Congress overrides
Obama veto of bill allowing 9/11 lawsuits
By Tom Carter
30 September 2016
On Wednesday, the US
Congress overturned President Obama’s veto of legislation that would permit
victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and their families to sue Saudi
Arabia. Declassified documents released this year confirm the involvement of
Saudi intelligence agents in the funding, organization, and planning of the
attacks—facts which were covered up for years by the Bush and Obama
administrations.
The vote, 97-1 in the Senate and 348-77 in the House of
Representatives, represents the first and only congressional override of
Obama’s presidency. Under the US Constitution, the president’s veto can be
overturned only by a two-thirds majority vote in both houses of Congress.
The Obama administration and the military and intelligence
agencies, backed by sections of the media, including the New York Times, have
vigorously denounced the legislation. Obama personally, together with Central
Intelligence Agency director John Brennan, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford among others, have all
publicly opposed the bill.
In a letter to Congress opposing the legislation, Obama
warned that the bill would “threaten to erode sovereign principles that protect
the United States, including our U.S. Armed Forces and other officials,
overseas.”
In a lead editorial on Wednesday, the New York Times
similarly warned that “if the bill becomes law, other countries could adopt
similar legislation defining their own exemptions to sovereign immunity.
Because no country is more engaged in the world than the United States—with
military bases, drone operations, intelligence missions and training
programs—the Obama administration fears that Americans could be subject to
legal actions abroad.”
In other words, the bill would set a precedent for families
of victims of American aggression abroad—such as the tens of thousands of
victims of “targeted killings” ordered by Obama personally—to file lawsuits
against US war criminal in their own countries’ courts.
Obama denounced the vote with unusual warmth on Wednesday.
“It's an example of why sometimes you have to do what's hard. And, frankly, I
wish Congress here had done what's hard,” Obama declared. “If you’re perceived
as voting against 9/11 families right before an election, not surprisingly, that's
a hard vote for people to take. But it would have been the right thing to do
... And it was, you know, basically a political vote.”
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” Sir Walter Scott famously
wrote, “When first we practice to deceive!” As the tangled web of lies
surrounding the September 11 attacks continue to unravel, one senses that the
American ruling class and its representatives do not see a clear way out of the
dilemma.
Openly torpedoing the legislation is tantamount to an
admission of guilt. Indeed, the Obama administration, the military and
intelligence agencies, and theNew York Times are publicly working to cover up a
crime perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its backers in Saudi Arabia, which in turn is
an ally of the United States. The mere fact that Obama vetoed this bill
constitutes an admission that the US government is hiding something with
respect to the September 11 attacks.
The alternative, from the standpoint of the American ruling
class, is also fraught with risks. Court proceedings initiated by the families
of September 11 victims will inevitably expose the role played by the Saudi
monarchy, an ally of both Al Qaeda and the United States, in the September 11
attacks. This, in turn, will highlight long and sordid history of American
support for Islamic fundamentalism in the
Middle East, which continues to the present day in Syria and
Libya.
Perhaps most dangerously of all, a full public accounting of the roles of Saudi intelligence agents in the
September 11 attacks will once again
raise questions about the role of the American state in the attacks. Why did US
intelligence
agencies ignore the activities of Saudi agents before the
attacks, based on Saudi Arabia’s supposed status as a US ally?
Why did the US government deliberately cover up the Saudi
connection after the fact, instead claiming that Afghanistan was a “state
sponsor of terrorism” and that Iraq was developing “weapons of mass
destruction?” Why was nobody
prosecuted?
The New York Times, for its part, simply lied about the
evidence of Saudi complicity. “The legislation is motivated by a belief among
the 9/11 families that Saudi Arabia played a role in the attacks, because 15 of
the 19 hijackers, who were members of Al Qaeda, were Saudis,” the editors
wrote. “But the independent American commission that investigated the attacks
found no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials financed
the terrorists.”
In fact, at least two of the hijackers received aid from Omar
al-Bayoumi, who was identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a
Saudi intelligence agent with “ties to terrorist elements.” Some of the
hijackers were paid for work in fictitious jobs from companies affiliated with
the Saudi Defense Ministry, with which Al-Bayoumi was in close contact. The
night before the attacks, three of the hijackers stayed at the same hotel as
Saleh al-Hussayen, a prominent Saudi government official.
These and other facts were confirmed by the infamous 28-page
suppressed chapter of the 2002 report issued by the Joint Inquiry into
Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of
September 11, 2001. After 14 years of stalling, the document was finally
released to the public this summer.
Yet the New York Times
continues to describe the Saudi monarchy, the principal financier and sponsor
of Islamic fundamentalist groups throughout the world, as “a partner in
combating terrorism.”
