Now it is being openly admitted that the Saudis did it and "we don't want to know."

[Bonobo]

Everyone knows it.

But they don't want to "officially" know it. The Obama admin is squelching a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia on the grounds of "international immunity" whatever that is and this weasel in the above clip named Steven Rattner says that we should just forget about it because they supply our oil and we need them.

Who is Steven Rattner?

* Lead auto advisor ("car czar&quot in the US Treasury Department under President Obama.
*Founding principal of Quadrangle Group, a global private equity firm specializing in the media
*Former Deputy Chairman and Deputy CEO at Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, and Lazard Freres & Co.,
*Current chairman of investment firm that manages Mayor Bloomberg's personal assets.

So it is now openly admitted that the US doesn't want to know.

Is it still a "conspiracy theory" to say that Bin Laden's relatives were protected and hustled out of the country?

[OffWithTheirHeads]

1. Gee, I wonder who else was in on it?

[Sanity Claws]

2. They sounded so calm after that bombshell was dropped

Not one of them pointed out that the Bush administration the investigation into the Saudi involvement and how this illustrates their lack of patriotism, if not outright treason.

Anytime anyone pointed to anything other than the official story, these same stooges called them conspiracy theory nuts.

[Bonobo]

3. What about the hundreds of thousands of casualties...

in the US armed forces?
They joined to get justice for the 9/11 victims.

How do you think THEY feel that the US govt. was protecting the real bad guys?

And why, why, WHY are we discussing this in a "creative speculation" dungeon along with UFO theories???

[frogmarch]

4. Oh, like

UFO theories abound here. The most recent OP pertaining to anything remotely connected to UFOs was my post about the upcoming Science Channel series pertaining to the possibility of life on other planets. No one even commented on the thread.

By the way, some UFO theories make as much sense as many of the other theories posted here.

[Bonobo]

5. The point I was trying to make (and did poorly) was...

that THIS is not "creative speculation".

[frogmarch]

6. Got it. nt

[William Seger]

7. Huh? There's no vindication for conspiracy theory nuts in this story

... unless you're claiming that Saudis rigged the towers for controlled demolition. I defy you to find a single instance where someone who speculated about Saudi involvement in the plot to hijack planes and crash them into buildings was called a conspiracy theory nut. The 26 pages redacted from the 9/11 Commission Report have commonly been believed to concern that very matter, right from the day it was published.

Actually, this "news" illustrates how conspiracy theory nuts have done nothing but distract from the serious questions about 9/11, so you insult people's intelligence by trying to claim any vindication from it.

[William Seger]

8. "Is it still a 'conspiracy theory' to say ..."

> "... that Bin Laden's relatives were protected and hustled out of the country?"

When was that ever called a "conspiracy theory?"

If any of bin Laden's relatives were involved in the plot, wouldn't you expect that they would have simply left the country before the attack, rather than depend on being "protected and hustled out?"

[Bonobo]

9. So it has been widely known and reported that...

the Saudi Govt. was behind 9/11 attacks AND the US govt. colluded to sneak out Saudis quickly after the incident?

This implies that there were people secretly talking to each other and law enforcement officials and winking and nodding as the Saudi people were swished away to safety.

Furthermore, it implies collusion with the Saudi govt. to get them out and secrecy involving all above points/

Bullshit and revise all you want, but there were plenty that would have whined that that was CT stuff.

[William Seger]

13. "Bullshit and revise" huh?

You didn't answer my questions. Instead, you say:

> So it has been widely known and reported that... the Saudi Govt. was behind 9/11 attacks AND the US govt. colluded to sneak out Saudis quickly after the incident?

Spin rejected. It has been widely speculated that some members of the huge royal family may have financed the operation, and the evacuation of bin Laden family members didn't remain secret for very long at all. If you were unaware of that, that's not my fault -- I didn't "bullshit and revise" anything. And again, I doubt that you can point to a single instance of someone who "whined that that was CT stuff."

> Furthermore, it implies collusion with the Saudi govt. to get them out and secrecy involving all above points

What "collusion with the Saudi govt." does it imply, and how can you possibly tie that into any of the theories promulgated by the "truth movement?"

Let's take it one step at a time: Do you now believe that 19 radical Islamists hijacked four planes and crashed them into three buildings?

[Bonobo]

21. What do you mean "now"? I never denied it. But it was 2 buildings, not 3.

Now my question:

Do you admit there was likely collusion between the Saudi Govt. and US officials (CIA, white house) in which it was agreed to hide/whitewash their involvement in 9/11?

[William Seger]

23. No, it was 3 buildings, and no, there was no need for any collusion

There was no need to even know for sure that there were any Saudis involved to make the political decision to not pursue the issue.

