Eric Zuesse

As a historian, I recognize that everything we know about history is from sources, and depends upon the reliability of those sources. Here, my main sources will be identified, and linked-to, so that any reader online can go directly to them, and won’t need to rely upon me but can go directly to the sources and evaluate them (my evidence) on one’s own.

First of all, however, reference will be made here to the three main countries (other than Afghanistan, which America first invaded for having allegedly perpetrated 9/11; and Iraq, which we next invaded for having allegedly perpetrated it) that have been accused, at different times, for allegedly having done those attacks; and anyone who wants to see my main previous article on each of the following three country’s involvement or non-involvement in the 9/11 attacks, can access that presentation simply by clicking onto the respective link here for that given country:

ISRAEL

IRAN

SAUDI ARABIA

Regarding each one of those three ‘suspects’, my article there links directly to its sources, so that the reliance is, yet again, not to my own evidence, but to the evidence that others have presented.

Of course, the CIA and the George W. Bush White House have also been alleged to have been involved. Anyone who scours the present article and its sources will find plenty of evidence implicating them; but the U.S. regime cannot go to war against itself; and, so, only the foreign government that actually financed and organized the 9/11 attacks, will be the focus here.

However, none of that will make much sense outside of the broader context of the article that I wrote documenting how the Cold War had ended in 1991 only on the Russian side while it was secretly continued on the U.S. side, which resolutely aims to conquer Russia. As things have turned out subsequent to 1990, ‘the war against communism’ had really been just the sales-pitch for a campaign ultimately to achieve U.S. control over the entire world — it was not really an ideological war — on the American side. Understanding this, is basic to everything. And America’s ‘war against terrorism’ is (as is well documented in the excerpts below) likewise fake. But that’s being said only in the way of preparation — any reader here will make his decisions solely upon the basis of the evidence, which is given here.

Other than your reading those basics, the following will present the supplementary evidence to my case that Saudi Arabia — that’s to say, the Saudi government; that’s to say, the Saudi royal family, the al-Sauds, — did it. This will be the relevant back-story, to how and why they did it, but all of it will be presented here by others, not by me.

My function in setting forth this history will simply be organizing these sources for the back-story, as follows:

Nafeez Ahmed, 2005, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism:
pp.3-5:

In the summer of 1979, a group of powerful elites from various countries gathered at an international conference in Jerusalem to promote and exploit the idea of ‘international terrorism.’ The forum, officially known as the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism (JCIT), was organized by Benjamin Netanyahu. …

Over two decades ago, the JCIT established the ideological foundations for the ‘War on Terror.’ The JCIT’s defining theme was that international terrorism constituted an organized political movement whose ultimate origin was the Soviet Union. All terrorist groups were ultimately products of it, and could be traced back to, this single source, which — according to the JCIT — provided financial, military, and logistical assistance to disparate terrorist movements around the globe. The mortal danger to Western security and democracy posed by the worldwide scope of this international terrorist movement required an appropriate worldwide anti-terrorism offensive, consisting of the mutual coordination of Western military intelligence services.2

But as Philip Paull documents extensively in his [1982] Masters thesis at San Francisco State University [and summarized in the link to this link], the JCIT’s own literature and use of source documentation was profoundly flawed [he shows they lied]. …

Who exactly were the primary architects of the JCIT’s ‘international terrorism’ project? According to Paull, ‘present and former members of the Israeli and United States governments, … and reactionary British and French politicians and publicists. … [They] included: Menachim Begin, … Benzion Netanyahu, then Cornell University professor emeritus [and Benjamin Netanyahu’s father], … Paul Johnson, … Richard Pipes, … Ray S. Cline, … George Bush Sr. …

David B. Ottaway, 2008, The King’s Messenger: Prince Bandar:
pp.41-44:

In the fall of 1979, Bandar took eight courses in international economics and politics, political theory, U.S. foreign policy, and Middle East politics, scoring four As, and four B pluses, according to a transcript of his school records.6 Mystery still surrounds his master’s thesis, which focused on the domestic origins of U.S. foreign policy. Though apparently it was extremely well written, Bandar received only a B plus. West said in one of his daily diary entries that the thesis was ‘exceptionally good’. … But in another entry, he said ‘I cannot help but wonder how much help he might have had with it.’8 One person who almost certainly helped Bandar was Fred Dutton.

