The CIA's Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection

On December 5, the CIA's director, General Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement disclosing that in 2005 at least two videotapes of interrogations with al Qaeda prisoners were destroyed. The tapes, which the CIA did not provide to either the 9/11 Commission, nor to a federal court in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, were destroyed, claimed Hayden, to protect the safety of undercover operatives.

Hayden did not disclose one of the al Qaeda suspects whose tapes were destroyed. But he did identify the other. It was Abu Zubaydah, the top ranking terror suspect when he was tracked and captured in Pakistan in 2003. In September 2006, at a press conference in which he defended American interrogation techniques, President Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah by name. Bush acknowledged that Zubaydah, who was wounded when captured, did not initially cooperate with his interrogators, but that eventually when he did talk, his information was, according to Bush, "quite important."

In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, "The Interrogation." There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called "fake flag" operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.

Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them

That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.

American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.

It would be nice to further investigate the men named by Zubaydah, but that is not possible. All four identified by Zubaydah are now dead. As for the three Saudi princes, the King's 43-year-old nephew, Prince Ahmed, died of either a heart attack or blood clot, depending on which report you believe, after having liposuction in Riyadh's top hospital; the second, 41-year-old Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, died the following day in a one car accident, on his way to the funeral of Prince Ahmed; and one week later, the third Saudi prince named by Zubaydah, 25-year-old Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, died, according to the Saudi Royal Court, "of thirst." The head of Pakistan's Air Force, Mushaf Ali Mir, was the last to go. He died, together with his wife and fifteen of his top aides, when his plane blew up -- suspected as sabotage -- in February 2003. Pakistan's investigation of the explosion -- if one was even done -- has never been made public.

Zubaydah is the only top al Queda operative who has secretly linked two of America's closest allies in the war on terror -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- to the 9/11 attacks. Why does Bush, and the CIA, continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military, from the implications of Zubaydah's confessions? It is, or course, because the Bush administration desperately needs Pakistani and Saudi help, not only to keep Afghanistan from spinning completely out of control, but also as counterweights to the growing power of Iran. The Sunni governments in Riyadh and Islamabad have as much to fear from a resurgent Iran as does the Bush administration. But does this mean that leads about the origins of 9/11 should not be aggressively pursued? Of course not. But this is precisely what the Bush administration is doing. And now the cover-up is enhanced by the CIA's destruction of Zubaydah's interrogation tapes.

The American public deserves no less than the complete truth about 9/11. And those CIA officials now complicit in hiding the truth by destroying key evidence should be held responsible.

Comments

[IngeniousGirl]

Gerald, thank you for your reporting

Reply to: "leveymg" (just a few posts down) he says:

"Who do you you think owns a controlling interest in News Corps (Fox), Disney (ABC), Time-Warner, and the largest advertiser (Proctor Gamble) and the largest bank in the United States (CitiCorp)?


The Saudis.

And, you think we have a free press in America? It's only free for those who control it."

MY ADD TO THIS: If this is true, go a step further: John Kiriakou is the ex CIA individual who gave an exclusive interview on ABC that he witnessed the torture and expressed reservations as well as other mixed messages about torture is quoted by the L.A. times to have served as a CIA counter-terrorism official from 1998 to 2004. He is now in the private sector. In 2006 (?) He wrote an article for the L.A. times about conditions in Afghanistan, with his co-author, Richard Klein, a former State Department official.

Richard Klein appears to be the "managing director for the Middle East and Arabian Gulf at Kissinger McLarty Associates in Washington" as quoted from the end of the L.A. Times article.

Again, not only who is in charge of the media but equally important think about why the information is put forth, and who is the actual source and what is the actual purpose of the ABC exclusive interview with John Kiriakou?

An interesting question might be, who is John Kiriakou, and what is his relationship with Richard Klein as well as with the Council of Foreign Relations. Some persistent googling helps turn this up.

[Gold9472]

Gerald asks, "Why does Bush, and the CIA, continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military, from the implications of Zubaydah's confessions?"

I would like to argue that "the Bush administration desperately needs Pakistani and Saudi help, not only to keep Afghanistan from spinning completely out of control, but also as counterweights to the growing power of Iran" is not the only answer available to us.

The other possibility is that there was a collaboration between the Bush Administration, the Pakistani ISI, and Saudi Arabia to commit the attacks of 9/11.

There is certainly MORE than enough information to substantiate that claim.

Look up Lt. General Mahmood Ahmed, Omar Sayeed Sheikh, Richard Armitage, Marc Grossman, Joe Biden, Porter Goss, Bob Graham, George Tenet, and "unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon."

