Posted on 06/25/2004 12:21:10 AM PDT by Rodney Dangerfield
Bin Laden Family Evacuated Sept. 30, 2001
Two dozen members of Osama bin Laden's family were urgently evacuated from the United States in the first days following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, according to the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
One of bin Laden's brothers frantically called the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington looking for protection, Prince Bandar bin Sultan told The New York Times. The brother was sent to a room in the Watergate Hotel and was told not to open the door.
Most of bin Laden's relatives were attending high school and college. The young members of the bin Laden family were driven or flown under FBI supervision to a secret place in Texas and then to Washington, The Times reported Sunday.
Many were terrified, fearing they would be lynched after hearing reports of violence against Muslims and Arab-Americans.
They left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks.
King Fahd, the ailing Saudi ruler, sent an urgent message to his embassy in Washington pointing out that there were "bin Laden children all over America" and ordered, "Take measures to protect the innocents," the ambassador said.
It's a tragedy," Prince Bandar told the Times. "The elders" of the students "came to see me, and one of them was a bright boy from Harvard who like the others had absolutely nothing to do with this and yet we had to tell him to go home and wait until the emotions calmed down. And he told me that he never really appreciated why the Japanese wanted a memorial or an apology for their treatment in World War II.
The student added, according to the prince, "I understand now that when you are innocent, in the face of emotion, nothing, not even common sense, can help argue your case."
Osama bin Laden is one of more than 50 children of a Yemeni-born migrant who made a vast fortune building roads and palaces in Saudi Arabia and his extended family spans the globe. Many have been educated in the United States and the family has donated millions of dollars to several American universities.
Bin Laden is estranged from his family and from Saudi Arabia, which revoked his citizenship in the early 1990s after he was caught smuggling weapons from Yemen.
I saw that and am confounded by Isakoff defending the administration. What is that all about.
Yes. Charming that was a priority at the time.
I'm opposed to lynching people.
Believe me, I take your word for it.
I have no doubt they were; Tampa was one of the pickup points!
Perhaps you would have preferred if the FBI dumped them all out at Ground Zero and people could have taken the issue into their own hands.
It was a weird feeling, wasn't it.......LOL. Talk about strange bedfellows!
They left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks.....
I had THE most puzzled look on my face. Not unusual when checking out Scarborough but this was something else.
It's also obvious that those who are claiming we evacuated them on the 11th (hours after the attacks) are lying through their teeth.
I often suspect that some members funnel money to him or his causes--but I don't know if there's any proof of that.
This is the truth, and it needs to be told.
Moore is getting away with lies.
Perhaps for those of us with busy lives to lead, and have no clue what Mickey Moore's picture is about, you could connect the dots between the bin Laden family and Dickie Clark (who himself became a pawn of the Left, poor baby.)
I'm guessing from what has been said here that Moore has some malevolent motives assigned to the Bush administration for allowing or helping the bin Laden family to leave following 9/11??
But it would be better if you clarified that in the opening part of your post.
Just a thought.
Beware of the not-so-hidden agenda of the posters who keep repeating that lie.
They could well have been flown to the Texas location after the air traffic resumed. Please, get a grip.
I didn't happen the way Moore portrayed it, even if Clarke was behind the whole thing. I think you've spent too much time at DU, or possibly watching shlockumentaries like F-911.
Guess who approved the flight out of these Bin Laden brothers...none other than Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief who is now the darling of the left because of his embittered Bush bashing book that dishonestly contradicts things he previously said indicating Bush had worked hard prior to 9-11 to combat Al Qaeda. Clarke approved it because they had been questioned and found to have no information about 9-11, having had no contact with Osama for over a decade. They have never since been in any way implicated in terrorism generally or 9-11 specifically. As a sidenote, I believe they also had diplomatic passports which means they could not have been held. That would have violated international law. Funny how Democrats don't mind ticking off an ally and violating international law when they can hypocritically demand that in order to find yet another pathetic opportunity to attack Bush. Get a life Dems.
Indeed, and they make themselves very clear. They're not very good at hiding those agendas.
LOL !! That is great ! Good job. :^DThe Michael Moron pics I posted are all 'borrowed'.
In which case the news story would be dead wrong about that. Not impossible, but the source story makes the clear distinction between the FBI "supervised" flights and other trips to the secret location before air traffic resumed, and their leaving the country after air traffic resumed.
It is also no use denying that U.S. ties to Saudi Arabia, and the bin Laden family in particular, were entirely too friendly and uncritical of Moslem radicalism.
Of course Moore is way operspinning this. But it is ugly all the same: The FBI goes around being armed flying nanny to bin Laden brats while I'm stuck in Europe for nearly a week.
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