The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [321]
29 “the Saudi government”: Report, JI, 110;
30 “As one of”/“foreign enemy”: Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, 72, 15;
31 “You’ve got to be”: Wright, 238.
32 “All the answers”: Brisard & Dasquié, xxix. The O’Neill conversation was with Jean-Charles Brisard, who began investigating terrorist finances for French intelligence in 1997. After 9/11, he became a lead investigator for the legal firm Motley Rice in connection with the civil action brought by 9/11 victims’ families against a list of Saudi-based Islamic charities, a number of financial institutions, and several members of the Saudi royal family. He provided written testimony to the U.S. Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in 2003 (ints. Jean-Charles Brisard, Written Testimony, Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate, 10/22/03, www.banking.senate.gov, Brisard & Dasquié, xxvii–, xxi).
33 longtime head: Prince Turki had resigned as GID chief, after a quarter of a century, just ten days before 9/11. The reason for the resignation remains unclear. Turki’s departure was the more striking, reportedly, because he had been confirmed in his post as recently as the end of May (Simon Henderson, “A Prince’s Mysterious Disappearance,” NPR, 10/22/10, Hamel, 237).
34 “At the instruction”: Arab News, 9/18/02. On another occasion, in a 2010 CNN interview, Prince Turki said much the same. “From my previous experience, there is a continuous exchange of information between the CIA and the Saudi security agencies” (CNN, 11/17/10);
35 GID/U.S. understanding: e.g., Cordesman, “Saudi Security”;
36 specifically/“What we told”: USA Today, 10/16/03, Salon, 10/18/03;
37 Bandar hinted: transcript of int. Bandar, Frontline: “Looking for Answers,” www.pbs.org;
38 Abdullah now king: Abdullah had succeeded to the throne in 2005, on the death of his long-ailing and incapacitated half-brother King Fahd;
39 “Saudi security”: ABC News, 11/2/07, CNN, 11/2/07;
40 “We have sent”/British deny: John Simpson int. of King Abdullah, BBC News, 10/29/07, CNN, 10/29/07;
41 denial: Wright, 448;
42 silence: Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, 72–;
43 “There is not”: USA Today, 10/16/03.
44 Turki stood by/Badeeb: Wright, 448, 310. A Saudi security consultant, Nawaf Obaid, also told author Lawrence Wright that the terrorists’ names were passed to the CIA station chief in Riyadh. Wright believed Turki’s 2003 account, and indicated in a New Yorker article that the CIA had consulted the Saudi authorities—after learning from an intercept on the Yemen phone “hub” that Mihdhar was headed to Kuala Lumpur (Wright, 310, 376n, 448, New Yorker, 7/10 & 16/06).
45 Scheuer/“fabrication”: Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell, 72–;
46 Bandar/Commission: MFR of int. Prince Bandar, Access Restricted, Item (3 pages) withdrawn, 10/14/08, CF.
47 Turki/“I can”: corr. Kristen Wilhelm. This reply to the authors’ inquiry is known as a “Glomar Response” to a request under the Freedom of Information Act—so called after the first occasion on which it was used, when the CIA sought to prevent publication of a Los Angeles Times story on the agency’s operation to raise a sunken Soviet submarine. The U.S. ship that had been intended for use in the operation to raise the sub was called the Glomar Explorer. The Glomar Response has been used in cases involving both national security and privacy issues (“The Glomar Response,” http://nsarchive.wordpress.com).
48 “penetrated al Qaeda”: Seattle Times, 10/29/01;
49 returned to Saudi/disclosed: Report, JI, 131–.
50 “presented with”: Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” 12, 15, 37. Before 9/11, according to the Commission’s staff report on terrorist travel, neither State Department personnel processing visa applications nor immigration inspectors were aware of such indicators. Even two years after the attacks, the information had “yet to be unclassified and disseminated to the field.”
51 Commission