FBI releases 9/11 investigation document that scrutinized Saudis

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/fbi-911-document-declassified/2021/09/12/fa37b584-13c9-11ec-9589-31ac3173c2e5_story.html

by graderjs • 5 years ago

230 165 5 years ago

washingtonpost.com

kotaKat• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/47mdz

jeroenhd• 5 years ago

That's strange, I'm getting a TLS certificate error when I visit that website now. Is it just me?

Edit: must be a DNS issue, the website resolves to cloudflare-dns.com so I guess it must be part of the website's operator's childish fight with Cloudflare's DNS resolver for not forwarding the resolving IP subnet to their DNS servers.

SquareWheel• 5 years ago

You're probably using Cloudflare DNS.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317

neom• 5 years ago

Crux of the article:

The FBI document released Saturday contains significant redactions, but nevertheless shows FBI officials were skeptical of claims by various witnesses that Saudis in the U.S. who met with the two hijackers did so accidentally through chance encounters.

It was “difficult to reconcile” the connection between the hijackers and those who gave them support, the FBI document states, noting that one individual claimed he met the hijackers at a 7-Eleven convenience store in northern Virginia “during a ‘chance meeting’, in a uniquely similar fashion to the way Bayoumi described his ‘chance meeting’ with Hazmi and Midhar in Los Angeles.”

compsciphd3• 5 years ago

it makes a little sense to question this. It make more sense that they had chance encounters at a mosque (i.e. "strange" visitors who are visiting an area are common to visiting local religious institutions).

with that said, there's a joke that many jews make when they travel, of playing the game "spot the jew", and I can imagine if I ran into a jew at a random 7-11 I'm more likely to have a friendly chit-chat than with other random people, so I can imagine that the same might hold true for saudis. I could very easily imagine if they were in a location with a reasonably sized saudi ex-pat community that there would be many of these chance encounters with other saudis.

I could imagine "white bread" FBI agents that aren't from a minority, might not be able to comprehend how minorities find each other and make connections in random locations.

with all that said, it be proper for the FBI to chase down all these threads.

nkozyra• 5 years ago

I think the details of this are a little more coincidental than you and I connecting randomly because we're Jewish.

h2odragon3• 5 years ago

Many FBI agents are Mormons, and have the same automatic assumption of fellowship you speak of.

MauroIksem• 5 years ago

I call it "what kind of brown are you"?

TuringNYC2• 5 years ago

I find it dubious to call chance encounters even "encounters." Muslims are encouraged to pray in congregation, even during travel. You find a random Mosque with several hundred people and perform your prayer rituals there (for most busy people, that is only for Friday congregational prayers.) You are also encouraged to smile at and greet everyone, even though you dont know them.

As a former Management Consultant, i've been in dozens of random mosques in random cities (based on where my client happened to be.) In SF alone I've visited in five or six on Fridays in the year before COVID as I flew in for work meetings.

I dont know anyone at any of these, but you try to smile and greet people as you are encouraged to.

Now imagine you create a graph of where you've been and who else has been there. You can find all sorts of co-incidences because the graph doesnt account for the degree of connectedness (near zero)

Another reason others faiths often dont fully understand this is due to the workday challenge in the west. Muslim mandatory congregational prayers are on a workday (usually Friday 12-1 or 1-2), so we dont get to enjoy the community feel of a long congregation with socializing before/after that one could achieve on a Saturday or Sunday. Instead Muslims often find themselves rushing back to work for a 2pm meeting. If you're unlucky and your meeting starts at 2pm sharp, you are brisk walking back and swapping New Balances for wingtips on the elevator up.

The workday challenge also means that the congregational prayer is not in your home community, it is whatever is closest to your office. Sometimes, you have multiple depending on whether you're at the downtown or uptown office, etc.

geoduck14• 5 years ago

of playing the game "spot the jew"

That can get dangerous very fast!

Alex3917• 5 years ago

Just like how, according to the 9/11 commission report, on the morning of 9/11 there was a "chance meeting" between the two guys who ran the investigation into attacks (Porter Graham and Bob Goss) and the guy who wired 100k to the lead hijacker (Ahmad).

