If Hol­ly­wood actors can get Oscars after Oscars for the stu­pid movies in which they play, how many prices would you deserve, you, Dave Emory, and oth­ers like the afore­men­tioned Russ Baker, and John Lof­tus, Daniel Hop­sicker, Lucy Komisar, Mae Brus­sel? Decid­edly, there are things one can­not com­pre­hend in this world.

Fam­ily of Secrets is a must-read. Russ Baker does what the vast major­ity of his col­legues dont’t: he actu­ally DO the job of a jour­nal­ist. He researches, puts into ques­tion the offi­cial facts, double-checks every­thing, doesn’t take anybody’s word at face value, and takes the TIME to do it cor­rectly. In other terms, he is not lazy and he is not a cow­ard. He is a real Amer­i­can. I hope every­one in this world will take these exem­ples of brav­ery before it is too late.

Read the book folks and don’t com­plain it is too long or too complex.

A quick adden­dum Dave,

I have pro­duced a book review of Fam­ily of Secrets on my blog. You can fin it at this longer URL:

http://lys-dor.com/book-review/russ-bakers-family-of-secrets/

Would you rock and slam the audi­ence for us at Dem Pass­ports tonight? We all need to wake up a lit­tle more, day by day.

Have a great day.

Side com­ment on story below: Russ needs to start lis­ten­ing to For The Record.

Is the Saudi Royal Fam­ily Con­nected to 9/11 Hijack­ers?
By Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy.com

Posted on Sep­tem­ber 22, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/152505/is_the_saudi_royal_family_connected_to_9_11_hijackers

WhoWhat­Why has found evi­dence link­ing the Saudi royal fam­ily to Saudis in South Florida who report­edly had direct con­tact with the 9/11 hijack­ers before flee­ing the United States just prior to the attacks. Our report con­nects some of the dots first laid out by inves­tiga­tive author Anthony Sum­mers and Florida-based jour­nal­ist Dan Chris­tensen in arti­cles jointly pub­lished in the Miami Her­ald and on the non­profit news site BrowardBulldog.org.

In early Sep­tem­ber of this year, Sum­mers and Chris­tensen reported that a secret FBI probe, never shared with Con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tors or the pres­i­den­tial 9/11 com­mis­sion, had uncov­ered infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of sup­port for the hijack­ers from pre­vi­ously unknown con­fed­er­ates in the United States dur­ing 2001.

Now WhoWhat­Why reveals that those alleged con­fed­er­ates were closely tied to influ­en­tial mem­bers of the Saudi rul­ing elite.

As reported in the Her­ald, phone records doc­u­mented com­mu­ni­ca­tion, dat­ing back more than a year, that con­nected a Saudi fam­ily then liv­ing in a house near Sara­sota, Florida, with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta, and his hijack pilots—as well as to eleven of the other hijack­ers. In addi­tion, records from the guard house at the gated com­mu­nity tied Atta’s vehi­cle and his accom­plice Ziad Jar­rah to actual vis­its to the house. Although requir­ing fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion, this infor­ma­tion sug­gests that the house may have func­tioned as an oper­a­tional base for the hijackers.

Accord­ing to inter­views and records exam­ined by The Her­ald, Anoud and Abdu­lazzi al-Hiijjii and their young twins abruptly departed their home in Sara­sota only days before Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001 and trav­eled to Arling­ton, Vir­ginia, where they stayed briefly at another house owned by Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi.

Then, still well before 9/11, the entire group, now includ­ing the father, flew to Lon­don and on to Riyadh, Saudi Ara­bia. The Sara­sota house was sold in 2003, as was apent­house apart­ment in another DC, sub­urb, Ross­lyn, Vir­ginia. The Ghaz­za­wis do not seem to have set foot again in the United States.

New Rev­e­la­tions

Build­ing on these rev­e­la­tions, WhoWhat­Why has found doc­u­ments lay­ing out the Ghaz­za­wis’ royal con­nec­tions through a nest of Saudi cor­po­ra­tions that share the name EIRAD. Esam Ghaz­zawi is direc­tor of EIRAD Man­age­ment Com­pany, the UK divi­sion of EIRAD Trad­ing and Con­tract­ing Co. Ltd., which among other things holds the Saudi fran­chise for many multi­na­tional brands, includ­ing UPS. Esam’s brother Mam­douh, whose name shows up on pub­lic records asso­ci­ated with fam­ily prop­er­ties in the U.S., is the Exec­u­tive Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the par­ent firm, EIRAD Hold­ing Co. Ltd. EIRAD has con­nec­tions to the US gov­ern­ment via con­tracts. In 2008, records show, the State Depart­ment paid EIRAD $11,733 for rental of facil­i­ties, pre­sum­ably in Saudi Arabia.

