On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 4: The Cutouts

A cutout is a link ...

 [Previous: Part 1: 28 Pages | Part 2: No Vortex | Part 3: The Lawsuit ]

The term "cutout" is intelligence jargon for a special sort of role that must be played in covert operations. A cutout acts as a go-between, bringing support and instructions from the planners to the perpetrators.

By doing this, the cutout becomes a link in the chain of evidence that connects the planners to the perpetrators. And the cutout's most important job is to be "cut out" of the chain if and when necessary.

The timely disappearance of a cutout can break the trail that would otherwise lead back from the crime to the people who wanted it to happen. By making cutouts disappear, covert operators can maintain a certain level of "plausible denial," even if the perpetrators are caught in the act, or tracked down later.

In the case of 9/11, where the "hijackers" were apparently patsies who were intended to be caught, the role of the cutouts was especially important -- and especially dangerous.

... in the chain of evidence that connects ...

It is sad and strange and very pathetic that we still know so little about the nature of the 9/11 attacks. It's bad enough that that we don't know who did it. But we don't even know what they did! That complicates everything except the government story, the litigation based on it, and the mainstream coverage.

We do know a little bit, and presumably Walter Jones, Stephen Lynch, Bob Graham know a lot more, about some well-connected Saudis who helped to put the patsies in a position from which they could take the blame -- and who then disappeared!

From Paul Sperry in the New York Post [or here]:

Some information already has leaked from the [28 redacted pages], which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally....

LOS ANGELES: Saudi consulate official Fahad al-Thumairy allegedly arranged for an advance team to receive two of the Saudi hijackers — Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi — as they arrived at LAX in 2000. One of the advance men, Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence agent, left the LA consulate and met the hijackers at a local restaurant. (Bayoumi left the United States two months before the attacks, while Thumairy was deported back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11.)

... the planners of a covert operation ...

Watch how this happens. The timing is very interesting. al-Bayoumi, who was directly connected with the patsies, disappeared two months before the attacks. Thumairy, who was connected to al-Bayoumi but not to the patsies directly, didn't disappear until after the attacks.

SAN DIEGO: Bayoumi and another suspected Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, set up essentially a forward operating base in San Diego for the hijackers after leaving LA. They were provided rooms, rent and phones, as well as private meetings with an American al Qaeda cleric who would later become notorious, Anwar al-Awlaki, at a Saudi-funded mosque he ran in a nearby suburb. They were also feted at a welcoming party. (Bassnan also fled the United States just before the attacks.)

Bassnan (sometimes also "Basnan"), who was also in direct contact with the patsies, also disappeared before the attacks.

WASHINGTON: Then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar and his wife sent checks totaling some $130,000 to Bassnan while he was handling the hijackers. Though the Bandars claim the checks were “welfare” for Bassnan’s supposedly ill wife, the money nonetheless made its way into the hijackers’ hands.

Other al Qaeda funding was traced back to Bandar and his embassy — so much so that by 2004 Riggs Bank of Washington had dropped the Saudis as a client. The next year, as a number of embassy employees popped up in terror probes, Riyadh recalled Bandar.

“Our investigations contributed to the ambassador’s departure,” an investigator who worked with the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington told me, though Bandar says he left for “personal reasons.”

... to the perpetrators.

Prince Bandar, who as Ambassador was under diplomatic immunity, didn't have to disappear until he could leave for "personal reasons" by being "recalled."

FALLS CHURCH, VA.: In 2001, Awlaki and the San Diego hijackers turned up together again — this time at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, a Pentagon-area mosque built with funds from the Saudi Embassy. Awlaki was recruited 3,000 miles away to head the mosque. As its imam, Awlaki helped the hijackers, who showed up at his doorstep as if on cue. He tasked a handler to help them acquire apartments and IDs before they attacked the Pentagon.

Awlaki worked closely with the Saudi Embassy. He lectured at a Saudi Islamic think tank in Merrifield, Va., chaired by Bandar. Saudi travel itinerary documents I’ve obtained show he also served as the ­official imam on Saudi Embassy-sponsored trips to Mecca and tours of Saudi holy sites. Most suspiciously, though, Awlaki fled the United States on a Saudi jet about a year after 9/11.

A cutout's most important job...

Awlaki needed a lot of help to disappear ... and he got it! Where do you suppose it came from?