The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, passed
Wednesday, is a direct reaction to these revelations of Saudi complicity in the
September 11 attacks, under pressure from organizations of survivors and
families of victims. The law amends the federal judicial code to allow US
courts “to hear cases involving claims against a foreign state for injuries,
death, or damages that occur inside the United States as a result of. .. an act
of terrorism, committed anywhere by a foreign state or official.”
Although the bill
nowhere names Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government has
threatened massive
retaliation, including by moving $750 billion in assets out of the country before they can be seized in
American legal proceedings. This
reaction alone confirms
the monarchy’s guilt.
During Wednesday’s session, many of the statements on the
floor of the Senate were nervous and apprehensive. Casting his vote in favor of
the bill, Republican Senator Bob Corker declared, “I have tremendous concerns
about the sovereign immunity procedures that would be set in place by the countries
as a result of this vote.” More than one legislator noted that if the bill had
unintended consequences, it would be modified or repealed.
The anxious comments of legislators and the crisscrossing
denunciations within the ruling elite reflect the significance of this
controversy for the entire American political establishment. For 15 years, the
American population has been relentlessly told that the events of September 11,
2001 “changed everything,” warranting the elimination of democratic rights, the
militarization of the police, renditions, torture, assassinations, totalitarian
levels of spying, death and destruction across the Middle East, and trillions
of dollars of expenditures.
The collapse of the official version of that day’s events
shows that American politics for 15 years has been based on a lie.
HILLARY CLINTON'S VERY PROFITABLE
CONNECTION TO THE SAUDI TERRORIST DICTATORSHIP
Can America Ultimately Survive the Crimes of Bush, Clinton and
Obama?
THE CRIME
WAVE THAT IS THE BU$H FAMILY STARTED TWO WARS AGAINST IRAQ ON BEHALF OF THEIR
SAUDI PAYMASTERS.
The perilous ramifications of the September 11 attacks on the
United States are only now beginning to unfold. They will undoubtedly be felt
for generations to come. This is one of many sad conclusions readers will draw
from Craig Unger's exceptional book House of Bush House of
Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. As Unger claims
in this incisive study, the seeds for the "Age of Terrorism" and
September 11 were planted nearly 30 years ago in what, at the time, appeared to
be savvy business transactions that subsequently translated into political
currency and the union between the Saudi royal family and the extended
political family of George H. W. Bush. On the surface, the claim may appear to
be politically driven, but as Unger (a respected investigative journalist and
editor) probes--with scores of documents and sources--the political tenor of
the U.S. over the last 30 years, the Iran-Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, the
birth of Al Qaeda, the dubious connection between members of the Saudi Royal family
and the exportation of terror, and the personal fortunes amassed by the Bush
family from companies such as Harken Energy and the Carlyle Group, he exposes
the "brilliantly hidden agendas and purposefully murky corporate
relationships" between these astonishingly powerful families.His evidence is
persuasive and reveals a devastating story of Orwellian proportions, replete
with political deception, shifting allegiances, and lethal global consequences.
Unger begins his book with the remarkable story of the repatriation of 140
Saudis directly following the September 11 attacks. He ends where Richard A. Clarkebegins, questioning the
efficacy of the war in Iraq in the battle against terrorism. We are
unquestionably facing a global security crisis unlike any before. President
Bush insists that we will prevail, yet as Unger so effectively concludes,
"Never before has an American president been so closely tied to a foreign
power that harbors and supports our country's mortal enemies." --Silvana
Tropea --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition
of this title.
THESE
ENDLESS WARS HAVE COST US BILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND THOUSANDS OF LIVES.... all
because Saddam gave the middle finger to the filthy Saudis!
IT WAS THE
SAUDIS THAT INVADED US 9-11 AND ARE THE GLOBAL FINANCIERS OF TERRORISM. IT IS
THE BUSH PRESIDENTS, HILLARY AND BILLARY and their little Muslim Obama THAT
SHOULD BE TRIED AS TRAITORS FOR DEFENDING A DICTATORSHIP THAT IS ANTI-JEWISH,
ANTI-CHRISTIAN and ANTI-AMERICAN!
WHO WILL
FUND AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARIES WITH BRIBES IF THE SAUDIS ARE EXECUTED?
WHO WILL PUMP MILLIONS INTO THE PHONY CLINTON FOUNDATION IF THE FILTHY SAUDIS
ARE EXECUTED?
AT WHOSE FEET WILL BARACK OBAMA KNEEL AND KISS IF HIS PAYMASTERS, THE FILTHY
SAUDIS GO UNDER?