There is no indi­ca­tion that the com­pany itself, or any of its offi­cers or employ­ees, have any con­nec­tion to the 9/11 inci­dent, or knowl­edge of any­thing regard­ing Mr. Ghazzawi’s activ­i­ties in the United States. Calls for com­ment to the company’s main switch­board went unan­swered dur­ing nor­mal busi­ness hours; its web­site was not func­tion­ing prop­erly and Saudi trade offi­cials in the United States had not fur­nished alter­na­tive con­tact infor­ma­tion at pub­li­ca­tion time.

But the now-revealed link between the Ghaz­za­wis and the high­est ranks of the Saudi estab­lish­ment reopens ques­tions about the White House’s con­tro­ver­sial approval for mul­ti­ple char­ter flights allow­ing Saudi nation­als to depart the U.S., begin­ning about 48 hours after the attacks, with­out the pas­sen­gers being inter­viewed by law enforcement—despite the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the major­ity of the hijack­ers as Saudis.

In addi­tion, the new rev­e­la­tions draw fur­ther atten­tion to a web of rela­tion­ships that include the long and close busi­ness, per­sonal and polit­i­cal ties between the Bush fam­ily and the Saudi royal family.

Saudi money is woven through­out busi­ness ven­tures con­nected to the Bushes. Saudi funds even helped bail out George W. Bush’s fail­ing oil com­pany early in his life. Jim Bath, a close friend of Bush in the Texas Air National Guard, went on to start a busi­ness in con­junc­tion with two sons of pow­er­ful Saudi families—Khalid bin Mah­fouz, whose the fam­ily pro­vides bank­ing ser­vices to the Saudi roy­als, and Salem bin Laden, heir to the bin Laden family’s global con­struc­tion empire and a half brother to Osama bin Laden. (For a detailed probe of the Bush family’s deal­ings with the Saudis, includ­ing sub­stan­tial pre­vi­ously unre­ported mate­r­ial, see my book, Fam­ily of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invis­i­ble Gov­ern­ment and the Hid­den His­tory of the Last Fifty Years.)

Details of The Herald’s Revelations

The Ghaz­zawi pres­ence in the Sun­shine State pre­dated 9/11 by at least six years. In 1995 a young Saudi woman named Anoud Ghaz­zawi liv­ing in South Florida mar­ried a fel­low Saudi native, Abdu­lazzi al-Hiijjii (Eng­lish spellings of his first name and sur­name vary, as is typ­i­cal of Ara­bic names.) Anoud’s father, Esam, and his American-born wife Deb­o­rah bought the cou­ple a styl­ish, three-bedroom house in a gated com­mu­nity in Sara­sota. The house remained in the elder Ghaz­za­wis’ names while the young cou­ple lived there and began a family.

Six years later, less than two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, Anoud, Abdu­lazzi and their chil­dren left their home on or about August 30, 2001 in great haste, tak­ing off in a white van. This was about the same time that the hijack­ers were pur­chas­ing their tick­ets for the tar­geted flights.

The fam­ily appar­ently left with no advance plan­ning, leav­ing behind almost all their pos­ses­sions, aban­don­ing three recently reg­is­tered vehi­cles, includ­ing a brand-new Chrysler PT Cruiser, in the garage and dri­ve­way. As the Her­ald arti­cle explained:

“there was mail on the table, dirty dia­pers in one of the bath­rooms … all the toi­letries still in place … all their clothes hang­ing in the closet … opu­lent fur­ni­ture, equal or greater in value than the house … the pool run­ning, with toys in it….The beds were made … fruit on the counter … the refrig­er­a­tor full of food. … It was like they went gro­cery shop­ping. Like they went out to a movie … [But] the safe was open in the mas­ter bed­room, with noth­ing in it, not a paper clip. … A com­puter was still there. A com­puter plug in another room, and the line still there. Looked like they’d taken [another] com­puter and left the cord.”

After pub­lic dis­clo­sure of Saudi involve­ment in the 9/11 attacks, peo­ple in the gated com­mu­nity took note of the rushed depar­ture and dis­ap­pear­ance of the Ghazzawi-al-Hiijjiis. After all, the attack­ers were not just over­whelm­ingly of Saudi nation­al­ity, but three out of four of the future hijack­ers had lived and trained to fly in Venice, Florida, just 10 miles away from the house.

The complex’s secu­rity offi­cer alerted the FBI, which began an inves­ti­ga­tion into the house at 4224 Escon­dito Cir­cle. (In addi­tion, a sus­pi­cious neigh­bor alerted the FBI by email on the day of the attacks.)

The Jus­tice Depart­ment declined to give the Her­ald a state­ment, but, accord­ing to an unnamed senior coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cer who was one of two peo­ple who got into the house first and served as a key source for the paper, the inves­ti­ga­tion bore stun­ning fruit.

Phone records showed com­mu­ni­ca­tion, dat­ing back more than a year, that con­nected those in the house with the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta and his accom­plices, includ­ing eleven of the other hijack­ers. Other records, kept by guards at the gated com­mu­nity, doc­u­mented numer­ousvis­its to the house by a vehi­cle known to have been used by Atta, and indi­cated the phys­i­cal pres­ence in the car of Atta’s pur­ported accom­plice Ziad Jar­rah. It appeared as if the Ghaz­zawi house was some kind of nerve cen­ter for the entire operation.

