16

9/11: Bush’s Guilt, And the ‘28 Pages’

Eric Zuesse
enhanced-1041-1421990652-38

On Friday July 15th, as the national newsmedia were either on vacation or preparing for the opening of the Trump National Convention on Monday the 18th, the long-awaited release of the ‘missing 28 pages’ from the U.S. Senate’s 9/11 report (“DECEMBER 2002: JOINT INQUIRY INTO INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES BEFORE AND AFTER THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001”) occurred.

The official title of this document is “PART FOUR — FINDING, DISCUSSION AND NARRATIVE REGARDING CERTAIN SENSITIVE NATIONAL SECURITY MATTERS”, and it constitutes pages 6-34 of a pdf. (Some writers mistakenly call it “29 pages.”

[I correct that statement; Robert Parry just now pointed out to me, it really is 29 pages: all of the previous references to it as “the missing 28 pages” had gotten the count wrong. Thanks, Robert!])

It “was kept secret from the public on the orders of former President George W. Bush”, and remained secret under Bush’s successor Barack Obama, until that Friday night late in Obama’s Second Administration, right before a week of Republican National Convention news would be dominating the news (along with any racial incidents, which would be sure to distract the public even more from any indication of Bush’s guilt).

The pdf was of a picture-file so as to be non-searchable by journalists and thus slow to interpret, and thus would impede press-coverage of it. The file was also of a very degraded picture of the pages, so as to make the reading of it even more uninviting and difficult. Well, that was a skillful news-release-and-coverup operation! The Federal Government had plenty of time to do this right, but they evidently had plenty of incentive to do it wrong. They’re not incompetent; the reasonable explanation is something worse than that. (After all: this information has been hidden from the public for all of the 13+ years since that report was published without the 29 pages at the end of 2002.)

A typical ‘news’ report about the matter was NBC’s, which was headlined “Secret 28 Pages of 9/11 Report Released, Hold No Proof of Saudi Link” and which ended: “American officials repeatedly have stated their conclusion: There was none.” That’s stenographic ‘journalism’, like (in 2002 and 2003) about ‘Saddam’s WMD’: it’s ‘journalism’ in which, whatever your government says, is simply reported, as being (or as if it were) the truth.
What these 29 long-suppressed pages revealed was well summarized by one succinct reader who wrote:

The Inquiry discloses that there is a very direct chain of evidence about financing and logistics … [that] goes from the Saudi Royal family (Amb. Bandar’s wife and Bandar’s checking account) and Saudi consulate employees (al Thumiari) to the agent handlers (Basnan and al Bayoumi) to some of the 9/11 hijackers (Khalid al-Mihdhar, Nawaf al-Hazmi).”

In other words: Prince Bandar bin-Sultan al-Saud, known in Washington as “Bandar Bush” (for his closeness to the Bush family), and who served at that time as Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to the United States, paid tens of thousands of dollars to Saudi Arabia’s “handlers” who were directing two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Also, one of Bandar’s subordinates at the Embassy, named al-Thumiari, was likewise paying the person who was paying and managing those two jihadists.

The report said:

FBI files suggest that al-Bayoumi provided substantial assistance to hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000. … According to an October 14, 2002 FBI document, al-Bayoumi has ‘extensive ties to the Saudi Government’. … According to the FBI, al-Bayoumi was in frequent contact with the Emir at the Ministry of Defense, responsible for air traffic control. … Al-Bayoumi was receiving money from the Saudi Ministry of Defense. … Al-Bayoumi was known to have access to large amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that he did not appear to hold a job. … Al-Bayoumi’s pay increased during the time that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were in the United States.”

Also, an FBI agent testified on 9 October 2002 regarding al-Bayoumi, and said Bayoumi:

…acted like a Saudi intelligence officer, in my opinion. And if he was involved with the hijackers, which it looks like he was, if he signed leases, if he provided some sort of financing … then I would say that there’s a clear possibility that there might be a connection between Saudi intelligence and UBL [Usama bin Laden].”

Moreover:

The FBI has now confirmed that only Osama Bassnan’s wife received money directly from Prince Bandar’s wife, but that al-Bayoumi’s wife attempted to deposit three of the checks from Prince Bandar’s wife, which were payable to Bassnan’s wife, into her own accounts. … Bassnan was a very close associate of Omar al-Bayoumi’s and was in telephone contact with al-Bayoumi several times a day.”

Furthermore:

Bassnan’s wife received a monthly stipend from Princess Haifa.”

And:

On at least one occasion, Bassnan received a check directly from Prince Bandar’s account. According to the FBI, on May 14, 1998, Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the amount of $15,000. Bassnan’s wife also received at least one check directly from Bandar … for $10,000. … FBI Executive Assistant Director D’Amuro commented on this financing: ‘I believe that we do have money going from Bandar’s wife, $2,000 a month up to about $64,000.’”

