IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA HELPED AL-QAEDA WITH 9/11 ATTACKS

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As the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks quickly approaches, a new book by two authors who have examined thousands of documents concludes that both Saudi Arabia as well as Iran assisted Al-Qaeda in carrying out those attacks.

This book also questions if President George W. Bush withheld evidence intentionally linking these two countries with these attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

This new book, The Eleventh Day, written by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, reveals an argument that both of these countries while publicly stating that they would help fight terrorism as well as publically expressing their condolences to the United States, were actually complicit in these attacks.

The authors point to a court document referred to as the Havlish memorandum, which was produced during a civil action conveyed against Iran by Fiona Havlish, the widow of an insurance consultant who worked in the World Trade Center and was killed that day.

This document was produced from the testimony of several experts, including former CIA agents, an Israeli intelligence analyst, a French investigative magistrate as well as former 9/11 Commission staff members.  As well it also includes evidence from three Iranian defectors.

The memorandum states that Hizbollah, the paramilitary group supported by Iran, knew 9/11 was going to take place.  It highlights that one of its key members, Iman Mughniyah, met with Osama Bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman Al Zawahiri as far back as 1993 and also travelled with members of the 9/11 hijackers on flights to and from Iran in 2000.

It also claimed Mughniyah also went to Beirut with hijacker Ahmed Al Ghamdi and ‘visited Saudi Arabia to coordinate activities there’ and that two of the terrorists, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were put up in the Iranian embassy during a visit to Malaysia.

The document also states that Al-Qaeda operatives had received airline hijacking training in Iran.

But the evidence linking Saudi Arabia to 9/11 is even stronger, according to the authors.

To start with, they point out, 95% of Saudi professionals polled about 9/11 stated that they agreed with Bin Laden’s cause.

Bin Laden, who was born into a wealthy Saudi family, was publicly condemned by the government and had his citizenship removed, but Summers and Swan quote a former French intelligence officer, Alain Chouet, who says that this was ‘a subterfuge aimed at the gullible, designed to cover a continuing clandestine relationship’.

They go on to claim, sourcing a U.S. official, that two Saudi princes paid bin Laden ‘protection money’ – in return for Al-Qaeda not carrying out operations in Saudi Arabia, the  authorities would turn a blind eye to any of his operations elsewhere.

There’s also the fact, they say, that 13 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and that U.S investigators working on the 9/11 inquiry complained of Saudi officials continually blocking requests for information. 

FBI counter-terrorism Chief John O’Neill, speaking before 9/11, summed it up. He is quoted in the book as saying that ‘all the answers, all the clues that would enable us to dismantle Osama bin Laden’s organization’ were in Saudi Arabia.

After becoming disillusioned with the United States failure to capture bin Laden in early 2001, O’Neill retired from the FBI and then took a position as head of security for the Twin Towers complex.  O’Neill was killed during the attack on that day.      

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