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Saudi flights (last updated August 9, 2004)
Fahrenheit 9/11 suggests that Saudi citizens, especially relatives of Osama Bin Laden, were allowed to leave the United States (a) when no other flights were allowed and (b) without being interviewed.
Both these points were investigated and largely rejected by the 9/11 Commission. According to the commission's final report, no Saudi citizens traveled within or left the United States while the national airspace was closed, and many Saudis - including many relatives of Osama Bin Laden - were in fact interviewed before being allowed to leave.
All Flights Occurred After Airspace Began to Re-Open on September 13
The 9/11 Commission reported that it found no evidence that any Saudi nationals were on flights out of the United States before airspace was reopened. It reported that there were nine chartered planes and one government plane that took Saudi nationals out of the United States between September 14 and 24, all after national airspace began to re-open to commercial aviation on the morning of September 13. Moreover, the 9/11 Commission reported that every airport involved in these flights was open when a flight departed and that there was no inappropriate action taken to allow those flights to depart.
A timeline of such flights is below:
The Commission also found no evidence of political intervention in allowing the flights. The Saudi embassy reportedly did request that their citizens be evacuated given the fear of retribution once the nationalities of the hijackers were known. The request was routed to counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who routed it to the FBI, which screened the flights with the Federal Aviation Administration and the State Department and effectively approved them. The 9/11 Commission found no evidence that anyone in the Bush administration above Clarke participated in granting the Saudi request.
"Think about it logically: Do you think -- where are we, in a banana republic? I would pick 140 Saudis, put them in aircraft and smuggle them out and nobody will know? Look, people have to take yes for an answer and read what the 9/11 Commission said on this," Saudi Prince Bandar said in an April 2004 interview with NBC News' Tim Russert (on-line here).
The "Bin Laden" Flight
One of the nine flights that took Saudi nationals out of the United States after September 11 has drawn particular attention because many of its 26 passengers were relatives of Osama Bin Laden. The so-called "Bin Laden" flight did not leave the United States immediately; it left on September 20, a week after airspace was opened. Moreover, most of the people on this flight, 22 out of 26, were in fact interviewed by the FBI. The 9/11 Commission reported that "many were asked detailed questions. None of the passengers stated that they had any recent contact with Usama Bin Ladin or knew anything about terrorist activity."
That the Bin Laden relatives were allowed to leave may not be so surprising in light of some additional facts.
First, Osama Bin Laden was the 17th of 57 children and he was exiled from Saudi Arabia and cut off from his family's fortune in 1994, factors which make it more likely that his relatives would not have good ideas about his location.
Second, the FBI had been tracking members of the Bin Laden family in the United States even before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke testified in a March 24, 2004 9/11 Commission hearing that "in open session I can say that I was very well aware of the members of the bin Ladin family and what they were doing in the United States, and the FBI was extraordinarily well aware of what they were doing in the United States. And I was informed by the FBI that none of the members of the bin Ladin family, this large clan, were doing anything in this country that was illegal or that raised their suspicions. And I believe the FBI had very good information and good sources of information about what the members of the bin Ladin family were doing."
Third, it was not unreasonable for Saudi nationals, especially relatives of Osama Bin Laden, to fear being in the United States immediately after the September 11 attacks. FBI statistics show that the number of hate crimes directed against Muslims in 2001 was 17 times greater than in 2000.
The "Phantom Flight"
Some, such as Craig Unger, author of "House of Bush, House of Saud," a major source used by Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11, have suggested that there was a domestic flight carrying three young Saudis that was allowed to fly from Tampa to Lexington, Kentucky while domestic airspace was closed. The 9/11 Commission refuted this allegation, reporting that this flight departed Tampa at 4:37 p.m., more than five hours after the Tampa airport had re-opened.
Moreover, the 9/11 Commission noted that:
| "The FBI is alleged to have had no record of the flight and denied that it occurred, hence contributing to the story of a 'phantom flight.' This is another misunderstanding. The FBI was initially misinformed about how the Saudis got to Lexington by a local police officer in Lexington who did not have firsthand knowledge of the matter. The Bureau subsequently learned about the flight." |
Sources: The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (2004). Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties (Simon & Schuster, 2004). A transcript of Prince Bandar's Apr. 25, 2004 interview with Tim Russert is on-line here. Richard Clarke's March 24, 2004 testimony, in part covering the Saudi flights, is on-line here. A Department of Justice report on the September 11 detainees (June 2003) is on-line here. The FBI's annual hate-crime reports are available on-line here and the FBI's report for 2001 is on-line as a PDF here.
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