Link To 9/11 Hijackers Found In Sarasota

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Link to 9/11 hijackers found in Sarasota
FBI found ties between hijackers and Saudis in Sarasota but never revealed the findings

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/07/v-fullstory/2395698/link-to-911-hijackers-found-in.html

By Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen
Special to The Miami Herald

Just two weeks before the 9/11 hijackers slammed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, members of a Saudi family abruptly vacated their luxury home near Sarasota, leaving a brand new car in the driveway, a refrigerator full of food, fruit on the counter — and an open safe in a master bedroom.

In the weeks to follow, law enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights — including leader Mohamed Atta — in discoveries never before revealed to the public.

Ten years after the deadliest attack of terrorism on U.S. soil, new information has emerged that shows the FBI found troubling ties between the hijackers and residents in the upscale community in southwest Florida, but the investigation wasn’t reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who co-chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks, said he should have been told about the findings, saying it “opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11. ... No information relative to the named people in Sarasota was disclosed.�

The U.S. Justice Department, the lead agency that investigated the attacks, refused to comment, saying it will discuss only information already released.

The Saudi residents then living at the stylish home, Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and his wife Anoud, could not be reached, nor could the then-owner of the house, Esam Ghazzawi, who is Anoud’s father. The house was sold in 2003, records show.

For Graham, the connections between the hijackers and residents raise questions about whether other Saudi nationals in Florida knew of the impending attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

The FBI investigation began the month after 9/11 when Larry Berberich, senior administrator and security officer of the gated community known as Prestancia, reported a bizarre event that took place two weeks before the hijackings of four passenger jets that originated in Boston, Newark and Washington.

The couple, living with their small children at the three-bedroom home at 4224 Escondito Circle, had left in a hurry in a white van, probably on Aug. 30.

They abandoned three recently registered vehicles, including a brand-new Chrysler PT Cruiser, in the garage and driveway.

After 9/11, Berberich said he had “a gut feeling� the people at the home may have had something to do with the attacks, prompting the FBI’s probe that would eventually link the hijackers to the house.

As an advisor to the Sarasota County sheriff — Berberich was with the group that received President Bush during his aborted visit to a Sarasota school on the morning of 9/11 — he alerted sheriff’s deputies. Patrick Gallagher, one of the Saudis’ neighbors, had become suspicious even earlier, and had fired off an email to the FBI on the day of the attacks.

Gallagher said law enforcement officers arrived and began an investigation, with agents swarming “all over the place, in their blue jackets,� he recalled.

Jone Weist, president of the group that managed Prestancia, confirmed the arrival of the FBI, which requested copies of the Saudis’ financial transactions involving the house.

Berberich and a senior counterterrorism agent said they were able to get into the abandoned house, ultimately finding “there was mail on the table, dirty diapers in one of the bathrooms … all the toiletries still in place … all their clothes hanging in the closet … opulent furniture, equal or greater in value than the house … the pool running, with toys in it.�

“The beds were made … fruit on the counter … the refrigerator full of food. … It was like they went grocery shopping. Like they went out to a movie ... [But] the safe was open in the master bedroom, with nothing in it, not a paper clip. ... A computer was still there. A computer plug in another room, and the line still there. Looked like they’d taken [another] computer and left the cord.�

The counterterrorism officer, who requested his name not be disclosed, said agents went on to make troubling discoveries: Phone records and the Prestancia gate records linked the house on Escondito Circle to the hijackers.

In addition, three of the four future hijackers had lived in Venice — just 10 miles from the house — for much of the year before 9/11. Atta, the leader, and his companion Marwan al-Shehhi, had been learning to fly small airplanes at Huffman Aviation, a flight school on the edge of the runway at Venice Municipal Airport.

A block away, at Florida Flight Training, accomplice Ziad Jarrah was also taking flying lessons. All three obtained their pilot licenses and afterwards, in the months that led to 9/11, spent much of their time traveling the state, including stints in Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale and Delray Beach, among other areas.

The counterterrorism agent said records of incoming and outgoing calls made at the Escondito house were obtained from the phone company under subpoena.

Agents were able to conduct a link analysis, a system of tracking calls based on dates, times and length of conversations — finding the Escondito calls dating back more than a year, “lined up with the known suspects.�

The links were not only to Atta and his hijack pilots, the agent said, but to 11 other terrorist suspects, including Walid al-Shehhri, one of the men who flew with Atta on the first plane to strike the World Trade Center.

Another was Adnan Shukrijumah, a former Miramar resident identified as having been with Atta in the spring of 2001. Shukrijumah is still at large and is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

But it was the gate records at the Prestancia development that produced the most telltale information.

People who arrived by car had to give their names and the address they were visiting. Gate staff would sometimes ask to see a driver’s license and note the name, Berberich said. License plates were photographed.

Atta is known to have used variations of his name, but the license plate of the car he owned was on record.

The vehicle and name information on Atta and Jarrah fit that of drivers entering Prestancia on their way to visit the home at 4224 Escondito Circle, said Berberich and the counterterrorism officer.

Sarasota County property records identify the owners of the house at the time as Ghazzawi and his American-born wife Deborah, both with a post office box in al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and the capital, Riyadh.

Ghazzawi was described as a middle-aged financier and interior designer, the owner of many properties, including several in the United States, said the counterterrorism agent.

While Ghazzawi visited the house, the people living there were his daughter Anoud and her husband al-Hiijjii, who appeared to be in his 30s and once identified himself as a college student, said Berberich, who met the son-in-law.

The couple’s sudden departure two weeks before 9/11 was tracked in detail by the FBI after the attacks, the agent said.

First, they traveled to a Ghazzawi property in Arlington, Va., then — with Esam Ghazzawi — via Dulles airport and London’s Heathrow, to Riyadh.

The counterterrorism agent said Ghazzawi and al-Hiijjii had been on a watch list at the FBI and that a U.S. agency tracking terrorist funds was interested in both men even before 9/11.

“464 was Ghazzawi’s number,� the officer said. “I don’t remember the other man’s number.�

About a year after the family abandoned the home, the FBI made an attempt to lure the owner back.

Scott McKay, a Sarasota lawyer for the Prestancia homeowners’ association in its claim for unpaid dues, said the FBI tried to get him to bring the Saudis back for the transaction.

McKay said he tried to get the Ghazzawis to sign the necessary documents in person, but the ploy failed because the documents could legally be signed elsewhere using a notary. Records show Ghazzawi’s signature was notarized by the vice consul of the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in September 2003. Deborah Ghazzawi’s signature was notarized in Riverside County, Calif.

During an interview on Sunday, Graham said he was surprised he wasn’t told about the probe when he was co-chair of Congress’ Joint Inquiry into 9/11 — even though he was especially alert to terrorist information relating to Florida.

“At the beginning of the investigation,� he said, “each of the intelligence agencies, including the FBI, was asked to provide all information that agency possessed in relation to 9/11.�

The fact that the FBI did not tell the Inquiry about the Florida discoveries, Graham says, is similar to the agency’s failure to provide information linking members of the 9/11 terrorist team to other Saudis in California until congressional investigators discovered it themselves.

The Inquiry did nevertheless accumulate a “very large� file on the hijackers in the United States, and later turned it over to the 9/11 Commission. “They did very little with it,� Graham said, “and their reference to Saudi Arabia is almost cryptic sometimes. … I never got a good answer as to why they did not pursue that.�

The final 28-page section of the Inquiry’s report, which deals with “sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers,� was entirely blanked out. It was kept secret from the public on the orders of former President George W. Bush and is still withheld to this day, Graham said.

This in spite of the fact that Graham and his Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, both concluded the release of the pages would not endanger national security.

The grounds for suppressing the material, Graham believes, were “protection of the Saudis from embarrassment, protection of the administration from political embarrassment … some of the unknowns, some of the secrets of 9/11.�

Anthony Summers is co-author of The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 & Osama bin Laden. Dan Christensen is the editor of the Broward Bulldog, a not-for-profit online only newspaper created to provide local reporting in the public interest. www.BrowardBulldog.org

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Bob Graham Wants 9/11 Inquiry Reopened

http://www.wusf.usf.edu/news/2011/09/08/bob_graham_wants_911_inquiry_reopened

By Steve Newborn
9/9/2011

TAMPA (2011-9-9) - New information is surfacing that a Saudi family in Sarasota is linked to the masterminds of the 9/11 terror attack. Even though the FBI investigated the connection after the family fled, Congressional investigators were never notified. And that has former Sen. Bob Graham calling for a new investigation.

The information first surfaced in a story in the Broward Bulldog website. It says two of the 9/11 hijackers - including mastermind Mohammed Atta - appear to have visited the home of a Saudi family in Sarasota. And phone records link people in the house to several terrorism suspects.

Neighbors of the Saudis in the gated Prestancia community say the family disappeared a week before 9/11. They left a new car in the driveway and food in the refrigerator. And the FBI investigated the connection between the family and the 9/11 hijackers who trained to fly in nearby Venice.

But information about the investigation was apparently withheld. Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham headed Congress' 9/11 inquiry, and says he believes the Bush Administration purposely withheld the information from Congress.

"It tends to reaffirm the fundamental theory that the 19 hijackers were not acting alone," says Graham. "That they could have only completed such a complicated assignment as planning, practicing and executing a very sophisticated plot if they had assistance from people who spoke the English language, who were familiar with the culture of the United States and to provide them with protection, anonymity and support."

Graham says he will personally lobby President Obama to reopen the investigation into the attacks.

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Mystery surrounds the ritzy Florida home linked to 9/11 terrorists - and why the FBI didn't tell Congressional committee about it

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2035199/Mystery-surrounds-posh-Florida-home-linked-9-11-terrorists--FBI-failed-report-it.html

It's a sprawling piece of real estate with a dark secret: It may have been a haven for bloodthirsty terrorists.