Accord­ing to the senior coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cer, both Esam Ghaz­zawi and his son-in-law al-Hiijjii had been on a watch list at the FBI pre­dat­ing 9/11. An unnamed U.S. agency track­ing ter­ror funds had also taken an inter­est in them. “464 was Ghazzawi’s num­ber,” the offi­cer said. “I don’t remem­ber the other man’s number.”

Secrecy Reveals Lit­tle Offi­cial Curiosity—or Coverup?

These stun­ning revelations—said to be based on the work of the swarm of FBI agents who descended on the gated com­mu­nity in the fall of 2001—would surely have gen­er­ated head­lines world­wide if they had become known after 9/11. But the FBI, for rea­sons unknown, failed to pro­vide the infor­ma­tion to Con­gres­sional 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tors or to the pres­i­den­tial 9/11 com­mis­sion, and thus it has remained a secret for the past decade.

In response to the Her­ald arti­cle, the FBI has issued a state­ment say­ing that the occu­pants of the house had been tracked down and inter­ro­gated, and were found to have no con­nec­tions to the hijack­ers. It is not clear when these inter­ro­ga­tions are sup­posed to have taken place, or whether they were con­ducted by the FBI or by Saudi intel­li­gence. But given the FBI’s poor track record for can­dor in the mat­ter, the state­ment is being viewed with some skepticism.

Adding to these doubts is an inef­fec­tive effort by the Bureau to woo the house own­ers back to Florida. Accord­ing to Scott McKay, a lawyer for home­own­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion of the gated com­mu­nity, known as Prestancia, the FBI attempted to con­vince the Ghaz­za­wis they needed to come back in per­son to sign doc­u­ments related to unpaid back dues to the asso­ci­a­tion. This attempt proved unsuc­cess­ful when the Ghaz­za­wis sim­ply arranged to sign the doc­u­ments else­where. These facts, reported by The Her­ald, raise ques­tions about the U.S. government’s deter­mi­na­tion to inter­view the cou­ple: Esam Ghazzawi’s sig­na­ture was nota­rized in Lebanon—by a U.S. offi­cial no less—the vice con­sul at the US embassy in Beirut. His wife’s sig­na­ture was also notarized—elsewhere in the United States, in River­side County, California.

The emer­gence of this infor­ma­tion cha­grined Bob Gra­ham, the for­mer Florida U.S. Sen­a­tor. Gra­ham was Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee chair (and a 2004 can­di­date for the Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion) and served as co-chair of the con­gres­sional joint inquiry into 9/11. “At the begin­ning of the inves­ti­ga­tion,” he told The Her­ald, “each of the intel­li­gence agen­cies, includ­ing the FBI, was asked to pro­vide all infor­ma­tion that agency pos­sessed in rela­tion to 9/11.” Gra­ham noted that the Bureau also failed to turn over infor­ma­tion con­nect­ing the hijack­ers to other Saudis liv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia, which his own inves­ti­ga­tors later dis­cov­ered on their own.

Just as strange, when Graham’s con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tors turned over a large body of infor­ma­tion on the hijack­ers they had assem­bled to the pres­i­den­tial 9/11 Com­mis­sion, it seemed unin­ter­ested. “They did very lit­tle with it,” Gra­ham said, “and their ref­er­ence to Saudi Ara­bia is almost cryp­tic some­times. … I never got a good answer as to why they did not pur­sue that.”

About the new dis­cov­ery in Sara­sota, Gra­ham said it “opens the door to a new chap­ter of inves­ti­ga­tion as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11.”

All Eyes on Prince Sultan

Of spe­cial inter­est is the Ghaz­za­wis’ boss, the chair­man of EIRAD Hold­ing Co. Ltd.,Prince Sul­tan bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud. He is a promi­nent and pow­er­ful mem­ber of the rul­ing Saudi royal fam­ily who is expected to become crown prince, and thereby in line to become king. Born in 1956, which makes him approx­i­mately the same age as the Ghaz­zawi broth­ers, Prince Sul­tan bin Salman is a grand­son of King Abdul Aziz (com­monly referred to as Ibn Saud), founder of mod­ern Saudi Arabia.[1]

Prince Sultan’s fam­ily is of enor­mous impor­tance in today’s Saudi Ara­bia. His father, Prince Salman, has been the gov­er­nor of the province of Riyadh (the city of Riyadh is the Saudi cap­i­tal) since 1962, and is con­sid­ered an arbi­tra­tor among the fre­quently war­ring mem­bers of the Saudi royal fam­ily, with its 4000 princes. Salman is the sec­ond youngest of the so-called Sudairi Seven, an extremely pow­er­ful alliance of full broth­ers jock­ey­ing for power in the country.