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_Goss

tpmx6• 5 years ago

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Goss and Graham were having breakfast with General Ahmad [head of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)]

Secondary source for the $100k money transfer from the ISI head to Atta:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/22/usa.september1...

Significantly, Sheikh is also the man who, on the instructions of General Mahmoud Ahmed, the then head of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), wired $100,000 before the 9/11 attacks to Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. It is extraordinary that neither Ahmed nor Sheikh have been charged and brought to trial on this count. Why not?

mrobot• 5 years ago

This article starts off with meeting between Graham/Goss and Mahmoud Ahmed, or 'Mehmood Ahmed' as it is spelled some other places. Also, what is the reason spellings always differ so much?

https://archive.is/ttTRs

voldacar• 5 years ago

the amount of "chance" surrounding the 9/11 event truly boggles the mind. I can't think of any other historical occurence that even comes close

raldi• 5 years ago

All this sarcasm is getting confusing. Can you just clearly state what you're insinuating?

acgt2• 5 years ago

This NPR news doesn't require subscription.

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/12/1036389448/biden-declassifies...

So Saudis has connections with 9/11 terrorists, and Washington invaded Iraq instead?

CrazyPyroLinux• 5 years ago

As Ron Paul once said (about the Federal Reserve), "If that doesn't make any sense at all to you...then you understand it just fine."

acgt2• 5 years ago

I was just suggesting the Iraq war is a mistake.

ceejayoz• 5 years ago

Ron Paul ignores the entirely possible alternative of "you may just be an idiot", though.

tpmx6• 5 years ago

It's pretty widely accepted by now that the premise for Iraq 2.0 was manufactured by the GWB administration.

Regarding 9/11:

I think Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings, thinking they'd get maybe a small attack somewhere with a smaller number of US deaths, which would sort of be the cost of doing business in the middle east, and that this could be politically expedient in the context of his larger vision on how to deal with "the Iraq/Saddam problem", and in the larger picture morally "fine".

Btw: Dick Cheney is actually still around. How he and GWB never were indicted is beyond me. Don't get me started on the GWB PR rehabilitation campaign that has been ongoing during the the past ~6 years.

joconde• 5 years ago

I think Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings, thinking they'd get maybe a small attack somewhere with a smaller number of US deaths

Did he have so much control that he could suppress intelligence about an attack? I know he was pretty powerful for a vice president, but it sounds weird to me that one guy who isn't even in command could do that.

Note I'm not American and don't know that much about that period.

api2• 5 years ago

How he and GWB never were indicted is beyond me.

Same reason nothing will ever happen to Trump for January 6th (and many other things). Same reason Nixon was pardoned. Same reason Clinton got away with lying to Congress, nothing happened to Reagan or Bush Sr. over Iran Contra, and so on...

Once you reach a certain level, laws no longer apply.

This is a more likely explanation than more complex conspiracy theories for Saudi and Pakistani ISI involvement with the 9/11 hijackers. These people were never brought to justice because they are powerful, rich, or "valuable" in some other way. They're not subject to the law.

BeFlatXIII• 5 years ago

I think Cheney was pulling the shots and knowingly and cynically ignored all of those glaring warnings

Finally some government blame that isn't brain-dead "Bush did it".

api2• 5 years ago

Back then I was fond of saying that if George W Bush were president during Pearl Harbor we would have declared "War on Aerial Bombing" and invaded Korea.

aagha• 5 years ago

I'm hoping to God that question was being asked sarcastically.

Iv• 5 years ago

No, Washington invaded Afghanistan, despite arguably Rumsfeld wanting to target Iraq at first, but being told they did not have a case.

911 hijackers were Saudis and Osama Bin Laden was Saudi but it was decided to not look at KSA at all.

This was known to the Bush adminsitration who censored any mention of KSA from the 911 reports: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_28_pages

The GOP has always been a supporter of foreign and domestic terrorism. Them posing as antiterrorists is the biggest con of the 21st century.

will4274• 5 years ago

Document here: https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-and-related...

mcculley• 5 years ago

Where is the actual report?

junon• 5 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28502758

dmix• 5 years ago

This is one of the Saudi’s frequently mentioned in the report in connection to two hijackers, who was being financed by a Saudi princess married to a US Ambassador:

https://911research.fandom.com/wiki/Omar_al-Bayoumi

FBI agents involved in the case had received several reports that led them to believe al-Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence officer, living and working secretly in the U.S. His cover story was that he worked for an aviation logistics company owned by the Saudi government, but investigators found he never did any work for the company.
Bayoumi got the hijackers an apartment and helped open a bank account, obtain car insurance, get Social Security cards and call flight schools in Florida—and also threw a welcoming party for the hijackers, during which he introduced them to the local Muslim community.

