The Joint US-Saudi Guilt for 9/11

Exclusive: As guilty as Saudi Arabia may be over 9/11, the broader guilt is shared by generations of U.S. officials who coddled Saudi extremism and cooperated in building a jihadist movement for geo-political gain, writes Daniel Lazare.

By Daniel Lazare

In a stunning repudiation of Barack Obama’s Middle East policies, Congress has overridden a presidential veto and confirmed that 9/11 survivors can sue Saudi Arabia for its role in the destruction of the World Trade Center.

The vote was a rare victory in a global political system in which the major powers routinely roll over ordinary civilians the way a tank rolls over a daisy. Whether it’s a Yemeni wedding party pulverized by an errant bomb or a terrified office worker plummeting through space to escape the fire on 9/11, these are the sorts of people whom drone operators call “bug splats,” individuals whose bloody remnants must be wiped away as quickly as possible so that the war machine can continue on its way. But now it looks like some of their surviving families may finally get their day in court.

President George W. Bush meeting with then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan at the Bush Ranch in Crawford, Texas. (U.S. government photo)

President George W. Bush meeting with then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan at the Bush Ranch in Crawford, Texas. (U.S. government photo)

As wonderful as this is, there’s a problem. JASTA, as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act is universally known, goes after the wrong people. Yes, Saudi hands are all over 9/11. As the inestimable Kristen Breitweiser has pointed out the long-suppressed 28-page chapter (actually 29) of the Joint Congressional Report dealing with the Saudi role in 9/11 was a bombshell no matter how Washington and Riyadh try to deny it.

It described one link after another between Saudi officials and the 19 hijackers, 15 of them Saudi subjects. It notes, for instance, that the FBI received “numerous reports from individuals in the Muslim community” that Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who helped two of the hijackers after they arrived in the U.S., was a Saudi intelligence officer.

It says that Osama Bassnan, whom it describes as a supporter of Osama bin Laden, may have “received funding and possibly a fake passport from Saudi Government officials”; that he and his wife may also have received financial support from Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, and that he received “a significant amount of cash” from another member of the royal family as well.

The report cites FBI documents saying that a phone book owned by Abu Zubaida, a senior Al Qaeda operative captured in Pakistan, contained the unlisted number of the company that manages Bin Sultan’s vacation home in Aspen, Colorado.

Such links are remarkable, and if JASTA enables 9/11 survivors to pursue them further, then it’s all to the good. Still, the legislation overlooks one all-important fact: 9/11 in the final analysis was less a Saudi job than an American one.

This doesn’t mean that the CIA wired the Twin Towers with explosives or that Mossad somehow engineered the hijacking. What it means, rather, is that Washington has shaped the U.S.-Saudi relationship from the start and that it therefore must take responsibility for the horrors that have followed.

Made in the USA

The degree to which Saudi Arabia was made in the USA is often overlooked. But before the United States happened on the scene in the early 1930s, the kingdom was a great empty zone consisting of goats, flies, sand dunes, and a few thousand fanatical jihadis whom the British had no trouble taking care of when they threatened their holdings in neighboring Iraq and Jordan.

Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Photo credit: Reagan Library)

Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Photo credit: Reagan Library)

King Ibn Saud, whose stronghold was a desolate plateau known as Najd, was himself virtually a U.K. prisoner. Indeed, this is why he brought in American geologists when it appeared that significant oil deposits might lie beneath his country’s shifting sands. An alliance with the U.S. was his only hope of getting out from under Britain’s thumb.

Ibn Saud was a wily operator who eventually figured out how to use his oil wealth to gain leverage over U.S. oil companies as well. But leverage doesn’t mean independence. To the contrary, it meant a deepening partnership with the U.S. that the Americans encouraged at every turn.

So durable was the relationship that events that should have torn it apart only made it stronger. The most obvious is the 1973 Yom Kippur War when America’s pro-Israel policies led the Saudis to impose an oil embargo that quickly brought capitalism to its knees. Although President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger briefly considered seizing Saudi oil fields in retaliation, they eventually opted for an opposite policy based on ever closer economic integration.

With oil prices jumping six-fold in real terms by 1980, Saudi Arabia blossomed into an economic powerhouse, a mass consumer of everything from oil equipment to refrigerators, air conditioners, and cars. American anger soon dissipated. The country was the new El Dorado.