A lead­ing advo­cate of teach­ing Saudis to fly, Prince Sul­tan is the founder and Chair­man of the Board of the Saudi Avi­a­tion Club, and Chair­man of the King Khaled Inter­na­tional Air­port (KKIA) Super­vi­sory Com­mit­tee. Since 2000, he has also headed Saudi Arabia’s tourism com­mis­sion, plac­ing him among a hand­ful of the King’s grand­sons to hold min­is­te­r­ial rank. One of his mis­sions as head of the tourism com­mis­sion is to repair the dam­age to Saudi Arabia’s image caused by the 9/11 attacks.

In a doc­u­ment released by Wik­ileaks, the U.S. Ambas­sador to Saudi Ara­bia, James B. Smith, char­ac­ter­izes Prince Sul­tan this way: “With a pow­er­ful father who is the Gov­er­nor of Riyadh and a strong can­di­date to be the next crown-prince, Sul­tan is well posi­tioned to move up the Saudi gov­ern­ment ranks… Sul­tan has vis­ited almost every state [in the U.S.]. He joked with the Ambas­sador that ‘per­haps the only states he has not yet vis­ited are the Dako­tas.’ ” (He is extra well con­nected, with one brother serv­ing as the deputy oil minister)

Prince Sul­tan is closely allied with Prince Ban­dar bin Sul­tan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, the for­mer long­time ambas­sador to the United States, who is often called “Ban­dar Bush” for his friendly rela­tion­ship with the Bush fam­ily. Sul­tan and Ban­dar have worked together for years to pro­mote Saudi inter­est in aviation.

The Bushes and the Royals

The Bush fam­ily have long been regarded as friendly with the prince’s fam­ily and their asso­ciates. Prince Sultan’s NASA mis­sion is per­ceived as hav­ing been orches­trated by George HW Bush as a favor to the Saudis. Asso­ciates of the Bush fam­ily have many con­nec­tions with the Prince’s fam­ily. Prince Sultan’s father’s legal coun­sel is William Jef­fress Jr, of Houston-based Baker Botts LLP, where James A. Baker III, long­stand­ing advi­sor to the Bush fam­ily, includ­ing both Pres­i­dents Bush, is a senior part­ner. At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Baker held the post of Senior Coun­selor for the Car­lyle Group, aglobal asset man­age­ment firm which is heav­ily invested in mil­i­tary con­tract­ing stocks; among Carlyle’s large investors were the bin Ladens. (In a curi­ous coin­ci­dence, Baker watched the live tele­vi­sion cov­er­age of the attacks from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Wash­ing­ton, where he and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Osama bin Laden‘s extended fam­ily were attend­ing the Car­lyle Group’s annual con­fer­ence. In another odd coin­ci­dence, Pres­i­dent George W. Bush him­self was in Sara­sota, read­ing to school­child­ren, at the very time the Sarasota-area-based ter­ror­ists were hijack­ing the planes. Indeed, he was a short dis­tance from the home the Ghaz­za­wis had recently abandoned.)

Pres­i­dent Bush’s actions in the after­math of the World Trade Cen­ter and Pen­ta­gon assaults with regard to the Saudi royal fam­ily have long been known but have yet to be fully explored. Shortly after the attacks, Pres­i­dent Bush per­mit­ted an excep­tion to the ban on air traf­fic so that planes could take promi­nent Saudis out of the coun­try. One of those leav­ing on the flights was the late Prince Ahmed bin Salman, brother of Prince Sultan.

In a 2004 let­ter to the New York Times, Prince Sul­tan responded to alle­ga­tions sur­round­ing those flights, and pointed to a con­clu­sion in the 9/11 com­mis­sion report: ”Our own inde­pen­dent review of the Saudi nation­als involved con­firms that no one with known links to ter­ror­ism departed on these flights.” (Another Saudi who left the US after 9/11 was the archi­tect Abdel Wahed El-Wakil, who had a base in Miami and serves as an advi­sor to Prince Sultan.)

Alle­ga­tions of Saudi Royal Complicity

Sultan’s brother Prince Ahmed was the most west­ern­ized of the Saudi set. He raised race­horses in Ken­tucky and was the owner of the 2001 Ken­tucky Derby win­ner, with the per­haps unfor­tu­nate name “War Emblem.” Alle­ga­tions con­cern­ing Prince Ahmed emerged in the 2003 book, Why Amer­ica Slept, by the best­selling author Ger­ald Pos­ner. Pos­ner says that intel­li­gence sources told him how in March, 2002, under inter­ro­ga­tion (but before he was water­boarded 83 times in August), Al Qaeda’s pur­ported chief of oper­a­tions, Abu Zubay­dah, relaxed and began coop­er­at­ing. Tricked into think­ing he was in Saudi cus­tody, Zubay­dah asked his inter­roga­tors to call a senior mem­ber of the Saudi Royal fam­ily, who he said was his con­tact. He pro­vided, from mem­ory, the man’s pri­vate home and cell phones. This con­tact, accord­ing to Pos­ner, was Prince Ahmed.

