Saudi Influence in Washington Must End

[American_Jihad]

That goes for both sides...
Saudi Influence in Washington Must End
If we are going to have any hope of defeating the global jihad.
April 22, 2016
Robert Spencer

The 28 pages of a Congressional report detailing where the 9/11 hijackers got their financing have been classified for years, but what they contain is an open secret. Former Senator Bob Graham explained: “The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier.” So why keep this information secret? Because the Saudis wield undue influence in Washington, among both parties – an influence that has deformed our response to the global jihad threat, and continues to do so.

Responding to a bill that would allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue governments linked to terror attacks inside the U.S., the Saudis have acted like neither an ally nor an innocent party: they’ve threatened to sell $750 billion in U.S. asserts, vividly demonstrating why their influence in Washington is so detrimental.

Nonetheless, they still have a friend in Barack Obama, a man who has never hesitated to reach out in friendship to those who threaten the United States. Obama is trying to get Congress to reject the bill, and his solicitude for the Saudis is drawing criticism even from members of his own party. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) called on him to release the 28 pages: “If the president is going to meet with the Saudi Arabian leadership and the royal family, they think it would be appropriate that this document be released before the president makes that trip, so that they can talk about whatever issues are in that document.”

The New York Daily News, normally a reliable Democratic Party organ, fumed: “If the President allows himself to get pushed around this way in front of the world, then he earns every bit of the anger being directed at him by the extended family of September 11.”

...

In 1942, Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only wasn’t making sure that Hitler’s relatives were safely back home; he also wasn’t meeting with the Führer to discuss a German-U.S. alliance. It is long past time that the United States stop behaving like a weak client state of the House of Saud.

Saudi Influence in Washington Must End

 

[waltky]

Parallel document Examines Alleged Saudi-9/11 Links...

28 Pages Remain Classified, But Another Declassified Document Examines Alleged Saudi-9/11 Links
April 22, 2016 – A newly-emerged, declassified document written by a pair of investigators involved in two official inquiries into 9/11 sheds new light on some of the questions relating to alleged high-level Saudi involvement in the terror plot.

It also asks whether “political, economic or other considerations” may have affected U.S. government investigations into possible Saudi-9/11 links. The document, declassified last July, lists more than 20 individuals of interest to the investigation, including associates of the 9/11 hijackers and accredited Saudi diplomats. It also reveals that the flight certificate of an al-Qaeda operative who reportedly took flight lessons in the Phoenix, Ariz. area before 9/11 – although he was not one of the 19 hijackers – was found after his capture in Pakistan, stashed in an envelope from the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

The operative, Saudi national Ghassan al-Sharbi, was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan in 2002 and remains among the detainees still held at Guantanamo Bay. “After Al-Sharbi was captured, the FBI discovered that he had buried a cache of documents nearby, including an envelope from the Saudi Embassy in Washington that contained al-Sharbi’s flight certificate,” the document states. Furthermore, according to a related document unclassified at the same time, the name of “an individual” was written on the Saudi Embassy envelope.

Copies of the 9/11 Commission report, released in 2004.​

The second document does not identify the individual but says that the FBI was asked during a July 2003 meeting with 9/11 Commission members “to provide the individual’s name written on the Saudi embassy envelope that was found with the effects of Ghassan al-Sharbi in Pakistan, and any information available about that individual.” Allegations of links between senior Saudis and the al-Qaeda plot are believed to be the subject of 28 pages of a 2002 joint House and Senate inquiry report which were redacted upon its release and which the administration is now under growing pressure to declassify.

In contrast, the document in question was quietly declassified last year under an interagency security classification review process but only brought to public attention this week by Brian McGlinchey, a campaigner for the release of the 28 pages. It was written by Dana Lesemann and Michael Jacobson, two of the two dozen staff members who worked on the 2002 congressional inquiry. The two then went on to work for the independent 9/11 Commission. The formerly secret document is part of a 2003 “work plan” for part of the 9/11 Commission investigation dealing specifically with Saudi links to the attacks. It is entitled: “Possible Saudi Government and Royal Family connections to the September 11 Hijackers and Other Terrorists and Terrorist Groups.”

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