Also:

On March 28, 2002, U.S. and coalition forces retrieved the telephone book of Abu Zubayda, whom the U.S. Government has identified as a senior al-Qa’ida operational coordinator. According to an FBI document, ‘a review of toll records has linked [to] ASPCOL Corporation in Aspen, Colorado. … ASPCOL is the umbrella corporation that manages the affairs of the Colorado residence of Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador. … The U.S. Government also located another Virginia number at an Usama bin Laden safehouse in Pakistan … [where a person was] interviewed by the FBI in June 2002. He could not explain why his number ended up at a safehouse in Pakistan, but stated that he regularly provides services to a couple who are personal assistants to Prince Bandar.”

This has to be seen in the context of George W. Bush’s very close and longstanding personal friendship with Prince Bandar, and also in the context of Bandar’s career.

Bandar has long been involved, both officially and unofficially, in the intelligence operations of the Saud family (which own Saudi Arabia). During October 2005 through January 2015, he served as secretary general of Saudi Arabia’s National Security Council, and he also was director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014.

Furthermore the just-released report asserts:

The FBI also received reports from individuals in the Muslim community alleging that Bassnan might be a Saudi intelligence agent. According to a CIA memo, Basnan reportedly received funding and possibly a fake passport from Saudi Government officials. He and his wife have received financial support from the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and his wife. … A CIA report also indicates that Bassnan traveled to Houston in 2002 and … that during that trip a member of the Saudi royal family provided Bassnan with a significant amount of cash. … FBI information indicates that Bassnan is an extremist and a supporter of Usama bin Laden.”

Regarding Shaykh al-Thumairy, he was “an accredited diplomat at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles and one of the ‘imams’ at the King Fahd Mosque … built in 1998 from funding provided by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Abdulaziz. The mosque … is widely recognized for its anti-Western views.”

The 29 pages also include lots more, but those facts give at least some solid indications of the links that Prince Bandar had to 9/11.

And other FBI offices than in San Diego were basically not even covered in the 29 pages; this was a rush-job by a Senate Committee, and with enormous resistance from the White House, which did everything they could to block the investigators.

Furthermore: none of this information is as solid as the sworn court-testimony of the captured former bagman for al-Qaeda, their bookkeeper who personally collected each one of the million-dollar cash donations to the organization and named many donors, including Prince Bandar, as having been among the people from whom he picked up those suitcases full of cash. He said of their donations: “It was crucial. I mean, without the money of the — of the Saudi you will have nothing.” The authors of the Senate investigation report, never got any wind of this, because that man was in a U.S. prison and held incommunicado until that court-case in October 2014. But it was virtually the entire Saud family — not merely Bandar — who funded 9/11.

So: we know that Bandar “Bush” was practically like a brother to George W. Bush, but what other indications do we have of GWB’s guilt in the planning of the 9/11 attacks?
First of all: if he wasn’t involved in the attack’s planning, then he was grossly incompetent and uncaring, to the point of criminal negilgence for the numerous attempts that the CIA had made to warn GWB that such at attack was being planned and would occur soon — that he simply ignored those warnings. Criminal negligence, however, isn’t the same as being a traitor. That’s far more serious, and it would entail Bush’s conscious desire for such an attack to occur. Such evidence does exist.

Here it is – Researcher Chris Whipple headlined at Politico, on 12 November 2015, “‘The Attacks Will Be Spectacular’”, and he reported:

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The CIA’s famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming.

By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, “it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.” “There were real plots being manifested,” Cofer’s former boss, George Tenet, told me in his first interview in eight years…

…The crisis came to a head on July 10. The critical meeting that took place that day was first reported by Bob Woodward in 2006. Tenet also wrote about it in general terms in his 2007 memoir At the Center of the Storm.

But neither he nor Black has spoken about it publicly in such detail until now—or been so emphatic about how specific and pressing their warnings really were. Over the past eight months, in more than a hundred hours of interviews, my partners Jules and Gedeon Naudet and I talked with Tenet and the 11 other living former CIA directors for The Spymasters, a documentary set to air this month on Showtime.

The drama of failed warnings began when Tenet and Black pitched a plan, in the spring of 2001, called “the Blue Sky paper” to Bush’s new national security team. It called for a covert CIA and military campaign to end the Al Qaeda threat—“getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan.” “And the word back,” says Tenet, “‘was ‘we’re not quite ready to consider this. We don’t want the clock to start ticking.’” (Translation: they did not want a paper trail to show that they’d been warned.)

Five days later, I wrote an article interpreting that, titled “Politico Reports Bush Knew 2001 Terror-Attack Was Imminent and Wanted It”. Readers here are referred to that, for the continuation of the case here.