The Al Saud princess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haifa_bint_Faisal_Al_Saud?wpro...

Scoundreller• 5 years ago

but investigators found he never did any work for the company.

Not just him, but there were about 50 employees at this Saudi aviation company that were being paid and not showing up to work.

Clearly this was immigration fraud to bring people to the US, but I’ll bet these “ghost” jobs haven’t been cracked down on by immigration authorities.

wombatmobile2• 5 years ago

I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything.

I just wonder how WTC7 collapsed in 5 seconds despite not being hit by any aircraft.

The video just has always baffled me, and no explanation, including NIST's, has come close to passing the pub test.

https://ine.uaf.edu/projects/wtc7/

pupdogg7• 5 years ago

NIST is still withholding the mathematical model data that was used for their simulation of the collapse to derive their results. More recent rebuttal from NIST can be found here: https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/20-years-later-nis...

FYI: Shyam Sunder, the author of the article, was the lead investigator of this collapse.

yawaworht19782• 5 years ago

I just checked the nist report. An airplane impact doesn't even matter, wtc7 wasn't hit by one. It did not collapse in 5 seconds, 5 seconds was the visually obvious footage, but many things happened before that, it took 7 hours.

- Debris from wtc1 ignites fire on at least 10 floors. Sounds believable to me.

- floor 7-13 fires got out of control, primary sprinkler system failed, the redundancy or backup system didn't not work due to damage from the tower 1 and 2, the water supply for the backup relied on the cities water system which was mia on that day. This caused the fire to spread diagonally across the building. Sounds ok to me, I don't think anyone could make this up and it would be allowed into such a report without review.

There's much more but assuming usual explosives, this has to be considered: The smallest charge capable of initiating column failure would have resulted in a sound level of 130 to 140 dB at a distance of at least half a mile. This would be quite a couple seconds or max a minute before the full collapse, but no footage had such sounds, nor did witnesses report such sounds, and any nearby seismology equipment would detect irregularities. Just for reference 130-140 decibels are much louder than I would have thought, 130 is peak stadium crowd noise, 135 is an air raid siren, 140 is a jet engine take off.

mistermann5• 5 years ago

There's much more but assuming usual explosives, this has to be considered...

True, but it is possible to apply the same strict epistemology to the consensus narrative as well, like how is it that "many things happened" resulting in an orderly freefall that appeared magically homogeneous across the entire structure, resulting in a descent that is (afaik) largely indistinguishable from a controlled demolition.

but no footage had such sounds, nor did witnesses report such sounds, and any nearby seismology equipment would detect irregularities

A strict epistemological examination wouldn't let such premises be deployed without scrutiny.

atatatat2• 5 years ago

How many decibels to start fires that firefighters wouldn't be able to touch?

wombatmobile2• 5 years ago

Isn't it strange that all 24 internal columns of building 7 would collapse simultaneously?

Even if the office fires burned hot enough to compromise the columns, wouldn't they have advanced gradually over the diagonal span, trigger slow sequential collapses that might have resulted in the building listing or distorting, rather than falling flat to the ground in 5 seconds?

Would thermite be deployed explosively at 140db, or might it work over a longer period of minutes at lower volume to heat the steel columns to 700 degrees, the temperature at which it would lose structural integrity?

throwrqX• 5 years ago

I generally don't pay much attention to conspiracy theories but with regards to WTC 7 I feel there was something missing, a common video I see cited for this is this one [0], where Larry Silverstein, owner of the trade centers, says the fire department 'pulled' the building down because they determined that would be safer than letting it collapse of its own volition.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZlmHvd_RZU

oofabz• 5 years ago

I remember getting a call from the fire department commander telling me that they were not sure they are going to be able to contain the fire. "I said, "you know, we've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it". And they made that decision to pull. And then we watched the building collapse.

