Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Israel

Exclusive: Saudi Arabia is under a new cloud after a jailed al-Qaeda operative implicated senior Saudi officials as collaborators with the terror group and the shadow could even darken the political future of Israeli Prime Netanyahu because of his odd-couple alliance with Riyadh, reports Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The disclosure that convicted al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui has identified leading members of the Saudi government as financers of the terrorist network potentially reshapes how Americans will perceive events in the Middle East and creates a risk for Israel’s Likud government which has forged an unlikely alliance with some of these same Saudis.

According to a story in the New York Times on Wednesday, Moussaoui said in a prison deposition that he was directed in 1998 or 1999 by Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan to create a digital database of the group’s donors and that the list included Prince Turki al-Faisal, then Saudi intelligence chief; Prince Bandar bin Sultan, longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States; Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a prominent billionaire investor; and many leading clerics.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi ambassador to the United States, meeting with President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas. (White House photo)

Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then Saudi ambassador to the United States, meeting with President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas. (White House photo)

“Sheikh Osama wanted to keep a record who give money,” Moussaoui said in imperfect English, “who is to be listened to or who contributed to the jihad.”

Although Moussaoui’s credibility came under immediate attack from the Saudi kingdom, his assertions mesh with accounts from members of the U.S. Congress who have seen a secret portion of the 9/11 report that addresses alleged Saudi support for al-Qaeda.

Further complicating the predicament for Saudi Arabia is that, more recently, Saudi and other Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms have been identified as backers of Sunni militants fighting in Syria to overthrow the largely secular regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The major rebel force benefiting from this support is al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria.

In other words, the Saudis appear to have continued a covert relationship with al-Qaeda-connected jihadists to the present day.

The Israeli Exposure

And, like the Saudis, the Israelis have sided with the Sunni militants in Syria because the Israelis share the Saudi view that Iran and the so-called “Shiite crescent” reaching from Tehran and Baghdad to Damascus and Beirut is the greatest threat to their interests in the Middle East.

That shared concern has pushed Israel and Saudi Arabia into a de facto alliance, though the collaboration between Jerusalem and Riyadh has been mostly kept out of the public eye. Still, it has occasionally peeked out from under the covers as the two governments deploy their complementary assets Saudi oil and money and Israeli political and media clout in areas where they have mutual interests.

In recent years, these historic enemies have cooperated in their joint disdain for the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt (which was overthrown in 2013), in seeking the ouster of the Assad regime in Syria, and in pressing for a more hostile U.S. posture toward Iran.

Israel and Saudi Arabia also have collaborated in efforts to put the squeeze on Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who is deemed a key supporter of both Iran and Syria. The Saudis have used their power over oil production to drive down prices and hurt Russia’s economy, while U.S. neoconservatives who share Israel’s geopolitical world view were at the forefront of the coup that ousted Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014.

The behind-the-scenes Israeli-Saudi alliance has put the two governments uncomfortably at times on the side of Sunni jihadists battling Shiite influence in Syria, Lebanon and even Iraq. On Jan. 18, 2015, for instance, Israel attacked Lebanese-Iranian advisers assisting Assad’s government in Syria, killing several members of Hezbollah and an Iranian general. These military advisors were engaged in operations against al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

Meanwhile, Israel has refrained from attacking Nusra Front militants who have seized Syrian territory near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. One source familiar with U.S. intelligence information on Syria told me that Israel has a “non-aggression pact” with these Nusra forces.

An Odd Alliance

Israel’s odd-couple alliances with Sunni interests have evolved over the past several years, as Israel and Saudi Arabia emerged as strange bedfellows in the geopolitical struggle against Shiite-ruled Iran and its allies in Iraq, Syria and southern Lebanon. In Syria, for instance, senior Israelis have made clear they would prefer Sunni extremists to prevail in the civil war rather than Assad, who is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam.

In September 2013, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren, then a close adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the Jerusalem Post that Israel favored the Sunni extremists over Assad.

“The greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc,” Oren told the Jerusalem Post in an interview. “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” He said this was the case even if the “bad guys” were affiliated with al-Qaeda.

And, in June 2014, speaking as a former ambassador at an Aspen Institute conference, Oren expanded on his position, saying Israel would even prefer a victory by the brutal Islamic State over continuation of the Iranian-backed Assad in Syria. “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail,” Oren said.