West kept Bandar’s father informed abut his progress. When he went to tell Sultan about Bandar’s final grades in June 1980, Sultan joked that Bandar had ‘spent a lot of money’ on getting his degree, in response to which West quipped, ‘That was the reason he received a B plus instead of an A in economics.’9 Even [President] Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, read the thesis, commenting that Bandar had learned a lot about the U.S. decision-making process and explained how it affected Saudi Arabia’s interests ‘in an interesting and imaginative way.’10 …
Almost immediately after his return in June 1979, Bandar found himself called upon for help by President Carter once again.

Secretly, Carter had already turned to the kingdom for help, calling in Bandar and asking him to deliver a message to [King] Fahd pleading for an increase in Saudi [oil] production. Fahd’s reply, according to Bandar, was ‘Tell my friend, the president of the United States of America, when they need our help, they will not be disappointed.’13 The king was true to his world. … West’s diary corroborates Bandar’s account of how Saudi Arabia came to Carter’s rescue. West wrote that on May 30 he began discussing with Hamilton Jordan what they could do to get Carter reelected.14 …

The success of this venture in oil diplomacy gave Bandar enormous standing in Washington. In early December 1979, Carter asked the prince to come to the White House so that he could thank him personally for the Saudi help in alleviating the U.S. energy crunch. … The meeting was kept secret even from the State Department. Bandar, still only a pilot and with no diplomatic standing, was becoming involved in every aspect of Carter’s Middle East policy. …
pp.56-57:

The Saudi drive to export its religious influence eventually reached the United States. … In November 1980, a group of pro-Khomeni Iranian activists had seized control of the site [the Islamic Mosque and Cultural Center on Massachusetts Avenue] and ousted its Egyptian (Sunni) imam. …
In the turbulent decade after the Iranian revolution, the U.S. government welcomed this new Saudi religious activism, viewing it as a badly needed counterweight to help contain Iran’s drive to expand its religious and political influence. The Saudi export of Wahhabi Islam would eventually develop into an impressive soft power that the House of Saud could extend across the Muslim world. … Before long, this international activism took concrete form in a jihad aimed at the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which had begun [invading on 24 December 1979] [months after having provided only advisors to an independent leftist-revolutionary government that turned out to be ignoring much of Moscow’s advice] the same year as Iran’s revolution. … Starting in the early 1980s, the Saudi government provided several billions of dollars in arms and other assistance to the cause of freeing Afghanistan from godless communists. Reagan, of course, was careful to call them ‘freedom fighters’ rather than ‘holy warriors.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9RCFZnWGE0 VIDEO: 1979 Zbigniew Brzezinski to the Mujahideen: "Your cause is right and God is on your side!"

http://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interviewThe Brzezinski Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur (1998) Translated from the French by William Blum and David N. Gibbs. This translation was published in Gibbs, "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect," International Politics 37, no. 2, 2000, pp. 241-242. For article full text, click here.

Original French version appeared in "Les Révélations d'un Ancien Conseilleur de Carter: ‘Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes...’" Le Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998, p. 76. Click here for original French text.

Note that all ellipses appeared in the original transcript, as published in Le Nouvel Observateur.
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. Is this period, you were the national security advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention [emphasis added throughout].

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?
B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q : When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody believed them . However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime , a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q : “Some agitated Moslems”? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today...
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West has a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid: There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner, without demagoguery or emotionalism. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is t here in com m on among fundamentalist Saudi Arabia , moderate Morocco, militarist Pakistan, pro-Western Egypt, or secularist Central Asia? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries...
Additional Sources: …

http://archive.is/y6gtG
Anatomy of a Victory: CIA's Covert Afghan War
By: Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992
… In 1980, not long after Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan [on 24 December 1979] to prop up a sympathetic leftist government, President Jimmy Carter signed the first -- and for many years the only -- presidential "finding" on Afghanistan, the classified directive required by U.S. law to begin covert operations, according to several Western sources familiar with the Carter document.
The Carter finding sought to aid Afghan rebels in "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan through secret supplies of light weapons and other assistance. The finding did not talk of driving Soviet forces out of Afghanistan or defeating them militarily, goals few considered possible at the time, these sources said.