It sounds to me like Silverstein and the NYFD were talking about pulling firefighters out of WTC7. Once the fire department realized saving the building was a lost cause, there was no reason for firefighters to remain inside and risk their lives further. I don't hear anything in the video about "pulling" the building down.

jcranmer3• 5 years ago

I just wonder how WTC7 collapsed in 5 seconds despite not being hit by any aircraft.

Did you see the video of, say, the Surfside condo collapse? When a skyscraper starts to collapse--and it doesn't really matter all that much how it starts to collapse--it invariably collapses quite quickly and in much the same way.

WTC7 didn't collapse in "5 seconds". The actual observed portion of the collapse took about 9 seconds, and this is a view that only shows about the first ⅓ of the collapse. One of the things that greatly hampers analysis of the WTC7 collapse is there just aren't good views of much of WTC7, and so the full extent of the damage it received from its front-row seat of a collapsing building isn't entirely known.

anonAndOn4• 5 years ago

Because they built something too big for the foundation? I bet if you weaken those trusses between 5&7, gravity will handle the rest.

The final design for 7 World Trade Center was for a much larger building than originally planned when the substation was built.[16]:xxxviii The structural design of 7 World Trade Center therefore included a system of gravity column transfer trusses and girders, located between floors 5 and 7, to transfer loads to the smaller foundation.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center

the_third_wave• 5 years ago

Page 109-110 [1] covers the collapse of WTC7, the conclusion is:

Despite simulating a number of hypothetical scenarios, we were unable to identify any progressive sequence of failures that could have taken place on September 11, 2001, and caused a total collapse of the building, let alone the observed straight-down collapse with approximately 2.5 seconds of free fall and minimal differential movement of the exterior.

[1] https://vault.fbi.gov/9-11-attacks-investigation-and-related...

yawaworht19782• 5 years ago

Looks like the only reason why some of these mentioned weren't on the planes was because they cannot operate one. With the described anti western and anti Jewish sentiments and views, being Saudi citizens(I presume) , why would they want American citizenship?

Saudi embassy/consulate staff involved meeting these people? This looks so dodgy, the Kashoggi case has shown that Saudi diplomat staff doesn't respect territorial laws when being hosted. Mediterranean restaurant is some sort of key word or red herring, not just because of the rather offensive "beneath their status" statement, but clearly if it's more than just Mediterranean than in name, their last priority would be to cater for halal food and I am pretty sure that the Mediterranean dressing style would be viewed as "beneath their status" (but certainly not style, if I mad add this). So they didn't go there for the food, but to meet with other lackeys, to not been seen in the usual, not under status locations.

pupdogg7• 5 years ago

Whatever happened to the $2.3T (trillion) dollars that went missing as per Donald Rumsfeld's speech on September 10, 2001? I think we forgot to follow-up on this question...leading ourselves into greater debt year-after-year since then.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-war-on-waste/

hindsightbias2• 5 years ago

Trump said the troops stole it:

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/trump-us-troop-stole-...

throwaway829• 5 years ago

That article makes no reference to Rumsfeld's 9/10 speech. This is just a generic Trump is bad article.

pupdogg7• 5 years ago

I think you're confused. This is money before Iraq ever came into the picture (post 9/11). This is money that was reported "unaccounted for" 1 day prior to 9/11.

jl6• 5 years ago

The article makes it pretty clear that the $2.3T figure is about efficiency, sloppy accounting and diffuse accountability. It’s not like there was $2.3T cash in a van that got stolen.

pupdogg7• 5 years ago

Agreed! But if look at the timing of it, the efficiency, accounting, and accountability seemed to be worsened 6x times more to date.

blunte• 5 years ago

But as a matter of probability and human greed, some people understood the system and invisibly stole from it. How much of the money was mismanaged vs how much was stolen is debatable.

newsclues2• 5 years ago

Sloppy accounting on trillions of dollars. Ok, so how much was stolen?

toast02• 5 years ago

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

I think this is related to the very long DoD audit process, and there's a difference between being unable to track those dollars and them being missing or stolen or inappropriately used.