The sudden disappearance of the home’s Saudi residents before September 11 prompted calls to authorities, who found links to those who orchestrated the horrific attacks of that morning.

Days before the tenth anniversary of the worst terror strike on American soil, new light is being shed on the home, and its ties to the tragedy.
House or terror haven? This home, located at 4224 Escondito Circle in Sarasota, Florida, was probed by the FBI and was found to have several ties to the 9/11 hijackers

House or haven? This home, located at 4224 Escondito Circle in Sarasota, Florida, was probed by the FBI and was found to have several ties to the 9/11 hijackers

The Miami Herald reported the home was owned at the time by Esam Ghazzawi, a financier and interior designer, and his wife Deborah.

Also living at the opulent house was Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and his wife Anoud, Ghazzawi’s daughter. The home was sold in 2003.

Days before September 11, 2001, the Saudi family and their small children hurriedly vacated in a white van, leaving brand new cars in the garage, a fridge full of food and closets filled with clothes.

Their sudden departure irked Larry Berberich, senior administrator and security officer of the gated community, who reported the exodus.

Ironically, Mr Berberich, an advisor to the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, was with the group that received President Bush during his visit to the school where he was famously told of the terror attacks on the morning of September 11.

That same morning, neighbour Patrick Gallagher emailed the FBI to report what he felt was suspicious behaviour by the family.

In an investigation that began weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI reportedly found several links to the hijackers who carried them out.

When authorities pulled the records of phone calls to and from the home, they made a shocking discovery.

The numbers belonged to more than a dozen suspected terrorists, including the 9/11 hijackers.

A check on the logs of those entering the gated community prior to the attacks found a car belonging to Mohammed Atta, who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11.

Another car entering was linked to Ziad Samir Jarrah, a hijacker of United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed just outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Jarrah received flight training about a block away from the house at the Florida Flight Training, the Herald reported.

Another phone number linked to the home was that of Adnan Shukrijumah, who is believed to have been with Atta in the spring of 2001.

Shukrijumah, who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, remains on the loose.

The FBI was able to trace Ghazzawi's route back to Riyadh, with a stopover at a property he owned in Arlington, Virginia, before boarding a flight to Heathrow Airport on the way to Saudi Arabia.

An unnamed counterterrorism agent told the paper that Ghazzawi and al-Hiijjii were on an FBI watch list and a U.S. agency tracking terrorist funds was interested in both men even before 9/11.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, said he was surprised he wasn’t told about the probe of the Escondito Circle home at the time - even though he was especially alert to information pertaining to Florida.

Despite that, the inquiry was able to gather a massive file on the hijackers in the United States, and it was turned it over to the 9/11 Commission.

But Sen Graham said the Commission 'did very little with it, and their reference to Saudi Arabia is almost cryptic sometimes.

'I never got a good answer as to why they did not pursue that.'

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FBI investigated another Sarasota link to 9/11

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110908/ARTICLE/110909586/2055/NEWS?Title=FBI-investigated-another-Sarasota-link-to-9-11

By Zac Anderson & Robert Eckhart
Published: Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 11:10 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 11:10 p.m.

Newly revealed details from an FBI investigation into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks link a Saudi family living in an upscale Sarasota neighborhood to the hijackers, who made multiple visits to the Sarasota home before 9/11.

The Saudi family appear to have fled their home in the gated Palmer Ranch community of Prestancia two weeks before Sept. 11, raising suspicions about whether they had knowledge of the impending attacks. The family left clothes hanging in closets, food in the refrigerator, toys floating in the pool and three cars in the driveway and garage.

Details of the investigation were uncovered by author Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen, editor of Browardbulldog.org. Their story, which relied largely on an unnamed counterterrorism agent as well as former Prestancia security guard Larry Berberich, was published Thursday on Christensen's website and in the Miami Herald.

The story documents yet another potential connection between Southwest Florida and the Sept. 11 attacks.

Three of the four men who piloted planes on Sept. 11 attended flight schools in Venice and lived there until shortly before the attacks. Two of them, Sept. 11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and Ziad Jarrah, were found to have visited the Saudi family in Prestancia based on photos of their license plates taken at the security gate and information the men gave gate guards.

Neighbors did not grow suspicious of the Saudi family until after Sept. 11, when their abrupt departure days earlier raised questions.

At least three Sarasota residents, including a neighbor, a security guard and a real estate agent, called the FBI to report the Saudi family's odd behavior. Counterterrorism experts later pieced together the family's connection to the hijackers, but by then the Saudis had returned to their home country.

In a Thursday interview with the Herald Tribune, a former neighbor and close friend of the Saudi family who visited their house nearly every day for a few years in the mid-90s said she always wondered what had become of her old friends.

Sarasota High School graduate Carla DiBello, 27, said she became close with Anoud al-Hiijjii, the young Saudi mother.

Anoud, who was only 18 or 19 at the time, treated DiBello like a younger sister and DiBello enjoyed playing with the family's young twins, Esam and Hamsa.

DiBello and Anoud went to movies together, shopped at the mall and took trips to Busch Gardens.

DiBello said Anoud was a heavyset, pious woman who prayed multiple times a day. But in many ways she and her husband, Abdulazzi, were very Westernized. She sported a 10-carat, heart-shaped diamond ring. He liked Polo shirts and expensive jeans. They wore designer clothes, drove a Range Rover and a Lexus, loved American movies and decorated their home lavishly.

Abdulazzi often walked next door to visit with DiBello's father, Tom, and drink liquor, something Anoud did not approve of.

"Anoud would make him go pray and be more involved in their culture," Carla DiBello said.

Tom DiBello, an insurance salesman who now lives near Fort Lauderdale, said Abdulazzi was affable and outgoing.

DiBello got the impression that Abdulazzi, who at times said he was a business student but also talked about exporting furniture, was coasting on his wife's family money.

Anoud's father, Esam Ghazzawi, is a well-known interior designer and financier in Saudi Arabia who owned multiple properties in the United States, including the Prestancia home. The family bragged that Ghazzawi had a close relationship with the Saudi royal family.

Carlo DiBello said she met Ghazzawi at least four times and described him as "very eccentric." He enjoyed big family dinners and always had a large security detail.

Once, DiBello was shopping with the family around the time that Ab Roller exercise gadgets became popular.

Ghazzawi "ordered 40 or 50 of them at once and said he wanted them at all of his homes and offices around the world," DiBello said.

Abdulazzi's easy manner did not raise suspicions, but Tom DiBello said in hindsight some of their conversations were odd.

"He felt Americans came to their country to steal their oil and take their money," DiBello said. "He said he did not like Americans because of what we did to his country. He said, 'How would you like it if we came to your country and did that?' "

The al-Hiijjii family did not socialize widely and did not belong to Prestancia's posh country club or take advantage of the world-class golf course, DiBello said.

Carla DiBello, who now works in Los Angeles as a television producer for the show "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," said she lost touch with the family around 1999 after she entered high school and moved out of Prestancia.

House for sale
Sarasota real estate agent Louise Tessier may have been one of the last local residents to have contact with the al-Hiijjii family before they disappeared.

Tessier sat down with the couple in their family room in May 2001 after they contacted her about selling the Prestancia home.

Anoud told Tessier they wanted to sell the house because a brother was headed to college in Tampa.

Tessier didn't ask too many follow-up questions.

"We were never on a comfortable footing," she said. "You couldn't talk to them as easy as you could with other people."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Tessier got a tip that the family had abandoned their Prestancia home. She tried to contact them by phone and email. She remembers calling a phone number in Saudi Arabia but never getting through to the right people.

When Tessier went to check out the house, she saw that the pool was green and a car was parked in the driveway.

"There was stuff in the house that shouldn't have been left in the house," she said. "And I can't remember if I found food in the refrigerator or what but it was just like they had abandoned the whole thing."

She went back to her office and called the FBI.

"They knew who I meant," Tessier said. "Didn't have any problem getting that through to them. It made me feel like they knew what was going on."

A few months later, Tessier said the FBI called her back and told her that the al-Hiijjiis were "cleared." The FBI said that she could go through with the sale, and that the federal government would not be seizing the house.

But Tessier says she had had enough of the family.

"I just shut down on the whole thing. I didn't want to have anything to do with it."

What has become of the al-Hiijjii and Ghazzawi families since they fled the United States is unclear.

The Justice Department, the lead agency that investigated the attacks, refused to comment, saying it would discuss only information already released.

The al-Hiijjii and Ghazzawi families could not be reached for comment. The house was sold in 2003, records show.

Inquiry kept secret
The FBI investigation into the al-Hiijjii and Ghazzawi families was not reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who cochaired the bipartisan congressional joint inquiry into the attacks, said he should have been told about the findings, saying it "opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11. . . . No information relative to the named people in Sarasota was disclosed."

For Graham, who served as Florida's governor from 1979 to 1987, the connections between the hijackers and residents raise questions about whether other Saudi nationals in Florida might have known of the impending attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

The FBI investigation began the month after 9/11 when Larry Berberich, senior administrator and security officer of Prestancia, reported that the couple, living with their small children at the three-bedroom home at 4224 Escondito Circle, had left in a hurry in a white van, probably on Aug. 30.

They abandoned three recently registered vehicles, including a brand-new Chrysler PT Cruiser, in the garage and driveway.

As an adviser to the Sarasota County sheriff, Berberich was with the group that received President George W. Bush during his truncated visit to a Sarasota school on the morning of 9/11. He alerted sheriff's deputies.