As I first reported in my book, “Infiltration,” quoting from classified US documents, the Saudi-sponsored cleric was briefly detained at JFK before being released into the custody of a “Saudi representative.” A federal warrant for Awlaki’s arrest had mysteriously been withdrawn the previous day.

This timing is also very interesting, is it not? Normally, federal arrest warrants are not mysteriously withdrawn -- let alone just in time to facilitate a disappearance!

HERNDON, VA.: On the eve of the attacks, top Saudi government official Saleh Hussayen checked into the same Marriott Residence Inn near Dulles Airport as three of the Saudi hijackers who targeted the Pentagon. Hussayen had left a nearby hotel to move into the hijackers’ hotel. Did he meet with them? The FBI never found out. They let him go after he “feigned a seizure,” one agent recalled.

Hussayen "feigned a seizure" to disappear. Such a clever lad. He has even disappeared from the official story, as did they all, according to Sperry:

Hussayen’s name doesn’t appear in the separate 9/11 Commission Report, which clears the Saudis.

Poof! They're all cleared! Isn't that amazing?

Guess who else got "help" from a high-ranking Saudi, who then disappeared?

SARASOTA, FLA.: 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and other hijackers visited a home owned by Esam Ghazzawi, a Saudi adviser to the nephew of King Fahd. FBI agents investigating the connection in 2002 found that visitor logs for the gated community and photos of license tags matched vehicles driven by the hijackers. Just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks, the Saudi luxury home was abandoned. Three cars, including a new Chrysler PT Cruiser, were left in the driveway. Inside, opulent furniture was untouched.

... is to disappear ...

Esam Ghazzawi disappeared in a big hurry. That's the way it goes sometimes, especially when you're in contact with the "ringleader."

Some folks have more pull than others, apparently. The cutouts got away, but the senator chasing them ran into a stone wall.

Democrat Bob Graham, the former Florida senator who chaired the Joint Inquiry, has asked the FBI for the Sarasota case files, but can’t get a single, even heavily redacted, page released. He says it’s a “coverup.”

Of course it's a coverup. Sperry asks:

Is the federal government protecting the Saudis?

But that question is beneath consideration, is it not? The interesting question is "Why is the federal government protecting the Saudis?" But perhaps Sperry can't ask such questions in the New York Post. He does say this, though:

Case agents tell me they were repeatedly called off pursuing 9/11 leads back to the Saudi Embassy, which had curious sway over White House and FBI responses to the attacks.

... and they all did! Isn't that amazing?

Yes, curious indeed ... unless you prefer a stronger word. In my view, there is no plausible explanation, unless people in very high places wanted it to happen this way.

Just days after Bush met with the Saudi ambassador in the White House, the FBI evacuated from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, as well as Osama bin Laden family members. Bandar made the request for escorts directly to FBI headquarters on Sept. 13, 2001 — just hours after he met with the president. The two old family friends shared cigars on the Truman Balcony while discussing the attacks.

And that's how all the cutouts disappeared. Funny how that worked, isn't it? -- probably just the way it was supposed to.

Some of the cutouts didn't disappear safely enough. As Sperry notes,

A US drone killed Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.

We also know about some other cutouts who didn't disappear fast enough. We'll talk about them soon.

[to be continued]

Click here if you wish to join the discussion.

On The Trail Of The [Cutouts] Who [Set Up] The 9/11 [Patsies], Part 1: 28 Pages

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah
[holding hands] with
George W. Bush

There's been a bit of a buzz building on Capitol Hill recently over a report issued back in 2002 concerning an investigation into 9/11. If you haven't read anything about it lately, it's probably not your fault. With very few exceptions, the report in question has not been mentioned in the mainstream news for more than ten years.

As you may vaguely remember, in the early days after 9/11, former Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) chaired a Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry into the activites of certain intelligence agencies as they pertained to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Graham's inquiry resulted in an 800-page report, of which then-president George W. Bush held back 28 pages, claiming that the information they contained would be detrimental to national security. According to hints from sources who have read the report, the redacted pages concern a number of high-ranking Saudis who provided financial and other assistance to some of the "hijackers."

The Hill is slightly abuzz over this issue because earlier this year, representatives Walter B. Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-MA) were allowed to read the 28 redacted pages, and earlier this month they introduced a resolution urging president Obama to release them to the public.

I have been reading about this sporadically from a very small variety of sources, beginning with Jamie Reno's December 9 article at International Business Times [or here], which says, among other things,

Most of the allegations of links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 hijackers revolve around two enigmatic Saudi men who lived in San Diego: Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan, both of whom have long since left the United States.