Zubay­dah is alleged to have said that Osama bin Laden had cut a deal with a top Pak­istani mil­i­tary offi­cial, Air Mar­shal Mushaf Ali Mir, who was close to Islamist ele­ments in Pak­istani intel­li­gence. Accord­ing to this account, the Saudi intel­li­gence chief, Prince Turki, signed off on this, and agreed to pro­vide aid to the Tal­iban in Afghanistan and not to go after Al Qaeda so long as the ter­ror­ist group kept its gun sights trained away from the Saudi royals.

In this ver­sion of events, Zubay­dah is said to have also impli­cated Prince Sul­tan, along with another cousin, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, as Al Qaeda back­ers, and to have claimed that the Pak­istani Air Mar­shal Mushaf Ali Mir and Saudi Prince Ahmed knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks.

Though the inter­roga­tors were skep­ti­cal of these claims, Zubay­dah often proved cred­i­ble. Infor­ma­tion he pro­vided led to the cap­ture of a senior al-Qaeda oper­a­tive in South­east Asia. Zubay­dah would only talk when he thought he was in Saudi hands. When U.S. per­son­nel, no longer pos­ing as Saudis, con­fronted him, Zubay­dah said he had made up his ear­lier state­ments. But inves­ti­ga­tors found no basis for believ­ing the infor­ma­tion to be false—and even found mate­r­ial that cor­rob­o­rated his claimed ties to high level Saudis. Not sur­pris­ingly, the Saudi and Pak­istani gov­ern­ments insisted his claims were false in all respects.

One of the key fig­ures named by Zubay­dah, Prince Turki, had been removed from his posi­tion as Saudi intel­li­gence chief on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2001, ten days before the attacks. Thus, he was appar­ently not in that post on the crit­i­cal day. Yet, his removal was a tem­po­rary absence from the high­est lev­els of Saudi lead­er­ship, and not nec­es­sar­ily an indi­ca­tion that he had fallen into seri­ous dis­fa­vor. The next year, he was named Saudi ambas­sador to Great Britain, just as a shift in focus from Al Qaeda to Iraq was being pitched to the British. If Zubaydah’s claims are at all cred­i­ble, the removal of Turki from an offi­cial posi­tion shortly before the attacks surely war­rants addi­tional analy­sis— as does the Ghaz­za­wis’ hasty flight from the U.S. right in the same time frame.

Accord­ing to the book The Eleventh Day, by Sum­mers and his co-author Rob­byn Swan, Zubay­dah is not alone in assert­ing a Saudi-Al Qaeda deal:

In sworn state­ments after 9/11, for­mer Tal­iban intel­li­gence chief Mohammed Khak­sar said that in 1998 Prince Turki, chief of Saudi Arabia’s Gen­eral Intel­li­gence Depart­ment (G.I.D.), sealed a deal under which bin Laden agreed not to attack Saudi tar­gets. In return, Saudi Ara­bia would pro­vide funds and mate­r­ial assis­tance to the Tal­iban, not demand bin Laden’s extra­di­tion, and not bring pres­sure to close down al-Qaeda train­ing camps. Saudi busi­nesses, mean­while, would ensure that money also flowed directly to bin Laden.

***

Prince Ahmed and another royal, Prince Sul­tan bin Fahd bin Salman bin Abdu­lazziz, were among the fif­teen Saudis spir­ited out of the US, with Pres­i­dent Bush’s approval, on Sep­tem­ber 16, 2001, via Lex­ing­ton, Kentucky—i.e., out of Prince Ahmed’s U.S. back­yard. Prince Sul­tan bin Fahd is the nephew of Prince Ahmed and Prince Sul­tan, and the son of Prince Fahd bin Salman (see below) who died unex­pect­edly shortly before the 9/11 attacks.

“It appears as if they didn’t want to be around to be ques­tioned as to what role they had played and the best way to avoid that was to get out of the coun­try,” for­mer Sen­a­tor Bob Gra­ham told the Sara­sota Herald-Tribune.

As author Craig Unger notes in his book, House of Bush, House of Saud, FBI agents were sta­tioned at all points of depar­ture for the group of Saudis who massed in Lex­ing­ton before depart­ing the coun­try, yet there’s no evi­dence they were asked any ques­tions at all.

Iron­i­cally, Pos­ner, who is reg­u­larly cited by the cor­po­rate media for his views on the JFK assas­si­na­tion (he is a lead­ing defender of the con­clu­sion that Oswald was the lone gun­man), is largely ignored for his work on the Saudi-9/11 con­nec­tion, where he doe­s­posit high-level involve­ment. Pos­ner is a highly con­tro­ver­sial and at times per­plex­ing fig­ure, but he insists he has solid intel­li­gence sources, and the thrust of his claims have meshed with those of The New York Times intel­li­gence reporter and best-selling author James Risen. As Risen wrote in his book State of War,

Ever since the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks, the trail back from al Qaeda to Saudi Ara­bia has been an intrigu­ing path, but one that very few Amer­i­can inves­ti­ga­tors have been will­ing to fol­low. . . . [B]oth before and after 9/11, Pres­i­dent Bush and his admin­is­tra­tion have dis­played a remark­able lack of inter­est in aggres­sively exam­in­ing the con­nec­tions between Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Saudi power elite. Even as the Bush admin­is­tra­tion spent enor­mous time and energy try­ing in vain to prove con­nec­tions between Sad­dam Hus­sein and Osama bin Laden in order to help jus­tify the war in Iraq, the admin­is­tra­tion was ignor­ing far more con­clu­sive ties with Saudi Ara­bia. Those links are much stronger and far more trou­bling than has ever been pre­vi­ously dis­closed, and until they are thor­oughly inves­ti­gated, the roots of Al Qaeda’s power, and the full story of 9/11, will never be known.”

