13 bin Laden family members leave US on White House jet !!

[kentuck]

This is also breaking in LBN. But Senator Lautenberg, doing the job of an investigative journalist, managed to get the manifest of the flight out of Boston Logan Airport on September 19th, 2001. Lo and behold, the tail number matched the jet that the White House used to fly press members overseas...Damn! Broken by Dana Milbank
===================================================================

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0721terror-binladen21-ON.html

<snip>
The passenger list was made public by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who obtained the manifest from officials at Boston's Logan airport. Lautenberg's office was given the document in recent weeks and released it Wednesday in advance of Thursday's issuance of the final report of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

Though much was already known about the so-called "bin Laden flight," Lautenberg provided additional details, including the information that the plane, a 727 owned by DB Air and operated by Ryan International, began in Los Angeles and made stops in Orlando, Dulles and Boston before continuing on to Gander, Newfoundland, Paris, Geneva and Jeddah. The aircraft, tail number N521DB, has been chartered frequently by the White House for the press corps that travels with President Bush.

<snip>
The commission reported that there were 23 passengers and three private security guards on the bin Laden flight. However, the manifest lists 25 passengers, plus the three guards employed by CDT Training Inc. of Elmwood, N.J. After a request for permission to allow the bin Ladens to leave reached Richard A. Clarke at the National Security Council, the flight departed Logan at 11 p.m. on Sept. 19, 2001.

....

Lautenberg, in a statement, said Bush "needs to explain to the American people why his administration let this plane leave." White House spokesman Sean McCormack said the allegations that the flight should not have been allowed to leave have been "debunked by the facts."

...more

[faithnotgreed]

1. kick for truth

[merh]

2. Holy Moly! They flew them out on the jet normally chartered by the WH!

Unchenein believable. These folks have no shame and no qualms about the wrongs they commit.

Geeezzzzzzeeeeeeeeee!

We have to get them out of office, we just have to.

[dflprincess]

6. I wonder who paid for this?

n/t

[Media_Lies_Daily]

14. Three guesses....you know the drill.

[faithnotgreed]

3. this from todays wp? anyone seen this reported on tv at all...?

[MissB]

4. The only thing on tv has been the Berger stuff

And I didn't notice it in the WP.

[Champion Jack]

5. Kicked

so I can pick this up tomorrow and spread it around

[notbush]

7. A Whitehouse jet??????

Hardly.
You too can ride in this jet. It is owned by a charter company.
I don't see anything new here.
Yea some members of the Bin Laden family and other Saudies left the country on sept. 19th on a charter flight.

[kentuck]

8. DB Air was subleased by Miami Air Int'l... (Googled)

link: http://dmses.dot.gov/docimages/pdf89/278230_web.pdf

This consent order concerns violations by Miami Air International, Inc. (hereinafter
referred to as Miami Air) of 49 U.S.C. § 41712, which prohibits unfair and deceptive
practices and unfair methods of competition. Miami Air entered into contracts with DB
Air, Ltd., which in turn unlawfully engaged in air transportation as an indirect air carrier,
without the requisite economic authority from the Department. The order directs Miami
Air to cease and desist from future unlawful conduct and assesses the company $15,000
in compromise civil penalties.
Companies engaged in air transportation are required to hold economic authority from
the Department under 49 U.S.C. § 41101.1 Miami Air is an air carrier that holds such
economic authority from the Department and safety certification from the Federal
Aviation Administration under 14 CFR Part 121. DB Air, the lessee of two executively
configured Boeing 727-200 aircraft sub-leased to Miami Air, has no economic authority
itself to hold out or to provide, directly or indirectly, air transportation using these or any
other aircraft. DB Air contracted with Miami Air to provide air transportation using
aircraft leased by DB Air to Miami Air and DB Air in turn, separately contracted directly
with professional sports teams, entertainers, and other entities that were the ultimate
customers seeking air service, promising to provide them air transportation.

[kentuck]

9. And Ryan International is out of Wichita, KS

for what it's worth....???

[louis c]

11. Because it's old

doesn't mean it has no merit.

I haven't heard a satisfactory explanation yet. It seems that at least a few folks on that plane had some explaining to do, which should have taken more than a day or two.

Don't forget, the same incompetent fools who allowed this tragedy to occur were the ones who cleared the passengers to leave our country. I'd like to see a transcript of that questioning before I think that they had no connection.

[leesa]

30. You certainly aren't a very curious fellow, are you?

It's OK with you, eh?

[louis c]

10. Verrrrrry interesting

I saw a freeper sticker on a car which read, "bin Laden's with Kerry, I'm with Bush".

I wonder how that asshole would react to this story, if he could read.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

12. And just like everything else slimy and wrong the bush

cartel does, nooooo one's gonna care.

Sigh.

Don't mind me, just feeling negative tonight.

[meow2u3]

13. CARBCO* will try to spin this as.....

*(CARBCO= Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and Bush Co.)

...the bin Ladens being deported to Saudi Arabia for the actions of their no-good brother, Osama.