[Bonobo]

24. Yes, 3. I thought you were referring (for some reason) to WT7.

"There was no need to even know for sure that there were any Saudis involved to make the political decision to not pursue the issue. "

That is certainly ducking the issue of whether or not there was a concerted effort and collusion between countries and agencies to decide whether to and how to bury whitewash it.

[William Seger]

25. "ducking the issue?"

As I said, I see no logical reason for believing that any collusion was necessary, and you have certainly not provided any, nor have you presented any evidence that collusion occurred. What "issue" are you claiming I'm "ducking?" Seems to me there's nothing else to be said about it unless and until you can substantiate your claim.

[Bonobo]

26. How do you propose the CIA got the idea

to whisk important Saudi people out of the country?

Did they all just decide to do it on their own?

How do you suppose media reports about Saudi involvement didn't come out all this time we were busy fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq as payback for 9/11 (in many people's eyes)

Do you imagine there was no pulling of strings, calling in of favors from Saudi bigwigs?

[William Seger]

27. Really?

> How do you propose the CIA got the idea to whisk important Saudi people out of the country?

For starters, you haven't demonstrated that it was the CIA rather than the State Department, and furthermore I would suppose they "got the idea" that bin Laden's family would be in danger of retribution without any coaxing. In the absence of any real information, my first guess would be that someone in the family requested assistance from the State Department. But that reminds me, you didn't respond to my point that I would have expected any bin Ladens who knew about the attack to have already left the country before 9/11.

> How do you suppose media reports about Saudi involvement didn't come out all this time we were busy fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq as payback for 9/11 (in many people's eyes)

I'm not sure where you've been, but speculation about Saudi involvement has been bubbling since day one, but "media reports" typically involve facts, not speculations.

> Do you imagine there was no pulling of strings, calling in of favors from Saudi bigwigs?

As I said, I see no reason why that was a prerequisite for the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission to decide to avoid the issue, i.e. there was no need whatsoever for Saudis to remind us how dependent we are on both their oil and their cooperation in the Middle East.

[jberryhill]

16. "the Saudi govt."

Saudi Arabia is run by a large royal family headed for quite some time by a king who was quite ill. There has always been intrigue in the House of Saud, and treating the members thereof as if they are interchangeable oversimplifies the picture.

There has never been any serious dispute that the Saudi royal family is a mixed bag. As a group, they are not of one mind on just about anything. Many of them would just as soon stab one of their cousins in the back, than cooperate with them on anything.

Of course there was involvement of Saudis in 9/11. Who has ever denied that?

[Bonobo]

22. So then...

Do you admit there was likely collusion between the Saudi Govt. and US officials (CIA, white house) in which it was agreed to hide/whitewash their involvement in 9/11?

[jberryhill]

28. A piece of the 9/11 commission report was redacted

...and likely deals with information about various Saudi connections. That's no huge surprise either.

How one gets from there to "likely collusion between the Saudi Govt and US officials in which it was agreed to hide/whitewash their involvement in 9/11", is something of a leap.

[noise]

29. Actually the 28 pages were redacted from the

Joint Inquiry report. History Commons summarized Philip Shenon's reporting of behind the scenes 9/11 Commission conduct in regard to Saudi involvement:

In a late-night editing session, 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow and Dieter Snell, head of the Commission team investigating the 9/11 plot, delete sections of the 9/11 Commission Report linking two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, to suspected Saudi government operatives.

Evidence of Saudi Link - The sections were drafted by two of Snell’s team members, Mike Jacobson and Raj De, and deal with Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi who had helped the two hijackers (see January 15-February 2000); Fahad al-Thumairy, another of their associates (see June 9, 2000); cash transfers from the wife of the Saudi ambassador in Washington to an associate of al-Bayoumi (see December 4, 1999); and a taxi driver who said he had seen the two hijackers in Los Angeles (see 2002).

Disagreement - However, Snell, a former prosecutor, is opposed to these sections, as he thinks the hijackers’ links to Saudi intelligence are not 100 percent proven, so it is better to leave them out. Jacobson is notified of the editing session just before midnight; he calls De and they both go into the Commission’s offices to discuss the material. Snell says that the final report should not contain allegations that cannot be backed up conclusively, but Jacobson and De say demanding this level of proof would exonerate the guilty.

