Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since 2002 | Hacker News Reader

Saudi Ties to 9/11 Detailed in Documents Suppressed Since 2002

theintercept.com

201 pointsazazqadir105 comments

For anyone looking for a primer on jihad, and the influence of Saudi Wahhabism here is a great read: https://www.amazon.com/Future-Jihad-Terrorist-Strategies-aga...

Walid Phares wrote 10 years ago that Europe was going to experience a wave of attacks, and also foresaw the Arab Spring.

To be fair a prediction of unrest in the middle east/Africa doesn't require much insight. I predict there will be unrest for the next 50 years at least.

It doesn't help there are 1st world influences mucking up the natural ecosystem there. For example, US attempting to overthrow Assad is not a natural process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world/middleeast/us-relies...

Leaving aside how much of your statement is true, there is no such thing as natural process in international relations.

The only concept approaching that would be social darwinism, but from that perspective it would be quite "natural".

Dude. We talking about animals here? Their natural ecosystem? People deserve more respect than that.

Ecosystem: a complex network or interconnected system.

There's hardly anything "natural" about human ecosystems, or human relationships for that matter.

Depends on your definition of natural. The religious claim of 'special creation', esp. w.r.t. humans has it easy here:

> existing in nature and not made or caused by people : coming from nature

This definition really stems from man's early assumption that we are distinctly "different" from all other natural things.

But reality tells us otherwise: People are a part of nature; they are natural. It's easier to discuss in terms of what isn't the same instead of what is the same. And that is, we are the smartest known species (being the sole species with self-consciousness is still up for debate). Therefore everything people do is natural.

So either everything humans do is natural or nothing humans do is natural. Either way, it's incorrect to say that 1st world actions in the Middle East are any more "unnatural" than what the indigenous people do.

That was kinda my point. As long as they're being okay neighbors and keeping the human rights violations in line, IMHO countries deserve self determination without the superpowers bullying via overthrowing (Assad)--or just plain invading (eg Ukraine).

That's a reasonable point (although it's not like Assad is short on human rights violations), but implying there's some sort of "natural line of development" that would have happened without interaction with the west really strikes me as (unintentionally) racist.

No, I was making an obtuse reference to non-interference. Perhaps a poor metaphor.

For those who don't know Walid Phares was a high ranking political official in a Christian religious militia responsible for civilian massacres during Lebanon's civil war. Now he's a favorite Islam "scholar" for right-wing reactionaries in the U.S.

He may be a demagogue. But is his analysis wrong?

If Saudi Arabia is linked to 9/11 we need to have a serious look at the past 15 years and reevaluate our entire foreign policy justification

You've been listening to the wrong people for the past 15 years if you think 9/11 had anything to do with US foreign policy.

You have the logic of the parent's comment reversed. However, a case can be made that US support for the Taliban against the USSR contributed in some way.

The US didn't support the Taliban against the USSR. The Taliban came in to existence after the Afghan-Soviet war. Matter of fact, many of the Mujahideen supported by the US during the war later fought against Taliban.

eh?

If I've understood correctly, the point the GP was making was that 9/11 attacks were used as a cover for the foreign policy decisions rather than attempting to hold the perpetrators to account.

For example, what did Iraq have to do with 9/11? Nothing. What did Libya have to do with 9/11? Nothing. What did Yemen have to do with 9/11? Nothing. Did Guantanamo help keep the US safer? By many accounts, it mainly acted as fuel for the fire.

By declaring a 'war on terror' rather than targeting the specific groups involved in the 9/11 attacks, the US can now be engaged in perpetual war. How is that going to help make the US safer?

The actions only really make sense when you take into account the military-industrial complex and the desire for imperialism. 9/11 was just a convenient excuse used to push forward on those fronts.

The US has been in perpetual war ever since WW2. They just rebrand it as the times move on. That said, if anyone wants to trace the strife in the Middle East to its rightful owners just go look at European Colonialism and their slicing, dicing,and merging, of different groups in the early 1900s.

The US has been in perpetual war ever since its founding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_Uni...

While colonialism certainly didn't help, the Middle East has been a sliced, diced, merged region of perpetual war since the beginning of recorded history, and undoubtedly before.

i suspect this is not a shocking story to government, so I wouldn't expect much change here...

If?

Justification?

I hate to sound confronting, but anyone living in a western counrty which leadership sees these documents as the reason to reevaluate its relationship with Saudi Arabia should be scared by his leadership's incompetence:

Those documents aren't needed to see that the whole Saudi Establishment is the no. 1 reason for jihadist terrorism. Just look at the massive investments the Saudis made since the 1950s to recruite, edjucate and influence muslim clerics basically everywhere in the world. And boy, need I say that civil rights wasn't on their curriculum?!