The Iranian Revolution in February 1979 might also have undermined the budding new relationship by sending a clear message that the Persian Gulf was deeply unstable and that the U.S. would be foolish to grow overly reliant on energy from such a dangerous source. The same goes for the seizure of Mecca’s Grand Mosque by ultra-Wahhabist militants the following November. It also highlighted the political fault lines coursing through the region, which might also have caused the U.S. to back off.

But instead, the U.S. responded by embracing the Saudis ever more tightly. Although Jimmy Carter and his national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski had already begun sponsoring an Islamic fundamentalist revolt in Afghanistan, the Soviet incursion that followed in late December 1979 sealed the deal on what was to become one of the most durable marriages in modern diplomatic history.

Soon, under President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. and Saudis would be partners not only in fomenting Afghan jihad, but in other ventures as well such as channeling funds to the Nicaraguan Contras or to the South African-backed guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi in Angola.

This was an age of off-shoring when Wall Street moved its financial operations overseas in order to escape the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Reagan administration did the same with covert operations in order to escape an increasingly intrusive Congress.

But just as one shouldn’t blame the Cayman Islands for the consequences, one shouldn’t blame the Saudis either. To be sure, the latter reaped enormous benefits in the form of economic and military security, not to mention trillions in oil revenue. But the U.S. benefited even more.

Bleeding the Soviets

Not only did Saudi-fueled jihad bleed the Soviets dry in Afghanistan, but the U.S. and Saudi Arabia acquired sufficient leverage to manipulate the energy markets to Soviet disadvantage. U.S. control should not be exaggerated; America was having as hard a time as everyone else maintaining its balance amid economic turbulence of the day.

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski

Former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski

But the combination of steep price hikes in the 1970s and an equally dizzying plunge in the 1980s had the effect of first encouraging Russia’s dependence on international oil revenues and then slamming it to the ground when those revenues suddenly vanished. It was a one-two punch from which the Soviet economy never recovered.

Combined with the punishing war in Afghanistan, the results soon proved fatal. When the Nouvel Observateur caught up with Brzezinski in 1998 and asked him if he regretted stirring up Islamic fundamentalism, he shot back:

“Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap, and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War. Indeed, for almost ten years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet Empire….

“What is more important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire?  Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

And, for these American global chess players, the benefits kept on coming. The Saudis also helped the U.S. roll back leftwing influence across the Third World and then deal Iraq’s Saddam Hussein a punishing blow in the 1990-91 Gulf War, an awesome military display that doubled as a shot over the bow of neighboring Iran.

Riyadh sent mujahedeen to Bosnia where the U.S. was anxious to reduce Russian influence and to Chechnya where the threat to Russian interests was even more direct.

But then the relationship unraveled when Osama bin Laden began striking at Western targets, most notably U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya where more than 200 people died in simultaneous bombings in August 1998 and then the USS Cole in October 2000. The attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 11 months later was of course the final straw.

An Enduring Bond

So why didn’t the U.S. cut its losses by severing the Saudi partnership? Didn’t it realize that the costs were beginning to outweigh the benefits? The reason is that it knew that it was complicit in the Saudi terror campaign and that the Saudis knew it too. The two countries were in it together. Both had shown staggering recklessness and duplicity in their dealings with Al Qaeda, and both therefore had too much to lose in the event of a mutual falling out.

President Obama and King Salman Arabia stand at attention during the U.S. national anthem as the First Lady stands in the background with other officials on Jan. 27, 2015, at the start of Obama’s State Visit to Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza). (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Obama and King Salman Arabia stand at attention during the U.S. national anthem as the First Lady stands in the background with other officials on Jan. 27, 2015, at the start of Obama’s State Visit to Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The George W. Bush administration, moreover, was especially vulnerable. After the stolen election of 2000, Republicans knew that they faced mass destruction at the polls in 2004 if the full news about Bush’s incompetence got out. So a cover-up was even more essential for Washington than it was for Riyadh.

This is why Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld began pushing for an invasion of Iraq the morning after the Twin Towers attack. Although all evidence pointed to the Saudis, he wanted to deflect attention from Riyadh and place it on Baghdad instead. The same goes for Vice President Dick Cheney who, as Breitweiser notes, opposed a special investigation into 9/11 on the grounds that it would somehow interfere with efforts to ward off incidents that were undoubtedly on the way.

