Transcript of BBC Expose on Bush, bin Laden and the Carlyle Group
Transcribed by Mario
Date: November 28, 2001
The following transcript has been taken from a BBC Newsnight story that we mentioned November 7th. In this expose, Newsnight reported that the FBI was told to "back off" of Saudis before the September 11th attacks. The RealMedia video was transcribed by VHJ reader Mario.
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BBC's Jeremy Vine reporting from London:
Suddenly it emerges, before Sept 11th the Americans were using kid
gloves in certain terror investigations. Has someone been sitting
on the FBI?
Good evening, tonight we reveal the way important American terror
investigations were hampered in the run up to Sept 11th. Because so
many fanatics had contacts with Saudi Arabia, a US ally, the
Americans themselves trod carefully, we'll ask whether they can
change that policy now.
A document marked secret tells some of the story of Americas'
failures before Sept 11th, it's an FBI paper obtained by Newsnight
which refers to the questionable links of a member of Osama Bin
Laden's extended family. We've learned that US agents were told to
"back off" from investigating the Bin Laden family and the Saudi
Royals, all of which lends credence to suspicions that before the
suicide hijackings last month, the US allowed its strategic
interests in relationship with Saudi Arabia to blunt its inquiries
in to groups with suspected terrorist connections.
Greg Palast reporting from Washington:
The CIA and Saudi Arabia, the Bush's and the Bin Ladens, did their
connections cause the
America to turn a blind eye to terrorism?
Michael Wilde, former US Federal Attorney:
There is a hidden agenda at the very highest levels of our
government.
Joe Trento, National Security Expert:
The sad thing here is that thousands of Americans had to die
needlessly.
Peter Elsner, Center for Public Integrity:
How can it be that the former President of the US and the current
President of the US have business dealings with characters that
need to be investigated?
Greg Palast:
In the eight weeks since the attack, over a thousand suspects and
potential witnesses have been detained, yet days after the
hijackers took off from Boston, aiming for the twin towers, a
special charter flight out of the same airport whisked eleven
members of Osama Bin Laden's family off to Saudi Arabia. That did
not concern the White House, their official line is that the Bin
Ladens are above suspicion apart from Osama the black sheep who
they say hijacked the family name. That's fortunate for the Bush
family and the Saudi Royal Household, whose links with the Bin
Ladens could otherwise prove embarrassing.
Newsnight has obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of
other members of the Bin Laden family for links to terrorist
organizations before and after Sept 11th. This document is marked
secret. Case ID 199I-WF-213589. 199 is FBI code for case type, 9
would be murder, 65 would be espionage, 199 means national
security. WF indicates Washington Field Office Special Agents where
investigating ABL because of his relationship with the World
Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) a suspected terrorist organization.
ABL is Abdullah Bin Ladin, President and Treasurer of WAMY.
This is the sleepy Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, for
almost every home displays a stars and stripes. On this
unremarkable street at 3411 Silver Maple Place, we located the
former home of Abdullah and another brother Omar, also an FBI
suspect. It's conveniently close to WAMY. The World Assembly of
Muslim Youth is in this building in a little room in the basement
at 5613 Leasberg Pike, and here just a couple of blocks down the
road at 5913 Leasberg is where 4 of the highjackers that attacked
New York and Washington are listed as having lived. The US Treasury
had not frozen WAMYs' assets and when we talked to them they
insisted that they are a charity. Yet just weeks ago Pakistan
expelled WAMY operatives, and India claimed that WAMY was funding
an organization linked to bombings in Kashmir. In the Philippines
the military has accused WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency. The FBI
did look in to WAMY but for some reason agents were pulled off the
trail.
Joe Trento:
The FBI wanted to investigate these guys, this is not something
that they didn't want to do, they wanted to, they weren't permitted
to.
Greg Palast:
The secret file fell into the hands of national security expert Joe
Trento, the Washington spook tracker has been looking into the FBI
allegations about WAMY.