In early 2000, al-Bayoumi, who had previously worked for the Saudi government in civil aviation (a part of the Saudi defense department), invited two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, to San Diego from Los Angeles. He told authorities he met the two men by chance when he sat next to them at a restaurant.

Newsweek reported in 2002 that al-Bayoumi’s invitation was extended on the same day that he visited the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles for a private meeting.

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan

Newsweek's 2002 report was called "The Saudi Money Trail" and you can read it at the Newsweek site [or here]. Other early reports worth reading include "Bush Won't Reveal Saudi 9/11 Info" from Lauren Johnston of AP via CBS [or here] and "Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role By Saudi Spies" by James Risen and David Johnston in the New York Times [or here]

Jamie Reno continues:

Al-Bayoumi arranged for the two future hijackers to live in an apartment and paid $1,500 to cover their first two months of rent. Al-Bayoumi was briefly interviewed in Britain but was never brought back to the United States for questioning.

As for Basnan, Newsweek reported that he received monthly checks for several years totaling as much as $73,000 from the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, and his wife, Princess Haifa Faisal. Although the checks were sent to pay for thyroid surgery for Basnan’s wife, Majeda Dweikat, Dweikat signed many of the checks over to al-Bayoumi’s wife, Manal Bajadr. This money allegedly made its way into the hands of hijackers, according to the 9/11 report.

Despite all this, Basnan was ultimately allowed to return to Saudi Arabia, and Dweikat was deported to Jordan.

Sources and numerous press reports also suggest that the 28 pages include more information about Abdussattar Shaikh, an FBI asset in San Diego who Newsweek reported was friends with al-Bayoumi and invited two of the San Diego-based hijackers to live in his house.

Shaikh was not allowed by the FBI or the Bush administration to testify before the 9/11 Commission or the JICI.

Reno also says:

Jones insists that releasing the 28 secret pages would not violate national security.

This tells me that Walter B. Jones does not understand what "national security" means. But that's probably not his fault. We've been hearing lies about "national security" ever since we were born.

We tend to think of "national security" as something involving the safety and security of the nation and its people -- ordinary people such as you and me and our families. And this is what our political system would like us to believe -- not because it's true, only because it makes us easier to manipulate. As it is actually used, "national security" refers to the survival and continuing tenure in office of those who use the term to justify their actions. More broadly, it also refers to the survival and continuing (or increasing!) wealth, status and privilege of those who currently enjoy such things.

As we have known for a long time, George W. Bush and his administration resisted every attempt to investigate 9/11, except for the belated whitewash which they felt they could control. And they used "national security" to prevent the release, not only of the infamous "28 pages" but of a wide variety of other information.

It doesn't take much guesswork to figure out why they did this. Clearly the information they censored must have threatened them, their position, and their supporters. They may no longer have their positions, but surely their supporters retain a stake in the matter. And unless I am badly misreading the situation, the Obama administration has far greater incentive to keep the 28 pages secret than to release them. But we shall see what happens. Unless we don't.

[Next: Part 2: No Vortex]

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Redacted FBI Timeline Contradicts Official 9/11 Fiction

Larisa Alexandrovna has put together a great introduction and companion to a February 14th news summary from Paul Thompson of History Commons (formerly and/or aka Cooperative Research).

Larisa's piece, "FBI documents contradict 9/11 Commission report", has brought the FBI document (and Paul's analysis of it) to my attention, and stirred up quite a bit of interest among other bloggers (hooray!), You should read the whole thing. Here's a teaser:

Newly-released records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request contradict the 9/11 Commission’s report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and raise fresh questions about the role of Saudi government officials in connection to the hijackers.

They raise fresh questions about the role of American government officials, too; and about the so-called "hijackers".

The nearly 300 pages of a Federal Bureau of Investigation timeline used by the 9/11 Commission as the basis for many of its findings were acquired through a FOIA request filed by Kevin Fenton, a 26 year old translator from the Czech Republic. The FBI released the 298-page “hijacker timeline” Feb. 4.

The FBI timeline reveals that alleged hijacker Hamza Al-Ghamdi, who was aboard the United Airlines flight which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, had booked a future flight to San Francisco. He also had a ticket for a trip from Casablanca to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Suicide bombers with plans for after the attack? How fascinating!!

