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White House now admits Saudi flights took place after 9/11
For almost three years, the White House, FAA, FBI etc have been denying that three Saudis, one the son of a prince, flew from Tampa to Lexington, and then out of the country during a time when ALL flights were to be grounded. Many AMERICAN CITIZENS were stuck in cities far from home, left to fend for themselves, but Bush allows Saudis to fly from a number of cities (including many Bin Ladens) during the no-fly time. And then, in typical Bush fashion, denies it happened until overwhelming evidence to the contrary is piled up.
TAMPA - Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation's air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left.
The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky.
The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned to TIA a few hours later on the same plane.
For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose.
But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details.
The odyssey of the small LearJet 35 is part of a larger controversy over the hasty exodus from the United States in the days immediately after 9/11 of members of the Saudi royal family and relatives of Osama bin Laden.
The terrorism panel, better known as the 9/11 Commission, said in April that it knew of six chartered flights with 142 people aboard, mostly Saudis, that left the United States between Sept. 14 and 24, 2001. But it has said nothing about the Tampa flight.
The commission's general counsel, Daniel Marcus, asked TIA in a letter dated May 25 for any information about "a chartered flight with six people, including a Saudi prince, that flew from Tampa, Florida on or about Sept. 13, 2001." He asked for the information no later than June 8.
What are you suggesting? That the governemnt allowed certain Saudis with political connections to leave the country for their own protection or the White House or a different wing of the federal government conspired in the 9/11 tragedy?
What are you suggesting? That the governemnt allowed certain Saudis with political connections to leave the country for their own protection or the White House or a different wing of the federal government conspired in the 9/11 tragedy?
Not suggesting that anyone in the White House or elsewhere in the federal government conspired before the 9/11 tragedy.
What I want to know is why where Saudis allowed to fly when Americans weren't? Why were members/potential suspects/ties to Bin Laden allowed to leave the country without questioning? Did Bush's ties, and that of his father to Saudi Arabia and the House of Saud affect the course of the 9/11 reaction? What else is the government covering up about 9/11.
If there is nothing to hide about these flights, then why did the White House repeatedly LIE about it for almost three years? What else are they lying about? Or more to the point, what are the telling the truth about?
I think they shouldn't have lied about it but I understand why they did it. Normal people were grounded at the time but this has special circumstances. They were with accompanied by former police officers and Fbi agents I doubt we could follow everybody around who was grounded.... I doubt if a Democrat were president it would have been any different.
I think they shouldn't have lied about it but I understand why they did it. Normal people were grounded at the time but this has special circumstances. They were with accompanied by former police officers and Fbi agents I doubt we could follow everybody around who was grounded.... I doubt if a Democrat were president it would have been any different.
So allowing/encouraging potential suspects/witnesses/sources of information to flee the country after the biggest attack on us since WWII is understandable?
CLARK CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY
Ex-counterterrorism czar approved
post-9-11 flights for bin Laden family
By Alexander Bolton Richard Clarke, who served as President Bush's chief of counterterrorism, has claimed sole responsibility for approving flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden's family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In an interview with The Hill yesterday, Clarke said, "I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake, and I'd do it again."
Most of the 26 passengers aboard one flight, which departed from the United States on Sept. 20, 2001, were relatives of Osama bin Laden, whom intelligence officials blamed for the attacks almost immediately after they happened.
Clarke's claim of responsibility is likely to put an end to a brewing political controversy on Capitol Hill over who approved the controversial flights of members of the Saudi elite at a time when the administration was preparing to detain dozens of Muslim-Americans and people with Muslim backgrounds as material witnesses to the attacks.
Several Democrats say that at a closed-door meeting May 6, they pressed members of the commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11 to find out who approved the flights.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who attended the meeting, said she asked former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.) and former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, a Republican, "Who authorized the flight[s] and why?"
"They said it's been a part of their inquiry and they haven't received satisfactory answers yet and they were pushing," Boxer added.
Another Democrat who attended the meeting confirmed Boxer's account and reported that Hamilton said: "We don't know who authorized it. We've asked that question 50 times."