Joe Trento:
They've had connections to Osama Bin Laden's people, they had
connections to Muslim cultural and financial aid groups, they had
terrorist connections and they took the pattern of groups that the
Saudi Royal Family and Saudi community of Princes, with 20,000
Princes, had funded to be engaged in terrorist activity. Now do I
know that WAMY has done anything that's illegal? No, I don't know
that. Do I know that as far back as 1996 the FBI was very concerned
about this organization? I do.
Greg Palast:
Newsnight has uncovered a long history of shadowy connections
between the State Department, the CIA, and the Saudis. Former head
of American Visa Bureau in Jeddah is Michael Springman.
Michael Springman, former head of American Visa Bureau in
Jeddah:
In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State
Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants.
Theses were essentially people with no ties either to Saudi Arabia
or to their home country. I complained bitterly at the time there,
I returned to the US, I complained to the State Department here, to
the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic
Security, and to the Inspector Generals Office. I was met with
silence.
Greg Palast:
By now Bush senior, once CIA Director, was in the White House.
Springman was shocked to find that this was indeed a fraud, rather
stated, CIA were playing the great game.
Michael Springman:
What I was protesting was in reality an effort to bring recruits
rounded up by Osama Bin Laden to the US for terrorist training by
the CIA, they would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight
against the then Soviet Union.
Greg Palast:
The attack on the World Trade Center 1993 did not shake the States
Department faith in the Saudis, nor did the attack on the American
barracks at Khubar Towers in Saudi Arabia three years later in
which 19 Americans died. FBI agents began to feel that their
investigation was being obstructed. [Speaking to Michael Wilde.]
Would you be surprised to find out that FBI agents are a bit
frustrated that they can't be looking into some Saudi
connections.
Michael Wilde:
I would never be surprised with that. There're cut off at the hip
sometime by supervisors for a given shot that's been called from
Washington at the highest level.
Greg Palast:
I showed lawyer Michael Wilde our FBI documents. One of the Khubar
Tower bombers was represented by Wilde, he thought he had useful
intelligence for the US. He also represented the Saudi diplomat who
defected to the USA with 14,000 documents which Wilde claims
implicates Saudi citizens in financing terrorism and more. While he
met with FBI men he was told they were not permitted to read all
the documents, nevertheless he tried to give them to the
agents.
Michael Wilde:
Take these with you, we're not going to charge you for the copies,
keep them, do something with them, get some bad guys with them;
they refused.
Greg Palast:
In the hall of mirrors that is the US intelligence community,
Wilde, a former US Federal Attorney, said the FBI field agents
wanted the documents but they were told to see no evil.
Michael Wilde:
You see a difference between the rank and file counter intelligence
agents who are regarded by some as the motor pool of the FBI who
drive following diplomats, and the people who are getting the shots
called at the highest levels of our government who have a different
agenda if you would, it's unconscionable.
Greg Palast:
The State wanted to keep the pro American Saudi Royal Family in
control of the world's biggest oil spigot, even at the price of
turning a blind eye to any terrorist connection so long as America
was safe. In recent years CIA operatives had other reasons for not
exposing Saudi backed suspects.
Joe Trento:
If you recruited somebody who is a member of a terrorist
organization, who happens to make his way here to the US, and even
though you are not in touch with that person any more but you've
used him in the past, it would be very unseemly if he were to be
arrested by the FBI, and word got back that he once had been on the
payroll of the CIA. What we're talking about is blowback, what
we're talking about is embarrassing career destroying blowback for
intelligence officials.
Greg Palast:
Does the Bush family also have to worry about political blowback?
Younger Bush made his first million twenty years ago with an oil
company partly funded by Saleem Bin Laden, chief US representative.
Young George also received fees as director of a subsidiary of
Carlyle Corporation, a little known private company which has in
just a few years of its founding become one of Americas biggest
defense contractors. His father Bush senior is also a paid advisor,
and what became embarrassing was the revelation the Bin Ladens held
a stake in Carlyle, sold just after Sept 11th.