The timeline is heavily redacted (you can see a page that's been completely obliterated at the top of this post), but there are sill are all sorts of other contradictions, as well as plenty of other evidence of official obfuscation.

As Larisa says,

READ THE DOCUMENTS: PDF pages 1-105, PDF pages 106-210, PDF pages 211-297.

If you're not up to the task of reading 300 pages and figuring out what's new in them, read the rest of Larisa's piece and then read Paul Thompson's: "2/14/2008: Newly Released FBI Timeline Reveals New Information about 9/11 Hijackers that Was Ignored by 9/11 Commission".

Thompson's sub-head reads:

Latest Findings Raise New Questions about Hijackers and Suggest Incomplete Investigation

That's putting it mildly. Just a few excerpts:

New evidence suggests that some of the hijackers were assisted by employees of the Saudi government. It has previously been reported that Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi who was paid by the Saudi government despite not doing any work, assisted hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi when they first moved to the US. The FBI timeline shows that when these two hijackers moved into their first San Diego apartment, they indicated that they had been living with Bayoumi in the apartment next door for the previous two weeks. In fact, they had been with him in that apartment since January 15, 2000, the very day they first flew into the US, arriving in Los Angeles. The timeline also reveals that hijacker Hani Hanjour was seen in Bayoumi’s apartment.

Here's more on Bayoumi, from the second page of Larisa's piece:

Much has been reported about Omar al-Bayoumi and his alleged relationship with the government of Saudi Arabia. In his recent book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, New York Times reporter Phillip Shenon discusses at length the questions surrounding Bayoumi and his ties to the Saudi government.

“Bayoumi seemed clearly to be working for some part of the Saudi government,” Shenon wrote on page 52. “He entered the United States as a business student and had lived San Diego since 1996. He was on the payroll of an aviation contractor to the Saudi government, paid about $2,800 a month, but apparently did no work for the company.”

In fact, Bayoumi was an employee of the Saudi defense contractor Dallah Avco. According to a 2002 Newsweek article about Bayoumi, Dallah Avco is “an aviation-services company with extensive contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, headed by Prince Sultan, the father of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar.”

Newsweek points to another connection between Bayoumi and Bandar: “About two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, NEWSWEEK has learned, al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who in turn signed over many of them to al-Bayoumi's wife (and her friend), Manal Ahmed Bagader. The Feds want to know: Was this well-meaning charity gone awry? Or some elaborate money-laundering scheme? A scam? Or just a coincidence?”

And here's Paul Thompson again:

Some credit cards used by the hijackers were still used in the US after 9/11. For instance, a credit card jointly owned by Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi was used twice on September 15. This helps confirm news reports from late 2001 that hijacker credit cards were used on the East Coast as late as early October 2001. At the time, a government official said that while some of the cards might have been stolen, “We believe there are additional people out there” who helped the hijackers.

When Ahmed Alghamdi arrived in the US from London on May 5, 2001, an immigration inspector apparently noted that Alghamdi commented to him that the media was distorting the facts about Osama bin Laden and that bin Laden was a good Muslim. Alghamdi also indicated that he was travelling with more than $10,000 worth of currency. Shortly after 9/11, the New York Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers reported that by the spring of 2001, US customs was investigating Alghamdi and two other future 9/11 hijackers for their connections to known al-Qaeda operatives. One British newspaper even noted that Alghamdi should have been “instantly ‘red-flagged’ by British intelligence” as he passed through London on his way to the US because of a warning about his links to al-Qaeda. It has not been explained how Alghamdi was able to pass through British and US customs, even as he was openly praising bin Laden.

When hijacker Satam Al Suqami’s passport was recovered on 9/11 on the street near the World Trade Center, it was “soaked in jet fuel.”

It has previously been reported that shortly before 9/11, hijackers Nawaf Alhamzi and Khalid Almihdhar left a bag at a mosque in Laurel, Maryland, with a note attached to it saying, “Gift for the brothers.” The FBI’s timeline identifies this mosque as the Ayah Islamic Center. But the only contents mentioned in the bag were pilot log books, receipts, and other evidence documenting the brief flight training that Alhazmi and Almihdhar underwent in San Diego in early 2000. It is unclear why they would have kept the receipts, some mentioning their names, for over a year and then left them at a mosque to be found. After 9/11, a former high-level intelligence official told journalist Seymour Hersh that “Whatever trail was left [by the hijackers] was left deliberately—for the FBI to chase.”

