Osama bin Laden may have chartered a plane that carried his family members and Saudi nationals out of the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks, said FBI documents released Wednesday.
The papers, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, were made public by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based group that investigates government corruption.
One FBI document referred to a Ryan Air 727 airplane that departed Los Angeles International Airport on September 19, 2001, and was said to have carried Saudi nationals out of the United States.
"The plane was chartered either by the Saudi Arabian royal family or Osama bin Laden," according to the document, which was among 224 pages posted online.
The flight made stops in Orlando, Florida; Washington, DC; and Boston, Massachusetts and eventually left its passengers in Paris the following day.
In all, the documents detail six flights between September 14 and September 24 that evacuated Saudi nationals and bin Laden family members, Judicial Watch said in a statement.
"Incredibly, not a single Saudi national nor any of the bin Laden family members possessed any information of investigative value," Judicial Watch said.
"These documents contain numerous errors and inconsistencies which call to question the thoroughness of the FBI's investigation of the Saudi flights.
"For example, on one document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 20 of 23 passengers on the Ryan International Airlines flight ... on another document the FBI claims to have interviewed 15 to 22 passengers on the same flight."
Asked about the documents' assertion that either bin Laden or the Saudi royals ordered the flight, an FBI spokesman said the information was inaccurate.
"There is no new information here. Osama bin Laden did not charter a flight out of the US," FBI special agent Richard Kolko said.
"This is just an inflammatory headline by Judicial Watch to catch people's attention. This was thoroughly investigated by the FBI."
Kolko pointed to the 9-11 Commission Report, which was the book-length result of an official probe into the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.
"No political intervention was found. And most important, the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals that left on chartered flights. This is all available in the report," Kolko said.
On the issue of flights of Saudi nationals leaving the United States, the 9-11 report said: "We found no evidence of political intervention" to facilitate the departure of Saudi nationals.
The commission also said: "Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights."
Meredith Diliberto, an attorney with Judicial Watch, said that her group had seen a first version of the documents in 2005, although the FBI had heavily redacted the texts to black out names, including all references to bin Laden.
Nevertheless, unedited footnotes in the texts allowed lawyers to determine that bin Laden's name had been redacted. They pressed the issue in court and in November 2006, the FBI was ordered to re-release the documents.
Diliberto said mention that "either" bin Laden or Saudi royals had chartered the flight "really threw us for a loop."
"When you combine that with some of the family members not being interviewed, we found it very disturbing."
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There were several flights that were allowed to leave the US very soon after 9/11 when no US citizen was allowed to fly. Some of these earlier flights had Saudi royals on them from Vegas. Others had OBL family members.Here is some info on, later flights. Something stinks on the Potomac and it ain't rotten fish. Those oil guys take care of each other. Lots of stuff has been deleted by me.
"While the Saudis have long denied involvement in the massacre that claimed the lives of some 3,000 people, 15 of the 19 hijackers came from the kingdom.
Former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke described the Saudi exodus in an interview for the current issue of Vanity Fair on newsstands today. Clarke, who left the White House in February, lends confirmation to reports of the evacuation which first surfaced in September 2001, but have been dispelled as rumor and urban legend."
"Citing Clarke, the magazine reports that within a week of the hijackings private planes picked up individuals from 10 cities, including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Houston and Boston. Aviation officials complained the flights took place before the government had lifted flight restrictions for the general public."
""We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history and here we were seeing an evacuation of the bin Ladens. ... I wanted to go the highest levels in Washington," Tom Kinton, director of aviation at Boston's Logan International Airport, told the magazine. Kinton said it was clear the operation had the blessings of federal authorities."
"Once the flight ban was lifted, two jumbo jets transported the Saudis out of the country. The Boston Globe reported at the time that two flights bound for Saudi Arabia with members of the bin Laden clan on board left Logan on Sept. 18 and 19. Other reports put the departure date at Sept. 14."
Bin Laden is said to be estranged from his family.
""Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, leave the country," Clarke, who headed the Counterrorism Security Group of the National Security Council, told Vanity Fair. He said he did not recall who requested approval for the flight, but believes it was either the FBI or the State Department. He said he, in turn, checked with FBI officials, who gave the go ahead. "
"So I said, 'Fine, let it happen,'" Clarke told the magazine, adding that he asked the bureau to make sure no one "inappropriate" was leaving the country.
"I have no idea if they did a good job. I'm not in any position to second guess the FBI," he said.
The FBI role in the Saudi evacuation operation is in contention.
The Tampa Tribune and New York Times reported at the time that FBI agents supervised the shepherding of young members of the bin Laden family by car and plane to secret assembly points in Texas and elsewhere prior to their ultimate departure out of the country.
FBI officials deny this.
"I can say unequivocally that the FBI had no role in facilitating these flights one way or another," Special Agent John Iannarelli, the FBI's spokesman on counterterrorism activities, told Vanity Fair.
Iannarelli told the New York Times bureau agents interviewed the adult relatives of bin Laden in the days following Sept. 11 before the White House cleared them to leave the country.
"Dale Watson, the FBI's former head of counterterrorism, offered contradictory statements to Vanity Fair. He said that while the bureau identified the Saudis who were on the plane, "they were not subject to serious interviews or interrogations."
According to Clarke, top White House officials personally approved the repatriation plan, which is thought to have been organized by Saudi ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Vanity Fair reports Prince Bandar met with President George W. Bush on Sept. 13, 2001, but it is not known whether the plan was discussed. "
WorldNetDaily has reported the Saudi envoy donated millions of dollars to bin Laden's favorite charity, the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO. And tens of thousands of dollars in donations made by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Bandar, wound up in the hands of two al-Qaida operatives who later became 9-11 hijackers.
"In an interview with the New York Times, Schumer said he suspected that some of the Saudis who were allowed to leave could have shed light on the events of Sept. 11. Particularly valuable, he said, would have been information gleaned from two relatives of bin Laden who he said had links to terrorist groups. "
"This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis and giving them special privileges that others would never get," Schumer told the Times. "It's almost as if we didn't want to find out what links existed."
So they polluted the air with high CO2 emissions on the flight?
Those dirty bastards. Polluting our air like that. I flew on 9/16.
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Incredibly, not a single Saudi national nor any of the bin Laden family members possessed any information of investigative value," Judicial Watch said.
you think they would have kept the ones around that didn't have diplomatic ties to question don't ya?
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"you think they would have kept the ones around that didn't have diplomatic ties to question don't ya?"
Exactly. When the US was attacked by ***an, the US government rounded up all the ***anese diplomats and interned them. Think they were later traded for US diplomats but am not sure on that. How times change, now our Bunch in DC do not have the guts todetain and question those suspected terrorists in bin Ladens own family.
Bin Laden may have chartered flight