Patrick Gallagher, one of the Saudis' neighbors, had become suspicious even earlier, and had fired off an email to the FBI on the day of the attacks. Gallagher said law enforcement officers arrived and began an investigation, with agents swarming "all over the place, in their blue jackets," he recalled.

Berberich and a senior counterterrorism agent said they were able to get into the abandoned house, ultimately finding "there was mail on the table, dirty diapers in one of the bathrooms ... all the toiletries still in place ... all their clothes hanging in the closet ... TVs ... opulent furniture, equal or greater in value than the house ... the pool running, with toys in it."

The counterterrorism officer, who requested that his name not be disclosed, said agents went on to make some troubling discoveries: Phone records and the Prestancia gate records linked the house on Escondito Circle to the hijackers.

The links were not only to Atta and his hijack pilots, the agent said, but to 11 other terrorist suspects, including Walid al-Shehhri, one of the men who flew with Atta on the first plane to strike the World Trade Center.

But it was the gate records at the Prestancia development that produced the most telltale information.

People who arrived by car had to give their names and the home's address they were visiting. Gate staff would sometimes ask to see a driver's license and note the name, said Berberich.

More importantly, he added, the license plates of cars pulling through the gate were photographed.

Atta is known to have used variations of his name, but the license plate of the car he owned was on record.

The vehicle and name information on Atta and Jarrah fit that of drivers entering Prestancia on their way to visit the home at Escondito Circle, said Berberich and the counterterrorism officer.

County property records identify the owners of the house at the time as Ghazzawi and his American-born wife, Deborah, both with a P.O. box in al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and another address in the capital, Riyadh.

The sudden departure two weeks before 9/11 was tracked in detail by the FBI after the attacks, the counterterrorism agent said. First they traveled to a Ghazzawi property in Arlington, Va., then — with Esam Ghazzawi — to Riyadh by way of Dulles and Heathrow airports.

The counterterrorism agent said that Ghazzawi and al-Hiijjii had been on a watch list at the FBI, and that a U.S. agency involved in tracking terrorist funds was interested in both men even before 9/11.

About a year after the family vacated the home, the FBI made an attempt to lure the owner back. Scott McKay, a Sarasota lawyer for the Prestancia homeowners' association in its claim for unpaid dues on the property, said the FBI tried to get him to bring the Saudis back for the transaction.

"They didn't say you must do this. It was more like, 'But we'd really, really like you to make this happen,'" said McKay said.

McKay said he tried to get the Ghazzawis to sign the necessary documents in person, but the ploy failed because the documents could legally be signed elsewhere using a notary. Records show Ghazzawi's signature was notarized by the vice consul of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon in September 2003. Deborah Ghazzawi's signature was notarized in Riverside County, Calif.

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Investigate 9/11 link in Sarasota, Fla. lawmaker says

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/13/3905934/investigate-911-link-in-sarasota.html

By Dan Christensen
The Miami Herald

Published: Tuesday, Sep. 13, 2011 - 4:06 am
Last Modified: Tuesday, Sep. 13, 2011 - 5:02 am

A decade after the FBI found ties between a Saudi family living quietly near Sarasota and the 9/11 hijackers, a Florida Democratic congresswoman is calling on the House Intelligence Committee to investigate whether agents revealed their findings to Congress.

Kathy Castor said she was troubled over reports that federal agents discovered a luxury home where the family was living was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers and phone calls were linked between the home and the terrorists, but Congress was not told of the discovery.

The family abruptly left the home less than two weeks before the attacks, leaving a new car in the driveway, a refrigerator stuffed with food, toys in the pool — and an open safe in the master bedroom, according to administrators at the development.

“One of the great criticisms of the pre-9/11 intelligence operations,� Castor wrote in her letter on Monday to the committee’s two senior members, “was the lack of cooperation and information sharing among agencies.�

The dispute over what Congress knew about the case emerged last week after The Miami Herald reported about the little known FBI investigation at the upscale development on Florida’s west coast..

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into the deadly hijackings, said he was never told about the case, while the FBI, in a statement released Friday, said the agency did indeed tell Congress and the 911 Commission.

“With respect to recent reports about the Sarasota area, there is no new information related to the 9/11 hijackers,’’ said the FBI, adding the case was found not to be related to the 9/11 events. “All of the documentation pertaining to the 9/11 investigation was made available to the 9/11 Commission and the [joint inquiry].�

But Graham says questions still abound over the bizarre events that occurred at the three-bedroom home owned by Saudi financier Esam Ghazzawi, whose daughter and son-in-law and two young children resided there.

Graham disputed the FBI’s statement that the agency informed the Congress, saying it was “BS� that he and congressional investigators were told about the Sarasota events.

In an appearance Monday on MSNBC, Graham said he spoke with President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism advisor.

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FBI probe into Sarasota home's link to 9/11 hijackers wasn't reported to Congress, commission

http://www.heraldonline.com/2011/09/07/3363534/fbi-probe-into-sarasota-homes.html

Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen - McClatchy Newspapers
9/13/2011

MIAMI — Just two weeks before the 9/11 hijackers slammed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, members of a Saudi family abruptly vacated their luxury home near Sarasota, Fla., leaving a brand new car in the driveway, a refrigerator full of food, fruit on the counter — and an open safe in a master bedroom.

In the weeks to follow, law enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but also phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights — including leader Mohamed Atta — in discoveries never before revealed to the public.

Ten years after the deadliest attack of terrorism on U.S. soil, new information has emerged that shows the FBI found troubling ties between the hijackers and residents in the upscale community in southwest Florida, but the investigation wasn't reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who co-chaired the congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks, said he should have been told about the findings, saying it "opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11. ... No information relative to the named people in Sarasota was disclosed."

The U.S. Justice Department, the lead agency that investigated the attacks, refused to comment, saying it will discuss only information already released.

The Saudi residents then living at the stylish home, Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and his wife, Anoud, could not be reached, nor could the then-owner of the house, Esam Ghazzawi, who is Anoud's father. The house was sold in 2003, records show.

For Graham, the connections between the hijackers and residents raise questions about whether other Saudi nationals in Florida knew of the impending attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

The FBI investigation began the month after 9/11 when Larry Berberich, senior administrator and security officer of the gated community known as Prestancia, reported a bizarre event that took place two weeks before the hijackings of four passenger jets that originated in Boston, Newark and Washington.

The couple, living with their small children at the three-bedroom house at 4224 Escondito Circle, had left in a hurry in a white van, probably on Aug. 30.

They abandoned three recently registered vehicles, including a brand-new Chrysler PT Cruiser, in the garage and driveway.

After 9/11, Berberich said he had "a gut feeling" the people at the home may have had something to do with the attacks, prompting the FBI's probe that would eventually link the hijackers to the house.

As an adviser to the Sarasota County sheriff — Berberich was with the group that received President George W. Bush during his visit to a Sarasota school on the morning of 9/11 — he alerted sheriff's deputies. Patrick Gallagher, one of the Saudis' neighbors, had become suspicious even earlier, and had fired off an email to the FBI on the day of the attacks.

Gallagher said law enforcement officers arrived and began an investigation, with agents swarming "all over the place, in their blue jackets," he recalled.

Jone Weist, president of the group that managed Prestancia, confirmed the arrival of the FBI, which requested copies of the Saudis' financial transactions involving the house.

Berberich and a senior counterterrorism agent said they were able to get into the abandoned house, ultimately finding "there was mail on the table, dirty diapers in one of the bathrooms ... all the toiletries still in place ... all their clothes hanging in the closet ... TVs ... opulent furniture, equal or greater in value than the house ... the pool running, with toys in it."

"The beds were made ... fruit on the counter ... the refrigerator full of food. ... It was like they went grocery shopping. Like they went out to a movie. ... (But) the safe was open in the master bedroom, with nothing in it, not a paper clip. ... A computer was still there. A computer plug in another room, and the line still there. Looked like they'd taken (another) computer and left the cord."

In addition, three of the four future hijackers had lived in Venice — just 10 miles from the house — for much of the year before 9/11. Atta, the leader, and his companion Marwan al-Shehhi, had been learning to fly small airplanes at Huffman Aviation, a flight school on the edge of the runway at Venice Municipal Airport.

A block away, at Florida Flight Training, accomplice Ziad Jarrah was also taking flying lessons. All three obtained their pilot licenses and afterwards, in the months that led to 9/11, spent much of their time traveling the state, including stints in Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale and Delray Beach, among other areas.

The counterterrorism agent said records of incoming and outgoing calls made at the Escondito house were obtained from the phone company under subpoena.

Agents were able to conduct a link analysis, a system of tracking calls based on dates, times and length of conversations _ finding the Escondito calls dating back more than a year, "lined up with the known suspects."

The links were not just to Atta and his hijack pilots, the agent said, but to 11 other terrorist suspects, including Walid al-Shehhri, one of the men who flew with Atta on the first plane to strike the World Trade Center.

Another was Adnan Shukrijumah, a former Miramar, Fla., resident identified as having been with Atta in the spring of 2001. Shukrijumah is still at large and is on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

But it was the gate records at the Prestancia development that produced the most telltale information. People who arrived by car had to give their names and the home's address they were visiting. Gate staff would sometimes ask to see a driver's license and note the name, Berberich said. More importantly, he added, the license plates of cars pulling through the gate were photographed.

Atta is known to have used variations of his name, but the license plate of the car he owned was on record.

The vehicle and name information on Atta and Jarrah fit that of drivers entering Prestancia on their way to visit the home at 4224 Escondito Circle, said Berberich and the counterterrorism officer.

Sarasota County property records identify the owners of the house at the time as Ghazzawi and his American-born wife, Deborah, both with a post office box in al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and the capital, Riyadh.