Just watch. I wouldn't put it past them..

[harmonyguy]

27. CARBCO - LOL! No-Carb Government.

This country is ready for a no-CARB government !

HG

[buycitgo]

15. what a steaming LOAD, re: Dale Watson

there's a link that quotes him as saying JUST THE OPPOSITE

I know MMoore had it, cause it was part of a response to Isikoff's BS 'debunking' of the release of Saudi nationals

I can't wait to see how Watson, who was NAMED by Kristen Breitweiser as one of the officials who THREATENED her, btw, reconciles these two stories

going looking for link

[freetobegay]

16. Kick

:kick:

[Octafish]

17. Bet that plane was wired for sound.

No wonder they let the bin Ladens go. The plane was bugged.

Of course, the stupid morons probably thought the bin Ladens would spill their guts out at the first whiff of get-away over the Atlantic. That's just how the press operates.

[buycitgo]

18. from Moore's site

nothing from Watson yet, but Clarke, apparently has changed his story

his original one went like this, according to Craig Unger, who rips Isikoff the tool to pieces in this link; first article
http://www.michaelmoore.com/warroom/smackdown/

When first interviewed on this subject in 2003, Clarke said that his approval for evacuating the Saudis had been conditional on the FBI’ s vetting them. “I asked to make sure that no one inappropriate was leaving. I asked them if they had any objection to Saudis leaving the country at a time when aircraft were banned from flying.” He noted that he assumed the F.B.I. had vetted the bin Ladens prior to September 11.

Then he added, “I have no idea if they did a good job. I'm not in any position to second guess the FBI.”

And there's the rub. Given the long history of errors made by the FBI in investigating counterterrorism, how can one possibly accept their infallibility as unquestioningly as Isikoff does.I interviewed two FBI agents who participated in the Saudi evacuation and they made it clear that they did not subject the passengers to a formal criminal investigation. One rather astonishing finding of the 9/11 Commission is that though the rubble was still very much ablaze at the World Trade Center a few days after the attacks, the FBI did not even bother to check the Saudi passenger lists against its terror watch lists.

There are many other unanswered questions. "It is clear that the Saudi charities were being used as cover for Al Qaeda, but it is unclear how far up the chain of authority that went," Clarke said. Do we know for certain none of the Saudis on the flights could have shed light on that crucial question? Were any of them tied to the charities in question? Did any of them have any information on bin Laden? Did we let a treasure trove of intelligence leave?

[Oilwellian]

19. Most interesting part of the article

The flight manifest lists 13 people with the bin Laden surname and others with Brazilian, British, Indonesian and Yemeni passports. Passenger Omar Awad bin Laden had lived with Abdullah bin Laden, a nephew of Osama bin Laden who was involved in forming the U.S. branch of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth in Alexandria, Va. Federal agents raided the office this spring in connection with a terrorism-related investigation. The FBI has described the group as "a suspected terrorist organization."

So let me get this straight...the FBI "scrubbed" the passenger list and said everything's oooookay, yet one of the Bin Laden's was being investigated by the FBI for suspected terrorist activities?

[buycitgo]

22. WRONGO!!!!!

the most interesting part of this story is what isn't included, probably cause it didn't deal specifically with the story of Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz:


The full ramifications of allowing all these members of the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family to leave the country would only become clear several months later, when the war in Afghanistan was in full swing. On March 28, 2002, acting on electronic intercepts of telephone calls, heavily armed Pakistani commando units, accompanied by American Special Forces and FBI SWAT teams, raided a two-story house in the suburbs of Faisalabad, in western Pakistan. They had received tips that one of the people in the house was Abu Zubaydah, the 30-year-old chief of operations for al-Qaida who had been head of field operations for the USS Cole bombing and who was a close confidant of Osama bin Laden's.

On Sunday, March 31, three days after the raid, the interrogation of Zubaydah began. For the particulars of this episode there is one definitive source, Gerald Posner's "Why America Slept," and according to it, the CIA used two rather unusual methods for the interrogation. First, they administered thiopental sodium, better known under its trademarked name, Sodium Pentothal, through an IV drip, to make Zubaydah more talkative. Since the prisoner had been shot three times during the capture, he was already hooked up to a drip to treat his wounds and it was possible to administer the drug without his knowledge. Second, as a variation on the good cop-bad cop routine, the CIA used two teams of debriefers. One consisted of undisguised Americans who were at least willing to treat Zubaydah's injuries while they interrogated him. The other team consisted of Arab-Americans posing as Saudi security agents, who were known for their brutal interrogation techniques. The thinking was that Zubaydah would be so scared of being turned over to the Saudis, infamous for their public executions in Riyadh's Chop-Chop Square, that he would try to win over the American interrogators by talking to them.