Sev­eral of those alleged to have had knowl­edge of this puta­tive scheme and its enor­mous impli­ca­tions met with untimely ends shortly after Zubaydah’s inter­ro­ga­tion. In June, 2002, three months after Zubaydah’s cap­ture, the man he iden­ti­fied as his con­troller, Prince Ahmed, died of what offi­cials said was a heart attack while asleep. Another brother of Ahmed’s and Sultan’s, Prince Fahd bin Salman bin Abdu­lazziz, died of a heart attack on July 25, 2001, about six weeks before the 9/11 attacks. The death of Fahd, who pre­ceded his brother as head of EIRAD, is described in a Riyadh-datelined arti­cle by Mid­dle East News­file, as follows:

Prince Fahd died sud­denly. Prince Fahd did not show any symp­toms of any ail­ment. He had, how­ever, made an appoint­ment with a den­tist at King Faisal Spe­cial­ist Hos­pi­tal in Riyadh to check a toothache.

A cousin, Prince Sul­tan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, died when his car crashed en route to Salman’s funeral. Zubay­dah had sup­pos­edly impli­cated Prince Sul­tan bin Faisal, and another royal, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir. as Al-Qaeda sup­port­ers. All these men were in their for­ties. Still another key fig­ure in Zubaydah’s mon­strous sce­nario met an untimely death. On Feb­ru­ary 20, 2003, Mushaf Ali Mir, the Pak­istani air force chief, his wife and fif­teen oth­ers, were killed in a plane crash.

Not a hint of the above infor­ma­tion appeared in the released por­tion of the pres­i­den­tial 9/11 com­mis­sion report. It is not known whether any of it was in the 28 pages of mate­r­ial about Saudi con­nec­tions that the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion cen­sored on national secu­rity grounds.

A Long-Standing Relationship

The Ghaz­za­wis’ rela­tion­ship with the United States seems to date back to the 1950’s, when U.S. immi­gra­tion records show that Abbas Ghaz­zawi vis­ited New York. Abbas Ghaz­zawi was a promi­nent Saudi attor­ney. Esam, whose full name is Esam Abbas Ghaz­zawi, appears to be his son. (WhoWhat­Why was unable to reach Ghaz­zawi for com­ment on any of the mat­ters in this article.)

Abbas Ghaz­zawi, arriv­ing on a first class ticket on a con­nect­ing flight that orig­i­nated in Saudi Ara­bia, was trav­el­ing in an elite entourage. One com­pan­ion, Rasem al-Khalidi, wasa high-ranking Saudi mon­e­tary offi­cial. Another, Faisal al-Hegelan, would years later serve in the all-important posi­tion of Saudi ambas­sador to Wash­ing­ton. He held that post dur­ing 1979–1983, a period that partly coin­cided with the Reagan-Bush Admin­is­tra­tion. His replace­ment was Prince Ban­dar, the Bush fam­ily friend jok­ingly called “Ban­dar Bush.”

The focus of Saudi roy­als in their deal­ings with the United States can be seen in the con­duct of al-Hegelan. As ambas­sador, al-Hegelan was prin­ci­pally con­cerned with prop­ping up the Saudi regime. He had sev­en­teen mil­i­tary attachés assigned full­time to lobby for the sale of the advanced command-and-control air­craft known as AWACS to the Saudi air force. (see P. 17 of the book Arab Reach, by Hoag Levins.) Over­com­ing heavy pres­sure on Wash­ing­ton from the Israelis, the Saudis suc­ceeded in get­ting Con­gress to approve the AWACS sale. Al-Hegelan also led a lob­by­ing cam­paign against Sec­re­tary of State Alexan­der Haig’s pub­lic sup­port of Israel’s inva­sion of Lebanon. Pres­i­dent Rea­gan, with strong input from his vice pres­i­dent, George H.W. Bush, removed Haig and replaced him with George Schultz, who sided with the Saudis; Schultz had been pres­i­dent of Bech­tel, one of the largest con­struc­tion con­trac­tors in Saudi Ara­bia, whose projects included the orig­i­nal Trans-Arabian Pipeline.

We find the Ghaz­zawi clan again in the United States in 1970, when the young Esam mar­ried the Amer­i­can Deb­o­rah G. Brown­ing. The mar­riage didn’t last long—in July, 1971 they obtained a divorce in Orange County, California.

