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Saudi Arabia’s Alleged Involvement in the 9/11 Attacks. “Red-Herring”, Propaganda Ploy

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

BBC live report of the collapse of WTC building 7, more than minutes before the collapse took place. Building Seven in the background is still intact.

The 9/11 narrative in the mainstream media has taken on a new slant. The FBI is now accused of whitewashing Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

The alleged Saudi involvement in supporting Osama bin Laden, not to mention the classified 28 pages of the 9/11 joint Congressional inquiry pertaining to the insidious role of Saudi Arabia in supporting the hijackers is part of a propaganda ploy.

When the report of Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 was released in December 2002, it was met with considerable skepticism. That skepticism grew for a period of time but then was reduced to speculation about what was contained in the 28 pages that had been redacted by the Bush White House.

Various U.S. government leaders have since suggested that the missing 28 pages point to Saudi Arabia’s complicity in the 9/11 crimes. However such musings fail to discuss other important issues, like the links between the Saudi regime and the Western deep state, or the fact that, from the start, even the Saudis were calling for the 28 pages to be released. Discussion of the missing 28 pages also omits mention of the highly suspicious nature of the Inquiry’s investigation and its leaders. (Kevin Ryan, The 9/11 Joint Congressional Inquiry and the 28 Missing Pages, Global Research, March 14, 2014

The report of the FBI 9/11 Review Commission (25 March 2015) has revealed circumstances which allegedly were withheld by the FBI from both the 9/11 Commission headed by former Jersey Governor Thomas Kean as well from the joint Senate House inquiry committee chaired by former Senator Bob Graham. Graham.

And now agencies of the US government including the FBI are being accused of protecting the Saudis. This alleged Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks has served to precipitate segments of the 9/11 Truth movement into an erroneous and contradictory discourse. On the part of the US government and its intelligence apparatus, the objective is to ultimately to build a narrative which will weaken the 9/11 Truth movement.

The purpose of this new propaganda ploy is ultimately to sustain the legend that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks and that Saudi Arabia relentlessly supported Al Qaeda, namely that Saudi Arabia acted as a “state sponsor of terrorism”.

In this regard, the media reports intimate that if the Saudi connection is confirmed by the 28 classified pages, this “would make 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war by a foreign government.”

There is, however, an obvious hiccup in this reasoning: if the Saudis were indeed the State sponsors of 9/11, why on earth did the US and the Atlantic Alliance (under the doctrine of collective security) choose to wage a “Just War” of retribution against Afghanistan. Did they get there countries mixed up?

9/11 Truth

Many 9/11 Truthers across America are now calling for the release of the 28 classified pages. They are also accusing the FBI of coverup and complicity.

All eyes are on the classified 28 pages, which document Saudi support for the alleged hijackers. Meanwhile, the irrefutable evidence of controlled demolition of the Twin Towers –not to mention the mysterious collapse of WTC 7 which was announced by CNN and the BBC more than 20 minutes before it occurred– no longer constitutes the centrefold of the 9/11 Truth movement: ’The Saudis are behind 9/11 and our government is protecting them.”

Framed in a “Tele Novela” style scenario featuring wealthy Saudis in the plush suburban surroundings of Sarasota, Florida two weeks before 9/11, the New York Post describes the circumstances of Saudi involvement (quoting the FBI 9/11 Review Commission Report) in an article entitled How the FBI is whitewashing the Saudi connection to 9/11: .

“Just 15 days before the 9/11 attacks, a well-connected Saudi family suddenly abandoned their luxury home in Sarasota, Fla., leaving behind jewelry, clothes, opulent furniture, a driveway full of cars — including a brand new Chrysler PT Cruiser — and even a refrigerator full of food.

About the only thing not left behind was a forwarding address. The occupants simply vanished without notifying their neighbors, realtor or even mail carrier.

The 3,300-square-foot home on Escondito Circle (see image right) belonged to Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of then-King Fahd. But at the time, it was occupied by his daughter and son-in-law, who beat a hasty retreat back to Saudi Arabia just two weeks before the attacks after nearly a six-year stay here.

Neighbors took note of the troubling coincidence and called the FBI, which opened an investigation that led to the startling discovery that at least one “family member” trained at the same flight school as some of the 9/11 hijackers in nearby Venice, Fla.

… The Saudi-9/11 connection in Florida was no small part of the overall 9/11 investigation. Yet it was never shared with Congress. Nor was it mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Now it’s being whitewashed again, in a newly released report by the 9/11 Review Commission, set up last year by Congress to assess “any evidence now known to the FBI that was not considered by the 9/11 Commission.” Though the FBI acknowledges the Saudi family was investigated, it maintains the probe was a dead end.

The panel’s report also doesn’t explain why visitor security logs for the gated Sarasota community and photos of license tags matched vehicles driven by the hijackers, including 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta.

The three-member review panel was appointed by FBI Director James Comey, who also officially released the findings.

Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, who in 2002 chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11, maintains the FBI is covering up a Saudi support cell in Sarasota for the hijackers. He says the al-Hijjis “urgent” pre-9/11 exit suggests “someone may have tipped them off” about the coming attacks.

Graham has been working with a 14-member group in Congress to urge President Obama to declassify 28 pages of the final report of his inquiry which were originally redacted, wholesale, by President George W. Bush.

….

Sources who have read the censored Saudi section say it cites CIA and FBI case files that directly implicate officials of the Saudi Embassy in Washington and its consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks — which if true, would make 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war by a foreign government. The section allegedly identifies high-level Saudi officials and intelligence agents by name, and details their financial transactions and other dealings with the San Diego hijackers. It zeroes in on the Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi Embassy, among other Saudi entities.