Peter Elsner:
You have a key relationship between the Saudis and the former
President of the US who happens to be the father of the current
President of the US, and you have all sorts of questions about as
to where does policy begin and where does good business and good
profits for the company Carlyle end.
Greg Palast:
I received a telephone call from a high placed member of a US
intelligence agency, he tells me that while there has always been
constraints on investigating Saudis, under George Bush it's gotten
much worse. After the election the agencies were told to "back off"
investigating Bin Ladins and Saudi Royals, and that angered agents.
I'm told that since September 11th the policy has been reversed. FBI
headquarters told us that they could not comment on our findings; a
spokesman said there are lots of things that only the intelligence
community knows and that no one else ought to know.
BBC's Jeremy Vine reporting from London:
We're joined now by Abdel Barl Atwan who is the Editor of the Arab
daily Al Quds, also by Dr Anthony Cordesman, the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, and also in the
US by Martin Indylc who is former US Assistant Secretary of
State.
Dr Cordesman first of all, how big an obstacle do you think the US
Saudi relationship is when it comes to investigating these suspect
organizations.
Dr Anthony Cordesman, Center of Strategic and International
Studies:
I don't think it is, I thought frankly most of that report bordered
on rubbish. It isn't the FBI that does the investigation here it's
the CIA and groups like the National Security Agency; what you have
is a group of low level FBI people who have one impression of how
an investigation precedes and how it is managed, which has nothing
to do with how the overall investigation is taken place since a
period long before the bombing of the World Trade Center. So people
with an ax to grind have one bureaucratic perspective and people
who actually run intelligence operations have another.
Jeremy Vine:
But FBI agents would be responsible for investigating actions that
affected American citizens, particularly on American soil.
Dr Anthony Cordesman:
As low level FBI agents almost certainly are going to see this in
one dimension, somebody who is trying to manage an overall
intelligence investigation and a very very sensitive effort to look
at what happens within the Saudi Royal Family and senior families
inside Saudi Arabia is going to have a completely different
perspective and they're going to be in charge and the FBI has a
history of nearly a decade of feuding with Saudi Intelligence and
feuding with the CIA.
Jeremy Vine:
That's the point isn't it, that first this relationship is so
sensitive and secondly that perhaps the FBI has got into these
feuds which have become very counter productive.
Dr Anthony Cordesman:
I think it certainly was in the investigation of Al Cobra, (?) it
got better with time but one of the problems was we sent in a lot
of people with very poor language skills who weren't well managed
who came up against a long established intelligence relationship.
Now there are many problems in the way that Saudi Arabia handles
its internal security, just as there has been in the US, but this
kind of bureaucratic bickering is no indictment of the Saudis or
any indication that somehow the US government ignored Bin
Laden.
Jeremy Vine:
What do you make of this Mr. Atwan, at the state of this
extraordinary relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia at the
moment?
Abdel Barl Atwan, Editor of Al Quds:
I believe you know that Saudi Arabia is extremely helpful to the
American interests in the region, I believe that there are three
pillars of American foreign policy in the region, the first one is
to keep Israel as the regional super power, the second is to keep
the price of oil as low as they can, the third is to keep Iraq and
Sadam Hussein in the cage. Saudi Arabia played a major role in
keeping the price of oil down, also at the same time they offered
help to attack Sadam Hussein and south Iraq and help keep the no
fly zone in the south, and Saudi Arabia actually financed all the
American wars, they financed the Afghani war, they financed
Nicaragua, they financed recently the Gulf war; so the Americans
are fully dependent on the Saudi Arabia for foreign policy
there.
Jeremy Vine:
Since Sept 11th Saudi Arabia has not been playing ball has it.
Abdel Atwan:
Yes because there are you know sensitivities, they have a very very
delicate situation, an internal situation, they have a religious
establishment, an Islamic establishment with extremists among
there and they feel if the FBI or CIA interfere they may open
the cover and many secrets the Saudis don't want anybody else to
look at for example the banking system, the investment there, the
families, the royal family itself; some of it indulge in business
maybe money laundering; you don't know what's happening there so if
they let the Americans to be involved to put there nose there many
secrets will appear.