Ghazzawi was described as a middle-aged financier and interior designer, the owner of many properties, including several in the United States, said the counterterrorism agent.

While Ghazzawi visited the house, the people living there were his daughter Anoud and her husband, al-Hiijjii, who appeared to be in his 30s and once identified himself as a college student, said Berberich, who met the son-in-law.

The couple's sudden departure two weeks before 9/11 was tracked in detail by the FBI after the attacks, the counterterrorism agent said.

First, they traveled to a Ghazzawi property in Arlington, Va., then — with Esam Ghazzawi — via Dulles airport and London's Heathrow, to Riyadh.

The counterterrorism agent said Ghazzawi and al-Hiijjii had been on a watch list at the FBI and that a U.S. agency involved in tracking terrorist funds was interested in both men even before 9/11.

"464 was Ghazzawi's number," the officer said. "I don't remember the other man's number."

About a year after the family abandoned the home, the FBI made an attempt to lure the owner back. Scott McKay, a Sarasota lawyer for the Prestancia homeowners association in its claim for unpaid dues on the property, said the FBI tried to get him to bring the Saudis back for the transaction. "They didn't say you must do this. It was more like, 'But we'd really, really like you to make this happen,' " McKay said.

McKay said he tried to get the Ghazzawis to sign the necessary documents in person, but the ploy failed because the documents could legally be signed elsewhere using a notary. Records show Ghazzawi's signature was notarized by the vice consul of the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in September 2003. Deborah Ghazzawi's signature was notarized in Riverside County, Calif.

"At the beginning of the investigation," he said, "each of the intelligence agencies, including the FBI, was asked to provide all information that agency possessed in relation to 9/11."

The fact that the FBI did not tell the Inquiry about the Florida discoveries, Graham says, is similar to the agency's failure to provide information linking members of the 9/11 terrorist team to other Saudis in California until congressional investigators discovered it themselves.

The Inquiry did nevertheless accumulate a "very large" file on the hijackers in the United States, and later turned it over to the 9/11 Commission. "They did very little with it," Graham said, "and their reference to Saudi Arabia is almost cryptic sometimes. ... I never got a good answer as to why they did not pursue that."

The final 28-page section of the Inquiry's report, which deals with "sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers," was entirely blanked out. It was kept secret from the public on the orders of former President George W. Bush and is still withheld to this day, Graham said.

This in spite of the fact that Graham and his Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, both concluded the release of the pages would not endanger national security.

The grounds for suppressing the material, Graham believes, were "protection of the Saudis from embarrassment, protection of the administration from political embarrassment ... some of the unknowns, some of the secrets of 9/11."

[Gold9472]

Former September 11 probe chair calls for reopening inquiry

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/12/us-sept11-graham-idUSTRE78B6DH20110912

9/13/2011

(Reuters) - The former co-chair of a Congressional inquiry after the September 11, 2001 attacks called on the U.S. government to reopen its investigation following a news report linking the hijackers to a Saudi Arabian couple who lived in Florida.

Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham said he has no reason to doubt the news report, which said the Saudi Arabian couple abruptly abandoned their luxury home in Sarasota two weeks before the attacks, leaving behind a full refrigerator, clothes, furnishings and a new car in the driveway.

The report was published by BrowardBulldog.org., a nonprofit Internet news site and was simultaneously published on the news website of the Miami Herald.

If true, it reveals another Saudi terrorism connection that was never disclosed by the FBI to the public or to the 2002 joint Congressional intelligence committee investigating the attacks, said Graham, who was co-chair of the committee.

The FBI office in Tampa issued a statement on Monday saying the Sarasota case was one of many leads that "were resolved and determined not to be related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot."

Graham called the Sarasota case "eerily similar" to the FBI's failure to tell the intelligence committee about a former Saudi civil servant, Omar al-Bayoumi, who supported two hijackers while they were living in San Diego. Graham said an investigator for his committee independently unearthed the information about al-Bayoumi.

"Why did the U.S. government go to such lengths to cover up the Saudi involvement?" Graham said.

The former Democratic senator from Florida has long been critical of the administration of former President George W. Bush for refusing to release 28 pages of the intelligence committee's report, which allegedly included information about Saudi financial support of terrorists.

Information about the Saudi couple in Sarasota was reported by Anthony Summers, an independent journalist and co-author of The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, and Dan Christensen, editor of the BrowardBulldog.org.

Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii, his wife Anoud and their small children resided in a home owned by Anoud's father, Esam Ghazzawi, in the gated Sarasota subdivision called Prestancia, according to the report.

The report said the FBI learned of the couple from a suspicious neighbor on the day of the attacks.

According to the report, the FBI connected the couple to more than a dozen terrorists through telephone records and through their car license tags and drivers licenses as they passed through the subdivision's security gate.

Among the terrorists who visited the home or called the couple was 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta, the report said.

The report was based on quotes from an unnamed counterterrorism official, a neighbor, subdivision administrators, the security guard and the subdivision lawyer, who said the FBI tried to get him to lure the homeowner back to the U.S.

According to the report, the Sarasota couple returned to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with Anoud's father after abandoning their home.

[Gold9472]

Saudi couple who left country quickly not a threat: FBI

http://www.tampabay.com/news/saudi-couple-who-left-country-quickly-not-a-threat-fbi/1191192

By Susan Taylor Martin, Times Senior Correspondent
In Print: Tuesday, September 13, 2011

To neighbors in their gated community in Sarasota, the abrupt, seemingly permanent departure of a young Saudi couple shortly before the Sept. 11 attacks seemed suspicious enough to warrant calls and e-mails to the FBI.

But Abdulaziz al-Hijji had just graduated from the University of South Florida and was soon to take a job with Saudi Arabia's huge oil company. His wife, Anoud, returned in 2003 to arrange for the sale of their house.

The circumstances under which the al-Hijjis left Sarasota in early September 2001 have prompted speculation they might have had ties to some of the Sept. 11 hijackers. A Fort Lauderdale website first reported last week that phone and gate records linked the al-Hijjis' home to hijackers including Mohamed Atta.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the congressional inquiry into the attacks, said Friday that the FBI did not tell him about the purported links. He called for a new investigation into the extent of the Saudi role in the hijackings.

On Monday, however, the FBI said it had investigated all leads about the attacks, including the Sarasota case, and turned over all information to Graham's committee and the 9/11 Commission. The commission's executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, said, "We had very good access to FBI reports and we did not think the FBI was holding back stuff.''

A fuller picture is emerging of the al-Hijjis in Sarasota, where they married in 1995 when he was 22 and she was 17. They moved into a home owned by Anoud's parents in the upscale Prestancia community.

Property manager Jone Weist said she quickly had contact with the couple because they failed to keep up the lawn and pay their homeowners association fees.

Anoud, who spoke fluent English, alternated between Western dress and the black abaya and head scarf of Saudi women. At first she stayed home with the couple's twins, then joined her husband in studying at USF in Tampa, Weist said.

"She was very proud to be able to say she was finally going to college and taking design courses so she could work with her father'' — Essam Ghazzawi, a noted Saudi designer of luxury properties, Weist said.

On Labor Day weekend, 2001, neighbors were surprised to see huge piles of trash in front of the couple's home. The family also left three vehicles.

A few weeks after the al-Hijjis' departure, FBI and Sarasota County deputies swarmed the house and found dirty diapers along with personal belongings. Weist said that Larry Berberich, then president of the homeowners association and an adviser to the Sheriff's Office, told her that agents took a few computers and an answering machine.

Although some neighbors said they heard that the couple were never coming back, Anoud al-Hijji and her mother-in-law returned in mid 2003 after paying the delinquent homeowners association fees, Weist said. The house sold that September.

The Ghazzawis and al-Hijjis could not be reached for comment. On Linked In, a social networking site, a person identifying himself as Abdulaziz al-Hijji said he works as a career counselor for Saudi Aramco, the Saudi oil company. He lists his education as "University of South Florida.'' The school confirmed Monday that al-Hijji graduated in August 2001.

The possible ties between the couple and some of the hijackers were first reported by BrowardBulldog.org, an investigative website that broke the Sarasota story with Irish journalist Anthony Summers.

The story was based in part on information from Berberich. It quoted an unidentified counterterrorism officer who said agents found that phone records and the Prestancia gate records linked the house to the hijackers.

Berberich did not return calls from the St. Petersburg Times. Asked about the comments made by him and the anonymous officer, the FBI issued a statement:

"With respect to recent reports about the Sarasota area, there is no new information related to the 9/11 hijackers. During the course of the 9/11 investigation, the FBI followed up on numerous leads and tips . . . most of which, including this one, were resolved and determined not to be related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot. All of the documentation pertaining to the 9/11 investigation was made available to the 9/11 Commission" and the congressional committee.

Graham could not be reached for comment Monday.

[Gold9472]

Saudi couple in Fla. part of 9/11? FBI says no, others raise questions

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/13/7747417-saudi-couple-in-fla-part-of-911-fbi-says-no-others-raise-questions

9/14/2011

A news report about a Saudi family that disappeared from their home in Sarasota, Fla., just two weeks before the 9/11 attacks has brought an angry response from the co-chair of a congressional Sept. 11 committee.

Bob Graham, who was a senator from Florida when he co-chaired the panel, tells msnbc tv he contacted President Barack Obama's terrorism adviser after hearing about the news report, which documented that the family had had contact with three of the 9/11 pilot hijackers.

"I ... urged him to pursue an investigation of these matters, both in Sarasota and elsewhere ... and then hopefully release that information to the American people," Graham said Monday on The Dylan Ratigan Show, suggesting that other Saudi families in the U.S. might have also had contact with the terrorists, most of whom were Saudi.

