WP: Saudis and Bush* to Meet over 9/11 Allegations

[kskiska]

Tuesday, July 29, 2003; Page A01

Saudi officials, furious over a congressional report issued last week alleging possible links between individuals in the Saudi government and some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, have requested and been granted a meeting today between Foreign Minister Prince Saud Faisal and President Bush.

The hastily scheduled White House visit, which will take place shortly after Bush meets with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, demonstrates the level of Saudi anger and the kingdom's clout with the Bush administration. A key issue in the dispute is that 28 pages of the 900-page report, in a section dealing with allegations about Saudi Arabia, were entirely classified -- but well-publicized -- and some U.S. officials said it appeared the Saudi government was moving toward asking the president to declassify those pages.

A Saudi official said Saud is coming to Washington to meet with the president to discuss "issues of mutual concern." A U.S. official said the request for a presidential meeting came late last week.

(snip)

The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who will also attend the meeting with Bush, said last week that the material was classified most likely because it could not be substantiated. "Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide," he said. "We can deal with questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages."

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59074-2003Jul28.html

[Itascapark]

1. Oh to be a fly on the castle wall!

what fun to have a recording of that pow-wow!

[hang a left]

13. So telling is the quote

"issues of mutual concern" Sounds threatening to me, what do you think?

[Dhalgren]

2. Well this would just clinch it,

at least to most conscious observers. If a Saudi Prince can simply ask the Emperor to declassify an item when the Emperor has already refused the same request from half of the congress, then we know who runs things! This is an insult, a degredation, and genuine slap-in-the-face!! No foreign "royal" should be able to "demand" an audience with the POTUS and just have him drop everything like some kind of lickspital!

If these pages are declassified (and I hope they are) this will diffinatively prove the BFEE/Saud incestuous union! Make me puke!!!!

:puke: :puke: :puke:

[never cry wolf]

4. do you think...

...that they could ask for the declessification of cheney's energy policy board meetings too? complete with the maps of the Iraqi oil files?

[diamond14]

12. this meeting is just another of IDIOTS's incredibly bad moves

while trying to distract America's attention from the hurricane of the merging TW0 bush* scandals, huge intelligence failures (9/11 and Iraq-rush-to-war) scandals...they just make it worse, calling even the most uninterested soaper Americans to look-and-see the scandal, by putting on the ROYAL saudi prince (front page, major story in every network, even BEFORE he gets here)...(and lots of people meet the pResident without anybody even knowing it, if they wanted to keep it private, they could)...

bush* is self-destructing in a real spectacular way, all by himself...

all the experienced PR people have left (ari fleisher, karen hughes, victoria clarke, mary madelyn)...so the new inexperienced kids are just wallowing in this...that last thing that any person trying to contain this scandal should want: a ROYALTY over here, telling our Idiot what to do, and protecting their Saudi business ventures by hanging the Idiot out to dry...what is the Idiot thinking ????

[reprobate]

17. Sorry, but you used "the idiot" and "thinking" in the same sentance.

This, of course, is an oxymoron (which does not refer to the moron in the white house). In the future please use the sarcasm notation in this kind of situation.

[onehandle]

3. Set up?

Perhaps there's nothing in the report and the Saudi's know it.

Know what I mean?

[never cry wolf]

5. things that make you go

hmmmmmmmmmm

[indictrichardperle]

14. yes, the Saudis want it de-classified

you cant argue with that. I am very suspicious about some of the Saudi bashing coming from the neo-cons. Neo-cons like Perle and Krauthammer, Kristol have been after the Saudis for a long time. Remember Ledeen screaming "sieze the saudi oilfields" ?

Sharon and friends must see over-throwing Suadi as part of the "re-making of the middle east".

[Nottingham]

6. Oh I can't wait to see this meeting!

:bounce:

How can we cover this up!

[MoonAndSun]

7. When the Saudis' snap their fingers,

bush* says "how high should I jump?"

This meeting was set up so fast, that tells you right there who is in charge, and it is NOT bush*.

[w13rd0]

8. Bush and bin Laden...

...feed from the same oily sows teats...

[TahitiNut]

9. Kabuki. Undoubtedly they've met with Cheney

... since Howdy Doodoo doesn't have a clue which way to jump until Cheney set's the direction.

[IkeWarnedUs]

10. gotta get their stories straight n/t

.

[goforit]

11. LOL!!!..How many more deals are going to be made to cover up?

Or maybe They are making more arrangements for the next one?

Blood lust and greed.

How far are these turds going to go?

[cthrumatrix]

15. I can't imagine this as a "spanking" for shrub....

After all...he did obey and take out Iraq. I'm not sure we will ever know the truth here.

Who's in charge...? If Saudi were in charge, I can't imagine the 911 report would be so blatent...nothing is that simple. Or is it?

[0007]

16. James Baker will smooth things out

*

[eek]

18. Faisal = "bandar bush"'s father in law?

I'll go check the family tree but I'm fairly sure that price faisal is
father of the wife of bandar whatsis, the US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and VGF (very good friend) of the BFEE.

