FBI Hanky Panky on Guantanamo:

[Lauren Johnson]

[URL="http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/06/27/fbi-hanky-panky-on-guantanamo-part-of-larger-911-mystery/"]Part of a Larger 9/11 Mystery?
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What in the world is the FBI up to at Guantanamo? Why is it harassing the defense team of the accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices?

The FBI is hip-deep in yet another dubious activity but, this time, even the not-so-adventurous New York Times is kinda-sorta on the trail. The self-proclaimed "paper of record" has produced several articles, albeit confusing ones, on the mysterious doings of our much-vaunted national police force.

What should be made clear is that by connecting a few dots, one can make out a majoreven explosivestory hiding just out of plain sight. This story has a lot to do with the larger pattern of FBI misbehavior and points to at least one of the reasons why we never get better, more complete answers about the events of 9/11.

***

Readers of WhoWhatWhy are familiar with a growing litany of troubling actions on the part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the last few years (see for example this, this and this), compounding a disturbing legacy that has attended the outfit for much of its history. The Bureau has occasionally been scrutinized by the media, but as our Steve Weinberg reported, the G-men and journalists have just as often colluded to keep the public in the dark.

Now, for whatever reason, the New York Times has started to dig into….something. Unfortunately, the presentation is so grueling to get through and the core of the story so buried that it is impossible to say for sure what is going on.

It's possible that neither the reporter, his editor, nor even conceivably their sources in the Guantanamo defense team understand the full magnitude of the story.

We can only guess that what's at stake here is the FBI's need to bury evidence of its own behaviora baffling combination of incompetence and what seem to be deliberate actions running counter to the public's s interest in full disclosure of events leading up to the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.

For some perspective, we'd point you to reporting we did a while back about a prominent Saudi family living in South Floridaa family connected to a Saudi prince responsible for aviation issuesthat interacted directly with a number of the alleged 9/11 hijackers. In that case, the FBI investigated hijacker visits and phone calls tied to the family's house in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, near where a number of the 9/11 suspects trained to fly planes.

Since shutting down that investigation, the Bureau has tried to act as if it never happened.

Connection? What Connection?

More recently, documents released to our friends at the South Florida investigative nonprofit organization, Broward Bulldog, reveal something decidedly hinky going on. Within this packet of documents, the FBI both denies that the Sarasota inquiry turned up anything of interestand says the exact opposite.

A lot of interesting morsels are in the packet. But for now, let's just focus on two documents. See the one stamped "SARASOTA-1" (continues on "SARASOTA-2"). The summary states that the FBI's investigation found no evidence that connected the Saudi family members in Sarasota to any of the 9/11 hijackers, nor was any connection found between the family and the 9/11 plot.

Based on new reporting by WhoWhatWhy's team, including a recent trip I made to the area and conversations with sources there, I can unequivocally state that the above statement….is a lie. And the FBI knows it is.

But don't take our word for it. Have a look at the document labeled "SARASOTA 5." Right there, plain as can be, it says:

Further investigation of the ____ family revealed many connections between the _____ and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001…..

Enough other details in that document set, along with general knowledge of what went down in the days after 9/11, make it clear that the redacted words are the name of the Saudi family. And who is making the assertion of "many connections"? The Federal Bureau of Investigation.

***

"A spy within our team"

OK, now let's shift to the recent reporting on the strange events at Guantanamo. According to the Times, in an article with the incredibly off-putting headline of "Guantánamo Detainees' Lawyers Seek Further Delays" (we can only assume that's the work of some editor hoping no one will read the story), the reporter chronicles a series of curious happenings. (An earlier, related Times article is here) The details are so obscurely rendered that one can get almost no sense of a larger narrative. But two remarkable quotes, lower in the story, stand out:

"I feel that I'm under scrutiny," said David Nevin, the lead lawyer for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of the attacks. Mr. Nevin said that he had postponed a fact-finding trip to the Middle East because of the F.B.I. scrutiny, adding: "I am trimming my sails. I am being extremely careful about how I proceed."

So basically, the main guy defending the man who we are told confessed to authorship of 9/11 under torture is afraid.

Here's the other quote, from another defense attorney:

"We have had basically a spy within our team for a number of months," Mr. Harrington said.

Wow. How come the headline wasn't: "Attorneys for 9/11 Suspects Under Intense FBI Pressure"? Or: "FBI Accused of Illegally Harassing 9/11 Defense Lawyers." Or: "FBI Spy Hidden Within 9/11 Defense Team?"

Consider that, then take another look at those documents we link to above about the "Sarasota connection."

You will notice that the document in which the FBI denies any awareness of a Sarasota Saudi-9/11 connection is on the letterhead of the Guantanamo prosecution unit, with the FBI seal.

This may well be part of a wider pattern: one in which the Bureau seems determined to block all serious inquiry into those deadly events.

- See more at: http://whowhatwhy.com/2014/06/27/fbi-han...AwIPV.dpuf

[David Guyatt]

I enjoyed the following statement by the writer:

t's possible that neither the reporter, his editor, nor even conceivably their sources in the Guantanamo defense team understand the full magnitude of the story.

