9/11 AND THE SUADI CONNECTION

‘THE ELEVENTH DAY THE DEFINITIVE ACCOUNT OF 9/11' ANTHONY SUMMERS & ROBBYN SWAN

Saudi Arabia was the elephant in the room on 9/11

The flying of passenger laden airliners by religiously inspired fanatics into the Twin Towers in Manhattan is one of those iconic events. Like the sinking of the Titanic, the shooting of President Kennedy and the car crash that Killed Diana Princess of Wales, the images are etched into the modern psyche. ^[1]

All these events have generated a seemingly endless supply of conspiracy theories, none however on the scale of 9/11. Every fruitcake, loony tune, tin foil hat wearing screwball, as well as many who should know better, has their own take on the events of that Tuesday in September. I do not intend to repeat them here, anyone who has an internet connection can familiarise themselves with them. Though it says much of the age we live in that even the most absurd of these ideas have astonishingly gained traction, though the problem with debating such ideas is that in doing so you give them both credibility and oxygen.[2] Unfortunately, as Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan recognise in ‘The Eleventh Day,’ in dealing with the events of September 11 the task of attacking these ‘theories’ cannot be ducked. They go on to do an extremely effective job of demolishing all the major conspiracy theories.

The word ‘definitive,’ rather like genius tends to be thrown around loosely in the publishing word, and indeed has been attached to this book. In this case however the word feels justified, for it is difficult to see a more comprehensive account emerging in the near future, though, as they recognise, there are a number of extremely important loose ends ripe for further investigation. I will turn to these shortly.

One effect of all the crazy conspiracy theories has been to obscure some very real issues of concern, including indeed what can only be called a conspiracy to mislead the American public. If I were indeed a conspiracy theorist my self I might conclude that many of the bizarre explanations for the failures on 9/11 were designed to do just that.[3]

Summers and Swan divide the book into seven sections dealing with the attack, the lead up to the attack, the response to the attack, the nature of  Al Qaeda, plotters and perpetrators , culpabilities and loose ends/unanswered questions.

In The Wreckage of the Twin Towers

Tone is everything when dealing with these events and they immediately strike the right note, judicious, full of good sense and weighted facts, meticulously sourced, to the point verging on the academic. They avoid hyperbole, yet manage to forensically nail the culpability of many key individuals.

America’s intelligence and security failures in the lead up to 9/11 appear to this reader to verge on the criminal. At senior lever both John Ashcroft and Condoleezza Rice were surely guilty of a catastrophic failure to protect the American public they were supposed to serve. Bush throughout appears, as it indeed he was, completely out of his depth. On the day itself he froze, whilst few amongst the administration performed better. All lied after the attack and sought to distort the record to make it appear that the administration had functioned well. In reality on the morning of the attack the administration, the FAA[4] and the military all failed abysmally. A good portion of the book exposes this attempt to re-write history.

The story of Bin Laden and the creation of Al Qaeda are now pretty much widely known, though the book does provide an extraordinary clear picture of the network that created the suicide attack. However for me the most interesting part of the book is the one that deals with Saudi Arabia, the elephant in the room on 9/11.

The Saudi involvement in the events of 9/11 has been deliberately erased from the narrative of that day, by the concerted efforts of the American administration of George W Bush and the Saudi government.

Twenty eight pages of the report compiled by the 9/11 Commission, dealing with the involvement of Saudi Arabian citizens in supporting Al Quada and the attacks on 9/11, have been redacted on ‘security grounds.’ The book does however manage to give some tantalising hints of what those pages might contain respecting the involvement of some prominent Saudi Citizens. Interestingly when the names of three Saudi citizens emerged under interrogation by the CIA all three died within the course of a week; one, a Saudi official stated, had died of thirst!

Some prominent Saudi’s were hustled out of the US immediately following 9/11 with the collusion of the Bush administration. One individual with possible links to the hijackers should at least have been interviewed. He was not and the lead was unable to be followed.

Abdulaziz al-Hijji 

Even more significant is the case of Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife Anoud. Records of car number plates show that Hijji was visited numerous times by Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attackers as well as other members of the suicide squad.

[Hijji] ‘…left three cars at their luxurious home in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida — one of them new — and flew to Saudi Arabia in August 2001. The refrigerator was full of food; furniture and clothing were left behind; and the swimming pool water was still circulating.’[5]

As to the redacted pages of the 9/11 Commission report one of the officials who was privy to them before Bush ordered there redaction stated. “If the twenty eight pages were made public I have no question that the entire relationship with Saudi Arabia would change overnight.’[6]

The reality seems to be that the President of the United States placed the US  relationship with the Saudi Kingdom above the safety and interest of the American Public.[7]

The book deals in similar forensic fashion with the involvement in the attacks of the Pakistani administration in general and the ISI (the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA), in particular, though this is more familiar territory, indeed how it could not be given the circumstances in which Bin Laden was finally found.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a barbaric medieval state governed by the Islamic Wahhabi cult. It is also oil rich. For once the silly clever slogan “it’s all about oil’ has traction. Insulated by its oil wealth, with much of the world dependent on the Saudi oil tap remaining switched on, it is allowed to pump it’s poisonous ideology around the world through the funding of Islamic centres, Mosques and satellite TV channels. It was no accident that Bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers were all Saudi citizens.

The situation in Palestine obviously fuels hatred of the West in general and the US in particular. If not on the grounds of morality, common decency and respect for human rights this question needs to be addressed urgently if anti western sentiment is to be reduced. Israel is going to have to withdraw from occupied territory sooner or later, apart from anything else demographic trends are against it.  But if anyone believes that this in itself would solve the problem of Islamacist terrorism they are deluding themselves.

The roots of Islamism are complex, born of a sense of generalised grievance about the way history panned out; it is a cocktail of wounded esteem, grandiose imperial desires, hatred of liberal values  and a profound religious fundamentalism. Unable to compete with the West in science and industrial strength they seek to compensate with a fanatical religious zealotry and the belief that Islam ultimately trumps all.

Combating such fanaticism is going to require continued effort, not least in support of those across the Muslim world who are caught up in a life and death struggle to maintain basic freedoms against the onslaught of the bearded cave men. We will however get nowhere until we name the Saudi elephant in the room. As a start I suggest that we stop any further Saudi funding of mosques and Islamic centres until the traffic becomes two-way. A Humanist Centre in Riyadh would be nice.    

 

With Friends Like These

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[1] At one time I would have included the torpedoing of the Lusitania, or the explosion of the Hindenburg on arrival at New York’s Ellis Island, but for some reason they seem to have lost their iconic status. 

[2] The same problem arises when dealing with creationism or so called intelligent design.

[3] I am not; though believe that the internet age has led to a mushrooming of bizarre explanations and theories the roots of which are complex. Psychologically I suspect such theories serve a purpose in ‘making sense’ of an irrational and threatening world. We live in the age of credulity, with the added complexity that some conspiracies, eg Watergate, Contra-Gate, or nearer to home Hillsborough, do actually take place.

[4] Federal Aviation Authority

[5] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/september-11-attacks/9089896/London-based-oil-executive-linked-to-911-hijackers.html

[6] ‘The Eleventh Day, The Definitive Account of 9/11’ Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan Transword Publishers 2012.

[7] As of writing this the infamous section of the Commission report has not been released to the American public. See http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/ this article presents an extremely good summary of Saudi involment.

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