FBI holds 80,000 pages of secret documents on Saudi-9/11
links
FBI holds 80,000 pages
of secret documents on Saudi-9/11 links
By Patrick
Martin
14 May 2016
The American FBI has a
secret cache of documents, more than 80,000 pages in all, concerning possible
ties between the 9/11 hijackers and an upper-class Saudi family who lived in
Florida and fled the United States two weeks before the suicide hijackings that
killed nearly 3,000 people.
A federal judge in Tampa, Florida has been reviewing the documents for more
than two years as a consequence of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought
by a trio of online reporters—Anthony Summers, Robbyn Swan and Dan Christensen.
The review process has been extremely slow because of restrictive FBI rules on
how many pages Judge William Zloch may access at any one time.
The existence of the document trove was revealed Friday in a front-page article
in the US-based web publication the Daily Beast. The article
identified the Saudi family as Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud, who was
the daughter of Esam Ghazzawi, an adviser to a nephew of Saudi King Fahd.
Ghazzawi owned the home in which they were staying in a gated community in
Sarasota, Florida. The home was raided by the FBI after 9/11 but the residents
had all departed in evident haste on August 30, 2001.
Visitor logs in the community, known as Prestancia, showed that the alleged
ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammad Atta, had visited al-Hijji, along
with two other 9/11 hijackers, Ziad Jarrah and Marwan Al-Shehhi.
Former Senator Robert Graham, co-chair of the joint congressional committee
that investigated the 9/11 attacks, told the Daily Beast that
he had never known of the FBI documents on the Saratoga home until they were
uncovered by the investigative journalists. He later viewed a portion of these
records and confirmed that they identified the three 9/11 hijackers as
visitors.
Throughout this period, the FBI had denied that the al-Hijji family had any
connection to the 9/11 attackers. The agency changed its story only when Graham
said he would testify under oath about what he had read in the file of
documents. At this point the FBI conceded the existence of 35 pages of
documents.
When Judge Zloch ordered a further search for records, the Tampa office of the
FBI came back with 80,226 pages of files marked PENTTBOM, which stands for
“Pentagon/Twin-Towers Bombing” in FBI jargon. Judge Zloch has been reviewing
these since May 1, 2014 and has given no date by which he expects to finish.
The al-Hijji family exited its Sarasota home, leaving behind three cars, an
open safe and disarray that suggested a hasty departure. The security guards at
the gated community noted their departure, but did not consider it suspicious
until the 9/11 attacks two weeks later.
The FBI initially made only a perfunctory response and did not open a formal
investigation until eight months later, in April 2002, “based upon repeated
citizen calls” about the conduct of the family during their stay in the United
States. One of the few documents released said that this investigation
“revealed many connections” between a member of the family “and individuals
associated with the terrorist attacks.”
The Daily Beast report adds to recent revelations of
evidence of Saudi regime ties to the 9/11 hijackers that has been covered up by
the US government under both the Bush and Obama administrations.
Graham has actively campaigned for the release of 28 pages of material on the
Saudi-9/11 connection comprising an entire chapter of the joint congressional
committee report on the 9/11 attacks in which he participated. This material
has been withheld for more than 13 years. On April 10, Graham was the main
witness interviewed by the CBS program “60 Minutes” in a segment on the
continuing cover-up of Saudi-9/11 connections.
In an op-ed column this week in the Washington Post, Graham
reiterated his demand for release of the 28 pages, noting that President Obama
had promised a decision on declassifying the material by next month. Graham
denounced CIA Director John Brennan, who responded to the “60 Minutes” program
by publicly opposing any release of the 28 pages.
Also Friday, the Guardian newspaper published an interview
with a former member of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission appointed by President
George W. Bush, who flatly declared that there was extensive Saudi involvement
in supporting the hijackers. Of the 19 perpetrators, 15 were Saudi citizens,
most of them having recently arrived in the United States when they seized
control of four jetliners on September 11, 2001.
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a Republican, told the newspaper: “There was
an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers,
and some of those people worked in the Saudi government.” While only one Saudi
consular official in Los Angeles, Fahad al-Thumairy, was implicated in supporting
the hijackers, according to the official account, Lehman believes that at least
five officials were involved.
Al-Thumairy was linked to the two hijackers who lived in San Diego before the
9/11 attacks, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, but he was deported rather
than charged with a crime. The other five, whom Lehman did not name, “may not
have been indicted, but they were certainly implicated. There was an awful lot
of circumstantial evidence.”