Skepticism and Doubt

In August 2013, when I first reported on the growing relationship between Israel and Saudi Arabia in an article entitled “The Saudi-Israeli Superpower,” the story was met with much skepticism. But, increasingly, this secret alliance has gone public.

On Oct. 1, 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu hinted at it in his United Nations General Assembly speech, which was largely devoted to excoriating Iran over its nuclear program and threatening a unilateral Israeli military strike.

Amid the bellicosity, Netanyahu dropped in a largely missed clue about the evolving power relationships in the Middle East, saying: “The dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran and the emergence of other threats in our region have led many of our Arab neighbors to recognize, finally recognize, that Israel is not their enemy. And this affords us the opportunity to overcome the historic animosities and build new relationships, new friendships, new hopes.”

The next day, Israel’s Channel 2 TV news reported that senior Israeli security officials had met with a high-level Gulf state counterpart in Jerusalem, believed to be Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States who was then head of Saudi intelligence.

The reality of this unlikely alliance has now even reached the mainstream U.S. media. For instance, Time magazine correspondent Joe Klein described the new coziness in an article in the Jan. 19, 2015 issue.

He wrote: “On May 26, 2014, an unprecedented public conversation took place in Brussels. Two former high-ranking spymasters of Israel and Saudi Arabia Amos Yadlin and Prince Turki al-Faisal sat together for more than an hour, talking regional politics in a conversation moderated by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius.

“They disagreed on some things, like the exact nature of an Israel-Palestine peace settlement, and agreed on others: the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat, the need to support the new military government in Egypt, the demand for concerted international action in Syria. The most striking statement came from Prince Turki. He said the Arabs had ‘crossed the Rubicon’ and ‘don’t want to fight Israel anymore.’”

Though Klein detected only the bright side of this détente, there was a dark side as well, as referenced in Moussaoui’s deposition, which identified Prince Turki as one of al-Qaeda’s backers. Perhaps even more unsettling was his listing of Prince Bandar, who had long presented himself as a U.S. friend, so close to the Bush Family that he was nicknamed “Bandar Bush.”

Moussaoui claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, at a time when Bandar was the ambassador to the United States.

According to the New York Times article by Scott Shane, Moussaoui said he was assigned to “find a location where it may be suitable to launch a Stinger attack and then, after, be able to escape,” but that he was arrested on Aug. 16, 2001, before he could carry out the reconnaissance mission.

The thought of anyone in the Saudi embassy, then under the control of “Bandar Bush,” scheming with al-Qaeda to shoot down George W. Bush’s Air Force One is shocking, if true. The notion would have been considered unthinkable even after the 9/11 attacks, which involved 15 Saudis among the 19 hijackers.

After those terror attacks which killed nearly 3,000 Americans, Bandar went to the White House and persuaded Bush to arrange for the rapid extraction of bin Laden’s family members and other Saudis in the United States. Bush agreed to help get those Saudi nationals out on the first flights allowed back into the air.

Bandar’s intervention undercut the FBI’s chance to learn more about the ties between Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 perpetrators by giving FBI agents only time for cursory interviews with the departing Saudis.

Bandar himself was close to the bin Laden family and acknowledged having met Osama bin Laden in the context of bin Laden thanking Bandar for his help financing the jihad project in Afghanistan during the 1980s. “I was not impressed, to be honest with you,” Bandar told CNN’s Larry King about bin Laden. “I thought he was simple and very quiet guy.”

The Saudi government claimed to have broken ties with bin Laden in the early 1990s when he began targeting the United States because President George H.W. Bush had stationed U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, but if Moussaoui is telling the truth al-Qaeda would have still counted Bandar among its supporters in the late 1990s.

Bandar and Putin

Bandar’s possible links to Sunni terrorism also emerged in 2013 during a confrontation between Bandar and Putin over what Putin viewed as Bandar’s crude threat to unleash Chechen terrorists against the Sochi Winter Olympics if Putin did not reduce his support for the Syrian government.

According to a leaked diplomatic account of a July 31, 2013 meeting in Moscow, Bandar informed Putin that Saudi Arabia had strong influence over Chechen extremists who had carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Russian targets and who had since deployed to join the fight against the Assad regime in Syria.

As Bandar called for a Russian shift toward the Saudi position on Syria, he reportedly offered guarantees of protection from Chechen terror attacks on the Olympics. “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics in the city of Sochi on the Black Sea next year,” Bandar reportedly said. “The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us.”

Putin responded, “We know that you have supported the Chechen terrorist groups for a decade. And that support, which you have frankly talked about just now, is completely incompatible with the common objectives of fighting global terrorism.”

