Flights of Saudi Nationals Leaving the United States
Three questions have arisen with respect to the departure of Saudi nationals from the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: (1)Did any flights of Saudi nationals take place before national airspace reopened on September 13,2001?(2)Was there any political intervention to facilitate the departure of Saudi nationals?(3)Did the FBI screen Saudi nationals thoroughly before their departure?

First,we found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international,took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13,2001.24 To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened.25

Second,we found no evidence of political intervention.We found no evidence that anyone at theWhite House above the level of Richard Clarke participated in a decision on the departure of Saudi nationals. The issue came up in one of the many video teleconferences of the interagency group Clarke chaired,and Clarke said he approved of how the FBI was dealing with the matter when it came up for interagency discussion at his level.Clarke told us, I asked the FBI,Dale Watson ... to handle that,to check to see if that was all right with them,to see if they wanted access to any of these people,and to get back to me.And if they had no objections,it would be fine with me. Clarke added, I have no recollection of clearing it with anybody at the White House. 26

Although White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card remembered someone telling him about the Saudi request shortly after 9/11,he said he had not talked to the Saudis and did not ask anyone to do anything about it.The President andVice President told us they were not aware of the issue at all until it surfaced much later in the media.None of the officials we interviewed recalled any intervention or direction on this matter from any political appointee.27

Third,we believe that the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals who left the United States on charter flights.28 The Saudi government was advised of and agreed to the FBI s requirements that passengers be identified and checked against various databases before the flights departed.29 The Federal Aviation Administration representative working in the FBI operations center made sure that the FBI was aware of the flights of Saudi nationals and was able to screen the passengers before they were allowed to depart.30

The FBI interviewed all persons of interest on these flights prior to their departures.They concluded that none of the passengers was con � nected to the 9/11 attacks and have since found no evidence to change that conclusion.Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights.31

Jamie Gorelick calls Moore less than honest
http://news.bostonherald.com/national/view.bg?articleid=38943

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Not specifically related to the 9/11 report, but good background information:

Boston Globe: 9/21/2001
http://web.archive.org/web/20010927124917/www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/264/nation/Family_weighed_staying_in_US+.shtml

BIN LADEN KIN

Family weighed staying in US

By Kevin Cullen and Andrea Estes, Globe Staff, 9/21/2001

Although many of the Boston-area relatives of Osama bin Laden flew to Saudi Arabia this week, some were reluctant to listen to warnings by their government and the FBI last week that they faced possible retaliatory violence.

A Saudi diplomat said it remained unclear how many of bin Laden’s relatives remain in the United States, where some work and others go to school. ‘’Some of them didn’t want to leave. They think they can ride it out,’’ said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition he was not named.

The diplomat said the bin Ladens were advised by their government and the FBI they should return to Saudi Arabia for their own safety. ‘’The advice given last week was that they should consider leaving, at least until things cool down,’’ he said.

At least five members of bin Laden’s large family flew out of Logan International Airport Tuesday night on a private jet, which aviation sources described as a Boeing 727 reconfigured so it had only 30 first-class seats.

In addition, at least one of bin Laden’s 27 brothers, Kalil, reportedly boarded a jet in Orlando, Fla., which had been chartered by the Saudi government, had stopped in Los Angeles, Orlando, and then Boston Wednesday night before flying to Saudi Arabia.

The bin Ladens, who paid for their own plane, and about two dozen Saudi citizens who took up their government’s offer to fly home free, were questioned by the FBI before being allowed to leave the United States.

Although the FBI has repeatedly searched the Charlestown condominium complex where one of bin Laden’s brothers, Mohammaed, owns six luxury apartments and where some of the relatives live, the Saudi government says there is no indication bin Laden’s relatives are considered suspects.

All of bin Laden’s relatives, members of one of Saudi Arabia’s richest families, have publicly disowned him and renounced his extremist views and his Al Qaeda terror organization, which advocates killing Americans in a holy war.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4275513,00.html

No brother of mine

In the only interview given by a member of the Bin Laden family since September 11, Osama’s US-based brother Abdullah talks to Marcella Bombardieri

Marcella Bombardieri
Guardian

Friday October 12, 2001

The woman behind the counter at Starbucks was crying. Between sobs, she said something about a plane, something about the World Trade Centre. The man grabbed his tall latte and rushed back to his apartment, turning on the television just before the second plane crashed into the second tower.

For a while, the nightmare of September 11 was the same for him as it was for so many others in the United States. He was anxious about his friends in New York. He wondered how anyone could harm so many people. It was only when that name surfaced on television, the name of the suspected terrorist behind the attacks, that Abdullah Mohammed Binladin began to understand that he was not all right, and that his life was about to change for ever.

“I felt sad, that this is a tragedy for humanity,” says Binladin, who has lived in Cambridge, Massachussetts, for much of the past decade, earning a master’s and doctorate from Harvard Law School. “And I felt that this is a tragedy for our family. How will people look at our family? Our name is being hijacked.”

At 35, Binladin (the spelling is that used by most of the family) is among the youngest of 54 children born to the numerous wives of the late Mohammed Bin-Awad Binladin. Only 50 of those children are still with the family. Three have died. One is the accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, whom the family disowned in 1994.

