THE BIN LADEN FAMILY AND FRIENDS

The lead complainants included Bob McIlvaine, who lost his son Robert in the World Trade Center collapse; Patricia Perry, who lost her son John, a New York City Police officer; William Rodriguez, the WTC maintenance worker and rescue effort hero mentioned previously; numerous other 9/11 family members and survivors; and a variety of activist organizations.

With such suits and complaints, and considering the quarrels between the 9/11 Commission and the Bush administration, it now seems probable that any state sponsorship of the 9/11 terrorists, outside or the US, must have come from Saudi Arabia.

US News & World Report quoted an unnamed government official who had read the congressional report as saying, “There is so much more stuff about Saudi government involvement, it would blow people's minds.”

This statement was clarified in that same issue by Florida Senator Bob Graham, co-chairman of the report committee. “The reality is that the [Saudi] foreign government was much more directly involved in not only the financing but the provision of support—transportation, housing and introduction to a network which gave support to the terrorists.” He added, “They were not rogue agents, [but] were being directed by persons of significant responsibility within the government.”

According to writer Craig Unger, who investigated the elder Bush's role in both the Iran-Contra and Iraqgate scandals, the estranged sister-in-law of Osama bin Laden, Carmen bin Laden, said she thought family members might have provided funds for Osama.

Saudi Arabia has long profited from its cozy relationship with American leaders. That nation profited most from the 1991 Gulf War. According to London's Financial Times, “Saudi Arabia oil revenues have tripled since mid-1990 because of the closure of production in Iraq and Kuwait.”

Interestingly enough, it was the elder Bush's own secret society—the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)—that blew the whistle on his business partners and friends in Saudi Arabia. In a report issued in October 2002, a CFR task force reported that Saudi Arabian officials for years have ignored countrymen and Muslim charities that provided major funding for the al Qaeda network and that US officials had systematically refused to acknowledge this connection.

“Saudi nationals have always constituted a disproportionate percentage of al Qaeda's own membership; and al Qaeda's political message has long focused on issues of particular interest to Saudi nationals, especially those who are disenchanted with their own government,” stated the CFR report. Such connections are so numerous and documented that by late 2002 even the mass media began to question the Saudi role.

In his recent and widely noted book House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties (Scribner: March 2004), author Unger argues that the seeds for 9/11 were planted nearly thirty years ago in a series of savvy business transactions that subsequently translated into a long-term political union between the Saudi royal family and the extended family of George H. W. Bush.

Unger's book begins with a single question: “How is it that two days after September 11, 2001, even as American air traffic was tightly restricted, a Saudi billionaire socialized in the White House with President George W. Bush as 140 Saudi citizens, many immediate kin to Osama Bin Laden, were permitted to return to their country?”

According to Unger's account, a potential treasure trove of intelligence was allowed to flee the country—including an alleged al Qaeda intermediary who was said to have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Unger asks: “Why did the FBI facilitate this evacuation without questioning these people? Why did Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of most of the hijackers, receive exclusive and preferential treatment from the White House even as the World Trade Center continued to burn?”

Saudi Arabia is not only in conflict over the politics but there are serious schisms within its religious community too. There is a serious division in the Muslim faith between the followers of the prophet Mohammed and its most extreme sect, the Wahhabi. The Wahhabis are taught that Jews are sub-humans who should be killed, while Muslims who have studied the Hadith, or Traditions, know that Mohammed married a Jewish woman and stated that faithful Jews would join Muslims in Paradise.

The most vicious opponents of Israel are the Wahhabis and there is one very good reason for their fear and anger. Statistics tell the tale. Literacy in the Arab world is below 50 percent. “Wahhabis are functionally illiterate, they cannot read about this conflict on their own. Typically, they memorize a few passages of the Koran taken out of context, and never read the accompanying Hadith for explanation,” noted author John Loftus.

Loftus said Muslim scholars and leaders do not speak out against the “primitive Wahhabi apostasy” because most Muslim mosques are impoverished and depend on Saudi subsidies. To the Saudi royalty, literacy and knowledge would mean an end to their domination, so for years they have funded anyone who might aid their cause.

Why? Israel's literacy rate is 97 percent and it is the only nation in the Middle East that allows Arab women to vote. “To the Saudis, a democratic Palestinian nation would be a cancer in the Arab world, a destabilizing example of freedom that would threaten Arab dictators everywhere,” explained Loftus, an attorney who has represented a number of federal whistle-blowers within the US intelligence community.

As information slowly leaked to the public, more and more attention was drawn to the role of the Saudis in supporting terrorism. In early October, the congressional committee investigating the 9/11 attacks was shocked to hear testimony from FBI special agent Steven Butler concerning the bureau's knowledge of Saudi money going directly to two of the accused hijackers.

Butler said one of his confidential informants, Abdussattar Shaikh, rented rooms in San Diego to Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, both accused of hijacking American Airlines Flight 77. Two other Saudi nationals, Osama Basnan and Omar al-Bayoumi, also aided the hijackers by paying their rent, helping to open a bank account and arranging flight training, despite the fact that both had been charged with visa fraud.

Agent Butler also said he alerted his superiors in the FBI about this money flow but it went nowhere. Perhaps this inaction was due to evidence that at least some of the funding of the two terrorists came from the Saudi embassy. It was reported that Princess Haifa bint Faisal, wife of the Saudi ambassador, wrote cashier checks to Bayoumi, which were believed to have been passed along to the hijackers al-Midhar and alHazmi.