The first sign of the Ghaz­zawi clan on the east coast of the United States was in 1992, when Esam bought a pent­house apart­ment in the D.C. sub­urb of Ross­lyn, Vir­ginia. In var­i­ous accounts, Esam is described as a banker or financier, who also works as an inte­rior designer. He accrued addi­tional prop­erty in Arling­ton, Vir­ginia and Long­boat Key, Florida, and his name turns up in con­nec­tion with a fancy office build­ing in the K Street lob­by­ing corridor.

In this period, Esam’s name sur­faced when inves­ti­ga­tors prob­ing the mon­u­men­tally cor­rupt Bank of Credit and Com­merce Inter­na­tional (BCCI) sought to recover assets from Saudi Prince Fahd bin Salman—brother of Prince Sul­tan bin Salman. The prince argued that his assets were being held in another account under Esam Ghazzawi’s name. Only low-level BCCI offi­cials went to jail in the sprawl­ing scan­dal, which involved banks and gov­ern­ments all over the world. Prince Fahd bin Salman is one of the rel­a­tives who died unex­pect­edly in the year of the 9/11 attacks. (The Rea­gan and George H.W. Bush admin­is­tra­tions were repeat­edly accused by inves­ti­ga­tors into the BCCI mess of obstruct­ing their inquiries; it is worth not­ing that the Trea­sury Depart­ment offi­cial respon­si­ble for scru­ti­niz­ing BCCI’s affairs in the Reagan-Bush admin­is­tra­tion was assis­tant sec­re­tary for enforce­ment John M. Walker Jr.—who hap­pened to be George H.W. Bush’s cousin.)

In 1995, Ghazzawi’s daugh­ter Anoud, liv­ing in South Florida, mar­ried Abdu­lazzi al-Hiijii, who was a uni­ver­sity stu­dent in the area. Esam and Deb­o­rah Ghaz­zawi, appar­ently reunited some­time after their 1971 divorce, pur­chased the Sara­sota home into which the cou­ple moved. Abdu­lazzi appears to have received a B.S. and Mas­ters of Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems from the Uni­ver­sity of South Florida. His Master’s should be noted in the con­text of only one of two items removed from the Sara­sota house before the cou­ple fled—a computer.

Today, the fam­ily seems com­fort­ably ensconced back in Saudi Ara­bia. In August, 2003, Abdu­lazzi al-Hiijjii became a career coun­selor at the gov­ern­ment oil company—Saudi Aramco—a posi­tion he retains to this day. He served on the com­mit­tee hold­ing asym­po­sium about elec­tronic ser­vices in the east­ern (oil-producing) province of Saudi Ara­bia, held in Kho­bar in 2008.

We found the American-born Deb­o­rah Ghaz­zawi, post­ing online just three years ago for help on find­ing her username/password for a Saudi Black­berry sim card.

***

The seem­ing reluc­tance of the US gov­ern­ment to pur­sue hints of pos­si­ble Saudi com­plic­ity in the 9/11 attacks, wher­ever they might lead, is hardly an iso­lated fail­ure. Richard Clarke, the chief coun­tert­er­ror­ism offi­cial in both the Clin­ton and Bush admin­is­tra­tions, has recently stated his view that the CIA made an unsuc­cess­ful attempt to recruit two of the hijack­ers as dou­ble agents before the 9/11 attacks, then scur­ried to cover up this bun­gled effort. Clarke thinks evi­dence points to the spy agency itself allow­ing the hijack­ers into the U.S. as part of this scheme. If Clarke is cor­rect, this would be another case of inter­ested par­ties in the gov­ern­ment keep­ing the truth bot­tled up for their own purposes.

Even more dis­turb­ing, the final sec­tion of the Con­gres­sional inquiry’s report, on “sources of for­eign sup­port for some of the Sept. 11 hijack­ers,” was totally redacted. It is still unavail­able to the pub­lic on the 10th anniver­sary of the attacks. Both Gra­ham and his GOP coun­ter­part, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, deter­mined that national secu­rity would not be harmed by releas­ing those pages. Yet they were withheld—on the orders of George W. Bush.

Gra­ham told the reporters he thinks sup­pres­sion of the mate­r­ial pro­vided “pro­tec­tion of the Saudis from embar­rass­ment, pro­tec­tion of the admin­is­tra­tion from polit­i­cal embar­rass­ment … some of the unknowns, some of the secrets of 9/11.”