As Cheney put it in May 2002: “An investigation must not interfere with the ongoing efforts to prevent the next attack, because without a doubt a very real threat of another perhaps more devastating attack still exists.  The people and agencies responsible for helping us learn about and defeat such an attack are the very ones most likely to be distracted from their critical duties if Congress fails to carry out their obligations in a responsible fashion.”

An investigation into 9/11 would divert attention from the more immediate task of taking out Iraq. Yet the reality was quite the other way around. Taking out Iraq would divert attention from an investigation into 9/11. The 2003 invasion can thus be seen as a vast diversionary effort.

Its goal was to deflect attention from the real culprits, which is to say the U.S. and its Saudi partners, and shift it onto a country, Iraq, that, as former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke would later complain, had no more to do with 9/11 than Mexico did with Pearl Harbor. It was an exercise in mass deception that ended up costing an estimated $3 trillion and perhaps half a million lives.

To the degree that JASTA will help shift attention back to the Saudis, it is welcome. But if it takes aim at only one party in this grotesque pas-de-deux, and the less guilty one at that, then it could actually end up compounding the cover-up.

With oil down to $50 a barrel or so, Congress figures that the U.S. no longer has much need of Saudi Arabia and can therefore kick it while it’s down. Voting to allow the survivors’ lawsuit to go forward meant allowing it to take the fall, which is why it passed so overwhelmingly. But Riyadh should not accept the outcome without protest. Rather, it should do everything it can to take Washington down with it.

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

43 comments for “The Joint US-Saudi Guilt for 9/11

  1. jdd
    October 10, 2016 at 11:47

    The author underestimates the power of the JASTA vote. Not only was It was a stunning rebuke of Obama, but also testimony of the fall of Saudi influence , until recently unchallenged, over Capital Hill.The lawsuits against the Saudis will not only bring justice for the families and the American people, but beginning with discovery, the trial process itself will bear out the evidence of the Saudi role, The literally hundreds of thousands of pages of additional evidence collected by FBI field officers,suppressed at the highest levels, can then be made public. It will open the role of Bush/Cheney, Obama and FBI in protecting the Saudi perpetrators,and finally bringing into question why the US invaded and attacked countries having nothing to do with 911 resulting in the death and displacement of millions. Undoubtedly, it will raise the role of then US Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan (aka Bandar Bush), who had very close ties to the Bush family but even closer ties to the leading circles of Great Britain. It was he who negotiated, along with Margaret Thatcher, the infamous Al Yamamah oil for weapons barter deal that set up the multi-billion dollar offshore slush funds from which the hijackers were ultimately paid. The hearings, scheduled for November in the Southern District of New York are only the beginning.The bottle has indeed been uncorked.

  2. george Archers
    October 8, 2016 at 21:03

    I suggest the author take up Cooking articles instead of reporting 911 gibberish/ nonsense. Does he know that 8 of the 19 hi jackers are alive and how is it that CIA/FBI knew the names of the 19 just 3 days after 911 attacks and their law suites never got heard., How about the pass port of Atta, found in the rubble–untouched? Don’t authors like him have any shame in feeding us Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld government garbage???

    • Rikhard Ravindra Tanskanen
      October 12, 2016 at 18:50

      Another example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

  3. October 8, 2016 at 07:41

    FREE BOOK: “9/11 UNVEILED” — google it, 80,000+ downloaded.

    Nixon’s foreign policy advisor: “9/11 Unveiled” . . . is the best short summary of what most Americans and virtually all of the rest of the world consider to be the 9/11 mystery”.

    • Rikhard Ravindra Tanskanen
      October 12, 2016 at 18:51

      Which foreign policy advisor? Kissinger? Or someone else? If you don’t mention names, that weakens your credibility.

  4. Oz
    October 7, 2016 at 10:53

    This article omits a crucial piece of the puzzle, which is the British role. Some of the funds which Prince Bandar drew upon to finance the 9/11 attacks came from a huge slush fund for covert operations which was put together during the so-called “Al-Yamamah Affair”, a decades-long arrangement between the Saudi kingdom and the British firm BAE. An attempt to investigate this deal in the UK was halted by Tony Blair.

  5. October 6, 2016 at 23:50

    This is a lot of background that doesn’t even scratch the surface of 9/11.