The cornerstone of the program was that the United States, through the CIA, would provide funds, some weapons and general supervision of support for the mujaheddin rebels, but day-to-day operations and direct contact with the mujaheddin would be left to the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. The hands-off U.S. role contrasted with CIA operations in Nicaragua and Angola.

Saudi Arabia agreed to match U.S. financial contributions to the mujaheddin and distributed funds directly to ISI. China sold weapons to the CIA and donated a smaller number directly to Pakistan, but the extent of China's role has been one of the secret war's most closely guarded secrets.
In all, the United States funneled more than $2 billion in guns and money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It was the largest covert action program since World War II.
In the first years after the Reagan administration inherited the Carter program, the covert Afghan war "tended to be handled out of Casey's back pocket," recalled Ronald Spiers, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, the base of the Afghan rebels. Mainly from China's government, the CIA purchased assault rifles, grenade launchers, mines and SA-7 light antiaircraft weapons, and then arranged for shipment to Pakistan. Most of the weapons dated to the Korean War or earlier. The amounts were significant -- 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983, according to Yousaf -- but a fraction of what they would be in just a few years.

Beginning in 1984, Soviet forces in Afghanistan began to experiment with new and more aggressive tactics against the mujaheddin, based on the use of Soviet special forces, called the Spetsnaz, in helicopter-borne assaults on Afghan rebel supply lines. As these tactics succeeded, Soviet commanders pursued them increasingly. …

In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, and national security adviser Robert D. McFarlane signed an extensive annex, augmenting the original Carter intelligence finding that focused on "harassment" of Soviet occupying forces, according to several sources. Although it covered diplomatic and humanitarian objectives as well, the new, detailed Reagan directive used bold language to authorize stepped-up covert military aid to the mujaheddin, and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal.

New Covert U.S. Aid
The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies -- a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987, according to Yousaf -- as well as what he called a "ceaseless stream" of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan's ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

There the CIA specialists met with Pakistani intelligence officers to help plan operations for the Afghan rebels. …

Richard Labévière, 2000, “Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam”
p.6:

… Between 1994 and 1997, Bill Clinton was happy to allow Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to support the Taleban, seeing them as a useful counterbalance to Iran’s influence. ...
'The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army’ explains a former CIA analyst. ‘The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power. …’ In a certain sense, the Cold War is still going on. For years Graham Fuller, former Deputy Director of the National Council on Intelligence at the CIA, has been talking up the ‘modernizing virtues’ of the Islamists, insisting on their anti-Statist concepts of the economy. Listening to him, you would almost take the Taleban and their Wahhabi allies for liberals. ‘Islam, in theory at least, is firmly anchored in the traditions of free trade and private enterprise,’ wrote Fuller.2 … ‘Islam does not glorify the State’s role in the economy.’ …

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/akbar-ganji/u-s-jihadists-relation-pa_b_5553529.html
U. S. - Jihadists Relation, Part II: Waging Jihad to Defeat the Soviet Union
Akbar Ganji [7 July 2014. The links have been updated here.]

… Bin Laden was a civil engineer and a member of a wealthy Saudi family, which was not, however, a part of the Saudi royal family. He recruited 4000 Saudi citizens and took them to Afghanistan. Altogether, 100,000 fighters were recruited and taken to Afghanistan, who were funded, armed and trained by CIA and Saudi Arabia. The high level of civilian casualties that the war would certainly entail was considered by the Carter administration, but was set aside. One senior official of the Carter administration said, “The question here was whether it was morally acceptable that, in order to keep the Soviets off balance, which was the reason for the operation, it was permissible to use other lives for our geopolitical interests.” Representative Charles Wilson, a Texas Democrat, said that Carter’s CIA director Stansfield Turner said, “I decided I could live with that [high civilian casualties].”

