The Secret Saudi Ties to Terrorism

Exclusive: Saudi Arabia, working mostly through Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, is trying to enlist the U.S. on the Sunni side of a regional war against Iran and the Shiites. But that alliance is complicated by Saudi princes who support al-Qaeda and other Sunni terrorists, as Daniel Lazare explains.

By Daniel Lazare

The U.S.-Saudi alliance is coming under unprecedented strain. Everything seems to be going wrong. Up in arms over growing Shi‘ite resistance in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Bahrain and Yemen, the ultra-Sunnis in Riyadh are alarmed that Obama continues to press ahead with arms negotiations in Teheran, from its viewpoint the center of the Shi‘ite conspiracy.

Saudis want the U.S. to overthrow Syria’s Assad in return for its cooperation in the fight against ISIS, yet Washington is signaling that it wouldn’t mind if the Baathists remain in power in Damascus a while longer. Similarities between Saudi methods and those of the Islamic State both have a peculiar fondness for beheadings are harder and harder to ignore.  But with Saudi executions now running at triple the 2014 rate according to Amnesty International, the Saudis are pressing on regardless.

Zacarias Moussaoui

Zacarias Moussaoui

Even the kingdom’s decision to award a $200,000 prize to an Indian tele-preacher named Zakir Naik for “services to Islam” seems like a deliberate thumb in the eye of the United States. Naik, who has been banned from entering Canada or the U.K., is a Salafist nightmare who attacks evolution, defends al-Qaeda, and claims that George W. Bush was secretly responsible for 9/11. What is Riyadh’s point other than to flip Washington the bird?

But the ultimate body blow may prove to be Zacarias Moussaoui’s sensational testimony in an anti-Saudi lawsuit filed by 9/11 survivors. Now serving a life sentence in a federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, Moussaoui, the so-called “twentieth hijacker,” told lawyers about top-level Saudi support for Osama bin Laden right up to the eve of 9/11 and even a plot by a Saudi embassy employee to sneak a Stinger missile into the U.S. under diplomatic cover and use it to bring down Air Force One.

Moussaoui’s list of ultra-rich al-Qaeda contributors couldn’t be more stunning. It includes the late King Abdulllah and his hard-line successor, Salman bin Abdulaziz; Turki Al Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence and subsequently ambassador to the U.S. and U.K.; Bandar bin Sultan, a longtime presence in Washington who was so close to the Bushes that Dubya nicknamed him Bandar Bush; and Al-Waleed bin Talal, a mega-investor in Citigroup, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, the Hotel George V in Paris, and the Plaza in New York.

These are people whom a series of U.S. presidents have fussed and fawned over not just Bushes I and II, but Obama, who bowed deeply at the waist upon meeting Abdullah in April 2009. Yet according to Moussaoui, the princes provided bin Laden with millions of dollars needed to engineer the deaths of nearly 3,000 people in Lower Manhattan.

Considering how 9/11 has driven U.S. foreign policy, then the consequences are staggering. Teapot Dome? Watergate? If Moussaoui’s story turns out to be true, then the latter will really seem like the “third-rate burglary” that Nixon always made it out to be.

An Inside View

So the first question to ask concerns Moussaoui credibility. Should we believe the guy? How credible is he? The short answer is: very.

Admittedly, Moussaoui is a nut job whose behavior during his trial in U.S. federal court was often bizarre. He refused to enter a plea, tried to fire his court-appointed attorneys, filed a motion describing the presiding judge as a “pathological killer with ego-boasting dementia,” and described the U.S. as “United Sodom of America.”

But as the New York Times points out, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema said she was “fully satisfied that Mr. Moussaoui is completely competent,” adding that he is “an extremely intelligent man” with “a better understanding of the legal system than some lawyers I’ve seen in court.”

In his testimony last October the transcripts of which became public early last month he comes across as calm and lucid, a man eager to tell what he knows about bin Laden’s terror operation and its connections with the uppermost rungs of Saudi society.

What’s more, what he has to say is highly plausible. His account not only accords with what we know about Saudi Arabia’s otherwise opaque power structure, but seems to shed light on a few things we don’t.

The most obvious concerns Saudi Arabia’s 7,000 or so princes and their riotous lifestyle. The kingdom is famous for banning alcohol, virtually all types of public entertainment, and the slightest sexual displays. Yet its over-paid, under-worked royals are no less notorious for stampeding to the airport cocktail lounge as soon as they touch down in Cairo or Dubai and then jetting off to the plushest casinos and brothels that Europe has to offer.