    The Bush junta wanted the attacks, protected Saudis, and the CIA hid the known Al Qaeda cells from arrest. For over a year. The White House and plenty of others had foreknowledge. Nothing was a surprise–to them. Because their partners were aiding and abetting the attacks, and then swiftly airlifted out of the country the following day. It’s Treason, high Treason, but Americans are too brainwashed to think clearly. Michael Ruppert had most of the key findings nailed a month after the attack, but the media was more interested in lining up and saluting than in justice, as they are to this day.

    28 Pages of Treason
    https://politicalfilm.wordpress.com/2016/09/11/911-28-pages-of-treason/

  6. October 6, 2016 at 18:41

    I have a nitpick concerning the article. Absent in Laxare’s analysis of the reason for choosing Iraq as a target to “…to deflect attention from the real culprits…” is the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which had been advocating for “regime change” in Iraq since 1997 or thereabouts. Even Clinton came to support it, as I recall.

    I think there was deeper strategy involved than just deflection. I can only wonder at what the evil architects of this whole mess in the Middle East really had in mind. To eventually end the Saudi caliphate, perhaps? Isn’t that a nice thought!

    Obviously, the factors that come in to play with such massive projections of power (I’m still on Iraq) are almost endless in their descriptions, but the end result was evil. And I believe the thoughts that lead to those decisions were evil, not to mention the decisions themselves. And the actions…

    Funny how evil seems to be the provenance of the rich and powerful.

    • george Archers
      October 8, 2016 at 20:51

      BILL Clinton received a demand memo 1996–stated 7 middle east countries need to be destroyed for security of Israel. Then in 1999,same folks–We need a New pearl Harbor event to get the plan working..This has been exposed thousands of times and the author is assumed to be bright–Yaah! Muslims did it.

      • Rikhard Ravindra Tanskanen
        October 12, 2016 at 18:49

        Sir, everyone already knows about the Project for a New American Century. That’s old news.

  7. Ol' Hippy
    October 6, 2016 at 17:49

    The more I dig into the 9/11 disaster the more disgusted I am with the US govt. and the way the conduct “business”. It is starting to look like most of the “official” story are a small bit of truth mixed with tons of lies. I will no longer believe most of the “official” govt. stories and treat them as propaganda. Keep up the good work at consortiumnews, it’s amazing to find the real stories and factual reporting. I support this site as much as my limited budget allows.

  8. col from oz
    October 6, 2016 at 17:40

    A mass deflection exercise. Now it makes sense.

  9. David G
    October 6, 2016 at 17:21

    We’ll see how things look in a month. How does the “JASTA Repeal, TPP Passage, and Salute Our Heroic Veterans Act of (December) 2016” sound?

  10. Patricia P Tursi
    October 6, 2016 at 15:40

    The Crimes in the Middle East will continue until the US gets out of there and stops supplying the radical ISIS, IS, etc., with arms.

  11. October 6, 2016 at 15:31

    Even the estimable Daniel Lazare can’t bring himself to mention Bandar’s nickname, Bandar Bush. Mr. Parry, honestly, is this not a moment of opportunity? I have a 47-page affidavit at “Conclusion of Gallop v. Cheney” at vealetruth.com which could be the basis for a cross-examination by an informed trial lawyer of whomever you delegate, assuming you are unwilling to undergo the exercise yourself. I guarantee a change of mind or an incredibly embarrassed silence. Maybe readers here should endorse the enterprise.

    • F. G. Sanford
      October 6, 2016 at 19:48

      How about we just start a petition to repossess Dick Cheny’s latest heart? After all, it was paid for at U.S. Government expense. A proposito, how is daughter Lynn doing with her Congressional bid? I imagine she’ll be voting against any initiatives that might tarnish certain legacies. Given the gullibility of the U.S. electorate, it’s a cinch she’ll win by a comfy margin. And, no doubt, she’ll be voting against any initiatives that would provide expensive medical treatment for America’s elderly.

      • Joe Tedesky
        October 7, 2016 at 09:08

        I think the biggest crisis Cheney encountered was the time when little George almost choked on the pretzel. If dumbass would have been wasted by a pretzel, that would have meant Cheney (the real president) would have had to go public with his presidential ranking, and there ain’t no fun in that. I also find Lynn to be scarier than her dad, but other than that I think she is somewhat hot.

        As far as Cheney’s heart goes, may we American taxpayers get a refund on a slightly used heart? What are used hearts going for these days, anyway?