Bandar’s Mafia-like threat toward the Sochi games a version of “nice Olympics you got here, it’d be a shame if something terrible happened to it” failed to intimidate Putin, who continued to support Assad.

Less than a month later, an incident in Syria almost forced President Barack Obama’s hand in launching U.S. air strikes against Assad’s military, which would have possibly opened the path for the Nusra Front or the Islamic State to capture Damascus and take control of Syria. On Aug. 21, 2013, a mysterious sarin attack outside Damascus killed hundreds and, in the U.S. media, the incident was immediately blamed on the Assad regime.

American neocons and their allied “liberal interventionists” demanded that Obama launch retaliatory air strikes even though some U.S. intelligence analysts doubted that Assad’s forces were responsible and suspected that the attack was carried out by extremist rebels trying to pull the U.S. military into the civil war on their side.

Yet, pushed by the neocons and liberal war hawks, Obama nearly ordered a bombing campaign designed to “degrade” the Syrian military but called it off at the last minute. He then accepted Putin’s help in reaching a diplomatic solution in which Assad agreed to surrender his entire chemical weapons arsenal, while still denying any role in the sarin attack.

Later, the Assad-did-it case crumbled amid new evidence that Sunni extremists, supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, were the more likely perpetrators of the attack, a scenario that became increasingly persuasive as Americans learned more about the cruelty and ruthlessness of many Sunni jihadists fighting in Syria. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mistaken Guns of Last August.”]

Targeting Putin

Putin’s cooperation with Obama to head off a U.S. military strike in Syria made the Russian president more of a target for the American neocons who thought they finally had reached the cusp of their long-desired “regime change” in Syria only to be blocked by Putin. By late September 2013, a leading neocon, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, announced the goal of challenging Putin and recognizing his sore point in Ukraine.

Taking to the Washington Post’s op-ed page on Sept. 26, 2013, Gershman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and an important step toward ultimately ousting Putin. Gershman wrote, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.   Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Neocons’ Ukraine-Syria-Iran Gambit.“]

However, in early 2014, Putin was obsessed with Bandar’s implicit threat of terrorism striking the Sochi Olympics, thus distracting him from the “regime change” being pushed by NED and neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland next door in Ukraine.

On Feb. 22, 2014, putschists, spearheaded by well-organized neo-Nazi militias, drove elected President Viktor Yanukovych and his government from power. Putin was caught off-guard and, in the resulting political chaos, agreed to requests from Crimean officials and voters to accept Crimea back into Russia, thus exploding his cooperative relationship with Obama.

With Putin the new pariah in Official Washington, the neocon hand also was strengthened in the Middle East where renewed pressure could be put on the “Shiite crescent” in Syria and Iran. However, in summer 2014, the Islamic State, which had splintered off from al-Qaeda and its Nusra Front, went on a rampage, invading Iraq where captured soldiers were beheaded. The Islamic State then engaged in gruesome videotaped decapitations of Western hostages inside Syria.

The Islamic State’s brutality and the threat it posed to the U.S.-backed, Shiite-dominated government of Iraq changed the political calculus. Obama felt compelled to launch airstrikes against Islamic State targets in both Iraq and Syria. American neocons tried to convince Obama to expand the Syrian strikes to hit Assad’s forces, too, but Obama realized such a plan would only benefit the Islamic State and al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

In effect, the neocons were showing their hand much as Israeli Ambassador Oren had done favoring the Sunni extremists allied with al-Qaeda over Assad’s secular regime because it was allied with Iran. Now, with Moussaoui’s deposition identifying senior Saudi officials as patrons of al-Qaeda, another veil seems to have dropped.

Complicating matters further, Moussaoui also claimed that he passed letters between Osama bin Laden and then Crown Prince Salman, who recently became king upon the death of his brother King Abdullah.

But Moussaoui’s disclosure perhaps cast the most unflattering light on Bandar, the erstwhile confidant of the Bush Family who — if Moussaoui is right — may have been playing a sinister double game.

Also facing potentially embarrassing questions is Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, especially if he goes through with his planned speech before a joint session of Congress next month, attacking Obama for being soft on Iran.

