Executive Intelligence Review

Aug. 31, 2016 (EIRNS)--Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the former head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the co-chair of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11, addressed a room full of media at the National Press Club in Washington today, and made some explosive statements about the Saudi Royal Family's role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The former Senator has been a driving force behind the recent release of the long-suppressed 28-page chapter from his Dec. 2002 report, and he has now called for the total declassification of all of the government's investigative files on the 9/11 attacks.

Sen. Graham detailed the fight, now underway in Florida, to declassify 80,000 pages of FBI documents on a prominent Saudi businessman who was tied to three of the 9/11 hijackers, including the alleged ring-leader, Mohammed Atta. The FBI covered up the existence of that investigation for a decade, and it took a Federal judge to order the Bureau to turn over the investigative file on their probe of the Florida cell, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Sen. Graham highlighted the role of Prince Bandar bin Sultan in providing financial and logistical support to the 9/11 hijackers in San Diego, Cal., and reviewed some of the now-declassified details about Bandar's private security links to leading Al Qaeda figure Abu Zubaida. He made a strong case for the House to immediately pass the Justice Against Supporters of Terrorism Act (JASTA), to give the 9/11 survivors and families their long-overdue day in court to actually put the Saudi Royals on trial for their complicity. Graham spelled out three powerful reasons why the full government files on the 9/11 attack had to be made public, even 15 years after the fact. He made clear that first and foremost, the families of those killed in the 9/11 attacks, and the American people as a whole, deserved the full truth as a matter of justice. Second, the national security of the United States demands a full airing of the Saudi role. And third, the cover-up of such a crime breeds cynicism in the American people, and you cannot maintain a Republic if the citizens distrust their government and cease to participate in the political process. Graham cited Benjamin Franklin, who told an inquiring citizen during the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that ``We have given you a Republic--if you can keep it."

- Startling Statements -

During the extensive question-and-answer period, Sen. Graham gave some startling answers. He blasted both President Bush and President Obama, and particularly President Obama, who had no personal interest in covering up the Saudi role in 9/11, but suppressed the 28 pages for nearly eight years. He also assailed the FBI for conducting what he called an ``aggressive deception'' over the Sarasota files, and provided a detailed account of his own Dulles Airport encounter with the Deputy Director of the FBI, who pressured him to ``get a life'' and drop his inquiries into the Sarasota 9/11 cell.

In fact, Sen. Graham characterized a war between the Executive Branch cover-up of 9/11 and the Congressional efforts to dig at the Saudi role. He noted that, across the board, from the FBI to the State Department to other Executive Branch agencies, there was a single policy of cover-up and deceit--which proved, in his view, that it came directly from the White House--both the Bush and Obama White House.

Asked to explain how the Saudi royal family, ostensibly close allies of the United States, could have been complicit in the 9/11 attacks, Senator Graham gave his own hypothesis: He noted that the Saudis were very insecure about the stability of the Kingdom, after the U.S. had supported Iraq during the long war with Iran in the 1980s. After the U.S. intervention against Saddam Hussein in 1991, the Kingdom was even more unstable, and Osama bin Laden was calling for the ouster of the Royal Family. In return for bin Laden backing off from the threats, the Saudis agreed to provide material support in the United States for the planned Al Qaeda terror attack. He made clear that he had no ``proof'' of that theory, but found it very credible.

There are undoubtedly hundreds of thousands of pages of FBI and other government investigative files on the 9/11 attacks that remain hidden from the public, and Sen. Graham made clear that all of this had to be made public. Along with the immediate passage of JASTA, he put priority on opening up with the files on places like Paterson, New Jersey, and Falls Church, Virginia, where hijacker cells were operating, and where the FBI and other agencies no doubt conducted exhaustive investigations that remain secret.
Link to Graham press conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVyGF3QlDno



Thatcher Clinched Al Yamamah Arms Deal for Britain

Aug. 31, 2016 (EIRNS)--Margaret Thatcher made an unscheduled stop in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in April 1985 to give Saudi King Fahd the final push to sign the Al Yamamah arms deal, a £42 billion deal to sell Tornado combat jets and Hawk trainer aircraft, built by arms maker BAE Systems, that later gave rise to charges of bribery and financing of terrorism. According to British press accounts of Aug. 23 and 24, documents newly released by the British National Archives show that Thatcher made a hastily arranged visit to Riyadh while on her way back from a trip to Asia, a visit that could only have had one purpose, to nail down the Tornado deal.

The visit, which came in response to a personal invitation by Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador in Washington at the time, was supported by Defense Minister Michael Heseltine and other officials of the Thatcher government on condition that it produce a Saudi decision to go forward with the BAE deal.

"To date, we only have Prince Bandar's word for it that the King has decided to buy Tornado. We need to get this made more precise and more explicit," read a Foreign Office memo to Downing Street. "Tackling the King in person is probably the only way of smoking the Saudis out."