Another former 9/11 commissioner, who spoke to the Guardian without
direct attribution, recounted what the newspaper called “a mostly unknown
chapter of the history of the 9/11 commission: behind closed doors, members of
the panel’s staff fiercely protested the way the material about the Saudis was
presented in the final report, saying it underplayed or ignored evidence that
Saudi officials—especially at lower levels of the government—were part of an
al-Qaida support network that had been tasked to assist the hijackers after
they arrived in the US.”
The 9/11 Commission director, Philip Zelikow, who later served in the Bush
administration as senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice,
fired one staffer who protested over the suppression of the Saudi ties to 9/11
after she obtained a copy of the suppressed 28 pages of the joint congressional
committee report. Zelikow and the commission members overruled staff protests
on the soft-pedaling of the Saudi connection.
These press reports confirm what the World Socialist Web Site has
long maintained: the official 9/11 investigations were a series of whitewashes
aimed at concealing the role of the Saudi government and US intelligence
agencies during the period leading up to the terrorist attacks.
There has long been evidence that sections of the US government were aware of
the plot to hijack and suicide-crash airliners, but turned a blind eye because
such an atrocity could be used to stampede American public opinion and provide
a pretext for escalating US military interventions throughout the Middle East
and Central Asia.
Saudi Arabian regime gripped by factional infighting amid
mounting economic crisis
By Jean Shaoul
13 May 2016
The ruling House of Saud, issued a
series of royal decrees unceremoniously dumping its longstanding oil minister
Ali al-Naimi, central bank governor Fahad al-Mubarak, and other senior
officials.
The wide-ranging shakeup of
government bodies is part of an attempt to resolve the Kingdom’s growing
economic crisis at the expense of the Saudi masses.
The sackings follow the removal last
month of Abdullah al-Hasin, the water and electricity minister, in a bid to
deflect popular anger over high water rates and new rules over the digging of
wells and cuts in energy subsidies aimed at saving the ruling family
collectively in excess of one and a half trillion dollars.
The shake-up is intended to
concentrate power in the clique around Crown Prince Mohammed, the 30-year-old
son of the aging King Salman. It will further exacerbate the enormous
political, economic and social tensions wracking this semi-feudal regime that
has, since 1945, constituted an essential prop for US imperialist policy in the
region and a bulwark of reaction and repression in the Arab world.
The Saudi monarchy, threatened by the
revolutionary overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the subsequent
political turmoil that threatened almost every regime in the region, moved
rapidly to topple the elected Muslim Brotherhood-led government of President
Mohammed Mursi, even at the risk of conflicting with Washington, and helped
install and bankroll the brutal military dictator Abdul Fatah el-Sisi to
suppress the Egyptian masses.
It sought—at the cost of tens of
billions of dollars—to move against the Syrian regime of President Bashir
al-Assad in Syria by funding an Islamist insurgency, and to shore up the rule
of its regional allies in Yemen, Bahrain and Jordan. Accompanying its moves in
Syria, it sought to undermine pro-Iranian governments in Iraq and Lebanon,
through direct or covert military interventions, the use of Islamist fighters
as proxies, or economic aid.
Its relations with its chief backer,
US imperialism, are now at an all-time low. Riyadh was furious over
Washington’s failure to sustain its support for Mubarak against the Egyptian
masses in 2011.
The US-led interventions in Iraq and
Syria to assert Washington’s hegemony over the Middle East’s vast energy
resources have destabilised Saudi Arabia’s neighbours. Washington’s various
pragmatic manoeuvres, its failure to intervene decisively in the war to overthrow
Assad in Syria allowing Russia to intervene to shore up the regime, its deal
with Iran and support for the Shi’ite government in Iraq, helped strengthened
the influence of Saudi Arabia’s main regional rival, Tehran.
At home, Riyadh attempted to assuage
popular opposition and protests in the Shia-dominated Eastern Province with a
combination of violent suppression and a $350 billion package of benefits and
social spending, a lifeline for the estimated 28 percent of the population who
live in poverty. Between 2 million and 4 million Saudi citizens are believed to
be living on less than $530 a month. With its thousands of princes, the
parasitic Saudi monarchy deprives its citizens of basic democratic rights It
has sought to ruthlessly suppress public discussion of social inequality,
imprisoning bloggers who dare to raise such issues or criticise the regime.
This attempt at repression is being
undermined by the precipitous fall in oil prices, the result of the Saudis’
political decision to maintain output in an attempt to undermine Russia and
Iran. This has led to a $100 billion government deficit in 2015 (15 per cent of
GDP). The new oil minister Khalid al-Falih is not expected to rein in oil
production and thus boost oil prices because this would also boost the revenues
of Saudi Arabia’s rivals.
