White House Approved Departure of Saudis After Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2003 21:00:23 -0700
> From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
> Subject: White House Approved Departure of Saudis After Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says
> To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
>
>
> September 4, 2003
> White House Approved Departure of Saudis After Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says
> By ERIC LICHTBLAU
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/04/politics/04SAUD.html
>
> ASHINGTON, Sept. 3 ‹ Top White House officials personally approved the
> evacuation of dozens of influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin
> Laden, from the United States in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks
> when most flights were still grounded, a former White House adviser said
> today.
>
> The adviser, Richard Clarke, who ran the White House crisis team after the
> attacks but has since left the Bush administration, said he agreed to the
> extraordinary plan because the Federal Bureau of Investigation assured him
> that the departing Saudis were not linked to terrorism. The White House
> feared that the Saudis could face "retribution" for the hijackings if they
> remained in the United States, Mr. Clarke said.
>
> The fact that relatives of Mr. bin Laden and other Saudis had been rushed
> out of the country became public soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. But
> questions have lingered about the circumstances of their departure, and Mr.
> Clarke's statements provided the first acknowledgment that the White House
> had any direct involvement in the plan and that senior administration
> officials personally signed off on it.
>
> Mr. Clarke first made his remarks about the plan in an article in Vanity
> Fair due out Thursday, and he expanded on those remarks today in an
> interview and in Congressional testimony. The White House said today that it
> had no comment on Mr. Clarke's statements.
>
> The disclosure came just weeks after the classified part of a Congressional
> report on the Sept. 11 attacks suggested that Saudi Arabia had financial
> links to the hijackers, and Mr. Clarke's comments are likely to fuel
> accusations that the United States has gone soft on the Saudis because of
> diplomatic concerns.
>
> Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, seized on Mr. Clarke's
> comments to call on the White House to conduct an investigation into the
> hasty departures of about 140 Saudis from the United States in the days
> after the attacks.
>
> Mr. Schumer said in an interview that he suspected that some of the Saudis
> who were allowed to leave, particularly two relatives of Mr. bin Laden who
> he said had links to terrorist groups themselves, could have shed light on
> the events of Sept. 11.
>
> "This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis and giving
> them special privileges that others would never get," Mr. Schumer said.
> "It's almost as if we didn't want to find out what links existed."
>
> Saudi officials could not be reached for comment today, but in the past they
> have denied accusations linking them to the 19 hijackers, 15 of them from
> Saudi Arabia.
>
> While F.B.I. officials would not discuss details of the case, they said that
> in the days immediately after Sept. 11 bureau agents interviewed the adult
> relatives of Mr. bin Laden, members of one of Saudi Arabia's richest
> families, before the White House cleared them to leave the country. Mr. bin
> Laden is said to be estranged from his family, and many of his relatives
> have renounced his campaign against the United States.
>
> "We did everything that needed to be done," said John Iannarelli, a bureau
> spokesman. "There's nothing to indicate that any of these people had any
> information that could have assisted us, and no one was accorded any
> additional courtesies that wouldn't have been accorded anyone else."
>
> But the Vanity Fair investigation quotes Dale Watson, the former head of
> counterterrorism at the F.B.I., as saying that the departing Saudis "were
> not subject to serious interviews or interrogations."
>
> Mr. Watson could not be reached for comment today.
>
> The article depicts an elaborate but hurried evacuation carried out within a
> week of the hijackings in which private planes picked up Saudis from 10
> cities. Some aviation and bureau officials said they were upset by the
> operation because the government had not lifted flight restrictions for the
> general public, but those officials said they lacked the power to stop the
> evacuation, the article says.
>
> Mr. Clarke, who left the White House in February, said in an interview that
> he was driven by concern that the Saudis "would be targeted for retribution"
> by Americans after the hijackings.
>
> Mr. Clarke said he told the bureau to hold anyone it had suspicions about,
> and the F.B.I. said it did not hold anyone.
>
> Mr. Schumer said he doubted the thoroughness of a rushed review by the
> bureau, and in a letter to the White House today he said the Saudis appeared
> to have gotten "a free pass" despite their possible knowledge about the
> attacks.
> --
> Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
> Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
> http://www.ibd.com

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