So if mullahs can’t tolerate the sight of a woman’s bare arm, then why do they put up with such licentiousness? The answer, according to Moussaoui, is that the ulema, as the mullahs are collectively known, does so because of the leverage it gains.

“Ulema, essentially they are the king maker,” he testified. “If the ulema say that you should not take power, you are not going to take power.”

Since the mullahs have the power to label as an apostate anybody who drinks, fornicates (i.e. engages in illicit sex), or practices homosexuality collective behavior which apparently covers virtually the entire royal family then the effect is to give the ulema a veto over who is eligible for the throne and who is not. The more the princes misbehave, the more control the ulema acquires over Saudi politics as a whole.

Another puzzle concerns why the Saudi establishment would continue channeling funds to bin Laden even after a war of words had broken out over the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia during the 1990-91 Gulf War. Former CIA counter-intelligence chief Robert Grenier has seized on the issue to discredit Moussaoui’s testimony out of hand.

“The reason Osama bin Laden went to Sudan in the 1990s in the first place was because he was under pressure from the Saudi government,” Grenier told the Guardian. “The idea they’d be supporting him under any circumstances, and in particular in an attack on the U.S., is inconceivable.

But Moussaoui’s version is more nuanced than Grenier’s rather self-serving description of the Saudis as reliable partners would suggest. When asked why Saudi princes would contribute to someone who had turned against them, Moussaoui replied that bin Laden had not turned against all of the princes, merely some of them:

“He went against Fahd, but he didn’t want to go against Abdullah Saud and Turki and the people who have been classified by the ulema as criminal, but not apostate.”

The mullahs, no less xenophobic than bin Laden, despised then-King Fahd because he had OK’d the stationing of U.S. troops in “the land of the two holy mosques.” But while Abdullah was also guilty of certain offenses according to the ulema  hence Moussaoui’s description of him as a “criminal” they did not add up to apostasy, or abandonment of Islam, a far more serious offense.

The mullahs were therefore willing to cut him some slack, according to Moussaoui, in the hope that he would steer the kingdom back in a more authentically Muslim direction. “[T]he ulema told him [bin Laden] not to wage war against Al Saud,” Moussaoui said, “because Fahd was going to die and therefore that Abdullah Al Saud will take power and he will reestablish a true power.”

If we accept Moussaoui’s description of the mullahs as kingmakers, then this makes sense. As to why the princes would funnel aid to bin Laden as opposed to some other would-be terrorist mastermind, Moussaoui is helpful as well. Post-9/11, Bandar bin Sultan dismissed bin Laden as a flaky no-account who “couldn’t lead eight ducks across the street.”

But in his testimony, Moussaoui describes bin Laden as a capable organizer who built a complicated jihadi movement from the ground up. Since holy war is expensive, he was dependent on large-scale infusions of cash and equipment. As Moussaoui put it in his less-than-perfect English:

“[A]ll this money were there especially to set up the camp, because nothing was there, it was the desert, so we have to pay Afghan to dig a well, you have to dig to build the base for tent and camp and medical, everything was created from scratch, it was very expensive, OK? I mean, hundred of thousand of dollar on a weekly basis, you know? You have a lot of car, you have to pay for the maintenance of the tank and dozer, OK, and all of the spare part.   And everybody would get expense every child have X amount of money, every woman have X amount of money, every person have X amount of money a quite substantial [amount] of money.”

Since 9/11 was nothing if not smoothly organized, Moussaoui’s description of bin Laden as a skilled operator makes sense as well. Moussaoui notes that bin Laden stood high in the religious establishment’s esteem, much higher, in fact, than the princes.

Bin Laden’s father, the Yemeni-born construction magnate Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, had been best friends with Saudi Arabia’s founding king, Ibn Saud, and had been entrusted with rebuilding or restoring Islam’s three holiest sites the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Since Mohammed bin Laden was pure gold in the eyes of the ulema as a consequence, Osama was 24-karat as well. “So bin Laden was pure,” Moussaoui said, “a pure Wahhabi [who] will obey the Wahhabi scholar to the letter” loyalty that the mullahs fully repaid.