With 70 percent of its revenue
dependent on oil, the government has cut public spending for 2016 by 25
percent, slashing subsidies on fuel, power and water, with gas prices set to
increase by 80 percent. It took the unprecedented step of introducing a tax on
Saudi nationals—a 5 percent value added tax—in a bid to prevent the budget
deficit soaring to $140 billion and to conserve its $600 billion in reserves.
Riyadh’s sponsorship of Islamist
forces has led to the advance of ISIS, al-Qaeda and similar outfits with their
own agendas in Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula. ISIS cells have launched
dozens of attacks over the last two years and were alleged to have been behind
a spate of bombings targeting the Kingdom’s Shia minority.
Last week, Saudi forces carried out
an operation against ISIS in Mecca, killing four “wanted” men in a shootout,
and another in the southwestern province of Bisha, killing two ISIS suspects
and injuring another. It followed the arrest of Ukab Atibi, allegedly a member
of the ISIS cell that carried out a suicide attack on a mosque used by members
of a local security force in southwest Saudi Arabia in August 2015. Security
forces carried out another raid on a house in Jeddah, arresting two suspects.
The ruling clique is torn with
dissent over the succession to the ailing King Salmon, who promoted his
30-year-old son Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the positions of deputy crown
prince and minister of defence in charge of the murderous, but largely unsuccessful
war in Yemen, sidelining other older claimants to the throne. Mohammed has
overturned the Kingdom’s decades-long policy of buying political quiescence
with a social contract that has provided some security—via low utility prices,
social subventions and public sector jobs—for the Saudi population, and
promoted a wave of Sunni-based Saudi nationalism.
Last month, in an announcement that
the Economist described as “manic optimism,” Mohammed
unveiled his Vision 2030, drawn up by the McKinsey & Company global
consultants McKinsey and aimed at ending the Kingdom’s dependence on oil by
2030. He later declared on Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel an end to
“any dependence on oil” by 2020. The measures include the public listing of 5
percent of Aramco, the world’s largest oil company valued at $2.5 trillion, the
creation of a sovereign wealth fund with a potential value of $2 trillion to
invest in assets, the development of non-oil industries, including a domestic
arms industry; more private sector jobs and a new visa system to allow
expatriate Muslims and Arabs to work long-term in Saudi Arabia.
Symptomatic of the insoluble
contradictions of the Saudi economy was the announcement last week that one of
the largest companies, the construction giant the Saudi Bin Laden Group (SBG)
that has built most of the country’s public buildings, was unable to pay its
workforce.
SBG fired 77,000 of its 200,000
workforce and issued them with exit visas. Immigrant workers, angry that they
had not been paid for months, have held daily protests outside SBG’s offices,
burnt company buses in Mecca and refused to leave the country until they are
paid. The company also dismissed 12,000 of its 17,000 Saudi managerial and
professional staff, calling on them to resign or wait for their wages and a
two-month bonus worth $220 million.
With $30 billion in debts, SBG’s
financial problems stem from the cutbacks in government spending and the crane
collapse on a major expansion of the Grand Mosque in Mecca last year that
killed 107 workers and pilgrims. It prompted an investigation of its government
projects, many of which were reportedly being carried out without any signed
contracts. The company was hit with a withholding of government payments and a
ban on SBG tendering for further public building projects.
The impending collapse of SBG
provoked such a crisis that the government agreed to allow it to bid for state
contracts, said it would ensure that government payments would continue and
urged other companies to honour their commitments and pay up on their contracts
with SBG.
House
of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most
Powerful Dynasties Paperback – October 5, 2004
|
Craig Unger (Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
|
Newsbreaking
and controversial - an award-winning investigative journalist uncovers the
thirty-year relationship between the Bush family and the House of Saud and
explains its impact on American foreign policy, business, and national
security. House of Bush, House of Saud begins with a politically explosive
question: How is it that two days after 9/11, when U.S. air traffic was tightly
restricted, 140 Saudis, many immediate kin to Osama Bin Laden, were permitted
to leave the country without being questioned by U.S. intelligence? The answer
lies in a hidden relationship that began in the 1970s, when the oil-rich House
of Saud began courting American politicians in a bid for military protection,
influence, and investment opportunity. With the Bush family, the Saudis hit a
gusher - direct access to presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W.Bush. To trace the
amazing weave of Saud- Bush connections, Unger interviewed three former
directors of the CIA, top Saudi and Israeli intelligence officials, and more
than one hundred other sources. His access to major players is unparalleled and
often exclusive - including executives at the Carlyle Group, the
giant investment firm where
the House
of Bush and the House of Saud each
has a
major stake.