For additional information on the bonding between the Saudi aristocracy and the U.S. aristocracy, see this and this. It’s important to understand in order to be able to understand why Obama helped to set up the 21 August 2013 Syrian sarin attack to be blamed on Bashar al-Assad, who is allied with Russia. The U.S. is allied with the Saud family, against Russia; and Syria is allied with Russia and refuses to allow pipelines for gas from Qatar and oil from Saudi Arabia through Syria to replace gas and oil that Russia has been selling to the EU. (Like RFK Jr. properly headlined on 25 February 2016, “Syria: Another Pipeline War”. That’s why the Sauds want Assad dead.)

SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN

If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.

For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

16 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
bill
bill
Jul 24, 2016 10:47 PM

its an obvious limited hangout sewn into the 9/11 report for future release as now with a number of very polished legends to round off the false trail…. there were no hijackers on 9/11 where a new exotic weapon developed using huge black budgets deliberately destroyed in the Pentagon and in T2( the missing $2.3 trillion under investigation by the US Audit Office) which among a range of effects demolecularises some matter- not paper- into v fine dust which continually degrades and leaves a minor nuclear trail and some possible traces of nanothermite amongst other things….Richard Gage is part of the disinformation to protect the energy produced from this weapon which could be used for peaceful purposes and end oil and gas cartels if publicly known about, whilst most of “his ” members” cannot face through thier own training a new paradigm in physics so will not study the full evidence with an open mind.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Jul 24, 2016 11:14 PM
Reply to  bill

?????

Editor
Editor
Jul 25, 2016 8:28 AM
Reply to  bill

This would be the “space beam” weapon as theorised by Judy Wood? How would it leave a “nuclear trail” and “traces of nanothermite” exactly?

Schlüter
Schlüter
Jul 24, 2016 7:29 PM

To be honest: I´m sick and tired of the “twenty eight pages” and the “suppressed warnings! Lets face the facts:
Nine Eleven was an inside Job! Inbuilt as “a line of defense” some Saudi involvement (and other “Connections”.
“Nine Eleven a Dozen Years ago – Stirred it the Third World War?” http://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/nine-eleven-a-dozen-years-ago-stirred-it-the-third-world-war/
&
„USA and Israel, the Helpless Giant and his Mad Dog: are there more dirty secrets?“ http://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/usa-and-israel-the-helpless-giant-and-his-mad-dog-are-there-more-dirty-secrets/
Andreas Schlüter
Sociologist
Berlin, Germany

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Jul 24, 2016 9:56 PM
Reply to  Schlüter

Agree. 9/11 was achieved by Controlled Demolition. See “Architects and Engineers for 9/11”

Paul Smyth
Paul Smyth
Jul 23, 2016 9:28 AM

Reblogged this on The Greater Fool.

johnschoneboom
johnschoneboom
Jul 23, 2016 12:14 AM

Kevin Ryan’s piece on this is brief and excellent:
https://digwithin.net/2016/07/16/five-revelations-28-pages/

johnschoneboom
johnschoneboom
Jul 23, 2016 12:12 AM

So. Some useful confirmation of things that were more or less already known about the Saudi contacts in the US and their sources of support. Also, some regurgitated nonsense about Abu Zubaydah, who, as astute readers might recall, went from “senior Al Qaeda lieutenant”, millennium plotter, and prime torture-testimony source of the 9/11 Commission narrative, to suddenly in 2009 being admitted by the USG not to be a member of Al Qaeda or have involvement in the millennium plots after all. Meaning, among other things, that the main Al Qaeda narrative in the 9/11 Commission report was based on a lot of fictional hooey.
So these 29 pages are an odd mix of unreliable BS and useful dot-connection. I always think of that part in The Exorcist where Father Merrin says the devil mixes truth with lies. In any case, the one thing the 29 pages do not establish is the one thing the mainstream says it does: the non-involvement of Saudi officialdom.

joekano76
joekano76
Jul 22, 2016 11:47 PM

Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.

louisproyect
louisproyect
Jul 22, 2016 11:47 PM

So the Saudi state is simultaneously a proxy of US imperialism and bent on destroying destroying its key institutions such as the Pentagon and the WTC. Wow! What you learn from the Baathist amen corner.

cettel22
cettel22
Jul 23, 2016 7:37 PM
Reply to  louisproyect

This isn’t “the baathist amen corner’. It’s honest reporting on the contents of the “missing 28 pages”, and this includes honest reporting about the broader context behind the events that are reported in those “missing pages.”
And, also: the Earth is not flat and is not the center of the universe; and global warming is real; and all of these things are equally true regardless of whether you continue in reality-denial regarding any one of them.

mohandeer
mohandeer
Jul 22, 2016 8:21 PM

Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
Amazing how US spin can turn evidence into something it is not – the lies previously promulgated by Washington and which are still being perpetrated despite the overwhelming conflicting evidence.