On March 20, 2000, either Khalid Almihdhar or Nawaf Alhazmi used a phone registered to Alhazmi to make a call from San Diego to an al-Qaeda communications hub in Sana’a, Yemen, run by Almihdhar’s father-in-law. The call lasted 16 minutes. According to the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, the call was intercepted by the NSA, which had been intercepting Alhazmi and Almihdhar’s calls for over a year, but the FBI was not informed of the hijackers’ presence in the US. The call is only briefly mentioned as a family phone call by the 9/11 Commission in a endnote, and it is not mentioned that the call was monitored.

The FBI timeline shows other intriguing hints that the hijackers had associates in the US. For instance, on September 8, 2001, hijackers Majed Moqed and Hani Hanjour went to a bank with an unnamed Middle Eastern male. This man presented a Pennsylvania driver’s license for identification, but none of the 9/11 hijackers have been reported to have a driver’s license from that state. There is also a highly redacted section hinting that a woman in Laurel, Maryland, was helping Middle Eastern men and may have had links to hijackers Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah.

Several months ago, the London Times reported on an al-Qaeda leader imprisoned in Turkey named Luai Sakra. Sakra claims to have trained six of the hijackers in Turkey, including Satam Al Suqami. The FBI’s timeline supports his account, because Al Suqami’s passport record indicates he spent much of his time between late September 2000 and early April 2001 in Turkey. Furthermore, Sakra claimed that Al Suqami was one of the hijacker leaders, and not just another “muscle” hijacker as US investigators have alleged. The FBI’s timeline supports this, because it shows that Al Suqami was frequently on the move from 1998 onwards, flying to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Malaysia, as well as Turkey, and he travelled to most of these countries more than once. This is particularly important because contributors to the History Commons have put together evidence suggesting that Sakra was a CIA asset before 9/11, which would suggest that Al Suqami and other hijackers were actually trained by a CIA asset.

It's the biggest scam ever. There's more and more and more. Thompson concludes this way:

Unfortunately, much of the FBI timeline is heavily censored, with entire pages sometimes being completely redacted. But from what we do know, this timeline indicates that many questions remain about the hijackers and the 9/11 attacks. We know that the FBI’s timeline was available to the 9/11 Commission, so why did the commission fail to mention any of the information listed above?

It’s interesting to compare the results of the 9/11 Commission with the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry that proceeded it. For instance, while the 9/11 Commission downplayed any possible ties between the hijackers and the Saudi government, the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry wrote an entire chapter on the topic. Unfortunately, all 28 pages of that chapter were censored. But Sen. Bob Graham, co-chair of the inquiry, later claimed that evidence relating to the two hijackers who lived in San Diego “presented a compelling case that there was Saudi assistance” to the 9/11 plot. He alleged that Omar al-Bayoumi in fact was a Saudi intelligence agent. He also concluded that President Bush directed the FBI “to restrain and obfuscate” investigations into these ties.

Now, we’re finally beginning to see some of what was in those missing 28 pages. One anonymous official who has seen the pages claims: “We’re not talking about rogue elements. We’re talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government.”

The 9/11 Commission also downplayed the idea that the hijackers had any assistance in the US. The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, by contrast, noted that many people who interacted with the hijackers in the US, including Omar al-Bayoumi, were under FBI investigation even before 9/11.

Unfortunately, neither the 9/11 Commission nor the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry was a complete and unbiased investigation. If this timeline reflects just some of what only the FBI knew about the hijackers one month after the attacks, one can only guess at how much more all the US agencies combined know about the hijackers now. Why is that information being kept secret?

Well ... I have a pretty good idea why all that information is being kept secret, and I could tell Paul and Larisa all about it, but they wouldn't believe me. They're not into wacky conspiracy theories. But they don't need to be. Who needs wacky conspiracy theories?

Bandar's wife sends al-Bayoumi's wife money every month through a cutout. al-Bayoumi is a Saudi intelligence agent, who has been helping the "hijackers" since the moment they arrived. Bandar is a "close personal friend" of the "president", who directed the FBI "to restrain and obfuscate" the investigations. And now most of the details are still redacted.

So ... what do you think? Was it all a mistake? Was is just a coincidence? Was it mere incompetence?

I mean, did those checks from Bandar's wife end up in the hands of al-Bayoumi's wife by accident?

Sure, they did!