The Saud Family wants the radicalization of Islam for power reasons that are comparable to the situation of the Papal States and catholic influence over christian countries hundreds of years ago. It's not Islam that is cancerous, it is the Saud Family.

This doco (Bitter Lake) suggests they don't want radicalisation at all:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02gyz6b/adam-curtis-bi...

It claims the Saud family needed to appease conservative clerics to maintain power, so that's why they sponsored all these fanatical clerics. They kicked the can down the road and now their chickens are coming home to roost.

They are still part of the problem if they sponsor these fanatics.

Yeah absolutely, but the doco argues they aren't doing it to create some parallel of Catholicism, but rather as a way to appease the extremists who could have toppled them from power 50 years ago. The trouble is, those schools have now created a load of brainwashed idiots who are now causing trouble.

It is one thing if you spread internally crazy ideologies or if you spend considerable resources to go out there and try to subvert every society you possibly can.

Saudi education literally teaches children that they must wage jihad against the infidels (to spread their faith) and that's after 9/11 when they supposedly reviewed their textbooks for children to remove all texts that might spread hate.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05...

I say if that's the only way the Saud family can hold onto power then it's not worth supporting them.

These guys have done more to make Islam look bad than anyone else in the last decades combined.

> I say if that's the only way the Saud family can hold onto power then it's not worth supporting them.

Who do you think will be in power if the Saudis aren't?

> Who do you think will be in power if the Saudis aren't

The Hashemites

Why I oppose this view completely (please don't take this personally, I mean what the movie conveys) apart from leaving out the question of Arabian Nationality: You don't need to spread Wahabism globally to quite some local clerics in your country. But the latter is what the Saudis spent much effort in. For decades they've flown in Clerics or Soon-To-Be-Clerics from countries all over the world, putting them in their religous universities for some years and then sending them back as a measure to spread radicalism into other countries.

Boko Haram is direct descendent of this policy.

I can give a strong recommendation for Inside the Kingdom by Robert Lacey - someone mentioned it the last time I recommended Bitter Lake on HN.

http://www.robertlacey.com/?q=book/inside-kingdom

[NB Bitter Lake is awesome for both content and style].

A most excellent documentary, well worth a viewing.

As have stated other film critics [1] this documentation takes a rather one-sided approach in that it's basically the fault of the west (and of the USSR).

It seem to lack fact checking and leaves out one of the main issues surrounding modern arabic history: the delayed formation of nation-states and the threat modernism posed to existing, usually aristocratic power structures.

Specifically Saudi-Arabia felt threatened by movements like Pan-Arabism and Ba'athism and used religeous radicalism as an ideology to counter them.

Yes, the cold-war factions quickly found their adversaries on either side but it doesn't take a grain away from the pile of guilt the Saudi Establishment has amassed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_(film)#Reception

From what I can see pretty much every analysis of something like the recent war in Afghanistan has its own perspective and it's only by reading different accounts that you can get any idea of what actually happened.

[e.g. I've read multiple accounts of the "why can't the Paras install a washing machine in a hospital" incident - each from wildly different perspectives].

I guess this need to get different perspective might be obvious to trained historian - but my degree is in CS :-)

> the delayed formation of nation-states

Do you think that between the British, the French, the Russians, and the Ottomans all controlling the region, the development of nation-states may have been delayed by understandable reasons.

I think so. Or to put it in another perspective: Nations often (if not mostly or everytime) came into being by an outside threat.

USA = the British England = The French/Catholic Church Germany = France Poland = Germany and Russia

and so on. Threats make possible that people see an "us". I very much like the term "imagined communities" (Benedict Anderson) in this regard.

> As have stated other film critics [1] this documentation takes a rather one-sided approach in that it's basically the fault of the west (and of the USSR).

This is also a major cultural problem to overcome for Muslims before they can be able to build enduring and prospering societies.

The thing is that every major power constantly meddles in the affairs of everyone else and it will never end, that's for sure. The Russians do it to the West, the West to the Russians, same as the Chinese, the Japanese and Indians do.

Yet these societies are not constantly on the verge of collapse and total chaos.

It is because these societies are more resilient to outside influence, because members of these societies feel more strongly connected to their government and to other members of their societies.

On the other hand in many Muslim societies I see tribal attitudes, one clan against all other clans. One Muslim group might even declare another Muslim group as an enemy on the basis of the smallest imaginable disagreement and start total war. No wonder their governments can be toppled and controlled from the outside if many don't feel a strong connection to their own nation and people.

