PROBE THIS: Sen Bob Graham said two 9/11 hijackers had direct ties to Saudi intelligence

9/11 hijackers tied to Saudi government, Graham says in book

By Frank Davies, Knight Ridder | September 5, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Senator Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.

The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers "would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration," the Florida Democrat wrote.

And in Graham's book, "Intelligence Matters," obtained by The Miami Herald yesterday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

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He oversaw the Sept. 11 investigation on Capitol Hill with Representative Porter Goss. According to Graham, the FBI and the White House blocked efforts to investigate the extent of official Saudi connections to two hijackers.



http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/09/05/911_hijackers_tied_to_saudi_government_graham_says_in_book?mode=PF

Everybody knew that Graham was a sober, conscientious, unfailingly courteous grandfather who couldn't light up a room with a barrel of Iraqi crude and a Zippo. The Almanac of American Politics had described him as "careful, methodical, thorough, hardworking, reliable" -- it might as well have added "zzzzzzz." He was known as one of those mild-mannered moderates who don't rock boats or make enemies or generate buzz, who respect the dignity of their august institution and the opinions of their distinguished colleagues.
"I appreciate the thoughtful remarks of the senator from Connecticut and the senator from Arizona," Graham began. He wore a plain gray suit and one of his trademark Florida ties, with Mrs. Grundyish glasses perched at the end of his nose. The Florida reporters in the gallery braced for a typical Bob Graham speech: high-minded, long-winded and entirely devoid of quotable sound bites.

And then he started yelling about terror and danger and death.

"We are not talking about a threat 90 days from now!" Graham roared. "We are not talking about a threat that may come a year from now if nuclear material is made available!" His cherubic face turned purple. He gesticulated like a manic third-base coach, jabbing his fingers, pumping his fists, sweeping his hands across the lectern. "I am talking about a threat that could happen THIS AFTERNOON!"
Bob Graham as a modern-day Paul Revere? Bob Graham as a screaming-banshee Chicken Little? "I'd never seen Bob like that," recalls his best friend in the Senate, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. At his golf club in Miami Lakes, Fla., Graham was notorious for his plodding pace, for analyzing and reanalyzing every putt from every angle. He had a similar reputation as the Democratic chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, where he was dissed behind his back as the Tortoise for his earnest six-part questions and incessant requests for meetings.

......

But now, suddenly, Graham was preaching like a prophet of doom, hectoring his colleagues that Americans were dangerously vulnerable to terrorist attacks, that militant groups like Hezbollah could be even deadlier than al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, that war in Iraq would only increase the threat at home. And then he went further: "If you believe that the American people are not going to be at additional threat, then, frankly, my friends -- to use a blunt term -- blood is going to be on your hands."

Bob Graham said the Senate would have blood on its hands?

"I was like, Whoa! No way Uncle Bob said that!" marvels William E. Graham, the senator's nephew and the CEO of the Graham Companies, the family's real estate firm. Paul Anderson, the senator's communications director, had helped prepare Graham's floor remarks, and he knew he hadn't written anything about blood on anyone's hands. "I was completely speechless," Anderson says. Several former Graham aides frantically e-mailed one another transcripts, with "Wow" in the subject line. "We were all asking each other: Is this our Bob Graham?" says Margaret Kempel, who used to run Graham's South Florida office. "He's never been a freakout guy."

Suddenly, Bob Graham has become a freakout guy. In fact, assuming he continues to recover from January surgery to replace a valve in his heart, he plans to run for president as a kind of freakout candidate, a red-alert politician for a freakout nation. He rails about "hardened assassins" living among us, plotting attacks on American soil.
He fumes about dramatic intelligence failures, massive security gaps, "modern Armageddon." He frets about seaports and airports, nuclear plants and chemical plants. "It would be relatively easy," he says, "for a terrorist to poison a water utility and kill thousands of people." He hasn't screamed much since the blood-on-your-hands speech -- and he's been particularly measured since his own brush with mortality -- but he now peppers his methodical geekspeak with words like "outrageous" and "scandalous" and "inexcusable." As this article went to press, Hussein's fall had not provoked any new attacks in America, but Graham still insists that the risk to Americans from terrorism is as high as ever. "The gun," he warns, "is still loaded." .....

From the Guardian:

Other aspects appeared unusual. One of the kidnappers' demands was for the delivery of several F-16 fighter jets bought by Pakistan from the US in the early 1990s, a deal that was later cancelled. No militant group in Pakistan has ever before shown any interest in the F-16 deal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4462107,00.html

BOB WOODWARD: Casey had lunch with Prince Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, one of the most powerful figures even today in Washington. And they went for a stroll in the garden and they said, "We have to go off the books." And they agreed that the Saudis would put up the money to hire some professionals to go and try to car-bomb Sheik Fadlallah.

And it was so off the books, there's no evidence that Reagan knew about it or Weinberger or Schultz. It was Casey on his own, saying, "I'm going to solve the big problem by essentially getting tougher or as tough as the terrorists in using their weapon, the car bomb."


NARRATOR: The new U.S.-and-Saudi-backed Lebanese counterterrorist group set up a car bombing near a Beirut mosque.

JIM HOUGAN, Author/Journalist: The bombing took place in a public square, when the mosque let out and when it was thought that Fahdlallah would be coming through. In effect, you had hundreds of people who were leaving the Muslim equivalent of church. More than 80 people were killed. The remark at the time was that we- everyone was certain it was a CIA operation because everybody got killed except the target.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/script.html

"The Bush Administration knew all about them, having been fully briefed about Operation Catchers Mitt and related counter-terrorism operations the US was jointly conducting with several foreign intelligence agencies inside the US." http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/9/11/105117/571