When asked what Abdullah, Turki and other top-rank royals hoped to get in exchange for contributing to bin Laden’s organization, Moussaoui replied that “it was a a matter of survival for them, OK, because all of the mujahideen the hard core believe that Al Fahd was an apostate, so they would have wanted jihad against Saudi Arabia.”

If Wahhabi hardliners believed that Fahd was a renegade, then they might say the same of other high-living royals, in which case the princes would have to run for their lives. Funding bin Laden was a cheap way to remain in the mullahs’ good graces and continue raking in profits.

Real Power behind the Throne

Bin Laden was thus the ulema’s fair-haired boy, and since the princes were already skating on thin ice, they had to be nice to him so that the mullahs would be nice to them in return. Referring to top Wahhabi theologians Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz and Muhammad ibn al Uthaymeen, Moussaoui said:

“He [bin Laden] was doing it [waging jihad] with the express advice and consent and directive of the ulema. He will not have a single persons coming from Saudi Arabia if the ulema and Baz or Uthaymeen state this man is wrong.  Not to say he’s an apostate just he’s wrong everybody will have left, except the North African maybe.”

One word from the mullahs and bin Laden would have found himself cut off or so Moussaoui maintains.  If talk of an all-powerful ulema seems a mite over the top, other experts agree that their clout is difficult to exaggerate.

Mai Yamani, an independent scholar who is the daughter of the famous Saudi oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani, describes the Wahhabis, for instance, as “the kingdom’s de facto rulers,” noting that that they control not only the mosques and religious police, but all 700 judgeships, religious education in general (which comprises half the school curriculum), and other ministries as well.

While the House of Saud has proved adept at co-opting the mullahs and keeping in their place, decades of oil money have resulted in a hypertrophied religious sector to which attention must be paid. [See Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2010), pp. 232-33]

So princes tread lightly in the ulema’s presence. This seems to have been especially the case during the delicate post-1995 period when Fahd continued to cling to the throne even though crippled by stroke and Abdullah ruled in all but name. One king was out, but the other was not yet in, which is why the religious establishment’s approval was more critical than ever.

Thus, the princes eagerly did the ulema’s bidding, funding bin Laden’s activities abroad and only putting their foot down, according to Moussaoui, when it came to jihad at home. While Osama was free to do what he liked in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the princes drew the line at “do[ing] stuff in your backyard.”

Moussaoui, who says he was put to work compiling a financial database upon joining al Qaeda in late 1998, describes flying by private plane to Riyadh as a special courier.

“We went in to a private airport,” he recalled.  “[T]here was a car, we get into a car, a limousine, and I was taken to a place, it was like a Hilton Hotel, OK, and the next morning Turki came and we went to a big room, and there was Abdullah and there was Sultan, Bandar, and there was Waleed bin Talal and Salman” i.e., the Saudi crème de la crème. When asked if the princes knew why he was there, he said yes: “I was introduced as the messenger for Sheik Osama bin Laden.”

Moussaoui says that prominent Saudis visited bin Laden’s camp in Afghanistan in return: “There was a lot of bragging about I been to Sheik Osama bin Laden, I been to Afghanistan, I’m the real deal, I’m a real mujahid, I’m a real fighter for Allah.”

He says that bin Laden’s mother visited too, testimony that has also led to attacks on his credibility since he says that Hamid Gul, chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence, helped arrange it even though Gul by that time had been out of office for a decade. But Gul is a powerful player in Pakistan’s murky politics to this day, so the notion that he would help organize a visit by bin Laden’s mother even though no longer head of the ISI is hardly farfetched.

The Guardian has also labeled as “improbable” Moussaoui’s tale of smuggling a Stinger missile into the U.S. under diplomatic immunity in order to shoot down Air Force One. But Moussaoui was careful to note that it was not a prince who suggested such an operation, but a comparatively lowly member of the Saudi Embassy’s Islamic Department in Washington.

Moreover, the proposal “was not to launch the attack, it was only to see [to] the feasibility of the attack.” If, as he says, the Wahhabi cleric Muhammad ibn al Uthaymeen did indeed issue a fatwa declaring that embassy personnel “had a personal obligation to help the jihad if they can, even if they were not order[ed] by the Saudi government,” then it is hardly inconceivable that an individual Wahhabi militant might have decided to take matters into his own hands.