But, the United States did not stop there. Meeting in 1985 with the Mujahideen leaders at the White House, Ronald Reagan referred to them as the “moral equivalent of America’s Founding Fathers.” Think about it for a moment: Bin Laden and other hardline Muslim fundamentalists and leaders of the Mujahideen, such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, were moral equivalent of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other founding fathers. In the same meeting with the Jihadists, Reagan said, “We have here six Afghanistan freedom fighters. There is a man here whose wife was killed in front of his two children. Another one [is here] who lost his brother in a town, village, in which 105 people were massacred. One lost a brother who was the mayor of that village. They are here to tell the outside world, the free world, what is really going on in Afghanistan.” Earlier in 1982, Reagan had dedicated the space shuttle Colombia to what he called freedom fighters in Afghanistan. “This is Colombia lifting, representing man’s finest aspirations in the field of science and technology, so too the struggle of the Afghan people represents man’s highest aspirations for freedom. I am dedicating on behalf of the American people the March 22 of Colombia to the people of Afghanistan,” he said. …

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/05/16/panama-papers-reveal-george-soros-deep-money-ties-to-secretive-weapons-intel-firm.html
Panama Papers reveal George Soros' deep money ties to secretive weapons, intel investment firm
By Peter Byrne · Published May 16, 2016

… Soros Capital [on 24 January 1995] set up an offshore company in the Cayman Islands for the purpose of investing private equity with the Carlyle Group, alongside members of Saudi Arabia’s Bin Laden family. Carlyle’s partners include ex-heads of state and former CIA officials. The private equity partnership specializes in buying and selling weapons manufacturing and intelligence gathering companies with government and military contracts and it also uses secret offshore companies to conduct business. …

https://archive.is/48Fh
Bin Laden Family Liquidates Holdings With Carlyle Group
By Kurt Eichenwald, New York Times, October 26, 2001
… In recent years, Frank C. Carlucci, the chairman of Carlyle and a former secretary of defense, has visited the [bin Laden] family’s headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as have former President George Bush and James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state. Mr. Bush works as an adviser to Carlyle, and Mr. Baker is a partner in the firm.

The family's financial relationship with Carlyle began in 1994. At that time, they committed $2 million to a buyout fund, Carlyle Partners II, a tiny fraction of the $1.3 billion raised for the fund. …
—— https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/31/sensitive-uk-terror-funding-inquiry-findings-may-never-be-published-saudi-arabia 'Sensitive' UK terror funding inquiry may never be published Investigation into foreign funding and support of jihadi groups operating in UK understood to focus on Saudi ArabiaShares 27,931, Jessica Elgot, Wednesday 31 May 2017 10.20 EDTAn investigation into the foreign funding and support of jihadi groups that was authorised by David Cameron may never be published, the Home Office has admitted. …

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/04/tory-uk-saudi-arabia-gifts-money/
SAUDI ARABIA LAVISHES CONSERVATIVE U.K. OFFICIALS WITH GIFTS, TRAVEL, AND PLUM CONSULTANCIES Lee Fang, June 4 2017, 7:00 a.m.

NEW FIGURES RELEASED by British Parliament show that, at a time when U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s ties to Saudi Arabia have become an election issue, conservative government officials and members of Parliament were lavished with money by the oil-rich Saudi government with gifts, travel expenses, and consulting fees.Tory lawmakers received the cash as the U.K. backs Saudi Arabia’s brutal war against Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East. …

Questions to close: Inasmuch as the Sauds bomb their own Shia community — and inasmuch as their entire Kingdom was created in 1744 founded upon a rabid hatred of Shia — why would they have qualms about doing 9/11 to the U.S.? Would they? And does it make sense that the seven countries which Donald Trump tried to ban as soon as he became President are Shia-ruled not Sunni-ruled (or else adhere to Sufi or other extremely tolerant varieties of Islam)? And why did the U.S. sign a deal on May 20th to sell to the Saud family a record-shattering $350 billion of U.S.-made weapons even while the Sauds were bombing their own Shia? And what did 9/11 do for the Carlyle Group and the ‘defense’ contractors they had invested in? And what relevance does this headline, about an event that occurred in Australia on June 8th, have: “Saudi Soccer Team Refuse To Observe Minute's Silence For London Terror Attack Victims”? Do these things make sense in light of what you’ve just read? Do these matters make sense in light of what U.S. Presidents and U.S. newsmedia have been saying about them?

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.