  12. October 6, 2016 at 15:16

    Obama promised the families as soon as he came into office that he would release them, and waited almost his entire term to release them, and when he did, he left 3 pages worth still redacted. There was a lot of incriminating information in those pages. The President of the United States good friend helped to finance the 9/11 attacks. Did I mention that Prince Bandar and George Bush were talking about the need for decisive action in Iraq months before 9/11? How odd.

    • John Doe II
      October 6, 2016 at 15:32

      Details, those damn little nagging details that go capriciously unreported
      or are released years later in “REDACTED” Form.

      Like the promised Colin Powell “White Paper” THAT NEVER MATERIALIZED.

      Want real Data??? Here it is —

      https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/AOPof911p11.html

      • John Doe II
        October 6, 2016 at 16:27

        Jon Gold; Hey,man — my hats off to you.
        That’s a powerful compilation of data.
        Thank You for the time and research.

  13. Pablo Diablo
    October 6, 2016 at 15:10

    And yet, the American public stood back while the Supreme Court “selected” George W. Bush and two of the five Justices who were appointed by his Dad did not recuse themselves. The lawyer who oversaw the case before the Court was none other than John Roberts. WAKE UP AMERICA.

  14. October 6, 2016 at 14:56

    Just an FYI, her name is Kristen Breitweiser, and Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice started planning for the Iraq War within hours of the attacks.

  15. Monte George
    October 6, 2016 at 14:51

    Not me.

  16. John Doe II
    October 6, 2016 at 13:09

    Convenient loss of memory at work here?
    The US paid $$$Billions in BLOOD MONEY to 9/11 victim families after 9/11.
    Recompense /conscious cleansing for the foreknowledge of US victims of “COLLATERAL DAMAGE” – ???

    :: FYI ::

    The September 11th Victim Compensation Fund was created by an Act of Congress, the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (49 USC 40101), shortly after 9/11 to compensate the victims of the attack (or their families) in exchange for their agreement not to sue the airline corporations involved. Kenneth Feinberg was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to be Special Master of the fund. He worked for 33 months pro bono. He developed the regulations governing the administration of the fund and administered all aspects of the program.

    Feinberg was responsible for making the decisions on how much each family of a victim would receive. Feinberg had to estimate how much each victim would have earned in a full lifetime. If a family accepted the offer, it was not possible to appeal. Families unhappy with the offer were able to appeal in a nonadversarial, informal hearing to present their case however they wanted. Feinberg personally presided over more than 900 of the 1,600 hearings. At the end of the process $7 billion was awarded to 97% of the families; the average payout was $1.8 million. A non-negotiable clause in the acceptance papers for the settlements was that the families were to never file suit against the airlines for any lack of security or otherwise unsafe procedures.

    A stumbling block to settlements was the fact that many of the World Trade Center victims were highly compensated financial professionals. Families of these victims felt the compensation offers were too low, and, had a court considered their case on an individual basis, they would have been awarded much higher amounts. This concern had to be balanced against the time, complications, and risks of pursuing an individual case, and the real possibility that the airlines and their insurers could be bankrupted before being able to pay the claim.

    This is a separate fund from the similarly named September 11th Fund, and from the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company.

    ::

    All this, to open a war of destruction upon the people of the Middle East… .

  17. Zachary Smith
    October 6, 2016 at 12:35

    The author neglects to name another potential ‘victim’ of JASTA.

    In 2001 Israel was running a massive spying operation directed against Muslims either resident or traveling in the United States. The operation included the creation of a number of cover companies in New Jersey, Florida and also on the west coast that served as spying mechanisms for Mossad officers. The effort was supported by the Mossad Station in Washington D.C. and included a large number of volunteers, the so-called “art students” who traveled around the U.S. selling various products at malls and outdoor markets. The FBI was aware of the numerous Israeli students who were routinely overstaying their visas and some in the Bureau certainly believed that they were assisting their country’s intelligence service in some way, but it proved difficult to link the students to actual undercover operations, so they were regarded as a minor nuisance.

