The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

On the bottom floor of the United States Capitol’s new underground visitors’ center, there is a secure room where the House Intelligence Committee maintains highly classified files. One of those files is titled “Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters.” It is twenty-eight pages long. In 2002, the Administration of George W. Bush excised those pages from the report of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. President Bush said then that publication of that section of the report would damage American intelligence operations, revealing “sources and methods that would make it harder for us to win the war on terror.”

“There’s nothing in it about national security,” Walter Jones, a Republican congressman from North Carolina who has read the missing pages, contends. “It’s about the Bush Administration and its relationship with the Saudis.” Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told me that the document is “stunning in its clarity,” and that it offers direct evidence of complicity on the part of certain Saudi individuals and entities in Al Qaeda’s attack on America.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/twenty-eight-pages

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The (Obama) administration, which argues that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas, has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.

“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family members pushing for the legislation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-warns-ofeconomic-fallout-if-congress-passes-9-11-bill.html

I can understand the Bush administration fighting to keep them off limits. They would appear to be culpable. Obama is in the position of covering for them since the inflammatory nature of the information puts even more Americans at risk. I would expect the next president to do the same. Oh what a tangled web we weave...

We would be calling them terrorists if we weren't calling them allies.
http://www.executedtoday.com/2014/05/21/2013-five-beheaded-and-crucified-in-jizan/ (WARNING: dead people)

The Saudis are reacting exactly the way I would expect them to. If we decide to wipe away their sovereign immunity they HAVE to unload their US based assets as fast as possible to protect their own interests. What would you expect them to do?

And guess what comes next! The middle eastern countries begin wiping away US immunity for the people we drop bombs on and may have accidentally killed or tortured over the last 15 years.  I'm not saying we were more wrong than we were right... but my opinion doesn't matter at all in a Saudi/Iraqi/Kuwaiti/Palestinian/Qatari/Yemenis Court.

Were the Saudis responsible for 911? No. Is the Saudi Royal family more sympathetic with Jihadis than we are? Absolutely. Those guys are walking a tightrope keeping a country together with handouts that has as many extremists as anywhere else. I'm sure elements of the Royals ARE extremists. Bush may have suppressed the report for responsible reasons, not just CYA. If the populace was pissed at Saudi Arabia more than they already were, we would have lost our #1 ally in the region (yes, yes... Israel is a great ally. But not really capable of helping in the same way as Saudi Arabia) and things would have unraveled even further.

We are far better off with a despot in control than trying to "democrify" the middle east. Popular control ended badly in Iran, Iraq, and Egypt. Why would we want to upset the status quo in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, or anywhere else?

The House of Saud is not a natural ally. They do things that are intolerable to our set of values. But their interest align with ours more often than not - a stable Middle East with a tempered Iran. In global politics you pick allies based on shared interests, not shared values (see, e.g., Allies and Russia vs. Nazis).

But you're damn right, if they weren't allies - they'd be despotic extremists criminals oppressing women and murdering their own citizens.

Who was it that warned us "to avoid entangling foreign alliances". I think it was Washington. Good advice but entirely un-avoidable.

That was a well thought out reply Cannon, but it is quite troubling to consider that the conservative leadership, including our current republican candidates, don't seem to have this grasp of reality.

Huffington Post isnt holding back (surprise, surprise)

First and foremost, here is what you need to know when you listen to any member of our government state that the newly released 29 pages are no smoking gun — THEY ARE LYING.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kristen-breitweiser/29-pages-revealed-corrupt_b_11033068.html

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/413940-the-remarkable-similarities-between-9-11-and-jamal-khashoggis-murder

On Wednesday, senators delivered a historic blow to the country’s relationship with ally Saudi Arabia, a country whose leadership has committed notable human rights violations, by voting to move forward a resolution that would end all U.S. military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. 