Here this belief that all bad that has happened to you in your life is primarily caused by the US, the Soviets or more generally the infidels gives them an easy way to redirect their energy towards useless fighting (often among each other) instead of working together to improve their own societies.

This is a bad motivator for progress and nothing good or useful will ever come out of it.

If you face outside meddling then work hard on strengthening your own society so you can handle that stress, because it will never, ever stop.

> this belief that all bad that has happened to you in your life is primarily caused by the US, the Soviets or more generally the infidels gives them an easy way to redirect their energy

Exactly! In general, everything is the fault of the west/infidels. You see this in nowadays Turkey. And that alone says a lot about the state of muslim countries, since Turkey used to be a beacon of progress (Genocide aside).

I think Atatürk is rolling over in his grave for quite some years now.

Islam obviously doesn't equal jihad as proven by >1000 years of history, but do you think civil rights are "on Iran's curriculum", to pick a Muslim country as far from Saudi Arabia both religiously and politically as possible?

I don't know is Saudi Arabia sponsored directly 9/11 but what is clear is that Saudi Arabia is the main sponsor across the world of wahabism/sunni extremism, of which Al Quaeda, ISIS, etc are the direct offsprings.

Some of the Saudi royal family ( /= Saudi Arabia) appear to have sponsored 9/11, at least indirectly. On the official level, they stopped giving the US intelligence on Bin Laden in the mid 90's, since they knew that if caught, he would spill the beans on a lot of Saudi dark deeds, past and present.

I'm not sure of Gary Johnson's position on this, but I know Jill Stein agrees that Saudi Arabia should not be US' partner anymore, and that US should stop arming Saudi Arabia.

Even Bernie Sanders wanted US to remain a partner of Saudi Arabia to "get rid of ISIS", but I don't think he ever thought it through too much.

There is one mainstream candidate who is against an alliance with Saudi Arabia, and his name is Donald Trump.

(But but but he's a racist!!!!)

s/a racist/completely unfit for running even a small town, let alone a large country/

Yet perfectly competent at running a multi-billion dollar corporation... The cognitive dissonance is strong.

His mom was and his children are, that's for sure.

If I ran my company with the same "competence" Trump ran his, I would have gone out of business a long time ago.

Actually, evidence says he's not. He started in 1987 with $1 billion, and has tripled that in ~30 years. But simply putting the initial investment into index funds would have made a 13x ROI. So he's significantly underperformed the stock market. In fact, he's barely kept up with inflation. That's far from perfectly competent, any money manager with that record would be a laughing stock.

http://fortune.com/2015/08/20/donald-trump-index-funds/

> "Even Bernie Sanders wanted US to remain a partner of Saudi Arabia to "get rid of ISIS", but I don't think he ever thought it through too much."

Sanders has built his popularity on his domestic policies. His record on foreign policy is somewhat less stellar.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/bernie-sanders-troubli...

If the West would have bombed Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan and would have taken their oil we might be better off today.

Saudia Arabia is notorious for sponsoring mosques here in the EU that only ever seem to produce Salafi radicals and Jihadists which is in contrast to other Muslim communities that seem to have less of that problem.

Some countries in the EU already banned this influence from Saudi Arabia as it is widely considered as harmful to our societies.

But there are also some Muslim countries that did the same as they also consider their ideology as aggressive and inherently dangerous. (some of the Central Asian Muslim countries)

>If the West would have bombed Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan and would have taken their oil we might be better off today.

We never learn, do we?

What would you propose? Leaving a country alone that backstabs us and incites fanatics to attack us while pretending to be our friend?

Just look at what resources they have and what they potentially could do with it if they openly declared that the West is their enemy.

I'm quite sure that no one will allow Saudi Arabia to use its resources against the West. If they do we'll take all they have away from them.

By the way: It is absolutely legitimate to retaliate with force when you are under attack by another nation.

The problem is if you attack Saudi Arabia, most if not all Arab countries will be on the side of SA, which would start a major conflict.

"Much of the information in the 28 pages is not new and has been mentioned in previously released documents on the 9/11 investigation. As such, the public release of these suppressed pages is unlikely to precipitate major changes in the relationship between the United States and the Saudi government. In a statement issued on Friday, the Saudi Embassy in the United States said that it “welcomes the release” of the suppressed pages, saying that they exonerate Riyadh of any direct role in the attacks."

If so then I really don't get why they would suppress these at all.