In fact, exactly the opposite happened. "When Zubaydah was confronted with men passing themselves off as Saudi security officers, his reaction was not fear, but instead relief," Posner writes. "The prisoner, who had been reluctant even to confirm his identity to his American captors, suddenly started talking animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would torture and then kill him. Zubaydah asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the ruling Saudi family. He then provided a private home number and cell phone number from memory. 'He will tell you what to do,' Zubaydah promised them."

The name Zubaydah gave came as a complete surprise to the CIA. It was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the owner of so many legendary racehorses and one of the most westernized members of the royal family.

Zubaydah spoke to his faux Saudi interrogators as if they, not he, were the ones in trouble. He said that several years earlier the royal family had made a deal with al-Qaida in which the House of Saud would aid the Taliban so long as al-Qaida kept terrorism out of Saudi Arabia. Zubaydah added that as part of this arrangement, he dealt with Prince Ahmed and two other members of the House of Saud as intermediaries, Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, a nephew of King Fahd's, and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, a 25-year-old distant relative of the king's. Again, he furnished phone numbers from memory.

this isn't new, but should bear repeating, as this prince DIED of a "heart attack or stroke" at age 43, in a Saudi operating room

http://www.thinkingpeace.com/Lib/lib006.html

way down at bottom of page; from excerpt of Unger's book at above site

[buycitgo]

20. Dale Watson's take on this, from 2001

''Dale Watson, the FBI's former head of counter-terrorism, said that, while the bureau identified the Saudis who were on the plane, "they were not subject to serious interrogations."3 ''


3. Tyler, Patrick E. "Fearing Harm, Bin Laden Kin Fled from U.S."
The New York Times. 30 September 2001 (p. A1).


http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flight.htm

this is from Snopes, which gives an incomplete version of this story, based on recent debunkings, debunking of debunkings, etc.

but here's that site, in which they discuss the FBI's contradictory stories regarding just how carefully they questioned the Saudis

I remember reading that only about thirty were questioned AT ALL before they left. could be that those were the ones who weren't listed on the terror watch list, but who knows

and don't you love this snopeslike, weasely caveat at the very end:

Note that the former statement doesn't say that bin Laden relatives weren't questioned; it says they weren't subjected to "serious interrogations." What level of questioning Mr. Watson would have considered a "serious interrogation" is difficult to determine (and one always has to be wary that former government officials often have axes to grind and frame their statements in such a way as to make their former employers look bad).

recall that they jumped all over Moore, and down his throat, and seem to really be going out of their way to fall in line with the whitewashers with this egregious commentary

whatcha think?

[sheelz]

21. Hello everyone!

I've been reading this boards for a couple of weeks and I'm soooo happy that a found this great board. Keep up the great work! :yourock:


I could use your help! Repukies are blaming Clark, any Suggestions??:

[buycitgo]

23. vilkommen!

got anything more detailed?

what, exactly, are they going after him for?

there was so much disinfo about him

that said, he worries me over having changed his story in re: the saudis' leaving, which is being discussed right here

[sheelz]

24. Hannity idiots say...

Clarke arranged their flight. So, a lefty did it to the US again.

[shraby]

25. Find the transcript from the 9/11 commission

that covers when they interviewed Clarke. You will have the story of what he did. He let them go because they had been questioned. He didn't do the questioning.

[sheelz]

26. Thanks shraby! !

[MGKrebs]

28. Let's see, where to start...

Carlyle Group was having a board meeting in DC on 9/11. This would have included Bush Sr. and Saudi royals and Bin ladens (Which might only be one person! lol.)

Planes crash. Saudi's call their embassy. Bush calls the White House. bin Ladens start working the cell phones to round up their people.

Saudi embassy calls the White House with the plan. It's already essentially pre-approved because Sr. already called and paved the way. By the time Richard Clark hears about it, FBI Director Mueller (Bush flack) is already trying to call him to tell him to approve it and don't ask questions. Who the hell is Clark to defy the FBI Director?

Just a guess.

[newyawker99]

33. Hi sheelz!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[scottxyz]

29. This is what $1.87 billion will buy you

(The amount of money "donated" by the House of Saud to the House of Bush over the years, according to Craig Unger's book.)

Someone should do a MasterCard-style commercial on this whole mess.

[NightOwwl]

31. On MSNBC this morning

Here is a link to the video. I can't get it to play so I don't know if it's just a clip or the whole report.

Scroll down about 1/2 a page. Thie video is titled: 'Bin Laden's family flight'

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5473034 /

[MercutioATC]

32. We LOVE Lautenberg!!! (air traffic controllers)

The current administration has the desire to privatize air traffic control by changing it into a "quasi-government corporation" with the majority of board seats occupied by airline execs. Of course, safety would still be the highest priority...... :eyes:

To us, this is akin to privatizing the FDA and letting drug company execs run it. It's a safety issue.

Frank Lautenberg (his usual crusading self) has pledged that the administration will not privatize ATC "as long as there is a breath of life left in me."

Politicians don't usually adopt an issue on such a personal level. Frank Lautenberg is a great Senator.

[TNOE]

34. A Kick for the Freeps Lurking

:kick: