Some excerpts:
Just days after 9/11, wealthy Saudi Arabians, including members of the bin Laden family, were whisked out of the U.S. on private jets. No one will admit to clearing the flights, and the passengers weren't questioned.* * *
On the morning of September 13, 2001, a 49-year-old private eye named Dan Grossi got an unexpected call from the Tampa Police Department. Grossi had worked with the Tampa force for 20 years before retiring, and it was not particularly unusual for the police to recommend former officers for special security jobs. But Grossi's new assignment was very much out of the ordinary.
Two days earlier, terrorists had hijacked four airliners and carried out the worst atrocity in American history. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers had been from Saudi Arabia. "The police had been giving Saudi students protection since September 11." Grossi recalls. "They asked if I was interested in escorting these students from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky."
Grossi was told to go to the airport, where a small charter jet would be available to take him and the Saudis on their flight.
[] at 1:30 or 2 P.M. on the 13th, Dan Grossi received his phone call. He was told the Saudis would be delivered to Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar at Tampa International Airport.
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Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the 52-year-old Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, had been in Washington orchestrating the exodus of about 140 Saudis scattered throughout the country who were members of, or close to, two enormous families. One was the House of Saud, the family that rules the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and that, owing to its vast oil reserves, is the richest family in the world. The other was the ruling family's friends and allies the bin Ladens, who, in addition to owning a multi-billion-dollar construction conglomerate, had spawned the notorious terrorist Osama bin Laden. Thanks to the bin Ladens' extremely close relationship with the House of Saud, the family's huge construction company, the Saudi Binladin Group, had won contracts to restore the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina, two of the greatest icons in all of Islam.
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In Tampa, on the same day that Bandar and Bush were meeting in the White House, private investigator Dan Grossi says, he and Manuel Perez waited until three Saudi men, all apparently in their early 20s, arrived. Then the pilot took Grossi, Perez, and the Saudis to a well-appointed eight-passenger Learjet. They departed for Lexington, Kentucky, at about 4:30 P.M.
Both the Tampa Tribune and sources familiar with the flight say that one of the young men was either the son or nephew of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi minister of defense and Prince Bandar's father. Another passenger was said to have been the son of a Saudi army commander. []
According to Grossi, about an hour and 45 minutes after takeoff they landed at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington. There the Saudis were greeted by an American who took custody of them and helped them with their baggage. On the tarmac was a Boeing 747 with Arabic writing on it, apparently waiting to take them back to Saudi Arabia. "My understanding is that there were other Saudis in Kentucky buying racehorses at that time, and they were going to fly back together," Grossi says.
Why has this never become an enormously important story. It certainly should be.