Saudi Ties Moved to Endnotes - Zelikow appears sympathetic to Jacobson and De, and had also entertained suspicions of the Saudis at one point. However, he apparently sees his role at this late stage as that of a mediator and allows Snell to delete the sections from the main body of the report, although Jacobson and De are then permitted to write endnotes covering them. Shenon, 2008, pp. 398-399

Saudi links in 9/11 Commission report

The 9/11 Commission also relegated CIA withholding of information about al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar to a footnote. What is sad is the way some people cheerlead for the 9/11 Commission report while overlooking the commission's failure to provide a full account of 9/11. These aren't small issues. We are talking about withholding information about al Qaeda operatives linked to previous al Qaeda attacks and possible high level Saudi government involvement.

[LARED]

10. How did you come away with the notion that the "Saudis did it"?

The idea the agents of the Saudi government likely supported the 9/11 attacks in some form has been around for a long time and pretty much anyone that has anything other than a surface understanding of the plot or how things work in Saudi Arabia thinks this was highly plausible.

But there is a huge gulf between a Saudi government agent support (likely financial) and "they did it". It widely known that of the thousands of oil rich sheiks and princes (all government agents in the Saudi government structure) that quite a few support terrorism around the globe.

In my view this barely counts as news.

[Bonobo]

11. Bob Kerrey and Bob Graham seem to think so.

You say it barely counts as news?

You say there is a huge gulf between Saudi Govt. agent support and "they did it"?

Well, what the fuck would "they did it" look like to you if it wasn't sponsored by the government and farmed out to some for-hire types?

Do you think that unless it was done with box cutters stamped "Property of the Saudi Royal Family", then it wasn't done by the Saudis?

I am singularly unimpressed by the cyber yawns coming from you. If it is such yawn-worthy news, then were were all the protests that we were going after the wrong guys when we attacked Afghanistan simply because OBL lived there?

[LARED]

12. I think you fail to appreciate the structure of the Saudi "government"

SA is an absolute Monarchy. There are dozens of internal factions and around 7000 princes that control all facets of Saudi society. The Quran and Sunnah are it's "constitution". There is no accountability to the people. In short the King is the government. Unless you think the King sanctioned the attacks, claiming the "Saudis did it" is less then compelling.

I have little doubt there was a prince or lackey that helped fund or provided support for the attack. So I guess it's simply semantics that separate us.

[noise]

17. Graham has pointed to a Saudi network

that provided support for al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. He has speculated that the other hijackers received similar support. Is it not worth knowing who in the Saudi royal family approved this? Graham has pointed to the Saudi embassy and funds from Prince Bandar's account. Should the public not be outraged by President Bush hanging out with Bandar while this incriminating lead was not fully investigated?

Anyone who has followed the coverage of 9/11 knows that the US media is for the most part completely full of shit. If the media truly wanted answers they would interview Rich Blee of Alec Station. He has answers to some of the big questions about 9/11. For one he could explain the Saudi role in regard to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

19. Does that mean the Saudis had access to our military operations?

The way that the attacks were organized points to the fact that Saudis had access to our system somehow?

[LARED]

20. Shouldn't this say...

Is it not worth knowing who in if the Saudi royal family approved this?

I would say yes that's a worthwhile question.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

14. So why did Saudi Arabia want to help do the 911 attacks?

[noise]

18. There are two popular theories

1)The protection money theory:

A former Clinton administration official has claimed-and US intelligence sources concurred-that at least two Saudi princes had been paying, on behalf of the Kingdom, what amounted to protection money since 1995. "The deal was," the former official said, "they would turn a blind eye to what he was doing elsewhere. 'You don't conduct operations here, and we won't disrupt them elsewhere.'"

American and British official sources, speaking later with Simon Henderson-Baker fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy-named the two princes in question. They were, Henderson told the authors, Interior Minister Naif and the minister of defense and aviation, Price Sultan. The money involved in the alleged payments, according to Henderson's sources, had amounted to "hundreds of millions of dollars." It had been "Saudi official money-not their own."

The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

pg. 394

2)They don't like us theory:

At the State Department, the director of the Office of the Coodinator for Counterterrorism concluded that the (Bin Laden) relationship with some royals went way beyond recreational pursuits. "We've got information about who's backing Bin Laden," Dick Gannon was saying by 1998, "and in a lot of cases it goes back to the royal family. There are certain factions of the royal family who just don't like us."

The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan

pg. 394

The media likes to talk of collective country agendas as if US and Saudi leaders were all of the same page with their citizens. Like the US public has any idea WTF Bush and Bandar talked about in secret. Look at the invasion of Iraq. How was that in the best interests of the US public? What we had was a small faction of insiders who manipulated the public into supporting their policy agenda. Perhaps a similar scenario played out with US and Saudi insiders in regard to 9/11.

[noise]

15. Typically awful media coverage

The failure to properly investigate 9/11 indicates a sickening level of establishment corruption and contempt for the public.