> "exonerate Riyadh of any direct role in the attacks"

And indirectly?

You are expected to read the PR pieces, not think about their content. Critical thinking is dangerous and sign of subversion of the system.

My opinion is that a branch of their government has gone rogue. But that puts SA elite in very uncomfortable position - their later kings are reformers and progressives (baby steps, baby steps) with somewhat strained relationship with the clergy. But they either cannot control their government - implying they are weak or admit they are involved - which is casus belli for the US.

I'm guessing they've suppressed them to prevent the public from wanting to start a war with the saudis

Now why would anybody want to start a war with a country not directly involved in an attack. Oh, wait.

Ah, yes, the "BOOOOSH WANTED TO STEAL THEIR OIL" theory.

So, exactly how much of their oil did the U.S. actually "steal"? You have a barrel figure for that? A rough estimate will do.

"Why we did it"

https://vimeo.com/88670339

Oil. As in for "free market."

I'm not going to go watch a propaganda video.

How much oil did the U.S. steal from Iraq?

Do you have an answer to that question or not?

It's your turn now to give the reference for your claim, I've given mine. Alternatively, you'd have to specify what actually from that documentary isn't true, and given the high possibility of the authors to be sued, I'm quite sure they double checked their sources.

What "claim"? That the U.S. didn't "steal Iraq's oil"?

No, I don't have to watch your video to determine that this didn't happen. Nor does anyone else.

Edit: can you point out to me on this chart where all the "stolen oil" shows up?

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...

See the video, the most of Iraq oil was taken over by western petrol companies and physically sold to Europe. And that's why you won't see much in the chart you quote.

The video is much more nuanced than you imagine, as the goal was never to "steal the oil to bring it directly to the US" but merely to "control" the oil.

I'm assuming from the down mods that no one actually has an answer for this. :-)

Here are the facts: if the goal was to "steal their oil", that could easily have been accomplished.

1) Secure oil fields and terminals. 2) Fly in Texans and Okies to run everything. 3) Shoot anyone who approaches. Leave the rest of the country to fend for itself.

That didn't happen. Why not?

Reddit asked a very important question regarding that: So why is it being released then? And why now?

... and instead start a war with Iraq.

"Much" is not "all" and the released documents are heavily redacted. So a large amount of the information has been scrubbed. This seems to me more about controlling public opinion about the documents than releasing any information.

It was likely suppressed as it would have drawn attention away from Iraq, and the insinuated link between Iraq and 9-11.

The fallback argument was WMD, bring democracy and prosperity.

Instead we got ISIS.

I was very surprised that this was released as it adds to the evidence that the decision to attack Iraq and to dismantle its security services was based on lies and deception.

The timing of the release, when the repercussions of creating political and military instability in the region are becoming more frequent in Europe and the US is what surprises me the most. Perhaps the US has reduced its energy dependence on the middle east sufficiently to begin focusing on Saudi Arabia?

With this release and the Chilcot report, the leaders of US/UK have created a serious deficit in credibility and trust.

> With this release and the Chilcot report, the leaders of US/UK have created a serious deficit in credibility and trust.

I don't feel any different before / after. As far as I'm concerned the whole thing was a set-up from day #1 (the Iraq war, not 9/11, obviously), after Dr. Kelly's death and the Plame affair there was very little doubt we were being railroaded.

I personally think there is enough evidence to at least begin inquiry into the possibility of foreknowledge within the Bush administration and/or some US intelligence agencies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks_advance-k...

There is an interesting book by a former US prosecutor arguing that there is a case for charging G.W. Bush with murder:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prosecution_of_George_W._B...

It wouldn't surprise me if there are private prosecutions of Tony Blair in the UK along similar lines [NB I don't think there is any chance of an actual prosecution of GWB in the US].

ISIS' rise to prominence happened under Obama, a long time after the invasion of Iraq.

ISIS could only rise to prominence because of the power-vacuum the Iraq war left behind.

The power vaccuum happened when the troops were withdrawn.

The troops would have been withdrawn sooner or later anyway, this was something that was known before the Iraq war was even started. Unless you want to argue that the US had plans for a permanent occupation of Iraq after getting rid of Saddam.

Please do not try to re-write history in a way that suits your narrative, it is pointless and counterproductive.

Define "permanent" and "occupation". You mean like the way the U.S. still has troops in Europe after 75 years, and Korea after 60? Do those count as "occupations"?

There's a lot of room between keeping support troops on hand and a full-scale military occupation.

