T5 B68 Craig Unger Fdr- Media Reports- 1st Pgs For Reference 628

THE WAR AT HOME

FAMILY FRIENDS President Bush and Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, August 27, 2002. Inset, the burning towers on 9/11.

SAYING THE SAUDIS Just days after 9/11, wealthy Saudi Arabians, including members of the bin Laden family, were whisked out of the U.S. on private jets. No one will ^ admit to clearing the flights, and the passengers weren't |ljj questioned. Did the Bush family's long Iff! relationship with the Saudis help make it happen? I: "

BY CRAIG UNGER <"•*-><**#«* m,^.^

n the morning of September 13, 2001, a 49-year-old private eye named Dan Grossi got an unexpected call from the Tampa Police Department. Grossi had worked with the Tampa force for 20 years before retiring, and it was not particularly unusual for the police to recommend former officers for special security jobs. But Grossi's new assignment was very much out of the ordinary. Two days earlier, terrorists had hijacked four airliners and carried out the worst atrocity in American history. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers had been from Saudi Arabia. "The police had been giving Saudi students 162

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protection since September 11," Grossi recalls. "They asked if I was interested in escorting these students from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky." Grossi was told to go to the airport, where a small charter jet would be available to take him and the Saudis on their flight. He was dubious about the prospects of accomplishing his task. "Quite frankly, I knew that everything was grounded," he says. "I never thought this was going to happen." Even so, Grossi, who'd been asked to bring a colleague, phoned Manuel Perez, a former F.B.I, agent, to put him on alert. Perez was equally unconvinced. "I said, 'Forget about it,"' Perez recalls. '"Nobody is flying today.'" The two men had good reason to be

skeptical. Within minutes of the attacks on 9/11, the Federal Aviation Administration had sent out a special notification called a NOTAM—a notice to airmen—ordering every airborne plane in the United States to land at the nearest airport as soon as possible, and prohibiting planes on the ground from taking off. For the next two days, commercial and private aviation throughout the entire United States ceased. Former vice president Al Gore was stranded in Austria when his flight to the U.S. was canceled. Bill Clinton postponed travel as well. Majorleague baseball games were called off. For the first time in a century, American skies were nearly as empty as they had been when OCTOBER

2003

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Tom Eld ridge From:

Jonathan Stull

Sent:

Sunday, June 20, 2004 5:55 PM

To:

Tom Eldridge

Subject: Michael Moore on the Saudi Flights

Heat Is On Filmmaker Michael Moore Takes on Factual Challenges to Fahrenheit 9/11 ABCNEWS.com

June 20, 2004— Michael Moore's controversial new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, opens on screens across the United States on Friday. It's sure to enrage Bush lovers and rally Bush haters. But can it convince any of the unconvinced? This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos visited with Moore in his hometown of Flint, Mich, to talk about it. Moore began the interview, excerpted below, by establishing his motivation for making the film. STEPHANOPOULOS: Random House defines "propaganda" as information, rumors, et cetera, deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, et cetera. By that definition, Fahrenheit 911 is propaganda, isn't it? MOORE: Well, it's an op-ed piece. It's my opinion about the last four years of the Bush administration. And that's what I call it. I'm not trying to pretend that this is some sort of, you know, fair and balanced work of journalism, even though those who use the words "fair and balanced" often aren't that, but— STEPHANOPOULOS: And your goal is to defeat President Bush. MOORE: I would like to see Mr. Bush removed from the White House. Saudis Fly Away Critics of the movie charge that Moore's filmmaking style is deliberately misleading. Stephanopoulos raised two separate issues about the film's accuracy— the first regarding Moore's assertions about the movement of the bin Laden family in the week following 9/11. STEPHANOPOULOS: Take the issue of the Saudi planes. You make a big issue, a big chunk in the film about this issue where a few days after Sept. 11, many members of the Osama bin Laden family, Saudi nationals, were taken out of the country. It was helped, arranged by the White House. You suggest it was done when the airspace was closed. You suggest that these people were not screened. And you also [suggest] there's a whole sinister subtext there that this was because of the Bush family ties to the bin Laden family. But the 9/11 commission report found that they didn't fly until the airspace was open, that they were screened by the FBI. In fact— MOORE: That's not true. That's not true. And in fact... there's an FBI agent who was on the al Qaeda task force who's in my movie, who says quite bluntly, "No, proper police procedures were not followed." STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, wait. But what wasn't true? Because it says here in the 9/11 commission report that these flights didn't take off until after the airspace reopened. That is true, correct? MOORE: No, they were on charter flights. Once the airspace opened for commercial flights, they hadn't opened for the charter flights. And so the charter flights that picked up the bin Ladens around the country, that went to the various cities — this was all assisted by the White House, which really should be the real focus of this. STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, but Richard Clarke, who's probably at the top of the White House enemy list, says that it was his decision, he takes responsibility for it. He doesn't think it was a mistake.