Like Bob Woodward's The Veil, Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud features
unprecedented reportage; like Michael Moore's Dude, Where's My Country? Unger's
book offers a political counter-narrative to official explanations; this deeply
sourced account has already been cited by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and
Charles Schumer, and sets 9/11, the two Gulf Wars, and the ongoing Middle East
crisis in a new context: What really happened when America's most powerful
political family became seduced
The
perilous ramifications of the September 11 attacks on the United States are
only now beginning to unfold. They will undoubtedly be felt for generations to
come. This is one of many sad conclusions readers will draw from Craig Unger's
exceptional book House of Bush House of Saud: The Secret Relationship
Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. As Unger claims in this
incisive study, the seeds for the "Age of Terrorism" and September 11
were planted nearly 30 years ago in what, at the time, appeared to be savvy
business transactions that subsequently translated into political currency and
the union between the Saudi royal family and the extended political family of
George H. W. Bush. On the surface, the claim may appear to be politically
driven, but as Unger (a respected investigative journalist and editor)
probes--with scores of documents and sources--the political tenor of the U.S.
over the last 30 years, the Iran-Iraq War, the war in Afghanistan, the birth of
Al Qaeda, the dubious connection between members of the Saudi Royal family and
the exportation of terror, and the personal fortunes amassed by the Bush family
from companies such as Harken Energy and the Carlyle Group, he exposes the
"brilliantly hidden agendas and purposefully murky corporate
relationships" between these astonishingly powerful families. His evidence
is persuasive and reveals a devastating story of Orwellian proportions, replete
with political deception, shifting allegiances, and lethal global consequences.
Unger begins his book with the remarkable story of the repatriation of 140
Saudis directly following the September 11 attacks. He ends where Richard A. Clarke begins,
questioning the efficacy of the war in Iraq in the battle against terrorism. We
are unquestionably facing a global security crisis unlike any before. President
Bush insists that we will prevail, yet as Unger so effectively concludes,
"Never before has an American president been so closely tied to a foreign
power that harbors and supports our country's mortal enemies." --Silvana
Tropea --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition
of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
In this
potentially explosive book, investigative journalist Unger, who has written for
the New Yorker, Esquire and Vanity Fair, pieces together the highly unusual and
close personal and financial relationships between the Bush family and the
ruling family of Saudi Arabia—and questions the implications for Bush's
preparedness, or possible lack thereof, for September 11. What could forge such
an unlikely alliance between the leader of the free world and the leaders of a
stifling Islamic theocracy? First and foremost, according to Unger, is money.
He compiles figures in an appendix indicating over $1.4 billion worth of
business between the Saudi royal family and businesses tied (sometimes loosely)
to the House of Bush, ranging from donations to the Bush presidential library
to investments with the Carlyle Group ("a well-known player in global
commerce" for which George H.W. Bush has been a senior advisor and his
secretary of state, James Baker, is a partner), to deals with Halliburton, of
which Dick Cheney was CEO. James Baker’s law firm even defended the House of
Saud in a lawsuit brought by relatives of victims of September 11. Unger also
questions whether the Bush grew so complacent about the Saudis that his
administration ignored then White House terrorism czar Richard Clarke’s
repeated warnings and recommendations about the Saudis and al-Qaeda. Another
question raised by Unger’s research is whether millions in Saudi money given to
U.S. Muslim groups may have delivered a crucial block of Muslim votes to George
W. Bush in 2000—and it’s questions like that will make some readers wonder
whether Unger is applying a chainsaw to issues that should be dissected with a
scalpel. But whether one buys Unger’s arguments or not, there’s little doubt
that with this intensely researched, well-written book he has poured more flame
onto the political fires of 2004.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All
rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable
edition of this title.
THE SAUDI KILLING OF JAMAL
KHASHOGGI
What it reminds us about the Saudi rulers.
October
18, 2018
Jamal Khashoggi, a
well-known Saudi journalist, went to the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul on
October 2 to fill out some paperwork pertaining to his marriage — he was in the
process of divorcing his Saudi wife so that he might then marry his
Turkish fiancé. He entered the building at 1:14 p..m., and has not been
seen since. His fiancé had been waiting outside the consulate for what was
supposed to have been a short visit; when he failed to appear, the police
were summoned. The Saudis at the consulate claimed not to know what had
happened to Khashoggi. From Riyadh, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman insisted
that Khashoggi left soon after visiting the consulate. King Salman assured
President Trump that his government had nothing to do with Khashoggi’s
disappearance. Now the Saudis have decided to tell their latest version of the
truth. They claim that Khashoggi died during an “interrogation
gone wrong.”