Jeremy Vine:
So Mr. Indylc how does the US handle this relationship from now
on?
Martin Indylc, former US Assistant Secretary of State:
Well, I think when it comes to dealing with the problem of Osama
Bin Laden and the Al-Qaeda network, we do have to have a talk with
the Saudis about the funding issues there has been it seems over
time; money flowing from Saudi Arabia to the Taleban and to the
Al-Qaeda network through basically foundations, through rich Saudi
connections, and the Saudi Government has to do a much better job
of overhauling the whole system of Sacut (?) and how that money has
been going abroad. Secondly, we have to talk to them about the
export of their fundamentalist puritanical Lahavi (?) take on Islam
which is in its export form promoting intolerance rather then a
tolerant view of Islam which I think the Saudis have to be far more
active in trying to promote here.
Jeremy Vine:
But how does the US here get the balance taking into account all of
that and it's strategic interests in the region?
Martin Indylc:
Well, we have to reenter the bizarre and renegotiate the bargain I
think. Five thousand dead Americans later we're going to have to
take a look again at some of these issues. There is no question
that Saudi Arabia is a very important ally of ours in a very
sensitive region. They sit on a great deal of oil and we are
dependent on it, not to keep the price of oil low, but to keep it
at a reasonable level and so they are important strategically to
us. But there are some things that have gone on over the last
decade which have helped unfortunately to create the swamp that
Osama Bin Laden has been swimming in, we do have to talk to them
about drying that up.
Jeremy Vine:
Dr Cordesman, do you think then that the US has somehow mismanaged
its relationship in the last decade and needs to take account of
that in planning how it's going to deal with Saudi Arabia in the
future.
Dr Anthony Cordesman:
Well, I certainly agree with Martin Indylc that we need to work out
a better relationship, it's not just with Saudi Arabia, it's
virtually with every moderate Arab state we have relations with and
that includes many in North Africa. We did I think mismanage this
relationship and we did not put enough emphasis early enough on the
rest (?) that we're developing in Afghanistan, we did make the
mistake early on of encouraging Islamic fundamentalists movements
at least indirectly although much of the problem occurred through
Pakistan and not through Saudi Arabia.
Jeremy Vine:
So Mr. Atwan, what can the US do right now, there are 50 suspects
in the suicide hijackings who were Saudi, how can they get Saudi
Arabia to actually help give them some intelligence on them?
Abdel Atwan:
Well actually you know Saudi Arabia, you can't bribe Saudi Arabia
with money because they have a lot of money, you can't bribe them
politically, I mean the Saudis now say look at all this terrorism
coming from Israel, so solve the Arab Israeli conflict and
encourage an independent Palestinian State, implement UN Security
Council resolutions, and in this case the Saudi Royal Family would
be in a prouder position, they can say to the Americans OK let us
cooperate, let us resolve terrorism, let us have a resolution of
terrorism which includes the Israeli terrorism; so if you do so
there is a political route for that if you address the Saudi in
this way, I think they'll be more cooperative but if you are going
to support the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian, and not
to give the Palestinian anything, in this case the Saudi will be
shy to cooperate in such dangerous cooperation.
Jeremy Vine:
Mr. Martin Indylc, with the US faced with all these demands how
does the it react?
Martin Indylc:
Well I think first of all it's important to remind people that
after the Gulf war after we liberated Kuwait, we were told by the
Saudis and our other Arab friends that we had to solve the Arab
Israeli problems just like Mr. Atwan is suggesting now and we went
off instead of focussing on political reform in the Arab world we
went off…….
Jeremy Vine:
Ah, I think we just lost the satellite link, so I'll just thank you
all very much, Dr Cordesman, Mr. Atwan, Mr. Indylc. Thank you.
http://www.atlantaoc.com/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=36
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