The [FBI] review commission, however, concludes there is “no evidence” that any Saudi official provided assistance to the hijackers, even though the panel failed to interview Graham or his two key investigators — former Justice Department attorney Dana Lesemann and FBI investigator Michael Jacobson — who ran down FBI leads tying Saudi officials to the San Diego hijackers and documented their findings in the 28 pages. (emphasis added)

The key figure behind this new wave of propaganda is former Senator Bob Graham, who led the joint inquiry of the Senate and the House intelligence committees together with Rep. Porter Goss, a career CIA official who was subsequently appointed Director of National Intelligence (DNI) by the Bush administration. Graham coordinated the drafting and editing of the report including the 28 classified pages on Saudi Arabia.

While Graham is now heralded by the mainstream media as a 911 Truther, the evidence suggests that immediately in the wake of 9/11, he was involved (together with Porter Goss) in a coverup on behalf of Bush-Cheney. According to Kevin Ryan, “in the months following 9/11, both Goss and Graham rejected calls for an investigation”:

The Senate voted for one anyway, however, and that led both Bush and Cheney to attempt to stop it or limit its scope. Apparently the best they could do was to make sure that Goss and Graham were put in charge. That seemed to work as the Inquiry began in February 2002, more than five months after the attacks, and the approach taken was one of uncritical deference to the Bush Administration and the intelligence community.

Goss immediately made it clear that the Inquiry would not be looking for guilt or accountability with regard to 9/11. Saying he was “looking for solutions, not scapegoats,” Goss continued to defend the White House with regard to warnings the president had received about an impending attack, saying it was “a lot of nonsense.” The FBI did not cooperate but that didn’t seem to bother Goss and Graham. (Kevin Ryan, The 9/11 Joint Congressional Inquiry and the 28 Missing Pages, Global Research, March 14, 2014

Both the joint inquiry led by Graham and the 9/11 Commission were part of a Big Lie. And now Bob Graham and 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean are accusing the FBI of camouflage and the Saudis of collusion in the 9/11 attacks, while failing to acknowledge coverup and complicity at the highest levels of the US government.

According to Bob Graham in an interview with the Miami Herald,

’The FBI has served America through most of its history. There were stumbles by the agency before 9/11 and since the tragedy there has been a consistent effort to cover up the extent of Saudi Arabia’s involvement.’ (emphasis added)

And because Bob Graham accuses the FBI and the federal government, the 9/11 Truth movement applauds without realizing that these accusations directed against the FBI are “framed” with a view to sustaining the mainstream 9/11 narrative. What is at stake is a desperate ploy to uphold the legend that Muslims were behind 9/11 and that Saudi Arabia was behind the terrorists giving them money, with the FBI involved in a coverup, George W. Bush protecting his Saudi cronies because the Bushes and the bin Ladens were “intimo amigos”.

Former Senator Graham ”smells a rat” and that rat is the FBI and complicit government agencies:

“This is a pervasive pattern of covering up the role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11 by all of the agencies of federal government which have access to information that might illuminate Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11.”

“The 28 pages primarily relate to who financed 9/11, and they point a very strong finger at Saudi Arabia as being the principal financier,” he said, adding, “I am speaking of the kingdom,” or government, of Saudi Arabia, not just wealthy individual Saudi donors.

But who is the rat? The FBI or Senator Bob Graham who is visibly involved in a coverup on behalf of US intelligence? He accuses US government agencies of negligence, which serves to arouse protest against the FBI by many 9/11 Truthers.
Graham’s staged accusations thereby serve to distract the American public’s attention from the real evidence, amply documented that the WTC towers were brought down through controlled demolition and that Islamic terrorists were not behind the 9/11 attacks. The issue of Saudi financial support of al Qaeda is not only known and documented since the heyday of the Soviet Afghan war, it is irrelevant in establishing who was behind the terror attacks. Moreover, the contents of the 28 classified pages are known.

In a bitter irony, Graham’s track record (mentioned above) in supporting the official 9/11 narrative on behalf of Bush-Cheney is not mentioned:

Former Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who co-chaired a congressional inquiry into 9/11 — separate from the 9/11 Commission — stated, as though now it was obvious, “None of the people leading this investigation think it is credible that 19 people — most who could not speak English and did not have previous experience in the United States — could carry out such a complicated task without external assistance.”

Now, Graham says, a breakthrough may finally be around the corner with the upcoming declassification of the 28 pages of the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Calling for the official release and publication of the 28 page classified section of the joint inquiry report pertaining to Saudi Arabia is an obvious red-herring. The objective is to confuse matters, create divisions within the 9/11 Truth movement and ultimately dispel the fact that the 9/11 attacks were a carefully organized False Flag event which was used to declare war on Afghanistan as well as usher in sweeping anti-terrorist legislation.

Both the Congressional inquiry as well the 9/11 Commission report are flawed, their objective was to sustain the official narrative that America was under attack on September 11, 2001. And Graham’s role in liaison with the CIA, is “damage control” with a view to protecting those who were behind the demolition of the WTC towers as well sustaining the Al Qaeda legend, which constitutes the cornerstone of US military doctrine under the so-called “Global War on Terrorism”.

Without 9/11 and the “Global War on Terrorism”, the warmongers in high office would not have a leg to stand on. In turn, 9/11 Truth is an encroachment which undermines war propaganda and the US-led campaign of Islamophobia, which is sweeping the Western World.

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

13 April 2015

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