rtj1211
rtj1211
Jul 22, 2016 7:23 PM

One has to say that Obama’s lies about sarin gas attacks are worthy of him losing office.
Can he be prosecuted in the ICC for such wilful negligence, false-flag promotion and proposed murder??
If not, can he be impeached on Capitol Hill?
If not, can he be forced out in disgrace through resignation before his term is completed?
If not, why was American democracy and the ICC designed so badly that none of the above are possible??
I also simply do not understand the American aristocracy’s obsession with crushing Russia. Are any American Aristocrats those who were forced out in 1917? Were any of them descendants of Napeleon’s armies crushed so brutally by Russia? Are any of them Poles with hatred of Russians in their hearts?
I really would like a very good explanation of that, because the only reason I can see is that Americans are psychopaths who have to dominate the whole world and Russia demands autonomy to be respected……

binra
binra
Jul 22, 2016 9:32 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

Clearly the law does not apply, or has no one willing or able to apply it. Notional Security overrides all else. Power plays an open disregard for truth. The power of the lie is at least no longer confused with a velvet glove.
There are many ancient hatreds. I read of the Khazarians holding a hatred for both Europe and Russia – who between them destroyed their Empire. That was a very long time ago – but the result was a diaspora of east European ‘Jews’. For Khazaria adopted a form of Judaism.
However, all that is required to elicit hate from powerful and power-hungry people, is to not align with or accept subjection to their dictate – and be powerful enough to be seen as a blockage to be eradicated.
But yes – world dominance – and indeed broad spectrum dominance – which means control of the narrative/mind – food and medical models, – in fact to be as gods effectively – over sub-humans – or humans denied their humanity.
There is a deep seated hatred of Life in the human personality construct – that is usually masked in ‘rational’ terms of improving it, or managing and manipulating it to align or conform to our fantasy of power over Life.
Few look beneath the persona to recognize the hate that hides behind the veiling smile. But I see our times as being the exposure to ourselves of ourselves – and I mean that in terms of the unconscious and subconscious forces that run almost invisibly through us as a result of a surface persona founded to operate the suppression or evasion of that which we personally and collectively deny awareness and acceptance of – except in the hated scapegoat.
Reasonableness and rational good intentions are part of a collective desire to suppress and perhaps ‘rise above’ a base nature or hateful intent. But there are those who see life, humans and themselves as predators and as being without scruple in claiming power as the prize of a ridding themselves of the weaknesses and make-believe – that lesser men have to use to protect their minds from the stark and only truth – as such a compulsion to eat, possess or dominate Life – must see. There is a kind of god in this – in that it is the demand for sacrifice. And the kind of humanity that is set on such hidden foundations is one of sacrifice of Life to idol of self-concept that substitutes for Life.
And so we sacrifice the truth of our presence to conform and fit to an idea of who we are supposed to be – or indeed who we are not allowed to be.
Denials are invisible as long as we don’t trigger hate by breaking the rules and conditions that are largely tacitly induced and agreed in very early life and reinforced throughout. But see how quickly ‘love’ turns to hate when the ‘rules’ are not kept. It NEVER was but hatred withheld.
There is a recognized syndrome of victims who ‘love’ their abusers and interpret the withholding of penalty as ‘love’.
This is more true of us that we might like to recognize… on both sides of the story.
Without a deeper honesty – and I might add a natural humility and compassion arising from there – there is no resolution to the human recycling of hate – though it gains global reach through increasingly pervasive technologies.
Maybe forces will rise against hate in hate and sow a new crop in a seeming respite? Maybe we recognize that we no longer want any part in it and therefore have to find a different foundation from which to live and through which to appreciate and share Life – instead of hating it because it does not meet our conditions and demands.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Jul 22, 2016 10:04 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

The ICC is a joke. So far they have prosecuted a small number of African dictators, while people like Blair, Bush and Howard are free as a bird.

Jen
Jen
Jul 23, 2016 6:29 AM
Reply to  rtj1211

Dear Rtj1211,
You might be interested to know that in the 1860s, while the United States was convulsed in civil war, the Russian empire sent warships to New York and San Francisco to help Americans defend the Union against possible British invasion.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article169488.html
So at least after 1865, Russia and the US were friendly nations and both were antagonistic towards the British empire for their own reasons.
How the US attitude towards Russia changed, I don’t claim to know but you might note that during the later 19th century it was common practice for British aristocracy to marry rich American heiresses (Winston Churchill’s mother was American) so perhaps the attitudes of the American elite from then on started converging with those of the British elites.
Also don’t forget that after the Second World War, many Nazis and people who worked for Nazi Germany found refuge in the US, especially if they had knowledge or skills needed by the US. The example of rocket scientist Werner von Braun comes to mind.
http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/vonbraun/bio.html