“It is my understanding that in the early 90s the family repeatedly reached out and made attempts to plead with Osama to moderate his views,” Abdullah says. “After these attempts failed, there was a reluctant but unanimous consensus that Osama should be disowned.”

All 11 of the other Binladin relatives in the Boston area - Abdullah’s nieces and nephews - boarded a chartered Saudi jet and fled from the US on September 19. Abdullah stayed behind.

His life since has become almost unrecognisable: the man who loved jogging along the river has avoided any interactions with strangers who could “hear the name and get angry or upset or horrified”. He has stopped using his credit card and suspended his hobby of flying single-engine planes, for fear of the reactions he might get. “I’ve tried to keep a low profile and use cash as much as possible,” he says.

Abdullah’s apartment is tastefully appointed but unexceptional, apart from the large, framed photograph in the living room. Taken sometime in the 60s, it shows Abdullah’s father, Mohammed, standing beside King Faisal, as the Saudi ruler points into the distance.

Under Faisal, Saudi Arabia built up its infrastructure, connecting vast stretches of desert through complicated highway and dam projects. Looking at this photo today, the king’s confidence in Binladin is palpable. “My father didn’t know how to read or write, but God blessed him with a wonderful memory,” says Abdullah. “And he was a great visionary.”

After Mohammed died in a plane crash in 1967, control of the family business passed to his son Salem, and then to another son, Bakr, when Salem also perished in a plane crash in 1988.

It is unclear how many wives Mohammed Binladin had. Abdullah and Osama are technically half-brothers. Abdullah grew up in a villa with his mother in Jiddah, and attended a government school. It was the norm in a large polygamous family for children to live with their mothers. (Such practices have gone out of style, and Abdullah’s brothers, with the exception of Osama, each have only one wife. Abdullah is single.)

While Abdullah says it was his own desire to study law, the head of the Binladen family monitors the choices made by each member, especially with an eye toward protecting the business. “Bakr, I think, decides everything physically possible - who you marry, where you work in the business, what you study,” says Frank Vogel, director of the Islamic Legal Studies Programme at Harvard Law School.

The last time Abdullah saw Osama was in 1988, at their brother Salem’s funeral. By that time, Osama had already strayed far from the yoke of the family business. “He had been living most of the time in Afghanistan,” says Abdullah. “I personally didn’t know him very well.”

Osama had spent much of that decade raising money for, and then participating in, the fight by Muslims to repel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan. There is every indication that he received the support of the family in this cause, which was a popular one in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Muslim world.

When Osama returned to the family home base of Jiddah, riding high after the retreat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, tensions between him and his siblings came to the boil. He began to denounce the Saudi regime as oppressive and hypocritical. Then came the build-up to the Gulf war, which changed so much in Saudi Arabia. Iraq’s effortless toppling of Kuwait had the Saudi ruling family so worried that it reversed the kingdom’s longstanding policy of not allowing a foreign military force, even an ally such as the United States, on its soil.

That decision opened a ferocious faultline between Osama and the family business. The Binladin Group got many of the contracts to build military support facilities for the US forces - but Osama saw the arrival of US troops as an unforgivable abdication by the Saudi royal family of its most sacred obligation: protecting the birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed, and Islam, from crusading outsiders.

Osama’s attack on Saudi King Fahd was stunning, considering the family’s long and close association with the royal family. The Saudi government forced him into exile in 1991, and the family renounced him. From his outpost in the Sudan, Osama intensified his campaign against the Saudi government, and in 1994, it stripped him of his citizenship and his family disowned him.

“It is a big family,” Abdullah says. “There is a black sheep in every big family.”

When Abdullah visited Boston in 1990, he already had a law degree from King Saud University in Riyadh, and he was looking for a place to advance his studies. The Binladins now have close links with Harvard - they have made a $1m donation to the school of design there. They have also funded another fellowship programme at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. And every year, the Saudi Binladin Group donates tens of thousands of dollars to the Middle East Policy Council, which helps train educators in Middle East and Islamic studies.

“The main idea is really to further the understanding between western and Islamic cultures, at least to bridge the gap,” says Abdullah about the family’s charitable goals.

But as Osama’s profile as a terrorist grew with the bombings of US embassies in Africa in 1998 and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, the Binladins found it more difficult to conduct business around the world and in Boston.

The problems have accelerated dramatically since September 11. Several western companies have ended their joint ventures with the Binladin Group, though they have said the decisions were not related to the terrorist attacks. And there has been considerable speculation in the press that some members of the enormous Binladin family continue to have contact with Osama, a charge the family flatly rejects.

“I totally support my family’s statement that expressed condolences and deepest sympathy for the victims of the attack and unequivocally denounced and condemned the attacks and all those behind them,” Abdullah says. “I also affirm that the Binladin family and the Saudi Binladin Group have no relationship whatsoever with Osama or any of his activities. He shares no legal or beneficial interests with them or their assets or properties, and he is not directly or indirectly funded by them.”

© Boston Globe