Reuters reported that the FBI office in Tampa issued a statement Monday saying the Sarasota case was one of many leads that "were resolved and determined not to be related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot."

Graham said he had no reason to doubt the news report, which said the couple and their two children abruptly abandoned their luxury home, leaving behind a full refrigerator, clothes, furnishings and a new car in the driveway.

The report was published by BrowardBulldog.org, a nonprofit news site, and was simultaneously published on the Miami Herald website.

If true, it reveals another Saudi terrorism connection that the FBI never disclosed to the public or to the 2002 joint Congressional intelligence committee investigating the attacks, said Graham.

Reuters quoted Graham as calling the Sarasota case "eerily similar" to the FBI's failure to tell the intelligence committee about a former Saudi civil servant, Omar al-Bayoumi, who supported two hijackers while they were living in San Diego.

Graham said an investigator for his committee independently unearthed the information about al-Bayoumi.

"Why did the U.S. government go to such lengths to cover up the Saudi involvement?" Graham said.

The Democrat has long been critical of the administration of former President George W. Bush for refusing to release 28 pages of the intelligence committee's report, which allegedly included information about Saudi financial support of terrorists.

Information about the Saudi couple in Sarasota was reported by Anthony Summers, an independent journalist and co-author of "The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden," and Dan Christensen, editor of the BrowardBulldog.org.

Summers said on msnbc tv that a hushed-up inquiry found that "three of the (9/11) pilot hijackers had all been in touch with the Saudis in that house."

Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii, his wife Anoud and their two children resided in a home owned by Anoud's father, Esam Ghazzawi, in the gated Sarasota subdivision called Prestancia, according to the report.

The news report said the FBI learned of the couple from a suspicious neighbor on the day of the attacks.

According to the report, the FBI connected the couple to more than a dozen terrorists through telephone records and through their car license tags and driver's licenses as they passed through the subdivision's security gate.

Among the terrorists who visited the home or called the couple was 9/11 leader Mohamed Atta, the report said.

The news report was based on information from an unnamed counterterrorism official, a neighbor, subdivision administrators, the subdivision security guard and the subdivision lawyer, who said the FBI tried to get him to lure the homeowner back to the United States.

According to the report, the Sarasota couple returned to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with Anoud's father after abandoning their home.

[Gold9472]

Explore Saudi-Sarasota link

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110914/OPINION/110919838/-1/news?Title=Explore-Saudi-Sarasota-link

Published: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, September 13, 2011 at 6:55 p.m.

A statement by FBI Miami — discounting new reports of a possible 9/11 link to a Saudi family that once lived in Sarasota — is wholly unsatisfying.

It points to a need to release information long withheld by the U.S. government.

The FBI statement is at odds with a counterterrorism agent's revelation that the family had received phone calls from numbers linked to the 9/11 hijackers — some of whom took flight training in Venice.

The FBI statement also conflicts with reports that the family was visited by people using a car licensed to Mohamed Atta — who crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center that terrible September morning in 2001.

Last week's bombshell report about the former Sarasota family — heretofore undisclosed despite intense media coverage of the 9/11 investigation and the attacks' al-Qaida perpetrators — was written by independent reporters Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen. It was widely published and led to further reporting by the Herald-Tribune, which detailed the Saudi family's sudden abandonment of their home in the Prestancia subdivision less than two weeks before the 9/11 tragedy.

Late Friday, the FBI confirmed that it had investigated the family but said the case was "determined not to be related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot."

The FBI said all documentation "pertaining to the 9/11 investigation" was given to the congressional Joint Inquiry that examined the 9/11 tragedy.

But retired Sen. Bob Graham, co-leader of that joint inquiry, said Congress never received word of the Sarasota case.

He sees the discrepancy as another in a long line of U.S. government actions that seem to downplay or hide the possibility that certain Saudis — living in the U.S. and connected to Saudi Arabia's government or its large royal family — may have aided the hijackers.

Graham's frustration is not new. In 2003, he and other members of Congress fought the Bush administration's censoring of such details. He wants the Obama administration to make the information public.

On Monday, U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, whose 11th District includes part of Manatee County, urged the chairman of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to "investigate the matter and determine exactly what was investigated and reported to Congress in 2001 and during the years of inquiry thereafter regarding these individuals with ties to the 9/11 hijackers."

This week, Graham told BrowardBulldog.org — which broke the story about the Saudi family in Sarasota — that deeper investigations should be mounted in all the U.S. communities where the 9/11 hijackers lived in the run-up to the attacks.

We second Graham's call.

Americans already know in all too painful detail that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, as was Osama bin Laden.

Less publicized are reports suggesting that money and support for the hijackers came from people with ties to the Saudi government and/or monarchy. None were officially held accountable.

Is that because of Saudi Arabia's enormous importance as an oil supplier and as a base for what passes for Middle East stability? Graham suspects so.

Whatever the answer, the public deserves a true accounting.

[Gold9472]

FBI: No link between Sarasota family and 9/11 plot
Tampa’s FBI office said the agency investigated the disappearance of a Saudi family from their Sarasota home days before the 9/11 terrorist attacks and found no links to the terrorist plot.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/15/2409359/fbi-no-link-between-sarasota-family.html

By Dan Christensen
Special to The Miami Herald

A top Florida FBI agent said Thursday that members of a Saudi family living quietly near Sarasota were questioned after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but no evidence was found that linked them to the hijackers who slammed jetliners into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

A week after The Miami Herald published a story showing ties between the family and some of the terrorists, Tampa’s head FBI agent, Steven Ibison, released a statement Thursday saying the FBI investigated “suspicions surrounding� the Sarasota home, but never found evidence tying the family members to the hijackers.

“There was no connection found to the 9/11 plot,� said the statement, released to the St. Petersburg Times.

The agency’s statement came just days after U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., asked for a House investigation into the events surrounding the Sarasota family, which abruptly left the home several days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, leaving behind three vehicles, food in the refrigerator and toys in the swimming pool.

The FBI’s official version, the second in a week, conflicts sharply with reports from people who worked at the homeowners’ association and a counterterrorism officer who joined the investigation.

A senior administrator at the luxury community told The Herald that cars used by the 9/11 hijackers — the tag numbers noted by security guards at the gate — drove to the entrance asking to visit the family at various times before the attacks. One of the cars was linked to terrorist leader Mohamed Atta, said administrator Larry Berberich.

In addition, a counterterrorism officer who requested anonymity said agents also linked telephone calls between the home and known hijacking suspects in the year before the attacks.

So far, the FBI’s response to the discovery has drawn criticism from former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who said he was never told of the Sarasota investigation when he was co-chair of the congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. Thursday’s FBI statement said the agency provided all the information to the congressional inquiry.

Graham, who appeared on national television this week, said the FBI failed to provide information in the years after 9/11 linking members of the terrorist team to other Saudis in California until congressional investigators discovered it themselves.

“It was not because the FBI gave us the information. We had a very curious and effective investigator who found out,� Graham told the MSNBC cable television network.

In an appearance Monday on MSNBC, Graham said he spoke with President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism advisor. He said he has gone to the White House’s chief of counterterrorism to ask that the administration look into the Sarasota case.

The FBI, which has not released any results of its investigation, said family members who lived in the home owned by Saudi financier Esam Ghazzawi were tracked down and interviewed about the case after the attacks.

It was not clear from Thursday’s statement whether the FBI or Saudi intelligence conducted the interrogations. The family was believed to have flown to Saudi Arabia after briefly stopping in Virginia several days before Sept. 11.

Scott McKay, a Sarasota lawyer for the Prestancia Homeowners’ Association in its claim for unpaid dues, told The Herald that the FBI tried to get him to bring back the Saudis to Florida for the sale of the home.

McKay said he tried on behalf of the agency, but Ghazzawi was able to sign his name before a notary at the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in September 2003.

[Gold9472]

FBI Says Saudi Family in Sarasota Not Connected to 9/11
Law enforcement agency found no evidence from published reports that al-Hijjis had ties to the hijackers.

http://www.theledger.com/article/20110916/NEWS/110919466/1374?p=1&tc=pg

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN & STEPHEN NOHLGREN, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
Published: Friday, September 16, 2011 at 11:53 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, September 16, 2011 at 11:53 p.m.

The FBI said that it had interviewed members of a Saudi Arabian family that left Sarasota shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and found no evidence they were connected to the hijackers or the terror plot.

In what he called a statement "to correct the public record," Steven Ibison, special agent in charge of the Tampa office, took issue with a recent story that claimed the FBI found "troubling ties" between the hijackers and the al-Hijji family, the residents of a home in a gated Sarasota community.

As the FBI investigated leads after Sept. 11, "family members were located and interviewed," the statement said.

"At no time did the FBI develop evidence that connected the family members to any of the 9/11 hijackers, as suggested in the article, and there was no connection to the 9/11 plot."

The FBI's statement did not say where or when it interviewed the family members.

The statement, elaborating on one released Monday by the FBI, further called into question the accuracy of the story by Irish author Anthony Summers and Florida journalist Dan Christensen.

First appearing on the website Browardbulldog.org, the story was reprinted by the Miami Herald and followed by other media, including the St. Petersburg Times.

The Saudi couple drew suspicion from neighbors after the terrorist attacks because they appeared to have abandoned the home and some vehicles.

But the Times later found plausible reasons for their departure. Abdulaziz al-Hijji had just graduated from the University of South Florida and was soon to take a job with a Saudi oil company. When they were unable to rent out the home furnished, Anoud al-Hijji returned two years later to arrange a sale.