[Carolab]

Fine, but what about Mossad? Is this directing attention away from their involvement in 9/11? Anyone remember the Israeli spies story that Carl Cameron did and was spiked from Fox? I have been asking for YEARS: how is it that the U.S. supports Israel and Saudi Arabia simultaneously? Was the Wahhabi Sunni sect merely angry about the bases or angry about the nexus of U.S. and Israeli influence, aka AIPAC? Think about it: the Sunnis controlled Iraq. The U.S. made a deal in the '70s to keep the House of Saud in power in exchange for their keeping the cost of oil at a level acceptable to us and exchange for petrodollars, which Treasury then used to hire contractors to build infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. This all seemed to worked fine until Saudi Arabia began to face the prospect of oil peak and Hussein wasn't playing ball with us anymore.

[galilei]

Does this mean that Mr. Posner won't be going on The O'Reilly Factor again to claim that all people who have questions about 9/11 are Holocaust Deniers?
Just wondering, because that would be great.

[fourex]

Hayden destroyed the evidence that implicated Saudi and Pakistani officials, not unlike Bush helping Saudi's flee the country on 9-11.

[ThomasDoubting]

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are considered to be allies of the American government. Why would our allies be assisting in the events of September 11th. It would be interesting to see how they were paid for this help, and by who. Who ordered the stand down of the military for those two hours ? How did those nineteen guys get on the planes without tickets ? They were not on any of the passenger lists.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/911information
.

[lungfish]

The enemy of my enemy has turned out to be the enemy.... Thanks for tying this together for us and putting it in context. The other link was equally as informative
www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com
I have always wondered about those plane loads of Saudi's who were ushered out immediately after the attacks. I wonder what it would take to get this in front of American voters....
Where does all this animosity arise from? Bases in Saudi Arabia? Does this imply that US Intel has been asleep to the funamentalist antiAmerican jihadism that is fostered in Saudi Arabia??? Or has it been purposefully ignored or minimized to maintain the bases?
The Saudis haven't really been our partners in much of anything other than selling us oil, nearly as I can recall....

[dr4Will]

bush family and saudi royals are locked together by greed,corruption and perversion--they are the bottom feeders of repulsive gop behavior wanting power!!!

[davidly]

The facts are incontrovertible, and will be ignored. That said, I still find anything by the author of 'Case Closed' to be suspect.

[rabun666]

they have some dirt on Bush especially the Saudi's whose intelligence services can come and go as they please. They've bailed out Bush at least once and they wouldn't do this without a dossier on him. They know more about Bush than Bush knows about them and that includes OBL.

[speakingtruth2power]

The Bush crime family and the Saudi-Pakistani connections go way back, at least as far as The Iran/Contra drugs for guns affairs and the money handling of BCCI of the seventies.

The question we should all be asking is what would the Bush crime family not do to get it's way and start it's Crusade for Muslim Resources?

Catastrophes are what the Bush's thrive on for increasing their profits and the GWOT has been their greatest opportunity. Call me a conspiracy theory nut case if you want but I suspect OBL is long gone, along with any other witnesses to the world's largest larceny.

[WFB]

Gerald,

Great fan of your work on the Saudis. I was wondering when you might pipe in on those destroyed Zubaydah interrogation tapes.

However, one thing you forgot to mention is that your initial reporting on this has now been independently corroborated by James Risen of The New York Times, in his book State of War. If you haven't seen this already, it's on page 187.

FYI, I've got my own little project going on the Saudis. Probably old-hat to you, but I've tried to document everything, so you might find some of it useful. It's at:

www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com

Happy hunting!

[enoughalready]

The CIA would have given this information to the President. Then please explain why we see pictures of Bush walking hand in hand with Saudi royal at his ranch in Texas?

Start impeachment now! All of America seems to have been sold out by this administration. If the GOP blocks these investigations they should all be impeached themselves and I would suggest to each state to demand accountability or start recalling those Congress members that stonewall any investigation.

Joe Biden we need you now. We need you to lead the investigation and an impeachment. If this doesn't rise to high crimes and misdemeanors I don't know what does.

[tbone99]

From Wiki:
When Zubaydah was captured, he was carrying two bank cards (similar to American ATM cards), one from a bank in Kuwait and the other from a bank in Saudi Arabia. According to James Risen:
The discovery of Abu Zubaydah's cards provided some of the most tantalizing physical evidence ever uncovered related to al Qaeda. The cards had the potential to help investigators understand the financial structure behind al Qaeda, and perhaps even the 9/11 plot itself.... But something very odd happened .... There is little evidence that an aggressive investigation of the cards was ever conducted. [30]

" When American investigators finally did get around to looking into the cards, they worked with "a Muslim financier with a questionable past, and with connections to the Afghan Taliban, al Qaeda, and Saudi intelligence." He reported back that "Saudi intelligence officials had seized all of the records related to the card from the Saudi financial institution in question; the records then disappeared. There was no longer any way to trace the money that had gone into the account. The timing of the reported seizure of records by Saudi intelligence closely coincided with the timing of Abu Zubaydah's capture...." (p. 177).

[booker52]

Follow the money trail and you will find close ties between the royal family and the Bushes. These people are not our friends, yet this WH continues to cover and protect these people.