Tellingly, the ven­er­a­ble British insur­ance com­pany Lloyd’s of Lon­don actively inves­ti­gated Saudi com­plic­ity in 9/11. As reported by the U.K. paper The Inde­pen­dent, a Lloyd’s unit has launched what is described as “a land­mark legal case” again Saudi Ara­bia, claim­ing that the king­dom is indi­rectly respon­si­ble for the 9/11 attacks. Lloyd’s asserts that Saudi banks and char­i­ties act­ing as sur­ro­gates for the royal fam­ily gave the ter­ror­ist group the sus­te­nance it needed to carry out the 2001 assault. (Lloyd’s is seek­ing to recover sums it paid to firms and indi­vid­u­als affected by the event.) Reports The Independent:

The legal claim states: “Absent the spon­sor­ship of al-Qa’ida’s mate­r­ial spon­sors and sup­port­ers, includ­ing the defen­dants named therein, al-Qa’ida would not have pos­sessed the capac­ity to con­ceive, plan and exe­cute the 11 Sep­tem­ber attacks. The suc­cess of al-Qa’ida’s agenda, includ­ing the 11 Sep­tem­ber attacks them­selves, has been made pos­si­ble by the lav­ish spon­sor­ship al-Qa’ida has received from its mate­r­ial spon­sors and sup­port­ers over more than a decade lead­ing up to 11 Sep­tem­ber 2001.”

Bizarrely, sev­eral days ago, Lloyd’s qui­etly with­drew its suit, declin­ing to explain why. But the move was con­ducted in such a way to sug­gest a pos­si­ble set­tle­ment, thereby rais­ing still more ques­tions for investigation.

Mean­while, in the United States, a grow­ing cho­rus of voices—some very estab­lish­ment voices—are demand­ing account­abil­ity and can­dor. Gra­ham and Clarke have now been joined by retired CIA offi­cer Bob Baer, by sev­eral for­mer FBI agents and by Tom Kean, chair­man of pres­i­den­tial 9/11 com­mis­sion, all of whom express con­cern that the full story has not been per­mit­ted to emerge.

“No evi­dence,” But None Sought

The 9/11 Com­mis­sion report “found no evi­dence that the Saudi gov­ern­ment as an insti­tu­tion or senior Saudi offi­cials” financed Al Qaeda. But this care­fully worded state­ment does not fore­close the pos­si­bil­ity that mem­bers of the Saudi royal fam­ily per­son­ally pro­vided financ­ing, or that senior offi­cials funded com­pa­nies or out­siders that in turn pro­vided financing.

Many ques­tions remain to be answered. For exam­ple, why did the Ghaz­zawi clan flee in such a hasty man­ner, paus­ing only to empty their safe but leav­ing food on the kitchen counter and their pool pump run­ning? Was it because they had received some unex­pected news, news so urgent and alarm­ing that nor­mal prepa­ra­tions for an orderly depar­ture gave way to what appears to be a pan­icky exit?

If this ques­tion seems incon­se­quen­tial, think about what kind of news, in the days just before 9/11, could have prompted such intem­per­ate flight from the United States by a well-connected clan of Saudis? The pos­si­ble answers to this ques­tion could prove world-changing. The most impor­tant Mideast nation so far untouched by the dis­lo­ca­tions of the Arab Spring is Saudi Ara­bia, the sin­gle largest sup­plier of petro­leum to the west­ern world. If major play­ers in that country’s rul­ing fam­ily are shown to have had a hand in the 9/11 attacks, it would be the equiv­a­lent of a geopo­lit­i­cal tsunami—upsetting pow­er­ful elites around the world. Is it any won­der that efforts have been made to pre­vent a no-holds-barred inves­ti­ga­tion of this con­nec­tion? And isn’t it time, ten years later, to end this coverup — in the name of the com­mon good?

For­mer Sen­a­tor Gra­ham, for one, is increas­ingly adamant. As he told the St. Peters­burg Times: “These 19 peo­ple did not play out this plot as lone wolves. The chances that 19 peo­ple, most of whom had never been in the U.S., who did not speak Eng­lish, and most of whom did not know each other, could have com­pleted train­ing, prac­ticed and exe­cuted such a com­pli­cated plot defies com­mon sense.”

1. Saudi lin­eages are com­pli­cated due to men being named for their ances­tors. For exam­ple, Prince Sul­tan (Prince Sul­tan bin Salman) should not be con­fused with his uncle, also known as Prince Sul­tan (Prince Sul­tan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud), who is Defense Min­is­ter and Crown Prince, or his late cousin Prince Sul­tan bin Faisal.

I agree with you, R. Wil­son. Russ Baker, of whom I appre­ci­ate greatly the jour­nal­is­tic works, wrote this very good arti­cle appar­ently as if both Dave and Daniel Hop­sicker would not have researched and pre­sented this topic before. That’s curi­ous, ungrate­ful and a lit­tle rude in fact, frankly. There is prob­a­bly, I hope, a good expla­na­tion for that. And by the way, what about the six hours of air time that Dave offered Baker to present the con­tent of his book at great length? I don’t know what to think.

@Claude: Look­ing back at your Decem­ber com­ment, I can agree with this: Dave, Russ, John, and Lucy deserve a LOT more recog­ni­tion and praise than what they’re receiv­ing now. And Mae most of all: she prac­ti­cally birthed what we might call, if Dave doesn’t mind, the mod­ern truth seeker move­ment. (She’s the one who really started wak­ing me up first, tbh.) =)