The Cover-Up

None of this means that Moussaoui’s charges are true, merely that they’re plausible and therefore merit further investigation. But what makes them even more persuasive is the behavior of those in a position to know, not only the Saudis but the Americans as well.

Since virtually the moment the Twin Towers fell, top officials have behaved in a way that would tax the imagination of even the most fevered conspiratorialist. Two days after 9/11, Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador at the time, met with Bush, Dick Cheney, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, after which 144 Saudi nationals, including two dozen members of the Bin Laden family, were allowed to fly out of the country with at most cursory questioning by the FBI.

The Bush administration dragged its feet in the face of two official investigations, a joint congressional inquiry that began in February 2002 and an independent commission under Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton the following November. When Abdullah visited Bush at his Texas ranch in April 2002, the question of 9/11 hardly came up.

When a reporter pointed out that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, Bush cut him short, saying, “Yes, I the crown prince has been very strong in condemning those who committed the murder of U.S. citizens.  We’re constantly working with him and his government on intelligence sharing and cutting off money the government has been acting, and I appreciate that very much.”

Yet just a month earlier, former FBI assistant director Robert Kallstrom had said of the Saudis, “It doesn’t look like they’re doing much, and frankly it’s nothing new.” In April 2003, Philip Zelikow, the independent commission’s neocon executive director, fired an investigator, Dana Leseman, when she proved too vigorous in probing the Saudi connection. [See Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (New York: Twelve, 2008), pp. 110-13]

Strangest of all is the famous 28-page chapter from the 2002 joint congressional report dealing with the question of Saudi complicity. While the congressional report was heavily redacted, the chapter itself was suppressed in its entirety. Obama promised 9/11 widow Kristen Breitweiser shortly after taking office that he would see to it that the section was de-classified, yet nothing has been done.

Why did Obama go back on his word? Is it the text itself that’s so explosive? Or do the Saudis have something on the U.S., something very damaging, that they are threatening to release if it tries to blame them for 9/11? All we can do is speculate.

The Great Unraveling

The U.S. and Saudi Arabia are a pair of odd fellows if ever there was one. One is a liberal republic in the classic Nineteenth Century definition of the term while the other is perhaps the most illiberal society on the face of the earth. One is officially secular while the other is an absolute theocracy.

One professes to believe in diversity while the other imposes a suffocating uniformity, banning all religions other than Wahhabist Islam, forbidding “atheist thought in any form,” and prohibiting participation in any conference, seminar, or other gathering, at home or abroad, that might have the effect of “sowing discord.” One claims to oppose terrorism while the other “constitute[s] the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” according to no less an authority than Hillary Clinton.

The alliance has served the imperial agenda but at appalling cost. This includes not only 9/11 and ISIS, which Joe Biden said the Saudis and others Arab gulf states funded to the tune of “hundreds of millions of dollars,” but the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris as well, which was financed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a group that, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg, has also benefited from Saudi Arabia and other Arab gulf largesse.

This is the dark side of the alliance that Washington has struggled to keep under wraps. But Moussaoui’s testimony is an indication that it may not be able to do so for much longer.

Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).

15 comments for “The Secret Saudi Ties to Terrorism

  1. March 19, 2015 at 20:18

    I’d like to briefly provide more details in my previous comment:
    The article was an excellent regarding pinpointing the Saudis role in worldwide terrorism 9/11 was only small sample like a tip of iceberg. Osama was Saudis hero until 9/11 then after over 30000 innocent Americans perished, Saudis announced that Osama was no longer Saudi citizen by revoking his citizenship, 15 of hijackers were Saudis one from UAB, one from Egypt and other 2 were Arabs as well. Some court cases against Saudis are still open in New York City and the 28 missing secret pages of 9/11 commission are going to be unclassified soon and world is going to see how Saudi royal family contributed in that century’s greatest tragedy. If we look deeply inside of the building blocks/roots of all Sunny Arab Wahhabism /Salafist terrorist organizations who are very active internationally such as Al-Qaeda, Boko-haram, Al-Shbab, Al-Nosher, ISIS, Taliban.. Etc. They somehow relate to oil revenue rise mainly from Saudi Arabia which is the spiritual home of Sunny Wahhabi/Salafist Moslem extremism, host for 2 of the Moslems holiest shrines of Makkah and Medina, all Moslems worldwide pray on that direction. The fact is terrorists are promised by Saudi Muftis the key of Heaven for being martyrs by killing infidels and kingdom’s enemies including none Sunny Wahhabi Moslems and there are some traces from other small oil rich Arab Sheikdoms around the Persian Gulf area such as UAE, Qatar. Bahrain..Etc. These little Monarchs, in order to survive/save their crowns/regimes plus destroy their enemies they finance/train/provide arms, explosives to these terror organizations and send them unleash them to only kill and destroy. Historically 3 nations recognized Taliban and built them up financially/logistically before 9/11 were Saudis, UAB, and Pakistan. The Taliban, Boko-haram, Chechnya’s, Philippine’s and some Africans as well as other terror organizations may not be Arabs, but their minds have been poisoned by Wahhabism mentality of Saudi Arabia and it’s rising dangerously. Sometimes Monarchs plans backfire and get the founders/sponsors/arm providers in deep trouble as we see at the present time those terrorists going against/attacking their sponsors/founders/arm providers in the Middle East and worldwide.

