"Bush took FBI agents off Laden family trail" is the fitting title of the third article. Much of this happened on the Bush watch, not just the Clinton watch. White House spin meisters are trying to blame Clinton for information Bush received from the CIA and the FBI that Bush should have acted on when Bush was President to make 9/11/01 less likely in my opinion. Was Bush blinded by his associations with the Saudis and the Bin Ladens?
FBI CLAIMS BIN LADEN INQUIRY WAS FRUSTRATED
The Guardian | Wednesday November 7, 2001 | Greg Palast and David Pallister
LINK: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/565357/posts
Posted on 11/6/01 7:41 PM Pacific by CommiesOut
Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis before September 11
Greg Palast and David Pallister
Wednesday November 7, 2001
The Guardian
FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of September 11.
US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Centre. But some are complaining that their hands were tied.
FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and obtained by the Guardian show that they had earlier sought to investigate two of Osama bin Laden's relatives in Washington and a Muslim organisation, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), with which they were linked.
The FBI file, marked Secret and coded 199, which means a case involving national security, records that Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in Washington, had originally had a file opened on him "because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth - a suspected terrorist organisation".
WAMY members deny they have been involved with terrorist activities, and WAMY has not been placed on the latest list of terrorist organisations whose assets are being frozen.
Abdullah, who lived with his brother Omar at the time in Falls Church, a town just outside Washington, was the US director of WAMY, whose offices were in a basement nearby.
But the FBI files were closed in 1996 apparently before any conclusions could be reached on either the Bin Laden brothers or the organisation itself. High-placed intelligence sources in Washington told the Guardian this week: "There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis".
They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took over this year. The intelligence agencies had been told to "back off" from investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan.
"There were particular investigations that were effectively killed."
Only after the September 11 attacks was the stance of political and commercial closeness reversed towards the other members of the large Bin Laden clan, who have classed Osama bin Laden as their "black sheep".
Yesterday, the head of the Saudi-based WAMY's London office, Nouredine Miladi, said the charity was totally against Bin Laden's violent methods. "We seek social change through education and cooperation, not force."
He said Abdullah bin Laden had ceased to run WAMY's US operation a year ago.
Neither Abdullah nor Omar bin Laden could be contacted in Saudi Arabia for comment.
WAMY was founded in 1972 in a Saudi effort to prevent the "corrupting" ideas of the west ern world influencing young Muslims. With official backing it grew to embrace 450 youth and student organisations with 34 offices worldwide.
Its aim was to encourage "concerned Muslims to take up the challenge by arming the youth with sound understanding of Islam, guarding them against destructive ideologies, and instilling in them level-headed wisdom".
In Britain it has 20 associated organisations, many highly respectable.
But as long as 10 years ago it was named as a discreet channel for public and private Saudi donations to hardline Islamic organisations. One of the recipients of its largesse has been the militant Students Islamic Movement of India, which has lent support to Pakistani-backed terrorists in Kashmir and seeks to set up an Islamic state in India.
Since September 11 WAMY has been investigated in the US along with a number of other Muslim charities. There have been several grand jury investigations but no findings have been made against any of them.
Current FBI interest in WAMY is shown in their agents' interrogation of a radiologist from San Antonio, Texas, Dr Al Badr al-Hazmi, who was arrested on September 12 and released without charge two weeks later. He had the same surname as two of the plane hijackers.
He was also questioned about his contacts with Abdullah bin Laden at the US WAMY office.
Mr Al-Hazmi said that he had made phone calls to Abdullah bin Laden in 1999 trying to obtain books and videotapes about Islamic teachings for the Islamic Centre of San Antonio.
BUSH'S BIN LADEN LINK ThWARTED FBI PROBE: Report (11/7/01)
LINK: http://www.rediff.com/us/2001/nov/07ny5.htm
A BBC programme aired on Tuesday made a startling revelation that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents probing relatives of the Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden were told to go slow soon after George W Bush became the president of the United States.