In its original story, Browardbulldog.org said that a "link analysis" of incoming and outgoing phone calls "lined up with the known suspects." Link analysis is an investigative technique that does not rely on direct contact between parties.

Despite a request from the Times, the FBI did not specifically deny the most serious allegation in the Browardbulldog.org story — that name and vehicle information for hijackers Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah "fit that of drivers entering Prestancia on their way to visit" the Saudis' home.

The FBI would not comment on whether it reviewed the Prestancia community's gate records because " it's not our policy to discuss any investigative techniques," said David Couvertier, an FBI spokesman in Tampa.

The story's sources for that allegation were an anonymous "counterterrorism agent" and former Prestancia resident Larry Berberich, who represented the homeowners association on security issues.

Ibison's statement said the unidentified source for the story apparently was not an FBI agent and "had no access to the facts and circumstances pertaining to the resolution of this lead — otherwise this person would know this matter was resolved without any nexus to the 9/11 plot."

However, Summers told the Times on Wednesday that the " counterterrorism agent " had seen FBI reports. Berberich has not responded to several calls from the Times.

Summers met with the "agent" and Berberich recently while in the United States to promote his book, The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of Osama bin Laden and 9/11, due out next month.

Former Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who co-chaired the congressional committee that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks, said Thursday that he wants to see the documents on which the FBI based its conclusion that the al-Hijjis had no ties to the hijackers or the plot.

"This is exactly what happened in San Diego when we were told by the FBI that there was no information that would have linked any activities in San Diego to terrorists," Graham said. But when investigators got there, Graham said, "they found these very extensive relations between two of the hijackers and Saudi entities in San Diego."

The FBI has said it turned over all information it collected on the attacks to Graham's committee and the 9/11 Commission.

U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, a Tampa Democrat, said she "appreciated" the FBI's statements this week. However, she repeated her call for the House and Senate intelligence committees to verify what information the agency had given Congress and the 9/11 panel.

[Gold9472]

Who Funded 9/11 Attacks? Insurers, 9/11 Families Still Want Answers

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/funded-911-attacks-insurance-companies-911-families-continue/story?id=14512391

By SUSANNA KIM
Sept. 15, 2011

After the 10-year anniversary of Sept. 11 and six months after the death of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, questions still remain regarding who funded the attacks that led to thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in damages.

The latest legal pursuit is that of an insurance syndicate of British insurer Lloyd's, which says the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, its banks and various charities should be financially responsible for the $215 million it paid in insurance settlements to 9/11 victims' families.

William Doyle's family is one of the families determined to find those who funded the attacks on 9/11. Doyle's son, Joseph, was killed in the north tower of the World Trade Center.

William Doyle told ABC News there are "concrete facts" showing the majority of the hijackers' funding originated from Saudi Arabia. He said the government helped "shield" some of that evidence when the joint congressional committee investigating the attacks published a report in December 2002 and redacted about 28 pages.

Doyle and others believe names of Saudi financiers and companies have been removed.

"How could they hide under diplomatic immunity?" Doyle said of those he believes have been protected. "People don't get missiles to strike down helicopters by themselves. Someone is funding them. If someone is funding them, let it be known and cut out their funding."

Former Florida Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, former co-chair of the congressional committee, has called on the government to reopen its 9/11 investigation.

Thousands of individuals and companies are still pursuing a multi-district litigation suit in New York called "Re: Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001," which has dismissed about 127 defendants, according to the law firm Motley Rice, which represents 6,700 individuals for that case, including Doyle. There are about 24 remaining active defendants, says Motley Rice.

Craig Unger, journalist and author of "House of Bush, House of Saud," said there is widespread reason to believe prominent Saudis were funding terrorists through Islamic charities. But the United States-Saudi relationship is "duplicitous from both sides of the fence," in part because Saudi Arabia is the world's largest oil producer and exporter.

"The relationship has soiled contradictions and we turn a blind eye to various aspects," he said. "The U.S. is so dependent on oil, you don't want to rock the boat."

Despite unanimous dismissals of Lloyd's nine defendants in cases in New York, the insurer's suit, filed in a federal court in Pennsylvania on Sept. 8, claims "al Qaeda would not have possessed the capacity to conceive, plan and execute the September 11th attacks" without the funding.

Sean Carter, an attorney with law firm Cozen O'Connor, whose client is the Lloyd's syndicate, said the lawsuit seeks recovery for amounts that were paid to settle claims brought against airlines and security companies related to Sept. 11.

"The theme of the lawsuit is that the ultimate responsibility for a terrorist attack of this nature should rest with parties that were intentional actors rather than parties alleged to have been merely negligent," Carter said.

The Pennsylvania lawsuit lists nine defendants, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Saudi Red Crescent Society, which is associated with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

"Though this case has a different plaintiff, the suit is essentially based on the same claims around the tragic events of 9/11. However the court has dismissed most of the defendants," Lynne Bernabei of the law firm Bernabei & Wachtel, representing the Saudi Red Crescent Society, told ABC News.

Bernabei said the lawsuit is another attempt to get around the rulings which have been mostly adverse to the plaintiffs. Her client was in part dismissed because it was not shown to have any involvement and because it is a sovereign defendant, or state entity, for which the requirements to sue were not met.

Mark Hansen, whose law firm, Kelloff, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, represented the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the previous 9/11 suits, said the firm does not comment on pending litigation.

While 2,983 families of 9/11 victims and 2,300 physically injured have received over $7 billion from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001, 94 families decided not to participate in the fund. Those families received on average an estimated $5 million each, using figures from the report of Sheila Birnbaum, the 9/11 mediator. However, that information is confidential.

Only one victim's family is still pursuing litigation against United Airlines and security company Huntleigh under the plaintiff's arguments they were negligent in failing to prevent the attacks. A hearing will take place Monday in New York with a trial date scheduled for November.

[Gold9472]

Saudi/Florida link to 9/11

http://www.vindy.com/news/2011/sep/21/saudiflorida-link-to-911/?newswatch

Published: Wed, September 21, 2011 @ 12:00 a.m.

The Miami Herald: Reports of a previously unknown Saudi connection to the events of 9/11 in Florida cry out for a full airing. There are simply too many troubling questions surrounding the mystery of a hastily-abandoned house in Sarasota days before the attacks to sweep this matter under the rug.

The three-bedroom home in an upscale, gated residential compound was owned by a Saudi financier whose daughter, son-in-law and two young children lived there. They left a few days before 19 terrorists — 15 of whom were Saudis — carried out the plot to attack targets in this country. They left behind three cars, rooms of expensive furniture, food supplies, and other evidence of an abrupt exit, including clothes hanging in the closets, dirty diapers, mail left on the table and so forth.

More worrisome, they also had ties to the al Qaida terrorists. FBI agents, acting on a tip from a neighbor weeks later, found gate logs of vehicle tags showing that a car owned by hijacker Mohamed Atta had visited the compound. More information indicated that he and Ziad Jarrah, another hijacker, were in the car. Agents reportedly linked phone calls from the house to the Saudi attackers.

The FBI issued a statement saying it had followed up the information on the Sarasota house and “there was no connection found to the 9/11 plot.� The bureau said it had informed Congress and the 9/11 Commission about its investigation.

Seeking answers
That should not be the end of it, however. If there was an investigation, when did it end and what did they find? Who did they tell? What about the visits and phone calls? What was the nature of the connection between the hijackers and those who owned the house and lived there? There may be an explanation without connection to al Qaida, but after 10 years the public deserves answers.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired the congressional investigation into the hijackings, emphatically disputes the assertion that the FBI informed Congress. That, too, should be cleared up.

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http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/09/22/saudi-royal-ties-to-911-hijackers-via-florida-saudi-family-0/2/

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Questions over Saudis' abrupt exit from Sarasota still lingering

http://www.tampabay.com/news/questions-over-saudis-abrupt-exit-from-sarasota-still-lingering/1193346

By Susan Taylor Martin and Stephen Nohlgren, Times Staff Writers
In Print: Sunday, September 25, 2011

It began with an Irish journalist and a four-year-old tip. Then a meeting in a Florida motel room, an anonymous source and finally, a blockbuster story published just days before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The website Browardbulldog.org said the FBI had found "troubling ties'' between the hijackers and members of a Saudi family who "abandoned'' their Sarasota home and cars shortly before 9/11. But, the story said, the FBI had never turned over the information to Congress or the 9/11 Commission.

So meticulously planned were the attacks that it still strains the imagination to think that 19 foreigners could have pulled them off without ample help from confederates in the United States. So the Bulldog story was read by many, including an influential former U.S. senator, as evidence that the government mishandled, even withheld, key information from Congress and the 9/11 Commission.

But the FBI insisted "there was no connection found" between the Saudi family and the 9/11 plot. And other evidence suggests the family's departure might not have been all that surprising.

Was it a case of different people seeing very different things, viewed through the kaleidoscope of fact and rumor still swirling around one of the most wrenching events in American history?

Rich and good-looking
Here are some facts about the young couple in the house at 4224 Escondito Circle:

Anoud and Abdulaziz al-Hijji were born in Saudi Arabia. It is not clear how they landed 7,000 miles away in Sarasota, though Anoud had ties to the United States long before 9/11.

Her mother, Deborah, is an American citizen from California. Her older brother, international businessman Abed Ghazzawi, was born in the United States, graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., and is a director of the EastWest Institute, a New York-based think tank.

(Another director is Michael Chertoff, former head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the agency created after 9/11 to protect Americans from terrorists.)

Anoud's father, Esam Abbas Ghazzawi, is a Saudi interior designer with an international clientele. In 1995 he and his wife were staying in a waterfront mansion on Sarasota County's exclusive Longboat Key.

Jone Weist, a Sarasota property manager, recalls reading an article about Ghazzawi.

