign minister says, the Saudis only created ISIS in response to Obama's disastrous policy in the region.

 To wit:

After the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to a lightning Isis offensive in 2014, even the late Prince Saud al-Faisal, the respected Saudi foreign minister, remonstrated with John Kerry, US secretary of state, that “Daesh [Isis] is our [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa” — the Tehran-aligned Shia Islamist ruling party of Iraq.

And there you have it, and as a reminder, the person who was in charge of US foreign policy during this entire period was none other than...

But that is just part of the story.

As we revealed last year courtesy of leaked CIA documents, according to investigative reporter Nafeez Ahmed  the "leaked document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, despite anticipating that doing so could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

"According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of the strategy, but described this outcome as a strategic opportunity to “isolate the Syrian regime."

In other words, the Saudis may have created ISIS in response to US foreign policy, but this had been known all too well to the US from the beginning, who not only were "in on it", but actively groomed the terrorist organization, ostensibly through a clandestine spy organization whose name is conveniently abbreviated to just three letters.

Which ultimately means that just like Al Qaeda was funded, i.e., created, by Saudi Arabia, so its replacement on the global bogeyman scale, the Islamic State terrorist are nothing more than conveniently puppets, played from day one by the interplay of Saudi and US national interests.

And since the US clearly knew about the formation of ISIS, it is also safe to assume that the US government may well have been aware of the tactics and strategy used by Al Qaeda, especially on that fateful day of September 11, 2001.

When will this be confirmed? Hopefully just as soon as those "28 pages" of high confidential documents are finally declassified. We are holding our breath...

The Smoking Gun: "Document 17" Links Saudi Embassy In Washington To Sept 11

Zero Hedge,

20 April, 2016

With the topic of Saudi Arabia's involvement in the Sept 11 attack on everyone's lips, if certainly not those of president Obama who is currently in Riyadh where he is meeting with members of Saudi royalty in what may be his last trip to the Saudi nation as US president, many have been clamoring for the information in the suddenly notorious "28-pages" (following the recent

0 Minutes episode) to be released to the public so the US population can finally relegate all those "conspiracy theories" surrounding the real perpetrator behind the Sept 11 terrorist attack to the "conspiracy fact" pile.

It won't have to wait that long.

As The Times writes today, new evidence has come to light of a definitive link between Saudi Arabian officials and the 9/11 terrorist attacks "further raising tensions as President Obama travels to the kingdom."

According to the report, Ghassan Al-Sharbi, a Saudi who became an al-Qa’ida bomb maker, is believed to have taken flying lessons with some of the 9/11 hijackers in Arizona but did not take part in the attacks on New York and the Pentagon that killed 3,000 people in 2001.

He was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and has since been held at Guantanamo Bay. According to a US memo, known as document 17, written in 2003 and quietly declassified last year, the FBI learnt that he had buried a cache of papers shortly before he was captured

.

Think of "Document 17" as a mini version of the "28 pages" whose content has yet to be revealed. The document was written by two US investigators examining the possible roles of foreign governments in the attacks.

One detail leapt out at the FBI agents from the papers that Sharbi had tried to hide: his US flight certificate was in an envelope from the Saudi embassy in Washington.

A car pulls into the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, AP Photo

 

And there is your smoking gun, which has been fully available to the US government for the pat 13 years.It should have also been available to the American public.

Understandably, Brian McGlinchey, the activist who uncovered document 17, asked a simple question: "The envelope points to the fundamental question hanging over us today: to what extent was the 9/11 plot facilitated by individuals at the highest levels of the Saudi government?"

Here is the problem. As the Times puts it, "president Obama is expected to meet on Wednesday with King Salman, whose kingdom is under pressure from low oil prices, an emboldened Iran and Washington’s tougher stance. The Saudi government threatened last week to dump $750 billion in US Treasury securities and other American assets if congress passes a bill that would clear a path for the families of 9/11 victims to file lawsuits against the kingdom."

In other words, Obama will not ask any questions of King Salman, let alone the "fundamental" one.

So perhaps it is time to get a president who will ask the question: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidates, backed the bill, which Mr Obama has signaled he will veto. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the leading Republicans in the race, have warned Saudi Arabia that its relationship with the US must change. “Friends do not fund jihadists that are seeking to murder us,” Mr Cruz said.

Sp even as all of Obama's potential replacements have at least promised to investigate further, we wonder:just why is Obama so terrified of the US public getting access to the truth?

If he is so worried about the Saudi liquidation threat, he shouldn't be: after all the Fed would be deliriously happy at the opportunity to monetize another $750 billion in assets and inject three-quarters of a trillion in fresh "reserves" aka liquidity into the system.

Meanwhile, Obama has other problems: the US president also faces calls to release a redacted 28-page portion of a joint congressional report on the 9/11 attacks, produced in 2002 and thought to link senior Saudi figures to the plot. He suggested on Monday that a decision was imminent.

We are confident his "decision" in this matter will be to likewise prevent the truth from emerging, because as Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, said: "I had to stop every couple of pages ... to rearrange my understanding of history." No further comment necessary.

Meanwhile the lies go on.

Bob Graham, a former chairman of the US senate intelligence committee, has alleged that Saudi Arabia was the principal financier of 9/11. “The effect of withholding [the pages] has been to embolden Saudi Arabia to be a continuing source of financial and human terror resources,” he said.

Document 17, written by Dana Lesemann and Michael Jacobson, will deepen suspicions. Ms Lesemann is said to have been sacked from the 9/11 commission after she circumvented her boss to access the 28 pages.

Mr Jacobson was the principal author of the 28 pages, and document 17 hints at his suspicions. "How aggressively has the US government investigated possible ties between the Saudi government and/or royal family and the September 11th attacks?" it asks.

The answer: not at all. It's about time the American people asked why not.