Notably, it took until about 2017 for annual audits to actually start at DoD, and AFAIK, they have yet to have a 'clean' audit where all/substantially all assets and spending is accounted for, although it seems like progress is being made. This isn't necessarily unexpected as the organization wasn't built with auditing as a requirement and it takes some time to retrofit that into a large organization. Congressional oversight is powerful, but persistant focus is hard to come by and is really needed on something like this.

Tylast• 5 years ago

Trillions of dollars are NOT missing…never were. With 34 colors of money, subdivided by Fiscal Year (FY), and where the RDT&E is further divided by 8 budget activities (each also divided by FY), it becomes a task impossible to tell congress (who actually created this insane level of fiscal sub-division in the first place) that every single dollar was spent according to their scheme.

Think about it, there is not a single off the shelf enterprise accounting system designed to accommodate even a fraction of this maniacal minutia.

Note that the cited list didn’t account for JIEDO appropriation type (which also had a FY component) which was prevalent over the past 20 years, but is now defunct.

A major part of the problem (save the super fragmented parsing of the funding) is that each service has their own accounting & execution systems. There is NOT a singular DoD system.

https://acqnotes.com/acqnote/acquisitions/appropriation-cate...

https://ndiatvc.org/images/downloads/DAU_Training/dau_color_...

throwawaylinux• 5 years ago

Nobody could answer the question of what the money was spent on, so it's missing. This is a normal usage of the term, nobody is alleging that someone was walking down the street with a briefcase full of 2.3 trillion dollars and whoops accidentally slipped and threw it into the bushes somewhere but can't find it.

And I'm no accountant but I suspect there could be a reasonable middle ground between accounting for every single dollar spent, and accounting for 2.3 trillion dollars.

TwoNineFive• 5 years ago

This exact question has been making the rounds. I suspect it's some meme amongst conspiracy peddlers and conversation de-trailers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/pldkd4/what_...

pupdogg7• 5 years ago

Yet the coalition of 3400 architects and engineers still do not have computer inputs of NIST's mathematical models used for simulating how the buildings were destroyed. As per NIST: "This information was exempt from public disclosure under Section 7d of the National Construction Safety Team Act because it was determined by the Director of NIST that release of the files might jeopardize public safety."

References: 1. https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/20-years-later-nis... 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiwpj7aa9c8

resoluteteeth• 5 years ago

Because they don't want to teach terrorists how to take down skyscrapers?

pupdogg7• 5 years ago

Two planes are hijacked and then rammed into two of the tallest buildings in the world. Both buildings collapse, while causing another 3rd building to collapse as well. I'm not sure how a mathematical model would help/teach the terrorist any more than the already available public videos of the attacks.

pan692• 5 years ago

It sounds unlikely to me that some terrorists have figured out a secret way to collapse skyscrapers with an airliner that architects and engineers haven't figured out already and which wouldn't be part of the curriculum of becoming an architect or engineer in the first place.

casperc• 5 years ago

May I ask the HN community what your thoughts are om this?

I always felt there are two parts of the “truthers”: the same crowd that is now denying covid and the ones representing this point of view.

The insanity is overshadowing the reasonable people in the truther movement, but in isolation this video (and ones like it) really makes me wonder.

h2odragon3• 5 years ago

It isn't odd to think that some of the wilder conspiracy theories on this, and other subjects, are seeded precisely to be such bullshit as to tar any discussion of the issue.

Plus the ever present rampant hucksterism that will say anything to sell stuff.

knownjorbist3• 5 years ago

BLS estimates several hundred thousand in directly overlapping professions in the US. I suspect a good number of these 3400 are people who are not even aware their name is being used for this cause.

newbamboo• 5 years ago

“Some mysteries are better left unsolved really.” Spinal tap

timdaub• 5 years ago

It's weird, all my coming of age I believed that 9/11 had something fishy going for it. I fell for the popularized conspiracy theories. There were videos propagated through Google Videos. I don't hold them much anymore.

Still to this day, I'm extremely skeptical of some of the official stories. I don't get the point of classified documents in this case. And there are still many open questions like e.g. why WTC 5 collapsed without an airplane impact.