"The thrust was that he owned this interior design company that specializes in houses of 25,000 square feet or more,'' Weist said. "It said that in order to accommodate all the beautiful furnishings and antiques that he used in his business, he had warehouses all over the world.''

Accompanying the story were photographs of opulent homes Ghazzawi had designed, along with a photo of the man himself — "to die-for good looking, around 60, he had what appeared to be a white cashmere suit,'' Weist said.

In 1995, the Ghazzawis bought a 3,300-square-foot house in Prestancia, a gated community where basketball star Michael Jordan briefly lived. Soon afterward, their daughter Anoud moved in with her new husband.

Court records show the couple, he 22 and she 17, were married May 12, 1995 in Sarasota. Performing the ceremony was notary public Malik Sardar Khan, a Miami real estate agent and one of the top officials of the World Muslim Congress.

As the al-Hijjis settled into married life, soon to be joined by twins and later another baby, they ran afoul of the Prestancia homeowners association for letting their yard go to weed.

"The HOA had great difficulties with them, nothing criminal but not a neighborhood where you let the grass grow for a month,'' said Weist, then Prestancia's property manger.

One neighbor helped Abdulaziz fix his sprinkler system so he could get his lawn back in shape. Other neighbors sometimes babysat for the kids. A nanny joined the family, enabling Anoud as well as her husband to attend the University of South Florida in Tampa.

In August 2001, Abdulaziz graduated with a degree in management information and had a job waiting at Saudi Arabia's huge oil company, Saudi Aramco. The family left around the end of the month. There was one sign they might have intended to return at some point: They talked to real estate agents about renting out the house with its expensive furnishings.

Then came Sept. 11 and news that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, including some who had attended flight schools not far from where the al-Hijjis lived.

To neighbors, what appeared unremarkable before 9/11 was suddenly suspicious. Why had a Saudi family moved out just two weeks before the attacks? Why had they left vehicles, food and furniture, as if beating a hasty retreat?

"I went on the FBI website and said, 'I don't want to waste your time on false leads, but here's something you might want to look into,' " recalled neighbor Patrick Gallagher, one of several people who contacted the agency.

But none of this would be known to the wider world until almost a decade later.

A nagging question
Irish author Anthony Summers, 69, has written several books about famous people and events, including Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and the JFK assassination.

About five years ago, he began researching The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, which came out this summer.

It's well documented, with 118 pages of footnotes, and asserts a sharp point of view: That U.S. officials bungled signs of an imminent attack and that the Bush administration suppressed evidence of a strong Saudi influence.

Early in his research, Summers told the Times, he encountered a law enforcement official who mentioned that some hijackers had ties to a Saudi couple in Sarasota.

At the time, Summers was focused on the hijackers' pilot training and not so much on the Saudi angle.

"But it gnawed at me,'' he said. "Later, this was a thing I knew I should have gone further on.''

When he recently returned to the United States to promote his book, he said, he paid his way to Sarasota to question his source more closely. Summers won't identify the man, but called him a "counter-terrorism agent'' who was in Sarasota on 9/11 when President Bush was reading to schoolchildren. During the investigation that followed, Summers said, the source had access to FBI reports.

The source related how the al-Hijjis left Sarasota just before the attacks. He said telephone "link analysis'' had seemingly tied the couple to terrorists, including Mohamed Atta, pilot of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center.

Phone link analysis is an investigative technique that doesn't necessarily show direct contact, but looks at whom a target subject communicates with and with whom those people, in turn, communicate.

Since that analysis is subjective, Summers said, he was more intrigued when the "counter-terrorism agent'' said the Prestancia guard gate had recorded car and driver license information that linked Atta and other hijackers to the al-Hijjis.

The agent suggested that Summers also talk to Larry Berberich, a former homeowners association president who had overseen security at Prestancia and was present when the guard gate records were pulled.

Summers interviewed the two men in his motel room. He said they did not seem to be altering their stories to make them fit neatly together, but occasionally jogged each other's memories "in a way that added to credibility,'' he said. "One would say, 'Wasn't that in January?', and the other would say, 'No, I remember, because it was right after my daughter's birthday.' ''

Only the agent knew about the phone link analysis, but both men seemed to know what had transpired at the guard gate, Summers said.

Summers took his scoop to Dan Christensen, a friend and veteran South Florida investigative reporter who founded BrowardBulldog.org ("News you can sink your teeth into"), a nonprofit website distributed through Reuters. Together, they met with former Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat.

Graham had co-chaired the joint congressional committee that investigated the 9/11 attacks. The FBI was supposed to forward all pertinent information, but Graham said he remembered nothing of the Sarasota couple. Nor did anything appear in the 9/11 commission report.

That didn't surprise him, Graham said later. He had long felt that the Republican Bush administration had played down, if not suppressed, signs that support networks for the hijackers reached into high levels of the Saudi government. Graham had recently written a novel based on that premise.

A shadow network?
Christensen and Summers sold the BrowardBulldog story to the Miami Herald, which published it on Sept. 7. It appeared on the Bulldog's website the next day.

Here's how the story began:

Just two weeks before 9/11 hijackers slammed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, members of a Saudi family abruptly left their Sarasota home, leaving a brand new car in the driveway, a refrigerator full of food, fruit on the counter — and an open safe in the master bedroom. In the weeks to follow, law enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights — including leader Mohamed Atta — in discoveries never before revealed to the public.

Graham reacted sharply. He called it "the most important thing about 9/11 to surface in the last seven or eight years.'' He urged President Barack Obama to reopen the investigation to determine "the full extent of Saudi involvement prior to 9/11.''

Graham said the al-Hijjis and Anoud's wealthy father could have helped form a shadow support system for the hijackers. He cited the example of a Saudi man in San Diego who rented an apartment for two of the hijackers and left the United States two months before 9/11.

But as the St. Petersburg Times and other media followed the story about the Sarasota family, new information shed contrasting light on the nature of their departure.

Michael Otis, a former Sarasota sheriff's detective who helped the FBI check leads, said he saw the inside of the house some days after the hijackings. Did it look like it had been abandoned in a state of disarray?

"Maybe not really,'' he said.

Otis said the sheriff's office investigated to make certain there hadn't been any foul play. "But as far as gate records and things that appeared in that article, I never heard of any of that,'' he said.

Berberich, of the homeowners association, did not respond to calls from the Times. Nor did former Sarasota Sheriff Bill Balkwill, who set up a counterterrorism unit and had access to at least some confidential FBI terrorism information. (He and Berberich, a wealthy political supporter and adviser, were so close that Berberich once had an office in the sheriff's department.)

In 2003, Anoud al-Hijji and her mother returned to deal with the house, which sold in September of that year. The family could not be reached for comment so the following questions remain unanswered:

Did the al-Hijjis have to depart so abruptly in 2001 that they didn't have time to clean out the refrigerator? Or did a harried mother with three young kids leave the chore for someone else, perhaps a rental agent or property manager?

Was the empty safe a sign of something nefarious? Or the logical result of removing cash and valuables before going away?

Did the al-Hijjis "abandon'' vehicles and furniture? Or would shipping them to Saudi Arabia have been so costly and cumbersome that they were left for the couple's representatives to handle? And why didn't Anoud return for two years? One possible answer: After 9/11, it became far harder for people from Muslim countries to get visas to go to the United States. A year before the attacks, there were 60,508 non-immigrant visas issued to Saudis. The year after, the number plunged to 14,126.

Still not convinced
Of all the allegations, the most serious involves the guard gate records. The Broward Bulldog's initial story said the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers. A later story, quoting a "senior administrator'' at Prestancia, said that "cars used by the 9/11 hijackers drove to the entrance asking to visit the family at various times before the attacks.''

It is not clear from the Bulldog stories that any of the hijackers themselves visited or even tried to visit the al-Hijji family.

Despite a request from the Times to confirm or deny it, the FBI has not addressed the question of whether gate records showed any visits or attempted visits by terrorists to the al-Hijjis' home.

But in a statement, Steven Ibison, special agent in charge of the Tampa office, said that "family members were located and interviewed'' during the agency's investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks. "At no time did the FBI develop evidence that connected the family members to any of the 9/11 hijackers, as suggested in the (Bulldog) article, and there was no connection to the 9/11 plot,'' Ibison said. The statement did not say where or when the family members were interviewed. Or by whom.

Graham wants more details.

More than a week ago, he asked the FBI to provide the number of its file on the al-Hijji family and the date the file was transmitted to the congressional committee that investigated the 9/11 attacks. That way he could have the committee's archives searched to see exactly what information the FBI had sent.

As of Friday, Graham was still waiting.

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Former Senator reveals secrets about 9/11, Saudis

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/former-senator-reveals-secrets-about-911-saudis/nFWc5/

By John Bachman
11/4/2011

ATLANTA — It's one of the largest sales of U.S. weapons ever. The government has approved sending billions of dollars worth of equipment to Saudi Arabia. But there are more concerns the sales shouldn't go through, because of new suspicions about the Saudis' role in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The terrorist attacks of 9-11 were the deadliest on U.S. soil. Nineteen hijackers carried out the plot. Fifteen of them were from Saudi Arabia. There's at least one person who believes that's more than a coincidence.

Former Senator Bob Graham was born in Georgia, but represented Florida in Congress. He co-chaired the Joint Congressional Committee that investigated the attacks.

Graham wrote a book based on the committee's 800-page report, but government security officials stepped in.

"In that report there was one chapter that primarily dealt with the role of the Saudis in 9-11," Graham said. "That was the only chapter in the book that was totally censored."

So Graham wrote a second book, this one fiction. He called "Keys to the Kingdom" informed fiction, and said it's filled with a lot of events that really happened.