    But the hands-off attitude towards Israeli spying shifted dramatically when, on September 11, 2001, a New Jersey housewife saw something from the window of her apartment building, which overlooked the World Trade Center. She watched as the buildings burned and crumbled but also noted something strange. Three young men were kneeling on the roof of a white transit van parked by the water’s edge, making a movie in which they featured themselves high fiving and laughing in front of the catastrophic scene unfolding behind them. The woman wrote down the license plate number of the van and called the police, who responded quickly and soon both the local force and the FBI began looking for the vehicle, which was subsequently seen by other witnesses in various locations along the New Jersey waterfront, its occupants “celebrating and filming.”

    https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2016/10/04/will-israel-be-sued-for-911/

    This entire affair has been more or less swept under the rug. Rather like the attack on the USS Liberty.

    The most likely solution is that Congress will ‘revisit’ the law and allow the President to issue a waiver to halt any specific lawsuit because doing so would be in the national security interest of the United States.

    Another procedure would be to quietly pass the word to the Federal Judiciary that at some level any lawsuit involving Israel’s involvement in the 9/11 terror attacks is squashed.

    • David Smith
      October 6, 2016 at 14:00

      Z.S., the call from the “New Jersey housewife” referenced in your quote was actually the SECOND call received by police. The first call to police(with similar details of photos/lighters/the high five) occurred before the first airliner hit the N. Towers. Clearly foreknowledge. The individuals referred to by the caller were on the roof of Urban Moving Systems. The Dancing Israelis were employed by Urban Moving Systems, and were arrested in a van, with the reported license plates, owned by UMS. Later that day the FBI showed up at UMS. It was empty, and whoever had left had left in a hurry as half-eaten sandwiches and coffees were left on desks. The owner of Urban Moving Systems boarded a flight to Israel approx. two hours after the Dancing Israelis were arrested, clearly someone tipped him off. The FBI interviewed a non-jewish former employee of UBS who stated there were meetings between the owner and the jewish employees, closed to the non-jews and that he had quit because of frequent anti-American comments by the jewish employees, including “In twenty years we will own The United States!!!”. Foreknowledge of 9/11 and outrageous arrogance.

      • Zachary Smith
        October 6, 2016 at 17:16

        That outrageous arrogance grows. Back in May of this year some off-duty goons hired by a local Jewish group assaulted and arrested a citizen AND a librarian.

        http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article105294071.html

        In this case, the library agreed to have the Jewish Community Foundation bring security, in part out of sensitivity to the 2014 shootings that left three dead at Jewish sites in Overland Park.

        But library officials said they had specified that no one was to be removed for asking uncomfortable questions and not without permission of library staff, unless there was an imminent threat.

        Kemper, the library director, said the security guards and police officers violated that agreement, along with the library’s core reason for existence as a place to exchange ideas.

        As the link says, the Prosecutor plans to pursue the case.

        Well, I do have a treasured memory of living in the US before it was a world-class police state. And when Israel wasn’t controlling everything down to the local cop level.

      • Helen Marshall
        October 6, 2016 at 17:38

        They didn’t have to wait twenty years…

        • Rikhard Ravindra Tanskanen
          October 12, 2016 at 18:46

          Fuck off.

      • Rikhard Ravindra Tanskanen
        October 12, 2016 at 18:45

        Do you have any evidence of the last quote?

  18. Helen Marshall
    October 6, 2016 at 12:25

    Curious – or perhaps not – that this extensive account only mentions Israel once, noting that our pro-Israel policies during the 1973 war caused a Saudi counter-attack via the oil market. Israel and Saudi Arabia are openly buddies now, united in their anti-Iran policies, and quite likely were working together 15 years ago behind the scenes.

  19. david gamble
    October 6, 2016 at 12:23

    When do the survivors of the USS Liberty sue Israel?

    • October 7, 2016 at 13:28

      I urge readers to look into that event and how it got that way.

  20. bobzz
    October 6, 2016 at 12:10

    If JASTA focuses on the Saudis, what would stop them from opening the books on the US involvement? Was that the reason Obama tried to stop the investigation?

  21. evelync
    October 6, 2016 at 12:08

    Daniel Lazare,

    Thank you for tying this all together. Americans know that it’s crazy to think that our foreign policy/energy policy is blameless for the horror that is now taking place and has been ongoing.
    Your piece is a beginning to the examination of the role played by our government in the horror that seems to have no end.
    Americans have allowed their foreign policy to be decided and conducted in secret with disastrous results.

