Former Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar refuses to testify about what he knows of 9/11
During his 22 years as Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat in
Washington, His Royal Highness Prince Bandar bin Sultan was a powerful
influencer in the U.S., dealing with five presidents, 10 secretaries of state,
11 national security advisors and 16 sessions of Congress. He was close enough
to both Presidents Bush that he earned the nickname Bandar Bush.
Bandar was ambassador on Sept. 11, 2001 when 15 of his
countrymen and four other al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four California-bound
commercial airliners from airports in Boston, Newark and suburban Washington,
D.C. and crashed them into New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and,
after passengers intervened, a field near Shanksville, PA. Two days later,
Bandar was photographed relaxing on the Truman Balcony at the White House with
President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security
Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
Today, Bandar’s American-bred daughter, Her Royal Highness
Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, is the kingdom’s ambassador to the U.S.
Bandar is media savvy. Both before and after the attacks, he
appeared frequently on U.S. television to deflect criticism of Saudi Arabia.
Here’s what Bandar told CNN’s Larry King Live just three weeks after the
attacks:
“Well, it broke my heart when I found that there are some
Saudis with them. I must say that we now are sure that at least half of what we
thought, who we thought were Saudis are actually not. Stolen passports, it is
stolen identities,” Bandar said.
“Our position on this issue was we are with you to get to
the perpetrators of this cowardly attack, find and who supports them, and who
shelters them. That is — and we have no reservation on that.”
But Bandar isn’t with us anymore. He has refused a
court-approved opportunity to speak to lawyers representing thousands of 9/11
survivors and family members of the dead who are suing Saudi Arabia in federal
court in New York City.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan won’t talk
The period of discovery when depositions of Saudi fact
witnesses could occur has ended. So Bandar won’t be testifying about what he
knows. And what the witnesses who did answer questions had to say is secret
because of a gag order imposed at the request of the FBI.
U.S. Magistrate Sarah Netburn specifically authorized the
plaintiffs to depose Bandar. “But when we tried, he said no and KSA [Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia] said he is no longer employed by the KSA government and that they
cannot compel him,” said attorney Andrew Maloney, a partner in the New York law
firm that’s helping to spearhead the litigation, Kreindler & Kreindler.
According to Maloney, approximately 20 current or former
Saudi officials were deposed, though none from the Royal family. Ten more
third-party witnesses, believed to have relevant information, were also
deposed, and a half-dozen more gave sworn declarations.
Also deposed were a trio of Saudis who worked for Dallah
Avco, a Saudi aviation company where
suspected Saudi intelligence agent and befriender of two 9/11 hijackers Omar
al-Bayoumi claimed to have worked, but did not, yet was paid for several years
with Saudi government funds.
Why do the lawyers want to question Bandar under oath? Lots
of reasons.
Perhaps the most intriguing one stems from the 2017 public
release of 28 classified pages from Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 and
co-written by the inquiry’s co-chairman, Sen. Bob Graham, D-FL. Graham had long
called for their release, saying the FBI’s claim that national security might
be compromised was bogus. Their release proved Graham correct.
Zubaydah and Prince Bandar bin Sultan
Among other things, what was disclosed was the fact that
when Abu Zubaydah, a longtime Guantanamo detainee identified by the U.S. as “an
associate and longtime terrorist ally of Osama bin Laden,’’ was captured in
Pakistan in 2002 he had in his phone book the unlisted number for the offshore
company, ASPCOL, which managed Bandar’s mansion and 90-acre estate in Aspen,
CO. He also had a phone number for Bandar’s bodyguard in Washington, according
to Maloney.
ASPCOL was incorporated offshore in 1988 by the late Fred
Dutton, a prominent Washington lawyer and Democratic strategist who also served
as a counselor to Prince Bandar and as a lobbyist. ASPCOL sold the property for
$49 million in May 2012.
The 28 pages revealed that the FBI was informed about the
Zubaydah-Bandar connection, but apparently never inquired as to why Zubaydah
had Bandar’s phone numbers.
Then there are questions about the pre-9/11 money transfers,
tens of thousands of dollars, from both Bandar and his wife, Princess Haifa, to
Osama Basnan, an apparent Saudi agent suspected of being part of the hijacker’s
support system, and his wife, ostensibly for her medical treatments.
According to documents prepared by the 9/11 Commission in
June 2003, Basnan was a “vocal supporter of Usama bin Laden” and was a “very
close associate of [Omar] al-Bayoumi,” another suspected Saudi agent known to
have befriended 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi when they
arrived in the U.S. in early 2000.
Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi diplomat and religious
leader at the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles, are currently the focus of
plaintiffs’ inquiries. The court has limited discovery in the case to questions
about whether the two men knowingly assisted al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi in
Southern California.
Operation Encore and more questions
An October 2012 FBI summary report, obtained by Florida
Bulldog in 2016 during Freedom of Information litigation, disclosed the
existence of an active investigation into Saudi involvement eight years after
the 9/11 Commission ended. Among other things, the report said the bureau had
designated three Saudi agents as “principal subjects” of the FBI’s
investigation, dubbed Operation Encore. The trio was identified as Bayoumi,
Thumairy and Musaed al Jarrah, deputy head of Islamic Affairs at the Saudi
Embassy in Washington. Jarrah was said to have “tasked” Bayoumi and Thumairy
with helping the hijackers.
Bayoumi, Thumairy and Jarrah have been deposed, but Basnan
could not be located for deposition. Maloney said, however, that it has been
learned that Basnan “met with and helped out Hazmi/Mihdhar” and that the “story
about his sick wife is BS.” Thus, questions for Bandar: Why did you give Basnan
money? Who else did you give money to?
Bandar, who headed the GID – Saudi Arabia’s top intelligence
agency – during part of his ambassadorship, could have been asked what Saudi
intelligence knew about the hijackers. The prince himself has hinted that it
knew more about the hijackers in advance than has been publicly admitted.
“Saudi security,” Bandar said in 2007, had been “actively following the
movements of most of the terrorists with precision…If U.S. security authorities
had engaged their Saudi counterparts in a serious and credible manner, in my
opinion, we would have avoided what happened.” What did Bandar mean by that?
Further, what does Bandar know about the exodus of the bin
Laden family and other well-to-do Saudis from the U.S. when airspace reopened
two days after the attacks? On Sept. 13, 2001, the night of Bandar’s White
House visit with President Bush, his deputy called the FBI to seek assistance
in getting bin Laden “family members” and other Saudis out of the country.
Maloney has additional questions he would have liked to ask
Bandar: “Why did your embassy provide diplomatic cover to Thumairy and say he
worked as an administrative officer at the embassy when he did not? Why assign
him to the King Fahd mosque and keep him there?”
What did the embassy’s post-9/11 investigation of Thumairy
show? Did they call the embassy from California before and during the time the
hijackers arrived? Who did they speak with and what was said?
Did Musaed al Jarrah report to you? Did you have control
and/or supervision of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in the U.S. or did it
operate independently of you?
With Bandar clammed up, his answers, if any, will apparently
never be known.
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