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questions The 9/11 commission should ask who authorized the evacuation of Saudi nationals in the days following the attacks | BY CRAIG UNGER IN ITS TOUGH QUESTIONING of Richard Clarke and Condoleezza Rice, the 9/11 commission has already shown itselfto bsjnpre resojute than some skeptics predicted. Many Americans now realize that multiple warnings of an Al Qaeda attack on American soil crossed the desks of Bush administration officials in the months leading up to 9/11. The administration's previously unchallenged narrative has begun to unravel. But when hearings resume on Tuesday, we may learn exactly how tough the commission is prepared to be. This time the stars will be Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III, among others. When they testify-especially Mueller-we will see whether or not the commission has the stomach to address what may be the single most egregious security lapse related to the attacks: the evacuation of approximately 140 Saudis just two days after 9/11. This episode raises particularly sensitive questions for the administration. Never before in

history has a president of the United States had such a close relationship with another foreign power as President Bush and his father have had with the Saridi royal family' iHeHousie'df Saud. I have traced more than.?:(.4 biiJion in investments and contracts that went from the House of Saucl over the past 20 years to companies in which the Bushes and their allies have had prominent positions -Harken Energy, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group among them. Is it possible that President Bush himself played a role in authorizing the evacuation of the Saudis after 9/11? What did he know and when did he know it? Let's go back to Sept, 13, 2001, and look at several scenes that were taking place simultaneously. Three thousand people had just been killed. The toxic rubble of the World Trade Center was still ablaze. American airspace was locked down. Not even Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who were out of the country, were allowed to fly home. And QUESTIONS, Page D5

Craig Unger, the former editor of Boston Magazine, -is the author of "House of Bush, House ofSaud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties" (Scribner, March 2004).

Tom Eldridge From: Sent: To: Subject:

articles-email@ms1 .Iga2.nytimes.com on behalf of Christine Healey Tuesday, June 01, 2004 9:12 AM Tom Eldridge NYTimes.com Article: The Great Escape

The article below from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by [email protected]. FYI

chealey@9-llcommission. gov

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June 1, 2004 By CRAIG UNGER

Americans who think the 9/11 commission is going to answer all the crucial questions about the terrorist attacks are likely to be sorely disappointed - especially if they're interested in the secret evacuation of Saudis by plane that began just after Sept. 11. We knew that 15 out of 19 hijackers were Saudis. We knew that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was behind 9/11. Yet we did not conduct a police-style investigation of the departing Saudis, of whom two dozen were members, of the bin Laden family. That is not to say that they were complicit in the attacks. Unfortunately, though, we may never know the real story. The investigative panel has already concluded that there is "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace." But the real point is that there were still some restrictions on American airspace when the Saudi flights began. In addition, new evidence shows that the evacuation involved more than the departure of 142 Saudis on six charter flights that the commission is investigating. According to newly released documents, 160 Saudis left the United States on 55 flights immediately after 9/11 - making a total of about 300 people who left with the apparent approval of the Bush administration, far more than has been reported before. The records were released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Freedom of 1