    A few years after the George W Bush/Dick Cheney/Donald Rumsfeld war was launched on Iraq, James Baker III gave a talk at Texas A&M. I don;t remember whether the subject was foreign policy or energy or terrorism or what exactly.
    In the Q&A afterwards, a student asked whether U.S. foreign policy/energy policy in the Middle East was in any way responsible for the blowback on Americans.
    Baker was horrified – he jumped on the young man and cried angrily, stammering —-youuuuuu’re questioning this country’s energy policy that goes back 60 years.

    I agree that it was very convenient for the war criminal Cheney to try to distract from Saudi Arabia and bait and switch the country to a “preventive” war on Iraq. But they were also on that PNAC hunt for taking down 7 countries to control their oil, too, weren’t they?
    They also used 9/11 as an excuse didn’t they to satisfy their war lust?

    Thanks very much for focusing the historical events and explaining how step by step they took us closer to what wiser people might have seen was an inevitable catastrophic disaster.

  22. October 6, 2016 at 11:51

    I have no objections to limited hang-outs and this is one of them. There has never been a forensic or even evidence/logic-based investigation of the attacks on 9/11 by anyone other than the outside-the-Narrative heretics aka “truthers” who don’t count because they need massive doses of medication since they only exist because the mental hospitals have discharged way to many people.

    In my view, the left defenestrated itself from power long ago when it refused to accept the obvious, i.e., the existence of Deep Politics. It goes hand-in-hand with the tendency of U.S. intellectuals to discount the existence of the unconscious in human beings because, obviously, things are only what they appear to be on the surface–plots and conspiracies only exist in fiction and then only outside the U.S.A in the realm of evil foreigners.

    I know very well that any journo who crosses the line gets banned from working anywhere–so as the I Ching says, no blame to you. But, at some point, if the “left” or what is left of it, wants to get traction it is going to have to cross over to deconstructing the mainstream Narrative or say hello to a further engorgement of this inverted totalitarian regime as should seem obvious by now.

    • kathy mayes
      October 6, 2016 at 13:47

      Totally agree with Chris Cosmos except about the so-called “truthers”.

    • David G
      October 6, 2016 at 17:19

      “There has never been a forensic or even evidence/logic-based investigation of the attacks on 9/11 by anyone other than the outside-the-Narrative heretics aka ‘truthers’ …”

      See:
      https://www.nist.gov/engineering-laboratory/final-reports-nist-world-trade-center-disaster-investigation

      I know, they’re all in on it.

      • Jesse
        October 10, 2016 at 06:11

        Did you know that “.gov” should be a small tip off for you that it’s a US government organization? It’s a “non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce” with a mission to “promote innovation and industrial competitiveness.”

        Let’s examine some of their other work, to see if they sound like a unbiased organization:

        “The Guardian and the New York Times reported that NIST allowed the National Security Agency to insert a cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator called Dual EC DRBG into NIST standard SP 800-90 that had a backdoor that the NSA can use to covertly decrypt material that was encrypted using this pseudorandom number generator. Both papers report that the NSA worked covertly to get its own version of SP 800-90 approved for worldwide use in 2006. The leaked document states that ‘eventually, NSA became the sole editor’.”

        And additionally, it’s a bit odd now isn’t it, that the World Trade Center report has no stated author, almost like it could been singlehandedly written by NIST’s director or just given to NIST by a parent goverment agency.

    • Tom Paine
      October 8, 2016 at 17:48

      But didn’t someone say that the redacted 29 pages would reveal “governmentS” plural, not government, singular was involved in 911. If so – WHO IS/ARE THE OTHER GOVERNMENTS?!

    • Hank
      October 9, 2016 at 13:16

      Left. Right? What about “TRUTH”? Not one mention of the REAL culprit behind 911, Israel. Apparently “truth” is now illegal in the USA. In a society based on lies, truth IS the enemy! And all the “left,right,liberal,conservative,etc” labeling only keeps Americans divided and in the dark. Political correctness is suffocating America because anyone who attempts to spread facts and truth is met with the term “truther” or something even more derogatory! Anyone who posits a CRACKPOT theory about 911 is more-than-likely a government shill trying to make ALL 911 questioners look crazy. You cannot change the facts once they have been documented and supported by enough witnesses and authorities. The problem with the USA like many nations before it is the propaganda role that the mainstream media, owned by just several major corporations, has on a clueless portion of the American public.

      • Rikhard Ravindra Tanskanen
        October 12, 2016 at 18:15

        You suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect.

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