Continued, excerpted:
According to Scheuer, members of the bin Ladin family who were doing business in the United States or studying at US universities were almost completely inaccessible.
"My counterparts at the FBI questioned one of the bin Ladens," the former CIA agent recalls. "But then the State Department received a complaint from a law firm, and there was a huge uproar.
We were shocked to find out that the bin Ladens in the United States had diplomatic passports, and that we weren't allowed to talk to them."
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Scheuer believes that these diplomatic privileges also helped the bin Ladens get out of the United States quickly after September 11, in a bizarre episode that has even been probed by the US Congress and an investigative commission.
Only two days after the attacks, when the US government had just reopened US air space, charter jets began taking off from various cities. Nine pilots flew 142 Saudi Arabians back to the kingdom.
On Sept. 20, 2001, the "bin Laden jet" took off from St. Louis, making stops in Los Angeles, Orlando, Washington and Boston. At each stop, the plane picked up more half-brothers, nephews, nieces and cousins of public enemy number one.
At that point, the FBI had already begun investigating two of the bin Ladens who were flown out of the country. They both lived in Falls Church, a suburb of Washington, and were officials in the "World Assembly of Muslim Youth."
Richard Clarke, for many years the chief of counterterrorism at the White House, has revealed that he was responsible for the flights.
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,359690,00.html
Richard Clarke, for many years the chief of counterterrorism at the White House, has revealed that he was responsible for the flights. <<<
I have heard Clarke on the talk shows, admit that it was his decision that sent them out of the country.
Clarke was also a Clinton man and in full support of Kerry.
I would also thing the "Gorlick Wall" that she and Clinton put into place, hamstring the different policing departments of our Government, was put into play here.
You will only hear that "Bush" allowed them to leave.