Free Republic

In its report on the still-censored “28 pages” implicating the Saudi government in 9/11, “60 Minutes” last weekend said the Saudi role in the attacks has been “soft-pedaled” to protect America’s delicate alliance with the oil-rich kingdom. That’s quite an understatement. Actually, the kingdom’s involvement was deliberately covered up at the highest levels of our government. And the coverup goes beyond locking up 28 pages of the Saudi report in a vault in the US Capitol basement. Investigations were throttled. Co-conspirators were let off the hook.

A still-classified section of the investigation by congressional intelligence committees into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has taken on an almost mythic quality over the past 13 years — 28 pages that examine crucial support given the hijackers and that by all accounts implicate prominent Saudis in financing terrorism. Now new claims by Zacarias Moussaoui, a convicted former member of Al Qaeda, that he had high-level contact with officials of the Saudi government in the prelude to Sept. 11 have brought renewed attention to the inquiry’s withheld findings, which lawmakers and relatives of those killed in the attacks have tried...

Saudis step up pleas for 'acquittal' over September 11 attacks By David Rennie in Washington (Filed: 31/07/2003) Saudi Arabia's campaign to clear itself in the court of American public opinion of involvement with the September 11 attacks was stepped up yesterday with an offer to let the United States interrogate a Saudi official. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, in Washington for a hastily arranged meeting with President Goerge W Bush, said he had granted a request from the US national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to question Omar al-Bayoumi.But the prince declined to say if his government would extradite...

It's striking how, since 9/11, the Saudi image has lurched between valued partner and veiled enemy -- especially when you consider Bush's strict moral declaration that nations are "either with us or against us." How do you think the Saudis ultimately fit into the picture in terms of the war on al-Qaida? Saudi Arabia is a sacred cow. It's sort of like Israel in this sense; it's been defined as an ally. But since Saudi Arabia is the source of most of the money and most of the hijackers, they have a long way to go before they're a...