EXCLUSIVE: FBI accidentally reveals name of Saudi official suspected of directing support for 9/11 h

[Dennis Donovan]

https://news.yahoo.com/in-court-filing-fbi-accidentally-reveals-name-of-saudi-official-suspected-of-directing-support-for-911-hijackers-224555851.html

EXCLUSIVE: In court filing, FBI accidentally reveals name of Saudi official suspected of directing support for 9/11 hijackers

Michael Isikoff Chief Investigative Correspondent,Yahoo News • May 12, 2020

WASHINGTON — The FBI inadvertently revealed one of the U.S. government’s most sensitive secrets about the Sept. 11 terror attacks: the identity of a mysterious Saudi Embassy official in Washington who agents suspected had directed crucial support to two of the al-Qaida hijackers.

The disclosure came in a new declaration filed in federal court by a senior FBI official in response to a lawsuit brought by families of 9/11 victims that accuses the Saudi government of complicity in the terrorist attacks.

The declaration was filed last month but unsealed late last week. According to a spokesman for the 9/11 victims’ families, it represents a major breakthrough in the long-running case, providing for the first time an apparent confirmation that FBI agents investigating the attacks believed they had uncovered a link between the hijackers and the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

It’s unclear just how strong the evidence is against the former Saudi Embassy official — it’s been a subject of sharp dispute within the FBI for years. But the disclosure, which a senior U.S. government official confirmed was made in error, seems likely to revive questions about potential Saudi links to the 9/11 plot.

It also shines a light on the extraordinary efforts by top Trump administration officials in recent months to prevent internal documents about the issue from ever becoming public.

</snip>

[eleny]

1. Wait around long enough and the truth comes out one way or another

[LuvNewcastle]

2. That is a fortunate accident.

Thanks to the person who made this 'mistake.'

[brewens]

3. I said all along we should have treated it like an attack on us by the Saudi's. How much do those

guys spend per capita on intelligence and security. I don't know, but I bet it is considerable, maybe even more than we do. And every one of their important agents has Mossad up their butts! The Saudi's involved and the money flying around and they didn't know anything? Yeah right.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. And his name is..........

Describing the request by lawyers for the 9/11 families to depose that individual under oath, Sanborn’s declaration says in one instance that it involves “any and all records referring to or relating to Jarrah.”

The reference is to Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, a mid-level Saudi Foreign Ministry official who was assigned to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1999 and 2000. His duties apparently included overseeing the activities of Ministry of Islamic Affairs employees at Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers within the United States.

Relatively little is known about Jarrah, but according to former embassy employees, he reported to the Saudi ambassador in the United States (at the time Prince Bandar), and that he was later reassigned to the Saudi mission in Morocco. His current whereabouts are unknown but he is believed to be in Saudi Arabia.

Jarrah has been on the radar screen of the lawyers for the 9/11 families for some time and is among nine current or former Saudi officials who they suspect have important information about the case and have sought to either question them or get access to FBI documents that mention them.

The families have also tapped former agents to help investigate the activities of the potential witnesses, including Jarrah.

[Dennis Donovan]

5. That's on Isikoff - that should've been in the lede

[Wellstone ruled]

6. The name is now in print.

The Minneapolis FBI Special Agent said it was a Saudi Operation .

[RVN VET71]

9. "Bandar Bush"?

The guy connected to 9/11 reported directly to the Saudi known as Bandar Bush because of his closeness to the Bush family? I don't remember even seeing a conspiracy theory springing up claiming this.

If the connection is proved true, what might it say about the Bush family's involvement in the attack?

But we have even bigger fish to fry these days because we're not talking about a presidential family's friendship with an alleged link in the attacks on 9/11, we're talking about a president who was and is, himself, involved in a continuing attack on America, its constitution, its principles, its position as a world leader.

[Celerity]

21. It has been all over the MSM for years

Last edited Thu May 14, 2020, 05:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Pre-9/11 Ties Haunt Saudis as New Accusations Surface

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/world/middleeast/pre-9-11-ties-haunt-saudis-as-new-accusations-surface.html

The investigation of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, would most likely have turned up such high-level support if it existed, said F. Gregory Gause III, a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A & M University, who studies Saudi Arabia.

Among the donors Mr. Moussaoui said were in a Qaeda database that he helped create were Prince Turki al-Faisal, then the head of Saudi intelligence, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington. Both held high positions in the very government that Al Qaeda was by the late 1990s seeking to destroy, Mr. Gause said.

snip

Prince Turki now heads a research institute in Riyadh and travels often to the United States, where he meets with officials. Prince Bandar was recently relieved of his post as the head of Saudi Arabia’s National Security Council. Prince Turki did not respond to requests for comment, and Prince Bandar could not be reached for comment.

snip

Mr. Moussaoui is a prolific writer of letters to judges, and it was his letter offering to testify in a long-running lawsuit of 9/11 survivors against Saudi Arabia that led to his deposition last October. Two weeks later, he wrote a federal judge in Oklahoma accusing Prince Turki of instructing a Saudi official to help the future 9/11 hijackers. He also claimed that Prince Bandar’s wife, Princess Haifa al-Faisal, “gave me money” and sent a large amount of money to the Saudi hijackers.





His wife sent a shedload of money that ended up with some of the terrorists, but of course, they all claim they did not know.

Prince Bandar implicated

Bandar had a very personal reason to be sensitive to the Inquiry’s work. The unclassified version of the Inquiry Report, and press leaks of the content of 28 then still classified pages, implicated Prince Bandar himself, and his wife, in payments made to Osama Basnan, a U.S.-based Saudi suspected of being part of the hijackers’ support system.

