Reply #8: You are fast - I was ready to post and saw your post! -nice going! [View All]

Yep, We have an early NYT saying they left on the 14th - as did Snopes at first - but now Snopes admits that Michael Moore was correct when he said:

"Why did this country allow the bin Laden family, two days after — two days after September 11 — to fly around America and pick up all the bin Laden relatives, about 24 of them, and take them to Europe? Not a single one of them was interrogated by the FBI."

Per Snopes : "Part of Moore's statement has since been proved to be correct — during the ban on air travel, some Saudis (including members of the bin Laden family) were transported by air to assembly points in the U.S. in preparation for their leaving the country.

In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, the Federal Aviation Administration immediately ordered all flights in the United States grounded, and that ban stayed in effect until September 13. (Even then, for that first day commercial carriers were either completing the interrupted flights of September 11 or were repositioning empty aircraft in anticipation of the resumption of full service. New passenger flights did not resume until the 14th.) During that two-day period of full lock-down, only the military and specially FAA-authorized flights that delivered life-saving medical necessities were in the air. The enforcement of the empty skies directive was so stringent that even after the United Network for Organ Sharing sought and gained FAA clearance to use charter aircraft on September 12 to effect time-critical deliveries of organs for transplant, one of its flights carrying a human heart was forced to the ground in Bellingham, Washington, 80 miles short of its Seattle destination, by two Navy F/A-18 fighters. (The organ completed its journey after being transferred to a helicopter.)

<snip>This component is another great source of confusion, and the crux of the overall issue. Reports indicate that some prominent Saudis were ferried around the U.S. via automobile and airplane in the days immediately after the September 11 attacks, even though the ban on general air travel was still in effect: The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened.3 Two armed bodyguards hired to chaperon recall a 100-minute trip Sept. 13 quite vividly. In the end, the son of a Saudi Arabian prince who is the nation's defense minister, and the son of a Saudi army commander made it to Kentucky for a waiting 747.

The hastily arranged flight out of Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar on the outskirts of Tampa International Airport, was anything but ordinary. It lifted off the tarmac at a time when every private plane in the nation was grounded due to safety concerns after the Sept. 11 attacks. <snip>



Sources:
6. Andrews, Bill. "Bin Laden Family's US Exit 'Approved'."
Edinburgh Evening News. 3 September 2003.

1. Buncombe, Andrew. "Fears of Reprisal Force Bin Laden Family to Flee Homes in US."
The Independent. 26 September 2001 (p. 3).

4. Cullen, Kevin. "Bin Laden Kin Flown Back to Saudi Arabia."
The Boston Globe. 20 September 2001 (p. A29).

2. Cullen, Kevin. "Saudi Diplomat: IDs Were Stolen."
The Boston Globe. 29 September 2001 (p. A6).

5. Hayward, Ed. "Hub Attack on Arab Student Investigated As Hate Crime."
The Boston Herald. 18 September 2001 (p. 28).

Kurz, Hank. "Organ Network Gets Clearance for Charter Flights."
The Associated Press. 13 September 2001.

9. Lichtblau, Eric. "White House Approved Departure of Saudis After Sept. 11, Ex-Aide Says."
The New York Times. 4 September 2003.

7. Steele, Kathy. "Phantom Flight from Florida."
Tampa Tribune. 5 October 2001 (p. 1)

3. Tyler, Patrick E. "Fearing Harm, Bin Laden Kin Fled from U.S."
The New York Times. 30 September 2001 (p. A1).

Associated Press. "FAA Allows Cross-Country Flight of Antivenin to Miami Victim."
13 September 2001.

8. CBSNews.com. "Returning to the Air."
15 September 2001.