But at least five of the Republican Senators who voted against the bill have received funding from lobbyists working for Saudi Arabia, a fact that illustrates how the kingdom uses its vast wealth to influence U.S. foreign policy.

Republican Senators Roy Blunt of Missouri, John Boozman of Arkansas, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mike Crapo of Idaho, and Tim Scott of South Carolina received financial contributions from lobbying firms that worked for Saudi Arabia, according to a report by the Center for International Policy released last month.
https://www.newsweek.com/republicans-senators-who-tried-kill-yemen-war-resolution-were-paid-saudi-1236715

And I sincerely hope that their opponents in the next election (GOP or DEM) use this against them...

Even the fact that the Bush family as a whole has received hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi's (Bin Laden family) over the decades didn't affect Baby Bush at all in an election.  Well, except that first one he had to buy....

Jared Kushner Gave Saudi Crown Prince Advice After Khashoggi Slaying
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/08/world/middleeast/saudi-mbs-jared-kushner.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur


Saudi Crown Prince Boasted That Jared Kushner Was “In His Pocket”
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/jared-kushner-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-bin-salman/


Has 'the sacrificial lamb' arrived?: U.N. cites new recordings in Khashoggi murder
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-khashoggi-un-recordings/has-the-sacrificial-lamb-arrived-u-n-cites-new-recordings-in-khashoggi-murder-idUSKCN1TK20W



Seizing on the new disclosures about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the families of Sept. 11 victims are appealing to President Biden to release still-classified documents about an FBI investigation into the Saudi role in the terror attacks that were blocked from public release by the Trump administration.

A lawyer who has been representing the families in the 9/11 lawsuit said in an interview he believes that the Khashoggi report gives his clients new leverage to demand full disclosure of the still-buried 9/11 documents, including a complete copy of a 2012 FBI report into suspected links between some Saudi government officials and the hijackers. Last year, then-Attorney General William Barr and then-acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell blocked disclosure to the public and families of that report’s most important details, declaring them a “state secret.”

“I don’t understand how our government can release the documents on the murder of one man two years ago but not the documents on the murder of 3,000 people 20 years ago,” said Brett Eagleson, a spokesman for the families, whose father was killed in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

The Justice Department — at first, inadvertently — filed a declaration by a senior FBI official that identified a former official at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, who was believed by the Operation Encore team to have “tasked” the imam, Fahad al-Thumairy, and al-Bayoumi with assisting the two al-Qaida hijackers after they flew into Los Angeles.

The lawyers for the families have been pressing for complete disclosure of the 2012 Operation Encore report to find out the basis for the assertion that al-Jarrah had directed the tasking to assist the al-Qaida operatives. Among the more sensitive material are long-suppressed financial records showing more than $300,000 in wire transfers from a high-ranking Saudi prince to the personal account of al-Thumairy between 1999 and 2001.
https://news.yahoo.com/khashoggi-report-spurs-911-families-to-push-president-biden-for-more-saudi-disclosures-184614507.html

Experts with whom we consulted confirmed New York Times reports on the Saudi capability to “collect vast amounts of previously inaccessible data from smartphones in the air without leaving a trace—including phone calls, texts, emails”—and confirmed that hacking was a key part of the Saudi’s “extensive surveillance efforts that ultimately led to the killing of (Washington Post) journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”

I would be wrong to imply that the Enquirer hasn’t evolved since the 90s, because it has. The tabloid and its chairman have evolved into secretly entangling with a nation-state that’s using its enormous resources to harm American citizens and companies.
Though relatively benign at first (“Al Gore’s Diet Is Making Him Stupid”), the Trump/Pecker relationship has metastasized: In effect, the Enquirer became an enforcement arm of the Trump presidential campaign, and presidency, as the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York laid out in its case against Michael Cohen, who has pleaded guilty.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeff-bezos-investigation-finds-the-saudis-obtained-his-private-information

And we have evolved from a nation with Trump supporters that are willfully ignorant to one that are malignantly ignorant.