  2. James Davis
    March 15, 2015 at 18:48

    Unfortunately for the reputation of the writer of this article, no credence can be given to the ridiculous claims of Moussaoui at all. This is because he claims too much: He just names all of the current and recent Saudi leadership, completely ignoring the fact that they all belong to different factions and are at each other’s throats. Before King Abdullah died, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt tried to keep his branch of the family in power, to the exclusion of Salman, who belongs to a different faction. Al-Waleed bin Talal is at odds with the political leadership, and Bandar is the darling of the US, who is disliked by the rest of the Saudi family but has been the US’s Manchurian candidate for king. Nor were the Saudi ‘ulama’ ever backers of Bin Ladin. Also, the writer forgets that when Bin Ladin was active in Afghanistan against the Soviets, he too was connected, if informally, with the American jihad against the commies. The Saudi figures mentioned by name are much too prominent and successful to plot against the US, whose loyal servants they have been all their lives. Nor do they dislike the US and things American; rather, they are big consumers of such things. No, rather than those named by Moussaoui, who obviously knows nothing, there are other, more marginal, dissatisfied elements who are still interested in supporting Sunni interests with guerilla warfare. But it should be realized that even these are primarily anti-Shi`i and neither particularly anti-American nor anti-Israeli. And politics does make strange bedfellows. It is most odd that the US is currently aligned with Bashshar al-Asad, with Hizbullah, with the Shi`is of Iraq and Iran in its ferocious crusade against the so-called “Islamic State,” while Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey are all inclined to the other side, even though they cannot loudly proclaim it. The US would be well advised to take a deep breath and actually engage in some deep study in order to know what is going on.

  3. March 14, 2015 at 00:09

    I found the article very useful and If we look deeply inside of the building blocks/roots of all Arab terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda, Boko-haram, Al-Shbab, Al-Nasreh, ISIS, Etc they somehow relate to oil revenue rise mostly from Saudi Arabia and other oil rich Arab Sheikdoms around the Persian Gulf area such as UAE, Qatar. Bahrain..etc . These Monarchs in order to survive and destroy their enemies they finance/train these organizations and sometimes their plans backfire and get the founders/sponcers in trouble as we see at the present time terrorists are attacking their sponcers/founders in Middle East.

    • John the Ba'thist
      March 15, 2015 at 11:34

      The terror groups you note are all Islamist organizations. Arab nationalism is a secular movement that is the primary target of Islamism in Syria, and formerly in Iraq and Libya, before the US won the battle for the theocratic side. Boko Haram is not an Arab group in any sense and al Shabab is very marginally Arab. Al Nusra-al Qaeda-ISIS relies heavily on foreign fighters and support from Chechnya, Pakistan, Turkey, the West, and many other non-Arab countries.

  4. John the Ba'thist
    March 13, 2015 at 12:43

    Excellent article…and then the author ruined it with a positive reference to Ambassador Marc Ginsberg – a third-rate intellect who was in the forefront of preparing the ground for the September 2013 sarin false flag attack in Syria.

    The former ISI head Hamid Gul continues to be an important figure in the alliance between the Pakistani Islamist right and the Gulf funders of Sunni extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Gul probably played a major role in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as well as some of the earlier murders of Bhutto family members. “Songs of Blood and Sword” , written by a grandaughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is a book that can give a lot of insight about not only AfPak politics, but about the general conflict between secularists and Islamists in the ME and SW Asia.