Referring to questions about who authorized the flights, former Rep. Tim Roemer (D-Ind.), one of the 10 members of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission, said in an interview Monday: "In my mind, this isn't resolved right now. We need more clarity and information from the relevant political sources and FBI sources."
But Clarke yesterday appeared to put an end to the mystery.
"It didn't get any higher than me," he said. "On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn't get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI."
Clarke's explanation fit with a new stance Hamilton has taken on the issue of the Saudi flights.
Hamilton said in an interview Friday that when he told Democratic senators that the commission did not know who authorized the Saudi flights, he was not fully informed.
"They asked the question 'Who authorized the flight?' and I said I did not know and I'd try to find out," Hamilton said. "I learned subsequently from talking to the staff that we thought Clarke authorized the flight and it did not go higher."
"I did not at any point say the White House was stalling," Hamilton added. "They asked me who authorized it, and I said we didn't know."
Hamilton said, however, that "we asked the question of who authorized the flight many times to many people."
"The FBI cleared the names [of the passengers on the flights] and Clarke's CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] team cleared the departure," Hamilton said.
He cautioned that this is "a story that could shift, and we still have this under review."
This new account of the events seemed to contradict Clarke's sworn testimony before the Sept. 11 commission at the end of March about who approved the flights.
"The request came to me, and I refused to approve it," Clarke testified. "I suggested that it be routed to the FBI and that the FBI look at the names of the individuals who were going to be on the passenger manifest and that they approve it or not. I spoke with the - at the time - No. 2 person in the FBI, Dale Watson, and asked him to deal with this issue. The FBI then approved . the flight."
"That's a little different than saying, 'I claim sole responsibility for it now,'" Roemer said yesterday.
However, the FBI has denied approving the flight.
FBI spokeswoman Donna Spiser said, "We haven't had anything to do with arranging and clearing the flights."
"We did know who was on the flights and interviewed anyone we thought we needed to," she said. "We didn't interview 100 percent of the [passengers on the] flight. We didn't think anyone on the flight was of investigative interest."
When Roemer asked Clarke during the commission's March hearing, "Who gave the final approval, then, to say, 'Yes, you're clear to go, it's all right with the United States government,'" Clarke seemed to suggest it came from the White House.
"I believe after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all these decisions that we were making in those hours, which was the interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference," Clarke testified. "I was making or coordinating a lot of the decisions on 9-11 in the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don't know. The two - since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House chief of staff's office."
Instead of putting the issue to rest, Clarke's testimony fueled speculation among Democrats that someone higher up in the administration, perhaps White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, approved the flights.
"It couldn't have come from Clarke. It should have come from someone further up the chain," said a Democratic Senate aide who watched Clarke's testimony.
Clarke's testimony did not settle the issue for Roemer, either.
"It doesn't seem that Richard Clarke had enough information to clear it," Roemer said Monday.
"I just don't think that the questions are resolved, and we need to dig deeper," Roemer added. "Clarke sure didn't seem to say that he was the final decisionmaker. I believe we need to continue to look for some more answers."
Roemer said there are important policy issues to address, such as the need to develop a flight-departure control system.
Several Democrats on and off the Hill say that bin Laden's family should have been detained as material witnesses to the attacks. They note that after the attacks, the Bush administration lowered the threshold for detaining potential witnesses. The Department of Justice is estimated to have detained more than 50 material witnesses since Sept. 11.
Clarke said yesterday that the furor over the flights of Saudi citizens is much ado about nothing.
"This is a tempest in a teapot," he said, adding that, since the attacks, the FBI has never said that any of the passengers aboard the flight shouldn't have been allowed to leave or were wanted for further investigation.
He said that many members of the bin Laden family had been subjects of FBI surveillance for years before the attacks and were well-known to law-enforcement officials.
"It's very funny that people on the Hill are now trying to second-guess the FBI investigation."
The Sept. 11 commission released a statement last month declaring that six chartered flights that evacuated close to 140 Saudi citizens were handled properly by the Bush administration.
Clarke's Contradiction May Dampen Dem Attack on Bush By Scott Wheeler
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
June 01, 2004
(CNSNews.com) - As Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess, two senators may need to revise one of their harshest critiques about the Bush administration's actions in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, especially now that Bush critic Richard Clarke has contradicted one of his own key statements.