This bandar chap is thisclose to the family bush that he's referred to as "bandar bush".

His wife is a SA princess, daughter of prince faisal *and* the gal who was paying the 2 hijackers rent money, setting them up in the community in the US etc etc.


I reckon this is the thing nearly referred to in the 9-11 report.

[eek]

20. well, I coulda read the article

before throwing in my 2c
from the article at start of this thread:
"Bassnan and his family received charitable support from Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Bandar, and members of the joint inquiry have complained they have had to press the FBI to determine whether any of that or other royal family money may have been used to aid the hijackers."

---------------------------------------
From Nov. 23, 2002:
According to Newsweek's sources, the money came from an account at Riggs Bank in Washington in Princess Haifa Al-Faisal's name. She is the daughter of the late King Faisal.

After Al Bayoumi left the United States in July 2001, similar payments were being made to another San Diego student, Osama Basnan, Newsweek reported.

According to the magazine's report, Al Bayoumi and Basnan befriended two men who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon -- Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi.

Isikoff said the timing of the Riggs Bank payments, which began just a couple months after they arrived in the United States, has raised questions about whether Saudi government money found its way to the two hijackers.

"There has been no explanation for why such a high-ranking official, or the wife of such a high-ranking official, would route money to a seeming nobody in San Diego," he said.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/11/23/saudi.fbi.911/
----------------------------------------------------------------
And this from Nov 24 2002:

Nail al-Jubeir, an aide to Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah, said reports that the wife of the Saudi ambassador to America sent money to the hijackers were "untrue and irresponsible".
(snip)
Nail al-Jubeir, Saudi spokesman Members of a US congressional committee probing the attacks have accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of not examining claims of a link between the Saudi Government and the hijackers closely enough.

According to US media reports, the two hijackers - Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi - received $3,500 a month from two students in the United States via an account in the name of Princess Haifa al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador's wife.

(snip)
Mr al-Jubeir voiced surprise that the committee was investigating the possible existence of the money, saying he thought the issue was closed several months ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2507327.stm

[Kolesar]

19. Saudi prince has had private meetings in Crawford before

I think it was just a few months after 9/11. They met to get their stories straight. I don't recall which Saudi prince it was.

How many other foreign leaders get a private meeting with Resident Bush? Not many.

[eek]

22. This story has so many connected dots yer head will spin:

http://foi.missouri.edu/evolvingissues/fallhouseofsaud.html

By Robert Baer (21 year CIA Vet)
The Atlantic Monthly
May 2003

Too much to excerpt but here's one yummy nugget;


"The U.S.-Saudi relationship would not be as cozy as it is without there being someone well connected on both sides who can move comfortably between them. That someone is the fifty-four-year-old Prince Bandar.
(snip)
Prince Bandar has been the Saudi ambassador to the United States since 1983. He is the only foreign ambassador to have a security detail assigned to him by the State Department.
(snip)
Bandar has proved adept at working both the public and the private sides of diplomacy. As the Saudi military attache to the United States, he scored a stunning coup in 1981 by persuading Congress to approve the sale of AWACS air-defense technology to his country, over the objections of AIPAC, the pro-Israeli Washington lobby. Later, as ambassador, Bandar conveyed the kingdom's thanks by secretly placing $10 million in a Vatican City bank, as reported last year in The Washington Post; the money, deposited at the request of William Casey, then the director of the CIA, was to be used by Italy's Christian Democratic Party in a campaign against Italian Communists. Later still, in June of 1984, Bandar started paying out $30 million from the royal family so that Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North could buy arms for the Nicaraguan contras.

It is on the personal front, however, where Bandar shines. A visit in the early nineties to the summer home of George H.W. Bush, in Kennebunkport, Maine, earned the prince the affectionate family sobriquet "Bandar Bush." Bandar reciprocated by inviting Bush to hunt pheasant on his estate in England. For good measure he also contributed a million dollars to the construction of the Bush Presidential Library, in College Station, Texas. King Fahd sent another million to Barbara Bush's campaign against illiteracy. (He had donated a million dollars to Nancy Reagan's"Just Say No" campaign against drugs four years earlier.) Bandar was once Colin Powell's racquetball partner. "

[Barrett808]

21. Obviously meeting to get their story straight

Before the subpoenas come their way.

[John_H]

23. OThis is way too obvious: Rove theater at its finest

The saudi's don't want bush to declassify the report for a second. And Chimpy has no thought at all about opening it. This trip "urging" Chimpy to open the file is intended to create the impression that what's in the file will exonerate the Saudi's. Of course, since the report won't ever be cdeclassified that im0pression is all joe I-pay-attention-for-thirty-seconds will be left with.

My guess: the Rethug talking point beginning tonight would be "Why oh why oh why would the saudies come all this way to tell bush to open it if they were worried about looking guilty."

Of course, all of this is ham handed and obviously staged--but it's good enough to work on the whores.

[Loonman]

24. "Saudis demand meeting"

Fuck the Saudis and their demands.

The House of Saud is full of criminals, opportunists and terrorist enablers.