On that same day, October
2, fifteen Saudis arrived in Istanbul in the morning, and departed, on two
different flights, the same evening. Or at least that’s the story. There are
videotapes of Saudis arriving at the airport, but to complicate matters, it
seems that some of those videotapes are five years old. Meanwhile, the Turks
claim to have proof that Khashoggi was killed inside the Embassy. They say they
have tapes on which the alleged audio evidence is particularly strong,
according to officials.
“You can hear his voice
and the voices of men speaking Arabic,” a source told the Washington Post. “You
can hear how he was interrogated, tortured and then murdered.” CCTV cameras
provide videotapes of a black van that left the Saudi Consulate that afternoon
and went to the home of the Saudi Consul General. The Turks initially claimed
the body was dismembered with a bone saw; among the Saudis who arrived that day
was an autopsy expert well-versed in such dismemberment. The world media is of
course titillated by the story: what did they then do with the pieces? Burn
them, so that nothing was left but ashes and bone? Would the ashes have been
flushed down the toilet? Would the pieces of bone have been cut up into ever
smaller pieces that, divvied up among the 15 Saudis, could be disposed of
discreetly around Istanbul or even at the airport, or packed in diplomatic
pouches and flown to Saudi Arabia? Or did they bury the body in the garden of
the Consul General? No one yet knows, but the “Pulp Fiction” and “Goodfellas”
aspect of all this is riveting.
But let’s get back to
what this killing demonstrates. It demonstrates that Saudi Arabia has only
contempt for the outside world, and no intention of changing its brutal ways no
matter what others think. All sorts of Western big shots have now pulled out of the
“Davos in the Desert” three-day economic summit to be held in Saudi Arabia in
early November. Among them are Richard Branson, the CEO’s of Viacom and Uber,
the heads of JP Morgan, Blackstone, BlackRock, the owner of the Los Angeles
Times, the creator of the Android Mobile Device, the creator of Crispr, and
many others. This will have little effect on the Saudis. If Western companies
want to engage in virtue-signaling, and lose billions in investments, both in
and from Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince can live with that. Besides, there is
always China, ready to sell weapons to the Saudis (as Trump has noted), and to
make, and receive, Saudi investments.
The killing may,
however, have a salutary effect on the American government’s view of Saudi
Arabia. The Saudis were largely protected during the investigation of the 9/11
attacks; 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, but through it all, Saudi Arabia
remained our “friend” and ally. They sold us their oil at the market price, doing us no
favors, but because Saudi Arabia was the “swing” producer, and when, purely for
reasons of economic self-interest, the Saudis raised or lowered production so
as to lower or raise the price of oil, we were always naively grateful. The
Saudis have a stake not just in current oil revenues, but in maximizing the
value of the billions of barrels they have in the ground. They are not
doing us favors. They calculate their ideal price for oil, at any time, based
on the likely effect on consumers, who may switch to other sources of energy,
and on energy producers, who if the price is high enough may search for new oil
supplies or extract oil already found, using innovative techniques. The Saudis
cannot forget fracking, and what that did to oil prices.
When the Saudis allowed
American troops to be based on on Saudi soil, this was presented as doing us a
favor, though it was the Americans who were protecting the Saudis, not the
other way round.
The alliance with Saudi
Arabia continues until today. When the Saudis bomb Yemeni civilians
indiscriminately, our government says nothing. After all, the Saudis are waging
a proxy war against Iran, and that is reason enough for the Americans to keep
quiet. But now we have a moment of high drama, conflicting tales, and Murder
Most Foul. Had the Saudis managed to lure Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia, they
could have promptly jailed him for 10, 20, 50 years, or even life, and there
would have been only a feeble bleat of protest, but nothing like what has
happened after his murder in Istanbul.
It’s the cinematic aspect
of the whole thing: the tape of Khashoggi walking serenely into the consulate,
unaware of any danger, with his fiancé waiting outside. He is never seen again.
We see those grainy shots of 15 Saudis who arrive at the airport, on two
different private planes, that same day, and who have apparently been recorded
— the Turks say they have the tapes — interrogating, torturing, and killing
him. Those same 15 Saudis leave that evening at two different times, on two
different planes. The whole thing is straight out of Hollywood.
Crown Prince Mohammed
(MbS) is often thought of as a proponent of major change. Yes, women can now
drive in Saudi Arabia, thanks to the Crown Prince. Yes, the cinemas, closed in
1979, have reopened, thanks to the Crown Prince. Yes, the forward-looking Crown
Prince has made big plans for building three new Saudi cities from scratch: one
an Economic City for businesses, especially high-tech companies and start-ups,
another for Entertainment, and a third intended to be a Muslim-friendly Tourist
City, so that the Saudis and other rich Arabs can spend more of their money at
home. With the help of a small army of Washington lobbyists, on whom Saudi
Arabia spent $27 million last year, and on media consultants from all over, the
Crown Prince has been presented as the young reformer of a sclerotic system,
and many in the West have accepted this carefully-cultivated image.