US troops do absolutely nothing on Korea and Europe other than as stand-by and a geopolitical deterrent. The troops in Iraq were acting as the fighting force for the official regime. These are very VERY different things. US toops were occupying Iraq, they are not occupying South Korea.

That's more or less my point, isn't it? It would have been possible to (attempt to) hand over responsibility to the Iraqi military while still keeping troops there in case things went south (as they did).

Given the state of the Iraqi military, things would have gone south immediately, and the troops would never leave.

Would they, though? I think it is a plausible argument that things would have been less likely to go south if the opposing force knew the U.S. forces were there to step in if necessary. While things might still have ended badly, I think there's no question that pulling the U.S. troops out so soon made the collapse a certainty.

At the very least, ISIS would not have been armed to the same extent by fleeing Iraqi security forces.

This NYT article has some very interesting background:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/world/middleeast/united-st...

After reading the article and learning some of the intricacies I really don't feel ready to blame anyone in particular. It seems to be a "system outcome" of the interactions and the (local) conditions.

Let's not forget a lot of Irakis wanted the US to leave, fully and completely:

> Possibilities being discussed are for some troops to return in 2012, an option preferred by some Iraqi politicians who want to claim credit for ending what many here still call an occupation,...

That "some" is about the politicians, the mood in the streets wasn't just "some" people who wanted all foreign soldiers to leave, if I remember anything from the news we heard at that time.

You only get to shift blame to your predecessor if you predict and warn about the unavoidable problems and state your plan for how to handle it.

ISIS' rise to prominence happened under Obama, a long time after the invasion of Iraq.

Absolutely true, technically. Also a completely useless and misleading statement.

The ISIS group splintered and grew out of the Al-Qaeda in Iraq after its defeat during the Anbar Awakening[1]. Ironically, the Iraqi goverment's behaviour towards the awakening groups[2] directly contributed to this.

Many of the same people involved in Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Anbar Awakening groups as well as the Ba'ath party ended up fighting for ISIS.

There is plenty of blame to go around, but the range of possible actions and outcomes Obama had was much smaller compared to that Bush had.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anbar_Awakening

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons_of_Iraq

Isn't the right question to ask, why the information was released now? Who can win by publishing a report, showing the wrongdoing of a former leadership?

I'm sure Trump will profit the most from that in the upcoming election.

Makes you think about how much in control of its own government the current leadership really is.

We're in the age where everyone brings their own facts to the table - even when the facts are the same, they take the facts and state that they support their position even as the other guy is claiming the opposite.

It doesn't even matter what they say anymore, as the realisation has set in that people won't actually read them - they'll wait for the headline and the related quotes from affected people and stop there.

So as long as you get there with a quote that states you're exonerated, it makes no difference what's actually been found.

So there was [1] in 2004 and [2] in 2009. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from the recent news now... it seems like it's just confirming what people already pretty much knew? Or is there surprising new information released?

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3815179.stm

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/middleeast/24saudi.h...

Emptywheel went over the already-knews and new-news pretty concisely the other day:

https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/07/15/fbi-established-saudi-...

Given the topic, curious if anyone knows anything about "Able Danger" operations:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger

Or the rapid decline of terrorism (80%) following the end of the Cold War: https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/

Have you seen anyone interview Norm Mineta about what really happened in the Situation Room on 9/11? He was fired and exiled practically when people started to point out his damning statements about what happened in the Situation Room when the Pentagon was seeing a plane approach. Or how about the 66 video tapes confiscated by the FBI that could show what really did hit the Pentagon?

Are you seriously implying that it wasn't a plane that hit the Pentagon?

I'll just say this: never forget who created the house of Saud in the first place. They were puppets from the start and still are.

Who do you have in mind?

From a glance at the wikipedia page, the history looks intricate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud

Could you please articulate? I am totally ignorant about it, and after the release of this document, I am getting more curious.

Ibn Saud essentially came to power as a local strongman, supported by the British, set up in opposition to the Ottoman-supported faction during the First World War. Saud originally controlled the Red Sea bordering portion of Arabia, which was astride the sea route through the Suez to India.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Saud#Rise_to_power

Ibn Saud initially controlled the Najd, the central portion of the peninsula. The Hashemites held the Red Sea coast.

Thanks a lot! I finally had time to read the article.

I always wonder if that was short term thinking, or if nowadays there is still something going on. We all know that empires fall, therefore, it might be that maybe at that time the UK didn't expect Saudi Arabia to become so powerful as it is nowadays. It's like playing monopoly: you help X to destroy Y, which you don't like, but then X becomes so powerful that it starts to be a pain in the ass.

it is probably about Zionists ruling the world, who else...

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