Is the House of  Saud Financing Global Terror with Bush's Consent?

YOWUSA.COM, 27-October-02
Marshall Masters

The House of Saud controls 25% of world oil reserves, and gas-guzzling Americans pay them approximately one hundred billion dollars a year for Saudi "sweet crude."  (The term "sweet crude" is used in the oil business as a designation for crude oil that contains little or no sulfur.)  But how sweet is it now that it has become apparent that corrupt Saudi royals have financed, armed and set loose a horde of bloodthirsty Islamists upon the free world. Worse yet, it appears that President Bush wants this to be the second best-kept secret in the world, next to 1947 Roswell incident.  Yet there is a subtle difference ­ — at least the alleged extraterrestrials came in peace.

The American mainstream has a solid understanding of just who is, and who is not friendly to America. For example, after 9-11, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), harshly chastised Rudy Giuliani for refusing a $10 million donation from a Saudi Arabian prince who insisted that we blame ourselves for the attack.  Last August, she was ousted in the Georgia primary election by challenger Denise Majette.

The point is that while we may be dumb sometimes, we're not stupid!   Yet, President Bush, who has up to this point offered a total vacuum of leadership when it comes to the economy, is now moving to betray 9-11 families.

The 9-11 Families Fight Back

Around the same time that Denise Majette was beating McKinney like a drum, relatives of the 9-11 victims showed the guts to file a lawsuit against the people who funded the attack.

CBSNEWS.COM, August 16, 2002
Sept. 11 Families Sue Saudis, Sudan

 (CBS) Some 600 relatives who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have filed a $100 trillion lawsuit against the Sudanese government and Saudi officials, banks and charities, claiming they helped finance Osama bin Laden's network. 

However, lead attorney Ron Motley said Friday that the $100 trillion complaint was being amended and would likely be scaled down asking for damages in excess of $1 trillion in future filings.

The 15-count federal lawsuit seeks to cripple banks, charities and some members of the Saudi royal family as a deterrent to terrorist financing schemes.

Another attorney in the case, Allan Gerson, said Friday that one aim of the lawsuit was to choke off the financial support for terrorist networks.

"Until now, sponsoring terrorism has been a cost-free operation," Gerson said on CBS News' "The Early Show." He said "we intend to stop that."

The lawsuit is likely to cause post 9-11 friction between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, reports CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer.

The Bush administration has been careful not to blame the Saudi government for the attacks in its drive to build a coalition for its war against terrorism. But the relatives' lawsuit bluntly accuses Saudi officials and institutions of supporting terrorists.

"That kingdom sponsors terrorism," Motley told reporters. "This is an insidious group of people."

Are the 9-11 families howling at the moon because the people they're suing wouldn't dare think of supporting global terrorism?  Not if you see what our British allies were saying a month after 9-11. 

Guardian Unlimited, November 21, 2001
House of Saud looks close to collapse

Modern Saudi Arabia is supported by the US and Britain in order to guarantee a steady flow of oil. Their war on terrorism could destroy it.

While tabloid cheerleaders and spin doctors have been celebrating the fall of Kabul and the retreat of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, the mood in other parts of Whitehall is much more sombre. For senior ministerial advisers know that the real cancer in the Middle East is not Afghanistan, but Saudi Arabia.

Fears are growing that the important but anachronistic country which spawned Osama bin Laden and many of the September 11 hijackers faces the real prospect of a coup. "The Saudi royals have been paying off the terrorists with danegeld for a long while," says one well-placed source. "There is a danger that well-educated returnees from US colleges who cannot get work will make common cause with the people of the souks and overthrow them.

This week, newspapers, including the Economist and Time magazine, published extensive and flattering advertisements placed by the Saudi regime - a clear indication of its concern about the future, as well as the bad publicity seeping out about its past links with Bin Laden and the Taliban."

So what has it come down to?  The 9-11 families have drawn a legal line in the sand and, like cockroaches fleeing the light, the Saudis are pulling their money out of America and diving for cover. Additionally, they are hiring PR firms to spin up some good will for them and wailing to a sympathetic American President who now seems to be more concerned about the sensitivity of the Arab street as opposed to that of the American street.  The net result is that the White House could be moving against the 9-11 families in favor of their "Saudi friends" and shortly!