And, America’s neocons might have some explaining to do about why they have carried water not just for the Israelis but for Israel’s de facto allies in Saudi Arabia.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

16 comments for “Al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Israel

  1. February 8, 2015 at 21:10

    I think this is important infromation and you do a good job of connection the dots. One point I think you missed is that ISIS was on the move in Iraq earlier in 2014. I only know because I went back to check because I wanted to write about ISIS sudden emergence just after the Syrian election which I was in Damascus to support the election.

    I was thinking it was a little too tidy as a response to the results of the election following on the Syrian Arab Army’s recent successes in Homs and other areas in the west of the country. And, after a massive show of support for the Syrian government in the places they controlled. People were hopeful. They thought they were seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. The rise of ISIS in Iraq was devastating in this context. It said that the enemies outside Syria were willing to expand the war to win it.

    What is interesting is that ISIS was fighting in Iraq earlier in the year. At first I thought, why wasn’t anyone reacting to this. But they didn’t get a clean win in any case. The local people fought back and the Iraqi Army and police were able to protect them. They targeted Fallujah in January, and though there was a long battle, a series of battles, they never took more than a small part of the city. This is a Sunni city. So, if the Sunnis were soft on ISIS, they could have handed it over, but they didn’t. They fought an won.

    This reinforced my sense that something was amiss in June when they walked into Mosul and not only took over the city but obtained a large cache of essentially brand new, still in the box US weapons. This has happened several times in Syria with weapons the US sent to the FSA, usually through the same liason, a Colonel Obeidi, who is also the guy who arranged McCain’s trip to Syria. He was again in charge this last fall when Al Nusra (and ISIS?) took the weapons from the retreating FSA in IDLIB. But the Iraqi army is a different story and none of the explanations I have heard ring true.

    The weapons were abandoned for their use by the officers of a military unit that wasn’t using them. The talk about corrupt Iraqis is a half truth, half because its probably true but it doesn’t explain the situation. If I was terrified of an approaching enemy, I’d take off in an armored Humvee or an MRAP. Not only do these vehicles offer protection, but they move a lot faster than a man on foot. They weren’t that far from Baghdad in one direction and Kurdistan in the other, not to mention other cities in the region. I’d grab a few bullets and carry a weapon so I’d have a chance to defend myself. When these guys deserted, the officers were already gone (generals aren’t ususally in line of fire so cowardice is no excuse) and they didn’t even have access to the armored vehicles and high tech weapons. That’s why they took off their uniforms and tried to hide.

    I believe this is just more evidence of the story you are telling. But I’m glad you have taken the initiative to tell it.

  2. February 6, 2015 at 21:30

    Saudi have always played to the tunes set by America. It continues to do so. It has thrown its own people under the bus when US has demanded to do so. US has given Saudi protection from democracy,dissidence, alternative political doctrine safety from Israrl. Iraq,and Egypt at different times.
    One open vortt system has supported another but closed corrupt system. One has sought legitimacy on the concept of individualism ,another on the idea of collectivism, one has tried to function under imposed democracy ,the other on imposed theocracy.
    US faces multiple challenges . As long as oil is sold only in dollar,US will remain economically invincible . Saudi has shown some reluctance to back the QE which can undermine dollar. US is also making an example to other countries .
    This is why a buried 911 report is being dusted off the shelf. It is like Iraq on the crosshairs over having gassed Kurdish in 1986 but being debated in 2002 to justify a war.
    Or Iran holding hostages or attacking Iraq( yes even that argument was used) for sanctions.
    But 911 is entirely fraud and corrupted investigation. It was sold as good investigation despite enhanced interrogation . It was not challenged despite destruction of tape,denial of time to firefighters and police present on 911, it did not try to follow the obvious clues left by so many-dancing Israelis, Dominique Sutter of Urban Moving Sustem,the finding of maps,3-4 different passports,and buildings tires with thousands on cash and even cardboard box cutters in the vans of Istaelis
    picked up immediately after911, messages predicting attacks in next 2 hours by E Mail, the unusual share market activities and deporting Istarli national on visa violation. Above all ,all the warnings before911 were ignored by the neocon in Bush administration.
    No one needs 911 commission to figure out that there are connections and there are hidden matters here .which have been ignored .
    Instead it creates an impression of protect ting a nation by concealing part of the report. May be it is dangling the sword over Saudi so it keep on toeing the line otherwise ..,, But if there were something , Israel would have known it and forced America to attack Saudi in 2003 . Don’t forget that Defense Policy Board discussed this possibility and the neocons were asking Bush to punish Saudi back then.
    This concealed report is being presented as a hidden gem of information ,as some kind of kernel of truth that is being denied to citizen. It is nothing but pirouetting around in tandem to reach certain objective .