Basnan was close to another Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, who had befriended 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi when they arrived in the U.S. in early 2000. According to FBI files, Bayoumi provided the pair with substantial assistance – helping with their move to San Diego, allowing them to stay in his home, and co-signing the lease on their apartment. He even threw them a welcome party.

Bayoumi also had extensive contacts with Saudi government entities in the U.S. including at least three individuals at his country’s embassy in Washington. He received a salary as an employee of the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority, but did no work for it. His income reportedly increased substantially when the future hijackers arrived in California – and dropped when they left. The money trail also led to Basnan, who caught the attention of investigators after having bragged to an FBI source that he “did more for the hijackers than Bayoumi did.” In a search of the Basnan residence, Bureau agents discovered thirty-one canceled checks totalling more than $70,000, made out to Basnan’s wife and drawn on the account of Prince Bandar’s wife Princess Haifa.

Other records revealed that Basnan and his wife each received at least one check from Ambassador Bandar himself. Several of the checks made out to Mrs. Basnan found their way to Bayoumi’s wife, who tried to deposit them in her own bank account. Though the 9/11 Commission knew all this when it interviewed Bandar, it did not question the Ambassador about it.

[RVN VET71]

25. Thanks for this

I had heard rumors of rumors but must have turned my attention to other things at the time of the reports and never got the full picture. It doesn't mean that Bush, Jr., was involved in 9/11, of course, but it suggests that his friendship with Bandar was more important to him than the 3,000+ people he seems to have had an indirect hand in murdering.

Important thing to remember when we score the game of vile presidents. Bush, Jr. killed more than 3,000 Americans in his and Cheney's illegal war in Iraq and -- now I understand -- seems to have turned a cold heart to the 3,000+ people, mostly Americans, murdered on 9/11. But Trump, of course, has Covid-19 squarely on his shoulders, and while not every resultant death can be laid at his feet, most of them can. So, Trump was indirect. he didn't kill, he "allowed to die" 10s of 1,000s of Americans. Bush didn't allow the 9/11 murder victims to die, he merely turned his back on them in favor of his friend -- but he did kill the 3,000+ Americans he sent to Iraq in order to make Halliburton and other private contractors even wealthier than they were before the invasion.

[Pepsidog]

13. Probably a buddy if Jared. Betcha Jared is texting him at this moment giving Jarrah PR advice.

[dalton99a]

16. +1

[crickets]

7. Finally. It was always about Saudi Arabia. nt

[scarletwoman]

11. Yes, Saudi Arabia, but with some FBI complicity at the highest levels.

I have not forgotten how evidence was suppressed and "ignored" in the aftermath.

[crickets]

12. You preach to choir. I have no problem with that.

[scarletwoman]

14. As a Minnesotan, I remember well how our local FBI office tried to alert the higher ups in the FBI

about Moussaoui prior to 9/11 and were ignored

[Snake Plissken]

8. so why is his name still a secret?

I don't see a mention of his name anywhere in this thread

[lastlib]

10. Post #4

"Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, a mid-level Saudi Foreign Ministry official who was assigned to the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., in 1999 and 2000."

[Snake Plissken]

17. thank you

[DinahMoeHum]

15. Well well well. Cat is out of the bag.

#newrostrong

[Captain Zero]

18. What I'd like to know is

When did this Saudi leave the country after 911? The royal family was scrambling out even during the no-fly period. Was this guy too??

[orleans]

19. nice video with Michael Isikoff at the link

Last edited Tue May 12, 2020, 11:29 PM - Edit history (1)

oh, and for some background on bandar bush & the cigar smoking afternoon two days after 9/11, here's a 2004 guardian piece:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/11/september11.usa1

on edit:
so now i'm wondering who hired that guy. bandar? i mean, how was he chosen for the job at the saudi embassy?

[Duppers]

20. Most still don't have a clue about the prelude

To the Iraq War, especially wingers. Somehow, in their minds, Saddam Hussein caused 911.

They swallowed all the lies that took half a million lives and cost almost $2 trillion.
And they keep electing liars.

[AntiFascist]

22. Unpleasant truth...

From an MSNBC article written in 1998:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3340101/t/bin-laden-comes-home-roost/#.XrubumhKjD4

BIN LADEN’S BEGINNINGS

As anyone who has bothered to read this far certainly knows by now, bin Laden is the heir to Saudi construction fortune who, at least since the early 1990s, has used that money to finance countless attacks on U.S. interests and those of its Arab allies around the world.

As his unclassified CIA biography states, bin Laden left Saudi Arabia to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan after Moscow’s invasion in 1979. By 1984, he was running a front organization known as Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - which funneled money, arms and fighters from the outside world into the Afghan war.

What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA’s primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow’s occupation.
...
a rich Saudi boy gone to war and welcomed home by the Saudi monarchy he so hated as something of a hero.

In fact, while he returned to his family’s construction business, bin Laden had split from the relatively conventional MAK in 1988 and established a new group, al-Qaida, that included many of the more extreme MAK members he had met in Afghanistan.
...
Given that context, a decision was made to provide America’s potential enemies with the arms, money - and most importantly - the knowledge of how to run a war of attrition violent and well-organized enough to humble a superpower.

That decision is coming home to roost.

[Duppers]

23. Been a long time since I read this background.

Thank you for the refresher. 👍

[AntiFascist]

24. There's also Joseph Trento's book "Prelude to Terror"...

https://www.amazon.com/Prelude-Terror-Americas-Private-Intelligence/dp/0786717661
.

..
For the first time the story of how CIA director George H. W. Bush was recruited into this network, and brought it into the bosom of the Saudi royal family, is told in detail, as well as how this group's manipulation of the CIA bureaucracy allowed Osama bin Laden's fundraising to thrive as al Qaeda flourished under Saudi and CIA protection.