11sept03
Naar nu blijkt heeft het Witte Huis ervoor gezorgd dat tijdens de dagen na 11 september, toen ieder ander vliegtuig aan de grond stond genageld, de familie Bin Laden het land uit werd gevlogen.

Het tijdschrijft Vanity Fair in een persbericht op 3 september: 'Former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke tells Vanity Fair that the Bush administration decided to allow a group of Saudis to fly out of the U.S. just after September 11—at a time when access to U.S. airspace was still restricted and required special government approval. According to other sources, at least four flights with about 140 Saudis, including roughly two dozen members of the bin Laden family, flew to Saudi Arabia that week—without even being interviewed or interrogated by the F.B.I.'

Witte Huis helpt familie Bin Laden ontsnappen
Op vier september brengt de New York Times een artikel (inloggen met: daanspeak) met de kop 'White House Approved Departure of Saudis After Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says'. 'Top White House officials personally approved the evacuation of dozens of influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, from the United States in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when most flights were still grounded, a former White House adviser said today. The adviser, Richard Clarke, who ran the White House crisis team after the attacks but has since left the Bush administration, said he agreed to the extraordinary plan because the Federal Bureau of Investigation assured him that the departing Saudis were not linked to terrorism.' Dat is hetzelfde FBI dat eerder zijn eigen personeel tegenwerkte in hun speurtochten naar verdachte Saudi's; dat ging van FBI-agente Coleen Rowley tot aan de leider van de Nationale Veiligheidsafdeling van het FBI John O'Neill (die uit onvrede ontslag nam en op de eerste dag van zijn nieuwe baan omkwam in het WTC op 11 september, zie deze DaanSpeak).

Urban legend blijkt urban fact
'The fact that relatives of Mr. bin Laden and other Saudis had been rushed out of the country became public soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. But questions have lingered about the circumstances of their departure, and Mr. Clarke's statements provided the first acknowledgment that the White House had any direct involvement in the plan and that senior administration officials personally signed off on it', schrijft de NYT. De verhalen werden al snel weggeschreven als broodjes aap. Ook Snopes.com vond het maar onzin dat Michael Moore deze feiten verkondigde. Snopes is een website die zogenoemde urban legends ontrafelt; de site is recent door het stof gegaan voor Moore en heeft alle feiten nog eens zorgvuldig uitgediept.

Senator: 'It's almost as if we didn't want to find out what links existed'
'Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, seized on Mr. Clarke's comments to call on the White House to conduct an investigation into the hasty departures of about 140 Saudis from the United States in the days after the attacks. Mr. Schumer said in an interview that he suspected that some of the Saudis who were allowed to leave, particularly two relatives of Mr. bin Laden who he said had links to terrorist groups themselves, could have shed light on the events of Sept. 11. "This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis and giving them special privileges that others would never get," Mr. Schumer said. "It's almost as if we didn't want to find out what links existed", aldus de NYT. Volgens Colin Powell is er niets aan de hand, maar het fijne weet hij er niet van: 'I don’t know the details of what happened. But my understanding is that there was no sneaking out of the country; that the flights were well-known, and it was coordinated within the government', zegt hij in Meet the Press, met Tim Russert.

Was het FBI de 'opruimploeg' bij 11 september?
In tegenstelling tot wat het FBI officieel beweert: '[... A] Vanity Fair investigation quotes Dale Watson, the former head of counterterrorism at the F.B.I., as saying that the departing Saudis "were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations."' Dit riekt naar de activieiten van een zogenoemde opruimploeg. DaanSpeak heeft eens een telefonisch interview gedaan met Oswald LeWinter, lid van een CIA-opruimploeg, in dit geval bij de October Surprise. 'The article depicts an elaborate but hurried evacuation carried out within a week of the hijackings in which private planes picked up Saudis from 10 cities. Some aviation and bureau officials said they were upset by the operation because the government had not lifted flight restrictions for the general public, but those officials said they lacked the power to stop the evacuation, the article says', schrijft de NYT. De Bin Laden hulpdienst van het FBI (Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity) was mogelijk tijdens dagen dat ieder ander vliegtuig aan de grond genageld stond. '“We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history,” Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Boston’s Logan airport, tells Unger, “and here we were seeing an evacuation of the bin Ladens!', schrijft Vanity Fair.


DaanSpeak
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