    We can start by asking who and when who decided to get Saudi out. Who contacted who ? In those days,when all the phones were monitored ,someone might have information on the frantic conversation of these Atabs mong themselves and between Bush official. There should be log book entries at WH.
    Chances are that someone with ulterior motive might have told Saudi to leave immediatly to escape scrutiny and backlash or might have frightened them of something of that nature happening and posing safety risks to Saudis. Later these very people might be spreading the rumors that Saudis were flown out by Bush( this way boxing Bush in a corner also – forcing him to do what the neocons wanted him to do . Bush was already under attack for ignoring signs. This new allegation had the potential of destroying him completely ) to avoid justice.
    So 911 secret report has an agenda. It had too many open agenda . Anything coming out of 911 or US gov sponsored investigation is not worth the paper on which it is written on .

  3. February 6, 2015 at 04:40

    Intelligence agencies and neocons running amok…they may have any kind of outlandish plans, but they merely advise the Commander in Chief, who is as Geo Bush so beautifully put it “the deciderator!!”

    The Buck not only stops at his place or the table, it has never left his place at the table. He is not required to take bad advice in which he does not concur. This is accountability!

  4. joe
    February 5, 2015 at 22:15

    How does everyone neglect to mention that this is exactly what ABU ZUBAYDAH told the FBI before he was snatched away by CIA and tortured into silence?

    We have a clear pattern, clear confirmation, and an absurd air of treason in Washington DC.

    Zubaydah was wrested away from FBI interrogators and put incommunicado for “47 days” without asking him a single question! They didn’t want to know anything from him and merely wanted him to shut up. This is revealed in the Senate’s new torture report summary. Am I the only one not snoring through the Apocalypse?

  5. ilker
    February 5, 2015 at 21:32

    This report has nothing new,Hilary clinton in her book told the world who created Al qaeda.Israel and the saudies share the same problem,a growing powerfull Iran and its growing shiite revolutionairy ideaology,american sanctions weakened irans economy,the drop in oil prices also weakens Irans and russian economy,irans spends a third of its income on arms productions.
    The saudies can reduce output to stablise prices,but it wont.Saudies wont do anything to help iranians.

  6. SurvivorofSaudis
    February 5, 2015 at 18:21

    The Saudis practice unprincipled expedience and cold calculation in the survival of their precarious monarchy. There is undoubtedly a kernel of truth that Saudi leaders were contributing to OBL’s efforts pre-2002 — with the understanding that AQ not attack Saudi Arabia or it’s interests. This is the Saudis’ approach to almost all problems facing the Kingdom, and as this article points out, there are Americans willing to accommodate them.

  7. SurvivorofSaudis
    February 5, 2015 at 16:45

    The Saudis practice unprincipled expedience and cold calculation in the survival of their precarious monarchy. There is undoubtedly a kernel of truth that Saudi leaders were contributing to OBL’s efforts pre-2002 — with the understanding that AQ not attack Saudi Arabia. This is the Saudis approach to almost all problems facing the Kingdom, and as this article points out there are more often than not, Americans willing to accommodate them.

  8. Pablo Diablo
    February 5, 2015 at 14:37

    Do the neocons and their corporate sponsors run the U.S. government? Why can’t we get rid of them. They have cost millions of lives and billions (if not trillions) of dollars. Read the transcripts of Moussaoui’s trial. It is George Tennant that should be made to answer.

  9. dahoit
    February 5, 2015 at 13:28

    Doesn’t it also lead to 9-11,Israeli art students documenting an upcoming event they knew beforehand?And the MSMs total ignoring the Saudi connections for 14 years now,and that Israel is Al Nusras(whoever,they’re all linked)air force?
    A pit of serial lying BS,the whole WOT.

  10. February 5, 2015 at 09:09

    Robert Parry has once again pulled together the many elements that relate to a breaking news story and made the connections that reveal its true significance. This is why I like this site.

    • Gregory Kruse
      February 5, 2015 at 12:21

      Thanks for saving me the trouble of making a comment.

  11. Brendan
    February 5, 2015 at 07:34

    “Meanwhile, Israel has refrained from attacking Nusra Front militants who have seized Syrian territory near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. One source familiar with U.S. intelligence information on Syria told me that Israel has a “non-aggression pact” with these Nusra forces.”