The BBC's Newsnight said Bush at one point had a number of connections with Saudi Arabia's prominent bin Laden family.
The programme hinted that US interests in the huge Saudi oil reserves blunted the probe into the terrorist connections of several individuals.
Newsnight quoting from several purportedly secret documents said the FBI probe into the September 11 terror attacks unearthed terrorist links of at least two member of the bin Laden family.
The programme said it had obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of bin Laden family members living in United States before, as well as after, the terrorist attacks.
Newsnight said Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by the chief US representative of Salem Bin Laden, Osama's brother.
The programme also revealed that Bush and his father received fees from Carlyle Corporation -- a little known company that became one of America's largest defence contractors -- in which the bin Ladens held a stake, which was sold off after the September 11 terror attacks.
BUSH TOOK FBI AGENTS OFF LADEN FAMILY TRAIL
Link:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1030259305
RASHMEE Z AHMED
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 07, 2001 9:05:48 PM ]
LONDON: America was itself to blame for the events of September 11 because the US administration was using "kid gloves" in tracking down Osama bin Laden and "other fanatics linked to Saudi Arabia", a special BBC investigation has alleged in a damning indictment of the two presidents Bush and American foreign policy.
The report, which the BBC claimed was based on a secret FBI document, numbered 199I WF213589 and emanating out of the FBI’s Washington field office, alleged that the cynicism of the American establishment and "connections between the CIA and Saudi Arabia and the Bush men and bin Ladens" may have been the real cause of the deaths of thousands in the World Trade Centre attacks.
The investigation, which featured in the BBC’s leading current affairs programme, Newsnight, said the FBI was told to "back off" investigating one of Osama bin Laden’s brothers, Abdullah, who was linked to "the Saudi-funded World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a suspected terrorist organisation," whose accounts have still not frozen by the US treasury despite "being banned by Pakistan some weeks ago and India claiming it was linked to an organisation involved in bombing in Kashmir".
Newsnight said there was a long history of "shadowy" American connections with Saudi Arabia, not least the two presidents Bush’s "business dealings" with the bin Ladens and another more insidious link revealed by the former head of the American visa section in Jeddah.
The official said he had been concerned about visas issued to large numbers of "unqualified" men "with no family links or any links with America or Saudi Arabia", only to find out later that it "was not visa fraud" but part of a scheme in which young men "recruited by Osama bin Laden" were being sent for "terrorist training by the CIA" after which they were sent on to Afghanistan.
In a reiteration of a now well-known claim by one of George W Bush’s former business partners, the BBC said he made his first million 20 years ago on the back of a company financed by Osama’s elder brother, Salem. But it added the more disturbing assertion that both presidents Bush had lucrative stakes along with the bin Ladens in Carlyle Corporation, a small private company which has gone on to become one of America's biggest defense contractors. The bin Ladens sold their stake in Carlyle soon after September 11, it said.
American politicians later told the BBC programme that they rejected the accusation that the establishment had called the dogs of the intelligence agencies off the bin Ladens and the royal House of Saud because of a strategic interest in Saudi Arabia, which has the world's biggest oil reserve.
This is lame. Sources that won't go on record are worthless, aren't they? In fact, it's not above the British GUARDIAN to make things up.
All three articles you posted, with all due respect to the memory of CommiesOut, are from British newspapers, none of whom NAME SOURCES!
Patrick, the air's out of this balloon, my man.
First of all, I don't place much credence in anything based on "highly placed unnamed sources".
Perhaps the most interesting part of each article is what is not claimed. None of them have anything, nothing, zip, zero, nada, to say BAD about Clinton. I guess we are supposed to believe that these "highly placed FBI or Government sources" all feel that the Bushes are culpable in 911 and mister rapist is pure as the driven snow.
Third. as to the Carlyle Group, they are one of the main contractors for the Crusader artillery piece. I guess both George's must be pretty mad at Rumsfeld for wanting to kill the goose that could lay the golden egg.
Anyway, thanks for the post, but I don't believe it for a minute.