The killing of Jamal
Khashoggi reminds us that the Saudi rulers, and the Crown Prince, are
well-versed in the use of violence. They are determined to keep themselves in
power, and to keep the colossal wealth to which they help themselves. The
15,000 Saudi royals are collectively worth $1.7 trillion; they are not about to
let go of any of it. Jamal Khashoggi, though not a royal, began life as
well-connected as any commoner in Saudi Arabia could be. His grandfather was
the personal physician to King Abdelaziz Al Saud. His uncle was Adnan
Khashoggi, who through his connections in the Saudi government made $4 billion
dollars as an arms dealer. His cousin was Dodi Fayed, Princess Diana’s last
boyfriend, and the son of the billionaire businessman Mohamed Fayed.
Khashoggi has been a
leading journalist since the 1970s. He’s been the chief editor of Al Madina
(one of the oldest papers in the kingdom), worked as a columnist for
Al-Arabiya, served as a media advisor to Prince Turki al Faisal when he was the
Saudi ambassador to the United States, and has been a frequent guest both on
Saudi television and on such international channels as MBC, BBC, Al Jazeera,
and Dubai TV. He became the editor-in-chief of Al Watan twice, and on the
second occasion, he quickly got into hot water for publishing a column by the
poet Ibrahim al-Almaee challenging the basic Salafi premises. This led to
Khashoggi’s seemingly forced resignation. On May 17, 2010, Al Watan announced
that Khashoggi resigned as editor-in-chief “to focus on his personal projects.”
However, it is thought that he was forced to resign due to official displeasure
with articles published in the paper that were critical of the Kingdom’s harsh
Islamic rules; the one by al-Almaee was the last straw.
In December 2016, the
Independent, citing a report from Middle East Eye, said Khashoggi had been
banned by Saudi Arabian authorities from publishing or appearing on television
“for criticising US President-elect Donald Trump.” That led Khashoggi to move
permanently to the United States.
Khashoggi began writing
for the Washington Post in September 2017, and still was contributing pieces up
to the time of his death. In the Post, he criticized the Saudi-led blockade
against Qatar, Saudi Arabia’s dispute with Lebanon, Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic
dispute with Canada, and the Kingdom’s crackdown on dissent and the media. But
he also supported some of Crown Prince’s reforms, such as allowing women to
drive. He condemned the arrest of Loujain al-Hathloul, Eman al-Nafjan, Aziza
al-Yousef, and several other women’s rights advocates involved in the
women-to-drive movement and the anti male-guardianship campaign. He opposed the
Saudi-Israel alliance.
By 2017, Khashoggi, who
had two million Twitter followers, was the best known pundit in the Arab world.
He has been hailed in the West as a progressive, but that is a case of
misunderstanding his aims. Khashoggi believed in spreading Islamic rule, the
same goal as that of any Jihadi, but he wanted to achieve that goal through
political Islam. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s and remained
true to it, even praising it in a Washington Post column. Some described him as
the de facto leader of the Saudi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Crown
Prince, on the other hand, believes that the Muslim Brotherhood is a danger to
the Kingdom, that is, to his family’s continued rule.
Khashoggi flourished in
Washington during the last year. He became a regular guest on the major TV news
networks in Britain and the United States, as well as a columnist for the
Washington Post. In 2018 Khashoggi established a new political party, in the
West, called Democracy for the Arab World Now, which — had he lived — could
have become a major political threat to Crown Prince Mohammed.
During this past year,
there have been many Saudi emissaries — “businessmen” — who met with Khashoggi
in Washington, to promise him he would be safe if he returned to the Kingdom;
the Crown Prince, too, offered to make him an “advisor” if only he would
return. He turned them all down, telling a friend that he would have to have
been crazy to believe their assurances.
Khashoggi was not a
secularist, not a Saudi Ataturk, as some in the West seem to think. He believed
in Islam and wanted it to spread, but to do so through “democratic” means — the
“political Islam” of, for example, Mohamed Morsi in Egypt or Rachid Ghannouchi
in Tunisia. He disliked the Saudi family’s censorship of the media; he believed
that criticism might weaken the hold of the Al-Saud, but strengthen the sinews
of the state and of the Muslim Brotherhood. He knew how corrupt the Saudi
system was, and knew, too, how unforgiving the Crown Prince could be. Yet he
still maintained his faith that there were some limits to Saudi ruthlessness,
which is why, on October 2, he went to the consulate in Istanbul. We see — as
he suddenly saw, just before the murderers started in on him — that he was
wrong.