    Not only does Israel have a non-aggression pact with the al-Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra, it has also been directly cooperating with them if the report from UN observers on the Golan Heights is to be believed. The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force’s report from 11 March to 28 May 2014 includes details of the interaction between the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) and the Syrian opposition (which is dominated by Al Nusra in the area around the Golan Heights). These include many occasions where Israel treated the wounded who were transferred by the Islamist extremists, and once Israel even handed over boxes to them:

    “Throughout the reporting period, UNDOF frequently observed armed members of the opposition interacting with IDF across the ceasefire line in the vicinity of United Nations position 85. On 59 occasions, particularly during periods of heavy engagement between the Syrian armed forces and members of the armed opposition, UNDOF observed armed members of the opposition transferring 89 wounded persons from the Bravo side across the ceasefire line to IDF and IDF on the Alpha side handing over 19 treated and 2 deceased individuals to the armed members of the opposition on the Bravo side. On one occasion, UNDOF observed IDF on the Alpha side handing over two boxes to armed members of the opposition on the Bravo side.”
    http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2014/401 page 3/14, part 9

  12. February 5, 2015 at 01:34

    My guess is that there is probably at least some if not some significant truth in Moussaoui’s information, although the specifics might not be totally accurate. For instance even if Bin Laden made up a “donor list,” there’s a chance that list wasn’t completely accurate or became outdated, the same way political campaigns’ donor lists end up not being accurate. Even so, it’s shockingly wrong that the 9-11 Commission Report really ignored this entire avenue of Saudi support for al Qaeda, even though the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry did pursue it (i.e. in the 28 pages that are still being withheld). I’m told by those who studied the 9-11 Commission Report that Zelikow and Dieter Snell were responsible for thwarting investigation of Saudi Arabia’s involvement.

    Additionally, the FBI was stopped from even attempting to interview Moussaoui on 9/11 and on the early morning of 9/12 (when I was told by FBI-DOJ officials in the DC command post that the situation was no longer an “emergency”) and of course continuing thereafter. Even though Moussaoui almost certainly knew of other plots (like his London crony, shoebomber Richard Reid’s plot which nearly brought a plane down 3 months later).

    Can anyone get their head around the totally conflicting official arguments that U.S. officials were so panic-struck about imminent attack that they had to begin torturing those detainees captured months and years later, after 9-11 (the day they said the emergency ended) in order to get information to prevent another attack while we were stopped from interviewing this guy from 9/11 onwards (until just now)?! (And now it’s only private attorneys doing so, not our government which has constantly promised to pull all strings to keep us safe.)

    And now that ISIS and other Qaeda spin-offs are really mounting their killing machine, the US switches its “capture or kill” policy to sole reliance upon “kill lists” and aerial and drone bombing, forgoing all capturing and interviewing of anyone who might have info of future plots.

    Maybe if one’s generous, it can all be chalked up to “fog of war” or gross incompetence but their “global war on terror” arguments are mutually contradictory and make no sense.

  13. Pat
    February 4, 2015 at 23:34

    Last week, a captured ISIS commander in Pakistan said he had been receiving funds through the U.S. to recruit soldiers to fight in Syria. The story was reported in the International Business Times, which wrote, “Experts believe that IS receives much of its funding from donations from wealthy backers in the Middle East, and is channelled through the international banking system.”

    And now this. Coincidence?

    http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/isis-funding-routed-through-us-claims-islamic-state-commander-pakistan-1485622

  14. February 4, 2015 at 21:57

    I object to the framing of how we are to interpret the 28 pages before they are declassified.

    WorldNetDaily leads us to believe that Obama is working to get Netanyahu removed from his office. LaRouche leads to to think the Saudis did 9-11. Netanyahu will be addressing a joint session of Congress.

    It is all a control drama with players acting like they either support or oppose one another–much like World Wrestling commercials.

    How slowly can the Saudis be throw off the life raft? Will it take enough time for the full harvest from 9-11 lies to be realized and the next big war to be started?

    Mass media “news” agencies have, perhaps the most explaining to do about their willful ignorance.

    Time to commence indictments. Let’s not wait for the control drama directors and actors to create their next bamboozles.

    • John P Richards
      February 6, 2015 at 00:40

      Could not agree more. This is all theatre. The Saudis are being thrown under the bus because of their support for a move from Petro Dollars, threatening the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Any detailed examination of the facts related to 911 reveal that not one aspect of the “official” story can bear scrutiny. Saudis were not involved – 911 was pure Security State written, produced, and executed.

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