It turns out that President Bush and other top members of his administration had nothing to do with the decision to let members of Osama bin Laden's family depart the United States in the days immediately after 9/11, despite the suggestions of Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Charles Schumer of New York.
Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism official and author of a recent book blasting the Bush administration's handling of intelligence leading up to the terrorist attacks, told The Hill newspaper last week that he gave the go-ahead for two members of the bin Laden family and other Saudi nationals to leave the U.S.
"It didn't get any higher than me," Clarke told The Hill . "I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake, and I'd do it again."
However, back in March, testifying before The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9-11 Commission), Clarke described a different scenario regarding the attempts by the Saudis to depart the U.S. "The request came to me and I refused to approve it," he said at the time.
Clarke's original comments helped Boxer to apply more public pressure on the Bush administration.
"Who in the administration authorized the Saudi Arabian flights ... who did this?" Boxer demanded to know on May 18. "Why would the Saudis want to get out of the country?"
In September of 2003, long before Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Boxer and Schumer had already seized on the issue involving the bin Laden family.
"I have sent a letter to Andrew Card, the (White House) chief of staff, asking how this happened, what was the justification, what safeguards were taken, and what are we doing to make sure it doesn't happen again," Schumer proclaimed.
The New York senator suggested that the Bush administration had acted irresponsibly.
"On September 12th and 13th, hundreds of Saudis were able to take flights home back to Saudi Arabia when no one else could fly. I couldn't fly. Senator Boxer couldn't fly," Schumer said. "But relatives of the royal family, including two members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to get on airplanes and go back to Saudi Arabia.
"Now, Dick Clarke, at our Judiciary (Committee) hearing yesterday, said that the FBI approved each person and said they would be okay to go. How the heck did the FBI know on September 13th that none of these people were either involved in terrorism or, at the very least, be needed for questioning?" Schumer asked.
Republican strategist Cheri Jacobus told CNSNews.com that she wonders how Democrats will change their strategy, in light of Clarke's recent admission.
"What Boxer and Schumer do with this new information will tell a lot about their agenda" Jacobus said. But she added that Clarke, in reversing himself and accepting responsibility for approving the flights to Saudi Arabia, has made it impossible for the Democrats to use the issue against President Bush.
The contradiction also discredits Clarke's views on other matters related to 9/11, Jacobus said. Clarke's criticism of the president and his administration were heavily publicized by many in the media when the book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror , was published. Clarke followed up the release of his book with two days of testimony before the 9/11 Commission.
Jacobus said she wonders whether Boxer and Schumer were really more interested in scoring political points than in national security. "Do Schumer and Boxer still want accountability since it no longer serves their political agenda?" she asked.
But in a bitter election year, all issues are subordinate to politics, Jacobus added.
"Is their agenda to get to the bottom of things and find out what really happened? Or is it a political agenda where if the wrong person gives the wrong answer they will simply ignore it and be hypocrites?" Jacobus asked.
Schumer and Boxer were unavailable for comment on Friday.
I remember that article as well - which is it, Clarke? Did you lie to the 9/11 committee, or are you lying now to take heat off of the White House?
Parts you choose not to highlight.....
He (Lee Hamilton) cautioned that this is "a story that could shift, and we still have this under review."
When Roemer asked Clarke during the commission's March hearing, "Who gave the final approval, then, to say, 'Yes, you're clear to go, it's all right with the United States government,'" Clarke seemed to suggest it came from the White House.
"I believe after the FBI came back and said it was all right with them, we ran it through the decision process for all these decisions that we were making in those hours, which was the interagency Crisis Management Group on the video conference," Clarke testified. "I was making or coordinating a lot of the decisions on 9-11 in the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don't know. The two - since you press me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State or the White House chief of staff's office."
Instead of putting the issue to rest, Clarke's testimony fueled speculation among Democrats that someone higher up in the administration, perhaps White House Chief of Staff Andy Card, approved the flights.
"It couldn't have come from Clarke. It should have come from someone further up the chain," said a Democratic Senate aide who watched Clarke's testimony.
Clarke's testimony did not settle the issue for Roemer, either.
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