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the authors also saw information suggesting that hijacker leader Mohamed Atta had contact in Florida with one or more wealthy Saudis. A senior law enforcement officer in Florida told the authors—on condition that he not be identified—that he was personally involved after 9/11 in investigating the activities of “a man married into one of the Saudi ruling families.” Until his sudden departure on August 30, 2001, the man had lived not far from Venice, where Atta, Shehhi, and Jarrah had trained to fly. The information gathered convinced the authors’ source that the three future hijackers visited the man’s house, where alcohol and women were made available. The authors have also seen a lengthy taped interview with a former Venice Yellow Cab driver named Bob Simpson. Simpson described having picked up a “wealthy Saudi businessman” at Orlando Executive Airport and later that day having taken him to an apartment building where he had previously picked up Mohamed Atta. After 9/11, Simpson said, the FBI questioned him about the Saudi. Simpson did work for Yellow Cab in 2001, but the authors’ efforts to trace him were unsuccessful (“agents”: CR, 215; Simpson: videotape & transcript in the collection of Daniel Hopsicker).

90 page 395: Report, JI, 395–;

91 CIA not obstruct: corr. office of Bob Graham, 2009;

92 Bush himself: ibid., Graham with Nussbaum, 228, 215–, 231, NYT, 6/24/09, Salon, 9/8/04;

93 Pelosi: CNN, 7/30/03;

94 “I went back”: Nation, 7/29/03.

95 should be made public: Prince Bandar, then ambassador to Washington, said in 2003 that there was nothing to hide, and Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said it was an “outrage to any sense of fairness that 28 blank pages are now considered substantial evidence to proclaim the guilt of a country.” The Saudis, it was suggested, saw publication of the classified material as “a chance to clear their Kingdom’s name.” Senator Graham did not buy it. “It seemed to me,” he has written, “that George W. Bush and Prince Bandar were performing a sort of good cop–bad cop routine, in which Prince Bandar got to claim innocence of behalf of Saudi Arabia, while George W. Bush protected him by being the bad cop who wouldn’t release troubling information” (Bandar: “Saudi Ambassador Responds to Reports of Saudi Involvement in 9/11,” 7/24/03, www.saudiembassy.net; “outrage”: AP, 7/29/03; “a chance”: AP, 7/30/03; “It seemed”: Graham with Nussbaum, 228–).

96 “I can’t tell you”: int. Eleanor Hill;

97 leaks/​details/​“central figure”/“very direct”/“cannot be”/​Graham/​“apparent”: Newsweek, 2/3/03, LAT, 8/2/03, Shenon, 50–, 308–, AP, 7/27/03, NYT, 8/1/03;

98 Zubaydah waterboarded June/July: int. of CIA OIG John Helgerson, Der Spiegel, 8/31/09, “Yoo’s Legal Memos Gave Bush Retroactive Cover for Torture,” 2/23/09, http://pubrecord.org, BBC News, 7/13/09.

99 Kiriakou/Zubaydah: As reported, what Kuriakou learned about Zubaydah’s references to the princes came to him not firsthand but from those reading the cable traffic. For that reason and because of the passage of time, he told the authors, he is today unsure whether the Zubaydah/princes element first surfaced during interrogation or because he was questioned about something found in the journal Zubaydah had kept.

Refuting suggestions that Zubaydah may not have given good information, or that he may even have been mentally unstable, Kiriakou said he thought the contrary was true, that he did give reliable information and was “not crazy” but “bright, well-read, a good conversationalist.”

The Kiriakou interview for this book is first corroboration of the core elements of an account written by author Gerald Posner in 2003, with different detail and citing only anonymous sources. The Posner account, according to Kiriakou, got important detail and chronology skewed. The relevant interrogation of Zubaydah that produced the lead about the Saudi prince did not occur—as Posner wrote—within days of his capture but only months later, after he had been waterboarded. (This would fit with the account of FBI investigator Ali Soufan, who took part in interrogations