    Any policy affecting the Arab world that the Saudis and Israelis agree on (like the anti-Syria policy) – or any Arab policy that Iran and the Israeli far right agree upon (anti-Iraq policy) – should be strongly resisted from the outset. Anything the Turks and Israel seem to agree on concerning their Arab neighbors should also be suspect. The actions they promote will inevitably result in blowback, sectarian conflict and much death, displacement and suffering.

  5. Grateful
    March 13, 2015 at 09:59

    Terrific read, thanks.

    Some bizarre comments, as always on these kinds of stories.

  6. Mount
    March 13, 2015 at 06:00

    Jesus said “Search for the Truth and Truth shall set you Free”. Don’t believe everything you read online. Peace.

  7. Charles Lane
    March 12, 2015 at 14:52

    Whether the Saudis funded bin Laden is a valid question, but what is not a question is: did bin Laden plan and execute the 9/11 attacks? The “official” report says he did, but that report is pure BS. It never analyses the fall of Bldg. No. 7 of the WTC, nor the strike on the Pentagon. Blaming these attacks on Saudis with minimal flight training and box-cutters is simply absurd, and the sooner people in the USA and other countries wake up to this realization, perhaps we will have a proper, scientific investigation. Keep in mind that when such an attack occurs, the normal procedure is to examine the wreckage forensically. However, this was not done by the 9/11 Commission, because the powers that be rushed to remove and ship outside the country the steel and other wreckage/debris. Why would such an exception have been allowed in this horrendous case? Was it because it would have revealed what really happened? Americans have been conned into invading Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel wants us to attack Iran. These are not isolated facts, but are part of the whole drama.

  8. Joseph
    March 12, 2015 at 13:40

    Well, wait a minute. Is the official nine one one story true? Was Bin Laden really centrally involved? Was the whole business planned from a cave in Afghanistan and then executed by a bunch of incompetent Saudis with box cutters and miraculous flying skills, etc., etc.? Please! Ok, Saudis were involved in the red herrings that are used in the official story, but they are not the protagonists responsible for nine eleven. There is too much data out now for this kind of sloppy thinking.

    • George Ripley
      March 14, 2015 at 08:09

      My sentiments exactly.

  9. Yul
    March 12, 2015 at 09:51

    FWIW: It is surprising to see some American analyst going gaga on the Massaoui sensational revelations. As far as the Saudi royals ( racists, if I may use that word, amongst their own brethren), he is a nobody coming from France even though he is Arab and has Moroccan parentage and he wants us to believe that he was kow-towing with the royals of Riyadh . Meh.

    He may have been a soldier of the Jihadists but not what he pretends to be or know . His Arabic is not similar to the Saudis and as a Magrebien, at the lower end of the Arab league food chain: KSA being top dog , then the Emirates , Kuwait , Bahrein, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt,Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Oman and the other North African states.

  10. WY
    March 11, 2015 at 22:18

    It’s nice to see Consortium News kinda sorta start digging into the 9/11 cover-up. However, the writer of this article appears to be unaware of the extremely well-documented research done by Kevin Fenton and Peter Dale Scott, among others, which has been readily available in book form for several years. There has also been plenty of reporting on the Saudi angle by WhoWhatWhy and the Florida Bulldog (formerly the Broward Bulldog). All of this information is thoroughly documented, and none of it relies on speculation about Moussaoui’s credibility or the contents of the 28 pages. Consortium News still has a lot of catching up to do, evidently.

  11. Thomas Howard
    March 11, 2015 at 16:33

    The author is an enemy of the US Constitution….a change agent of the globalist elite.

  12. March 11, 2015 at 15:03

    Outstanding reporting and first rate analysis. This is an important story and needs to be told. However, the likely outcome is that it will be buried like the censored 9/11 report. The Saudis are utterly dreadful and hate us. However, they have the magic of oil, which apparently forgives all sins.

    I’m intrigued by the Netanyahu approach to the Saudis and collaboration of the PM and Saudi’s to sway the U.S. in the direction of an anti Shia war. I’d heard about the alliance but would like to know more about this insane proposal (which means that it’s got a good chance of adoption).

    • Bob
      March 12, 2015 at 12:57

      “The enemy of my enemy; is my friend.” Is dreadful policy. But it IS neocon policy.

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