New Details on FBI Aid for Saudis After 9/11

international | crime and justice | other press

Wednesday March 30, 2005 14:51

by redjade

FBI aiding & abetting the escape of suspects from the scene of a crime

What a laugh:
→ FBI says: "we'd do that for anybody if they felt they were threatened - we wouldn't characterize that as special treatment."

New Details on F.B.I. Aid for Saudis After 9/11

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/27/politics/27exodus.html?ex=1269579600&en=e2d6f668130376a2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

The episode has been retold so many times in the last three and a half years that it has become the stuff of political legend: in the frenzied days after Sept. 11, 2001, when some flights were still grounded, dozens of well-connected Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, managed to leave the United States on specially chartered flights.

Now, newly released government records show previously undisclosed flights from Las Vegas and elsewhere and point to a more active role by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in aiding some of the Saudis in their departure.

The F.B.I. gave personal airport escorts to two prominent Saudi families who fled the United States, and several other Saudis were allowed to leave the country without first being interviewed, the documents show.

The Saudi families, in Los Angeles and Orlando, requested the F.B.I. escorts because they said they were concerned for their safety in the wake of the attacks, and the F.B.I. - which was then beginning the biggest criminal investigation in its history - arranged to have agents escort them to their local airports, the documents show.

But F.B.I. officials reacted angrily, both internally and publicly, to the suggestion that any Saudis had received preferential treatment in leaving the country.

"I say baloney to any inference we red-carpeted any of this entourage," an F.B.I. official said in a 2003 internal note. Another F.B.I. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this week regarding the airport escorts that "we'd do that for anybody if they felt they were threatened - we wouldn't characterize that as special treatment."

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profiling the suspects that the FBI helped to get away....

Tue Apr 05, 2005 17:44

Osama's recruits well schooled
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,12742245,00.html

The typical recruit to al-Qa'ida is Western-educated and has a wealthy, professional background, according to a new study.

The analysis of 500 members of Osama bin Laden's organisation has turned Western experts' presumptions about al-Qa'ida upside down.

Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist who conducted the study, said he assumed it would find that most recruits were poor and ill-educated.

"The common stereotype is that terrorism is a product of poor, desperate, naive, single young men from Third World countries, vulnerable to brainwashing and recruitment into terror," he said.

However, his study showed 75 per cent of the al-Qa'ida members were from upper-middle-class homes and that many were married with children; 60 were college-educated, often in Europe or the US.

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New Details on FBI Aid for Saudis After 9/11

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