Yeah, right. The Times writes the story is such an obscure way that it's far from easy to understand, whereas as professional journalists their key skill is to render obscure stories into straightforward and easy to understand prose.

Quack.

[Peter Lemkin]

9/11 Silence On Saudis

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By Russ Baker on Dec 19, 2013

President Obama is apparently thinking about his presidential library. So now might be a good time to ponder whether anyone will want to visit it.
If he cared about revivifying his brief reputation as a good-guy outsider ready to shine light on the hidden recesses of our governing apparatus (remember his election-night victory speech that brought tears and rare hope to America?), Obama could certainly start at this late date by taking a stand for transparency.
Here's how: Two Congressmen, a Democrat and a Republican, are asking Obama to declassify the congressional report on 9/11, which the Bush administration heavily redacted.
The two members of the House of Representatives have read the blacked-out portions, including 28 totally blank pages that deal largely with Saudi government ties to the alleged 9/11 hijackers.
This is apparently major connect-the-dots stuffmuch more significant than what one may remember from Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 911, about Saudi royals and other Saudis studying and living in the US, who were allowed to go home without being interviewed in the aftermath of the attacks. This is about actual financial and logistical support of terrorism against the United Statesby its ally, the Saudi government.
As a Hoover Institution media scholar wrote in the New York Post(normally no bastion of deep investigative inquiry):
The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found "incontrovertible evidence" that Saudi government officials not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.
Congressmen "absolutely shocked"
The two outspoken Representatives, Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass) would be violating federal law if they offered any specifics about what they know, or even named any countries mentionedbut did say they were "absolutely shocked" by revelations of foreign state involvement in the attacks. Now, they want a resolution requesting Obama declassify the entire document.
If the media were to do its job and create the kind of wall-to-wall coverage it bestows upon, say, inter-spousal murder trials, Obama might feel he had to release the full 9/11 report. He'd have to concede there is a public right to know, or at least explain in detail why he doesn't think so. Either way, there would be major fireworks. But we're not betting on either the president or the media doing the right thing.
Mainstream Media: out to lunch, so far
How much publicity is this enormously significant story getting? Very, very little. A search of the Nexis-Lexis database turned up just 13 articles or transcripts. One was a very short, cautious piece from the Boston Globe. One was a transcript of TV commentator Lou Dobbs on Fox News. All of the others were specialty or ideological publications or blogsInvestor's Business Daily, the Blaze, Prairie Pundit, Right Wing News, etc. (CNN's Piers Morgan did interview Rep. Lynch). Nothing showed up from the New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, MSNBC or the broadcast networks.
That's a remarkable oversight, given that the media did cover similar concerns expressed by former senators Bob Kerrey and Bob Graham almost two years ago. In an affidavit for a lawsuit by the families of 9/11 victims, Graham, head of the joint 2002 congressional 9/11 inquiry, said, "I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia." Kerrey, who served on the non-congressional 9/11 Commission, said in his own affidavit, "Evidence relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government agents in the September 11th attacks has never been fully pursued."
But two House members, one a Democrat, one a Republican, explicitly calling for the President to make the full report available? That's certainly news.
What Will Obama Do?
If President Obama does declassify the records, that would be surprising, if not outright shocking.
Although he has belatedly (and under heavy pressure from his base) begun to shift more toward at least the rhetoric of openness, Obama failed to stand up for release of still-classified documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination (a half century after that tragedy), and he has presided over myriad actions that take us further than ever from transparency. Meanwhile, the media has all but abdicated its responsibility to hold the administration's feet to the fire on these and related matters.
At WhoWhatWhy, we understand how hard it is to get this kind of material into the hands of the American people. Our groundbreaking reporting on ties between prominent and powerful Saudis and the men said to have been on the planes attacking on September 11 (via a house in Sarasota, Florida) was almost entirely ignored by the establishment media, including many so-called "alternative" and "progressive" outlets, though it has nonetheless spread widely thanks to the Internet and social media. Even the above-mentioned New York Postonly now has acknowledged our reporting on the Saudi-Sarasota connection, without mentioning our name or linking to us.
No matter. The significance is that others have come forward to ask tough questions about the daunting reach and self-protective reflexes of our government's ever-expanding "secret sector." With a related meta-issueNSA surveillanceodd bedfellows like "leftie" Glenn Greenwald and "rightie" Larry Klayman (with a Bush appointed judge ruling in his favor) are going at the surveillance state simultaneously, mightily aided by former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.
Whatever one thinks of the 9/11 storyand one needn't buy the more extreme theories to be open to examining new, documented factsthere's clearly more to that trauma than we have been allowed to know; and we suspect there are many more establishment figures with a hunger for the truth. And once more "respectable" Washington insiders like House (and Senate) members start saying shocking thingswell, that's a man-bites-dog story few news organizations can turn down.
As for the executive branch, representatives of the State Department, Department of Justice and FBI have repeatedly denied knowing anything about the Saudi angle. If those documents are ever declassified, the denials themselvesand those issuing those denialsshould also be news.
- See more at: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/12/19/saudi-s...9dTts.dpuf