3. The Great Escape - June 1, 2004 CRAIG UNGER The New York Times Americans who think the 9/11 commission is going to answer all the crucial questions about the terrorist attacks are likely to be sorely disappointed — especially if they're interested in the secret evacuation of Saudis by plane that began just after Sept. 11. We knew that 15 out of 19 hijackers were Saudis. We knew that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was behind 9/11. Yet we did not conduct a police-style investigation of the departing Saudis, of whom two dozen were members, of the bin Laden family. That is not to say that they were complicit in the attacks. Unfortunately, though, we may never know the real story. The investigative panel has already concluded that there is "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace." But the real point is that there were still some restrictions on American airspace when the Saudi flights began. In addition, new evidence shows that the evacuation involved more than the departure of 142 Saudis on six charter flights that the commission is investigating. According to newly released documents, 160 Saudis left the United States on 55 flights immediately after 9/11 — making a total of about 300 people who left with the apparent approval of the Bush administration, far more than has been reported before. The records were released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative, nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington. The vast majority of the newly disclosed flights were commercial airline flights, not charters, often carrying just two or three Saudi passengers. They originated from more than 20 cities, including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Houston. One Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left Kennedy Airport on Sept. 13 with 46 Saudis. The next day, another Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left with 13 Saudis. The panel has indicated that it has yet to find any evidence that the F.B.I, checked the manifests of departing flights against its terror watch list. The departures of additional Saudis raise more questions for the panel. Richard Clarke, the former counter-terrorism czar, told The Hill newspaper recently that he took full responsibility for approving some flights. But we don't know if other Bush administration officials participated in the decision. The passengers should have been questioned about any links to Osama bin Laden, or his financing. We have long known that some faction of the Saudi elite has helped funnel money to Islamist terrorists —inadvertently at least. Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who has been accused of being an intermediary between Al Qaeda and the House of Saud, boarded one of the evacuation planes in Kentucky. Was he interrogated by the F.B.I, before he left? If the commission dares to address these issues, it will undoubtedly be accused of politicizing one of the most important national security investigations in American history — in an election year, no less. But if it does not, it risks something far worse — the betrayal of the thousands of people who lost their lives that day, not to mention millions of others who want the truth. Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties."

4. Elements of Myth Enter Into Post-9/11 Flights by Saudis June 1, 2004 ALAN MURRAY

The Wall Street Journal The secret evacuation of Saudi nationals from the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has achieved grassy-knoll status. Craig Unger, author of "House of Bush; House of Saud," calls it "the single most egregious security lapse related to the attacks." Every Bush hater can cite the basic details: At a time when Americans were grounded, more than 140 Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, were spirited out of the U.S. without questioning by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It's a myth. But like all great myths, it has such suggestive power that it will live on for years, despite its feeble connection to fact. In a recent column, I criticized Michael Moore for adopting this myth, both in his most recent book, "Dude, Where's My Country," and in his new movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11." I mentioned I hadn't seen the film -- Mr. Moore declined to make it available before the Cannes festival - but I relied on a synopsis provided by his publicist. Mr. Moore responded, not by disputing the facts of the Saudi flights, but with a blistering attack on me for daring to "review" a synopsis. On his Web site, he said that everything I wrote about the film was "completely false." This despite the fact it all was quoted directly from his book or the synopsis, and confirmed in a telephone interview with Mr. Moore himself. But perhaps I shouldn't have picked on the hero of Cannes, who has long had a loose relationship to truth. The Saudi story has made its way into much more respectable journalism. And the flood of critical e-mail I received after writing that column convinced me the myth has considerable staying power. For what it's worth, here are the facts, as gathered by the staff of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission: Between Sept. 14 and 24, 2001, six chartered flights carrying mostly Saudi nationals among their 142 passengers departed from the U.S. The 9/11 Commission found "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals" left before U.S. airspace reopened. Moreover, all six flights "were screened by law-enforcement officials, primarily the FBI" to ensure that no one of interest was allowed to leave. The most controversial flight, filled with members of the sprawling bin Laden family, left Sept. 20. Of the 26 people aboard - 23 passengers and three private security guards - the FBI interviewed 22 before the plane was allowed to leave. Last week, I reviewed these facts with Mr. Unger, who is now a principal proponent of the Saudi flight myth. "I think most of that is true," he replied. "I never said any flight left the U.S. while there were still restrictions on U.S. airspace." I asked Mr. Unger, what's the problem then? He pointed to an account, first reported in the Tampa Tribune, of a Lear jet with three Saudi passengers that flew from Tampa, Fla., to Lexington, Ky., on Sept. 13,2001, as part of an effort to help prominent Saudis who feared reprisals in the U.S. While commercial airspace was open at that time, private planes still weren't allowed to fly, according to Mr. Unger. He said he believes it couldn't have flown "without a special favor from the White House." Moreover, he says, he's not sure "the FBI did their job thoroughly" in screening passengers on the Saudi flights that later left the U.S. The 9/11 Commission still is investigating the Tampa flight, but it has found no evidence that any discussion of Saudi flights rose higher than Richard Clarke, former antiterrorism czar and now a