At the same time, others among Thatcher's aids were scheming about how to hide the real purpose of the visit from the British public. An official record of the meeting between Mrs Thatcher and King Fahd on April 14, 1985, made no mention of either Tornados or an arms deal, reports the {Independent}. But in a letter to the King the following day, the Prime Minister mysteriously wrote: "I was glad that we were able to discuss a further matter privately over lunch. I look forward to receiving your majesty's personal envoy soon, in order that we may conclude this matter successfully." The BAE deal was signed the following September, with the first jets delivered in 1986.

But, as {EIR} documented in its June 22, 2007 issue, the real nature of the AL Yamama deal, goes well beyond the bribery charges that were the subject of an investigation by Britain's Serious Fraud Office in 2006, an investigation that was subsequently shut down by Tony Blair. Al Yamamah was actually a barter deal by which the Saudis paid BAE for the jets by sending a super-tanker load of oil to Britain every day for the life of the deal. The oil was then sold on the spot market by Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum. By {EIR's} estimates, the barter deal netted some $160 billion off the billlion off the books for the British and their Saudi partners, creating the world's largest sluch fund devoted to the clandestine wars and Anglo-American covert operations over, now, three decades

Rep. Ted Lieu Leads Charge Against US Arms Sales to Saudis

Aug. 30, 2016 (EIRNS)--{The Intercept} has published an interview with Rep.
Ted Lieu (D-Cal.), who is a leader of the fight to block the $1.15 billion latest arms sales to the Saudis, and who has been pressing for months for the Obama Administration to abandon its blatant military backing for the Saudi crimes in Yemen. Lieu is a retired Air Force colonel who still serves in the Air Force Reserve.

``I taught the law of war when I was on active duty,'' he told {The Intercept}. ``You can't kill children, newlyweds, doctors and patients--those are exempt targets under the law of war, and the coalition has been repeatedly striking civilians.'' After the Saudis resumed bombing of civilian targets in Yemen in August, after peace talks broke down, Lieu charged that the Obama Administration was ``aiding and abetting what appears to be war crimes in Yemen.'' Less than 24 hours after Lieu issued that statement, the Saudi coalition bombed the Doctors Without Borders hospital in northern Yemen. It was the fourth Doctors Without Borders hospital that the Saudi coalition had bombed in Yemen in the past 12 months. Since September of last year, Lieu has written to JCS Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, calling for a full investigation into the ``indiscriminate nature'' of the coalition operations in Yemen. A Pentagon spokesman wrote back, claiming that the Saudis were "trying harder to comply with the Laws of Armed Conflict."

Lieu warned in his {Intercept} interview that continuing to back the Saudi war crimes in Yemen is going to backfire against US security: ``By aiding a coalition that is killing civilians, the U.S. is going to create another generation of people who hate the U.S. and who are going to want to do very bad things to us... It's actually creating more terrorists by killing all these civilians.''

In response to efforts by Congess and human rights groups to expose the crimes of the Saudis in Yemen, the Saudis are doubling down on their lobbying efforts in Washington, particularly since the July 15 release of the 28 pages from the Joint Inquiry into 9/11. {Al Monitor} reported yesterday that in the past year, the Saudis have hired five new public relations firms to defend them in the US, doubling their lobbying price tag to $9.5 million a year. In May, the Saudis hired DLA Piper, a major Washington lobbying firm, to save the Saudi reputation. The same month, the Saudis also hired former Republican National Committee chairman Haley Barbour as another lobbyist. Their longstanding chief lobbying firm, Qorvis (now renamed MSLGROUP), has been working for the Saudis for 14 years, hired in the aftermath of 9/11. Qorvis is also the PR firm for the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), the Saudi-backed Syrian rebel coalition, largely made up of hardcore Salafist groups.

Bruce Fein Calls for US To Leave NATO

Aug. 30, 2016 (EIRNS)--Attorney Bruce Fein, who has played a leading role in the fight to release the 28 pages from the original Joint Congressional Inquiry Report on 9/11, has written a lengthy article in Huffington Post, calling for the United States to leave NATO--in accord with the US Constitution's committment to self-defense without becoming involved in entangling imperial alliances.

``Our NATO membership,'' he wrote, ``contradicts the Constitution's foreign policy of billions for invincible self-defense, but not one cent for Empire or entangling alliances.'' NATO was created in 1949 ``at the beckoning of the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin,'' and to provide military protection for Europe. ``We joined NATO as part of a gratuitous, preoccupation with containing Soviet power no matter how irrelevant to protecting us from attack.'' Fein denounced the growing ideology of ``world domination for its own sake,''
because it is ``treasonous to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. The United States was an anti-imperialist creation.'' He went on to quote from John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington, who all understood the dangers of imperial wars and entangling foreign alliances.

Fein concluded with a specific reference to the improvement in US-Russian relations, were the US to leave NATO: ``In leaving NATO, the United States would dramatically lessen tensions or conflicts with Russia and strengthen our security against external aggression. Among other things, the stage would be set for a new treaty to reduce the nuclear arsenals of the two countries . . . To make the nation more secure in its safety, wealth, and liberty, NATO should be made a museum piece along with other artifacts of the American Empire."

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Executive Intelligence Review