Jon Gold
7/11/2009

A long time ago, I spent some time looking into the flights that took members of the Saudi Royals, as well as members of the Bin Laden family out of the country in the days, and weeks after 9/11. Here is what I found.

According to Richard Clarke during his testimony (yea, yea, call me lazy for linking to Michael Moore's site) at both the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the 9/11 Commission Hearings, he stated the following:

"Now, what I recall is that I asked for flight manifests of everyone on board and all of those names need to be directly and individually vetted by the FBI before they were allowed to leave the country. And I also wanted the FBI to sign off even on the concept of Saudis being allowed to leave the country. And as I recall, all of that was done. It is true that members of the Bin Laden family were among those who left. We knew that at the time. I can't say much more in open session, but it was a conscious decision with complete review at the highest levels of the State Department and the FBI and the White House." Testimony of Richard Clarke, Former Counterterrorism Chief, National Security Council, before The Senate Judiciary Committee, September 3, 2003."

"I was making or coordinating a lot of decisions on 9/11 and the days immediately after. And I would love to be able to tell you who did it, who brought this proposal to me, but I don't know. Since you pressed me, the two possibilities that are most likely are either the Department of State, or the White House Chief of Staff's Office. But I don't know." Testimony of Richard A. Clarke before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, March 24, 2004."

One of the individuals on those flights was Osama Bin Laden's brother, Khalil Bin Laden. On July 21st 2004, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey posted a flight manifest showing the name of Khalil Bin Laden.

In October 2003, Vanity Fair released an article written by Craig Unger entitled, "Saving the Saudis" that said, "Khalil bin Laden, who boarded a plane in Orlando that eventually took him back to Saudi Arabia, won the attention of Brazilian investigators for possible terrorist connections. According to a Brazilian paper, he had business connections in the Brazilian province of Minas Gerais, not far from the tri-border region, an alleged center for training terrorists."

On August 22nd 2004, CNN reports that an addendum released by the 9/11 Commission, "states that all the Saudi nationals were screened by the FBI to make certain they were not a threat to national security, and that no terrorists escaped from the United States on any of the Saudi flights."

If the allegations regarding Khalil's connection to terrorism are true, then in my opinion, either the State Department, or the Bush White house aided and abetted a "terrorist" in the days after 9/11, and the 9/11 Commission, for whatever reason, decided not to tell us about it.