Anthony Summers - The Eleventh Day

47 Turki/“I can”:corr. Kristen Wilhelm. This reply to the authors’ inquiry is known as a “Glomar Response” to a request under the Freedom of Information Act—so called after the first occasion on which it was used, when the CIA sought to prevent publication of a Los Angeles Times story on the agency’s operation to raise a sunken Soviet submarine. The U.S. ship that had been intended for use in the operation to raise the sub was called the Glomar Explorer . The Glomar Response has been used in cases involving both national security and privacy issues (“The Glomar Response,” http://nsarchive.wordpress.com).

48 “penetrated al Qaeda”: Seattle Times , 10/29/01;

49 returned to Saudi/disclosed:Report, JI, 131–.

50 “presented with”:Staff Report, “9/11 & Terrorist Travel,” 12, 15, 37. Before 9/11, according to the Commission’s staff report on terrorist travel, neither State Department personnel processing visa applications nor immigration inspectors were aware of such indicators. Even two years after the attacks, the information had “yet to be unclassified and disseminated to the field.”

51 Commission footnote:The Commission footnote appears to distinguish the cases of Mihdhar, the Hazmi brothers, and two other hijackers from those of the other ten Saudi hijackers. This may reflect the possibility that only the passports of Mihdhar and his named comrades were marked by the Saudi authorities. Absent fuller and clearer information, it is impossible to know (CR, 563n32).

52 “contained a secret”:Bamford, Shadow Factory , 58;

53 Trento account/“We had been”:Joe Trento, “The Real Intelligence Cover-up,” 8/6/03 & Joseph Trento & Susan Trento, “The No Fly List,” 1/11/10, http://dcbureau.org, & Trento & Trento, refs., conv. Joseph Trento.

54 Kuala Lumpur “to spy”:Trento & Trento, 7–. The administrator of the Islamic Center of San Diego, whom Mihdhar and Hazmi asked for assistance following their arrival in early 2000, said after 9/11 that he had “suspected that Mihdhar might have been an intelligence agent of the Saudi government” (CR, 517n29, 220).

55 Mihdhar multiple-entry visa:Trento & Trento, 8. According to the Trentos, citing Michael Springmann, who had years earlier served as head of the visa department in the Jeddah consulate, the CIA would have known this fact even sooner—because a CIA officer in the Jeddah consulate “routinely approved visas for Saudi intelligence operatives as a courtesy” (Trento & Trento, 8—see Michael Springmann, “A Sin Concealed—the Visas for Terrorists Program,” 12/13/07, http://visasforterrorists.blogspot.com).

56 “were perceived”:Trento & Trento, 9;

57 “Many terrorists”:ibid, 187;

58 “because they were”:Joe Trento, “The Real Intelligence Cover-up,” 8/6/03, http://dcbureau.org;

59 “In fact”:Trento & Trento, 9.

60 account bumps facts?:The Trento account, for example, asserts that the “complacency” of the Bush administration in summer 2001 is explained by CIA assurances that it had high-level penetration of al Qaeda via the GID. In fact, as documented in this book, the CIA leadership was far from complacent that summer, desperately worried and telling the White House—notably Condoleezza Rice—as much (Trento & Trento, 193; see—re far from complacent—pp. 315–16).

61 “[name redacted]”:Executive Summary, Report on CIA Accountability with Respect to the 9/11 Attacks, 6/05, www.cia.gov;

62 “hostile service”/passed to al Qaeda:Risen, State of War , 181–;

63 “On some occasions”:Report, JI, 274;

64 Rahman defense: New York , 3/27/95.

65 screen saver:The intelligence counterparts who told the CIA about bin Laden’s picture being used as a screen saver were those of Jordan—apparently in the late 1990s (Risen, 182);

66 “80% sympathetic”: The Times (London), 7/5/04.

CHAPTER 33

1

tens of thousands:

Reuters, 9/11/01;

2

honked horns:

transcript,

Frontline:

“Saudi Time Bomb,”

www.pbs.org

;

3

killed camels:

int. of Saad al-Fagih for

Frontline: “

Looking for Answers,”

www.pbs.org

;

4

screen savers/“somebody”:

int. of person in Saudi Arabia who asked to remain anonymous;

5

Ahmed/​“muted”/​“So, they lost”:

Qanta Ahmed, 395.

6

survey/Prince Nawwaf:

The survey was conducted by the Saudi GID, the intelligence service, and leaked to

The New York Times

a year later by a U.S. administration official. Prince Nawwaf had become GID chief following the resignation of Prince Turki. In a 2004 interview, Prince Bandar was to claim the situation was very different, that a Zogby poll “showed 91 percent of Saudis said they like America.” What the poll actually said was that 91 percent of Saudis said they had “no quarrel with the people of the United States, yet their overall impression of the American people is 70% unfavorable, 24% favorable” (leaked survey:

NYT

, 1/27/02,

Middle East Economic Digest

, 9/14/01; Bandar: int. Bandar,

Meet the Press

, NBC, 4/25/04).

7

“Almost unanimously”:

Kean & Hamilton, 113.

8

Bandar/“not Arabs”/“My God”:

New Yorker

, 3/24/03;

9

Palestinians celebrating:

There were numerous reports of Palestinians celebrating the attacks. It has been suggested, though, that some news footage of Palestinians supposedly celebrating 9/11 was a distortion—that it in fact showed celebration of something else. For more on the reaction to 9/11 across the Middle East, see Ch. 14, p. 154 (ed. Woods, 12);

10 “condemned”:statement, 9/11/01 cied in Cordesman, “Saudi Official Statements on Terrorism, After the Sept. 11 Attacks,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, 11/01;

11 Abdullah fumed/​declined/​snapped/​“I reject”/Bush responded: WP , 2/10/02, New Yorker , 3/24/03, Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud , 241–, Online NewsHour: Inside the Kingdom , www.pbs.org.

12 Abdullah pulled: Atlantic Monthly , 5/03, Lacey, Inside the Kingdom , 232, WP , 2/12/02. Though Saudi Arabia at the time produced only some 18 percent of the crude oil consumed by the United States, it has what other oil-producing countries do not have—the world’s only surplus production capacity. It means that world oil prices are controlled by Saudi Arabia, according to its decisions as to how much oil to make available at any given time. It had used the oil weapon in 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, by joining with other countries in cutting off the oil supply and in 1990–1991—in reverse—by increasing supply when Iraqi oil was cut off during the Gulf War ( Atlantic , 2/21/08, Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 2007 , Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 2007, 821).

13 15 were Saudi: Newsweek , 11/19/01, New Yorker , 3/24/03;

14 “That was a”:transcript, Frontline: “House of Saud,” www.pbs.org;