Dunno, I guess eventually with more years passing we'll start to learn more diverging stories and potentially the truth?

dilyevsky3• 5 years ago

Wtc 5 didnt collapse it was demolished. Wtc 7 did. Which do you think is worse getting hit by an airplane or getting hit by another massive building as it collapses?

dragonwriter2• 5 years ago

Wtc 5 didnt collapse it was demolished.

It experienced fire and partial collapse due to being hit with part of the fuselage of UA 175 and other debris from the North Tower. (“Without an airplane impact” is, of course, a false description.)

mistermann5• 5 years ago

Was the collapse of WTC 7 due to getting hit by another building?

vlovich1232• 5 years ago

Wikipedia says:

section of the fuselage from United Airlines Flight 175 landed on the roof

The only fishiness radar I have is around the subsequent power grab and civil liberties rollback by the espionage organizations within the USA. Certainly I wouldn’t have given more power to the organizations that so clearly failed, let alone who have had a track record in directly creating enemies for the USA.

azinman2• 5 years ago

Taking advantage of a situation doesn’t mean you caused it. This is correlation != causation situation. Anti-vaxxers didn’t cause covid but the captured the moment to exploit it.

fredophile• 5 years ago

Read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. It basically lays out the idea that there are groups with legislation like this already prepared just waiting for an opportunity to get it pushed through. It's pretty shitty behaviour but doesn't require a conspiracy to explain it.

jopsen2• 5 years ago

Most conspiracy theories become impossible when you consider the number of people that would have to be in on it.

Sure, there are bugs in our history books (and lots of propaganda). But if you discard facts reported in the media, then how do you know water is wet? :)

On topic: it's hard to know if classification makes sense. But I'll admit I don't really feel competent to have an opinion on the subject.

slimsag• 5 years ago

I wonder what the theoretical limit is for the number of people that can retain a secret actually is, with modern technology and all.

e.g. governments definitely keep secrets, so how many people can be in on a given conspiracy-like government secret without major leaks that cannot be squashed through media, suppression, etc.?

I feel like precursors to the Manhattan project (since the project itself was clearly widely known) would hold the answer, but wouldn't account for modern technology / communication methods.

An interesting / fun thought :)

betwixthewires2• 5 years ago

I'm not particularly a conspiracy theorist on this topic, but I do feel the need to point out that hundreds of millions, possibly over a billion people engage in a conspiracy worldwide to hide the fact that Santa Claus doesn't exist from children.

betwixthewires2• 5 years ago

WTC 7.

I'm not on the conspiracy train either, but when I think about it now, the world was very naive before the modern era of ease of discussion and information sharing. The story "some guys stole some planes" sold fine in 2001, but in my mind something this big requires a lot more moving parts than that. I don't claim to know what those moving parts are, but there's definitely a lot more to the story than what we know. I doubt we will ever learn the full truth of what happened, or anything resembling it.

If I were to throw out probable pieces I'd say there had to be some state involvement from at least one state intelligence apparatus and some financing through the traditional, "white market" finance sector, that's about all I'd be willing to bet on.

supperburg4• 5 years ago

I recently read Islamic imperialism, a history from Yale university press. The first thing you need to know is that in the Middle East, countries do not exist. What we call countries are conglomerations of loosely associated factions from top to bottom. That’s why there isn’t a single middle eastern state that is stable and also free of brutality, except the black sheep. Even if some Saudi people were involved, saying that “the saudis” were involved doesn’t make sense. The higher levels of the Saudi dynasty were certainly not in favor of 9/11 even if the fundamentalists in the country hadn’t lost any sleep over it.

Bin laden was an outcast. He left Saudi Arabia and went around to various places and at one point ended up in Northern Africa where he was engaged in evicting the Americans from Somalia. He said that the Americans he fought in Somalia were so weak and retreated so readily that it opened his mind to the possibility of inflicting real damage to the United States. But around this time he became more high profile and was evicted from his host country and wasn’t welcome anywhere, including Saudi Arabia. That should be a big hint about the Saudi theory. He made an appeal to the UK for political asylum, which based on his rhetoric at the time was like hitler asking for asylum in Israel. If the UK had granted him asylum 9/11 wouldn’t have happened. But they didn’t.