The New York Times, October 24, 2002
U.S. May Ask Court to Dismiss a $1 Trillion Suit Linking Saudis to Al Qaeda and 9/11

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is closely monitoring a private lawsuit accusing members of the Saudi royal family of ties to Al Qaeda, and may move in a federal court here to dismiss or delay the suit, which was brought by relatives of Sept. 11 victims, according to administration officials.

Government lawyers, the officials said, are trying to determine whether the case threatens to damage Saudi-American relations, which would give them reason to block the suit. The suit seeks $1 trillion in damages and is being pursued here by nearly 3,000 of the relatives. 

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he knew of no plans by the United States to take action in court, but he said the issue of the lawsuit had been raised in recent meetings of top American and Saudi officials.

"The Saudis have made their concerns known at a senior level," he said.

Mr. Gerson, an international law specialist, said he was not surprised that the government would consider intervening to derail the lawsuit.

"There will probably be an effort by the government to seek dismissal or deferral of the case on the grounds that at this particularly sensitive juncture in U.S.-Saudi relations, a suit like this would put the interests of private claimaints ahead of the interests of state," he said.

He is optimistic that the courts would reject such a move.

While Mr. Gerson is optimistic that an American court would move to reject a bid by the White House to deny the 9-11 families their right to pursue legal remedies against the people who funded the murders of their loved ones, the pressure remains. 

NYPOST.COM, August 28, 2002
PERFIDIOUS PRINCES, CONT.

The Saudis are up in arms over a trillion-dollar racketeering and unlawful death lawsuit filed by those relatives against, among others, top members of the Saudi royal family. 

No wonder the princes are mad: The lawsuit may well blow the lid off the still largely untold story behind 9/11 - how the House of Saud secretly bankrolled Osama bin Laden, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

While we normally look askance at such crusading litigation, this one serves a social purpose beyond enriching a gaggle of lawyers.

On one level, it seeks to choke off U.S.-based funding for terrorism by freezing the assets of the Saudi royals, eight Islamic foundations, various Middle East banks and the Sudanese government.

More important, it seeks to accomplish what the Bush administration refuses to investigate, at least openly: the extent of the Riyadh royals' bankrolling of Islamic terrorism.

Are we speaking rashly when we accuse the White House of trying to cover-up Saudi financing of terror, or does history speak for itself?

National Review, July 1, 2002
Blind Eye to the Saudis, Petro-dollars fuel Palestinian terrorism, yet State sits still.

 On Fox News Sunday yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell told host Tony Snow, "We have  been very appreciative of the role that Saudi Arabia has played, and especially Crown Prince Abdullah, in putting forward a vision for the Palestinian people of how we can find a solution to this crisis."

Powell's remark was bizarre enough, but even more so when put into context. It was in response to a question from Snow about the Saudis giving money explicitly to the families of Palestinian homicide bombers — a charge the Secretary of State all but acknowledged. The best he could muster in terms of moral clarity was that "that this kind of payment [to organizations such as Hamas] should stop."

With the Saudis incentivizing suicide bombings by doling out cash to the perpetrators' families after-the-fact, exactly what sort of "vision" are the Saudis providing for the Palestinians? It would seem that without the benefit of moral relativism, the Saudis might even seem like an enemy — perhaps because they are.

The blind eye being turned to Saudis funding families of known terrorists is symptomatic of a larger problem at the State Department. In spite of mounting — some might say overwhelming — evidence that the Saudis are not our friends, careerists at State have doggedly maintained its infatuation with the House of Saud in the same way a naïve teenage girl refuses to believe her loving boyfriend has been making the rounds with the rest of the cheerleading squad.

In a nutshell, President Bush and Colin Powell are doing everything possible to prevent the House of Saud from being held up to the light of truth by the American people. God forbid the American people should see who the Saudis really are in the clear light of day.