Meet the new news, same as the old news (apologies to The Who):

The Drudge Report has on its front page a link to a Financial Times story, September 11 report raises Saudi question, which states (in part)

Despite the deletions demanded by the administration, the report contains evidence indicating the Saudis may have been linked to supporters of the September 11 hijackers. It focuses on Omar al-Bayoumi, who some in the FBI believed to be a Saudi intelligence agent. The Saudi government has denied the allegation.

Mr Bayoumi played a vital role in establishing Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two of the hijackers, when they arrived in the US. US intelligence agencies knew as early as 1999 that the two were linked with al-Qaeda and had attended a CIA-monitored meeting of the terror network in Malaysia in 2000. Mr Bayoumi met the pair in Los Angeles after leaving a meeting at the Saudi consulate.

This is not exactly new. We posted comments about that back on November 24, 2002. We even diagrammed the money trail. Here it is (again):



And we wrote at the time, "... this flap should spur a proper investigation about Saudi connections to al Qaeda."

Why the renewed interest? Perhaps the attention to those 16 words, along with the finger-pointing by the CIA and White House, have caused the entire situaiton (terrorism, 9-11, Iraq war) to be viewed with fresh eyes.


posted by Quiddity at 7/24/2003 08:02:00 PM