From there he ultimately moved on to Afghanistan and the tribal regions of the Pakistan border where there is no presence of government.

Bin laden was a religious fanatic who outwardly pursued The universal adoption of islam and protested foreign occupation of the pan-Arab community, even the willful presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia after the invasion of Kuwait. He killed 3,000 people because the saudis willingly hosted American troops. Mind-bending. But this leads to the next point which is that despite his outward behavior, inwardly he probably had political ambitions and all indications point to yet another repetition of history in that region — a small group of people justify violence in the name of Islam and then promptly transform into a conventional state, built upon violations of Islam, as soon as they have captured the material means to do so. Bin laden, who probably thought 9/11 would cause the United States to remove itself from the Middle East, only made it to step one.

And this has interesting consequences for the future landscape of terror. We probably won’t see another attack from the Middle East. Attacks from these groups are almost always pragmatic, even if they are done in the name of “Islam,” and almost always the pragmatic target is some other player in that region.

baybal24• 5 years ago

because the saudis willingly hosted American troops.

Saudi royal family are one thing, and Saudi nation is another.

Saudi royal family is effectively an occupational regime, largely propped by American handouts, and backing, on top of gigatons of $$$ coming from ArAmCo

supperburg4• 5 years ago

I disagree

10xrubberduck• 5 years ago

May or may not be related:

https://www.rferl.org/a/saudi-russia-arms-weapons-/31425164....

So seems like they are making moves on the other side. Which US probably doesn't like. So something's going on with the timing of these news.

anticodon• 5 years ago

More like Saudi Arabia could be the next target for the US attack.

Reason is simple: it possesses large deposits of fossil fuel but spends "too much" (from American point of view in the world with rapidly declining energy resources) for internal consumption.

By bombing Saudi Arabia, killing millions and destroying infrastructure (e.g. oil-fired power plants), USA will reduce consumption of fossil fuels by Saudi Arabia and leave more for export to the US.

1024core4• 5 years ago

Saudi Arabia is the Land of the Two Shrines. If you want to kick the hornet's nest (not just regular hornets, but Asian Murder Hornets), that is the way. You'll have 1.5B pissed off Muslims if the US does anything hostile against the Saudi Kingdom.

barneygale• 5 years ago

A couple of contentions from 9/11 truthers never made much sense to me:

Firstly, why would the government plant explosives/thermite/whatever in the buildings? Flying planes into buildings would be enough pretext to start a war on terror, if that was the intention. You don't need to ensure they collapse with additional explosives.

Secondly, why would they use a missile rather than a plane when targeting the pentagon? If you're planning to make the public think a plane hit the pentagon, why not just use a plane?

pan692• 5 years ago

I'm no 9/11 truther but I'm fascinated by the subject at the same time. It's such a complex subject and there are no easy and simple answers. There are many angles to take into consideration. I guess the truth is somewhere in the middle as with most things these days.

I thought this video was interesting since it doesn't really seem to claim anything. It's asking difficult questions though:

The Debate: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=829

Part 1 - Air Defence: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=878

Part 2 - The Hijackers: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=3378

Part 3 - The Airplanes: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=5802

Part 4 - The Pentagon: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=7011

Part 5 - Flight 93: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=8272

Part 6 - The Twin Towers: - https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=9681

Part 7 - Building 7: https://youtu.be/LgYNPaO1rNY?t=16141

imglorp2• 5 years ago

the truth is somewhere in the middle

Beware of false equivalences though. Some facts are black and white even if parties are trying to muddy the water, retain secrets, or whatever. Eg, flat Earth: there is no middle and by humoring the story tellers elevates them to credence they haven't earned.

stordoff• 5 years ago

One suggested explanation for the first point I've seen is that it was to limit damage to the surrounding areas in case of an uncontrolled collapse. I don't recall any evidence being presented for this claim though, and it doesn't strike me as particularly plausible, as it doesn't seem worth complicating the plan to such a degree for seemingly little benefit.

The use of a missile rather than a plane has never made any sense to me - one unexpected photo, or even a plausible witness account, gives you a problem, despite there being an obvious way to avoid it. It also invites questions if the result is inconsistent with a plane crash in any way.

FBI releases 9/11 investigation document that scrutinized Saudis

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