One example is a Saudi agent Omar al-Bayoumi who lived in San Diego in 2001. Graham said the agent was paid for a job he never did, and was given a huge raise the same month two of the hijackers showed up in San Diego.

Channel 2's John Bachman asked Graham what that reveals.

"It tells us that Saudi Arabia is not the ally we think it is," Graham said.

Still, the United States is selling Saudi Arabia $60 billion in weapons. It is one of the largest sales of arms ever, and includes F-15 fighter jets, helicopters and missiles.

Retired Georgia National Guard Lt. Gen. David Poythress said keeping a close relationship with Saudi Arabia makes sense, not just because of oil, but because the Saudis help protect the U.S. fleet in the Persian Gulf.

"At the same time, they need domestic and regional military security. We can provide that," Poythress said.

Bachman asked him about the allegations of the Saudis connection to September 11.

"Who will ever know. Clearly, there's this kind of incestuous relationship between the royal family and the most radical elements of Islam in the Arabia Peninsula," Poythress said. "The royal family has no doubt turned a blind eye to a great deal of the fundamental Islamic radicalism."

Ten years after the attacks, even more evidence is surfacing. Just weeks ago, the Miami Herald reported a connection between September 11 ringleader Mohammad Atta and a Saudi family who lived in Sarasota, Florida.

"At least in 5 instances, Atta visited in his home," Graham said. "Extensive telephone conversations. We also know that on August 30th, 12 days before 9-11, that fairly quickly in a very rushed situation, (the family) left Sarasota and returned to Saudi Arabia."

The FBI said it interviewed and cleared the family of any involvement in 9-11.

Graham said he's skeptical. He said thousands of Americans already have paid the ultimate price for America's close relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Graham believes more Americans still are paying the price. "Because we're still treating the Saudis as if it were a loyal ally."

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Graham: Still no FBI records on Sarasota 9/11 probe
The agency has not been able to show that it disclosed any information about the investigation to a congressional committee that looked into the terrorist attacks. The FBI investigated possible links between a Saudi family in Sarasota and some of the 9/11

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/11/10/2496033/graham-still-no-fbi-records-on.html#comment

By Dan Christensen
BrowardBulldog.org
11/10/2011

In September, news about a previously unknown FBI investigation into possible ties between 9/11 hijackers and a Saudi family living near Sarasota led the agency to deny there was any connection and assert that it made all of its files available to congressional investigators a decade ago.

But two months later, the FBI has been unable or unwilling to substantiate that it disclosed any information regarding its Sarasota investigation to Congress, says former Florida U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress’s bipartisan joint inquiry into the terrorist attacks.

“My suspicion is that either, one, the documents don’t exist; two, that if they do exist they can’t find them; or three, they did find them and they did not substantiate the statements that they’ve made and that they are withholding them,� said Graham. He has long contended the FBI stonewalled Congress about what it knows about possible Saudi support for the 9/11 hijackers.

The FBI investigation began shortly after 9/11 when residents of the gated community of Prestancia, south of Sarasota, called to report the abrupt departure from their luxury home of a Saudi family about two weeks before four passenger jets originating in Boston, Newark and Washington were hijacked. The family left for Saudi Arabia, leaving behind cars, clothes in the closet and a refrigerator full of food.

Neighbors said agents searched the house and hauled away bags of belongings. But the most important information came when the FBI examined gatehouse security logs and photographs of license plates, according to then-homeowner’s association administrator Larry Berberich and a counterterrorism agent involved in the investigation.

They said the security records revealed that the home was visited by vehicles used by 9/11 terrorist leader Mohamed Atta and fellow hijacker-pilot Ziad Jarrah. Atta piloted the first plane to strike the World Trade Center. Jarrah was at the controls when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa.

The counterterrorism agent, who asked that his name not be disclosed, said an analysis of phone records found additional links between the residence and other hijackers and terrorist suspects, including Adnan Shukrijumah, a former Miramar resident who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

FBI agents in Tampa and Miami issued separate statements denying that any connection existed between the family and the terrorists.

Graham, a Democrat, has said that he and other members and staff of the joint inquiry were not made aware of the Sarasota investigation by the FBI.

Graham asked the FBI in September to provide him with file numbers about the Sarasota inquiry and the dates those records were provided to congressional investigators, so the records could be located. At one point, Graham said, FBI agents produced 10 file numbers. But intelligence committee personnel deter mined “there was no information in any of the 10 files that was relevant� to the Sarasota investigation, he said.

After failing to meet several subsequent self-imposed deadlines, Graham said, “The FBI asked [that] instead of finding the documents could they brief us instead. I said, ‘No, that would not be acceptable.’�

The FBI has turned down a recent Freedom of Information request The Herald and Broward Bulldog that sought agency records about agents’ findings in Sarasota, saying release of the records would be an invasion of the family’s privacy.

The Saudis who lived in the Prestancia home at 4224 Escondito Circle were Abdulaziz A. Al-Hijji, his wife, Anoud, and their small children. The home was owned by Anoud’s parents, Esam and Deborah Ghazzawi.

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Former Sen. Graham talks about novel

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111210/ARTICLE/111219984

By Kim Hackett
Published: Saturday, December 10, 2011 at 7:20 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, December 10, 2011 at 7:20 p.m.

Retired Senator and two-term Florida Governor Bob Graham speaks in Venice on Tuesday about his recently published novel, "Keys to the Kingdom." The book is a thriller about hijackers and an international conspiracy linking the Saudi Kingdom to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The Herald Tribune's Kim Hackett talked to him about his novel.

Q: As a member of the 9-11 committee, were you aware of the Sarasota family, Abdulazzi and Anoud al-Hiijjii, and the relationship they had with Sept. 11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and Ziad Jarrah?

A: The answer is no. The FBI had said in their press statement that they had provided documentation to the 9-11 Commission and the joint Congressional Inquiry. It just so happened that three key people on the committees were from Florida. What is unbelievable to me if there had been something that had came to our attention about Sarasota, light bulbs would have gone off. None of us have any recollection of being told about this.

Q: Have you been able to learn about any more support networks in the U.S.?

A: The FBI had the responsibility to do the investigation and they were extremely tight with any information they found. The press release they issued for Sarasota was about word-for-word the same in San Diego.

Q: You said the chapter in the 9-11 report detailing the Saudi connection was removed. Why do you think the Saudi connection remains such a mystery?

A: It's been suggested the close relationship the Bush family had with the house of Saud going back three generations; the oil — the Saudis have been a reliable source of oil. There's a curious lack of curiosity about the Saudi ties.

Q: You say about 40 percent of the book is fact. How did you come up with 40 percent?

A: I counted the pages and about forty percent were factual.

Q: What was the vetting process like with intelligence agencies?

A: Every draft of the novel was submitted and actually there were very few changes.

Q: Your character Billington has the same biography as you. What was it like killing yourself off?

A: I didn't have qualms. We needed to clear the stage so that Tony could be the center of attention. In a movie version, I see Robert Redford playing Billington (laughs); he had to go quickly or we couldn't afford Redford.

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Graham shares novel in Lee County
Former senator says book is 40 percent fact, 40 percent speculation and 20 percent fiction.

http://www.news-press.com/article/20111214/NEWS01/312140026/0/springtraining/Graham-shares-novel-Lee-County?odyssey=nav|head

12/14/2011

Florida’s former governor and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham left elected office 11 years ago, but standing in front of a Lee County crowd Tuesday, his talk was all politics — only now focused on terrorism and the threat of nuclear war, themes of his new novel, “Keys to the Kingdom.�

Graham has written nonfiction books, but said he had a message, instigated largely by his work as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee before and after 9/11, that he believed might be easier delivered in a fictionalized version, his first novel.

The book is about 40 percent fact, 40 percent “informed speculation,� and 20 percent fiction, said Graham, who relied on knowledge gathered through his work in intelligence matters to strengthen his story.

But much of what a national investigation discovered about Saudi Arabia’s role in the 9/11 attacks was “censored� from official reports issued by his committee, Graham said in his talk before about 40 people at the Lakes Regional Library. “The novel is meant to tell that story,� he said, bringing to light what Graham believes is the Saudis’ role that’s otherwise been underplayed.

The report “was not censored for reasons of national security, but because it was politically inconvenient to disclose the role of the Saudis� in 9/11, Graham said. He also speculated the relationship between the Saudis and the Bush family, along with the U.S. dependence on Saudi oil, may be reasons “why we’ve been so gentle with the Saudis and unwilling to disclose their involvement.�

Frustrated by the secrecy, he said, “I thought I could tell the story of the Saudis’ involvement through a novel,� which underwent review by security officials before publication.

The novel’s hero is a Cuban-American intelligence officer charged with finding nuclear material that’s fallen into the hands of terrorists, and foiling their planned attacks on America. There’s also a U.S. senator — bearing many similarities with Graham —with suspicions about the Saudis’ involvement, and who’s killed under suspicious circumstances.

Graham joked it wasn’t difficult to kill off his character. “I wanted him out of the way early, and his murder was a good way to begin the story.�

[Gold9472]

Sarasota family had 'many connections' to 9/11 terror attacks

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130416/ARTICLE/130419732/2416/NEWS?p=1&tc=pg

By Michael Pollick
Published: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 12:31 p.m.
Last Modified: Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 12:31 p.m.

Contrary to previous statements made by the FBI to the news media, a family living in the south Sarasota neighborhood of Prestancia had “many connections” to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to newly released FBI documents.

The family, Anoud and Abdulazziz al-Hijji, had links to 9/11 hijackers — including Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, who trained at a Venice flight school in preparation for the assault on New York and Washington, D.C., that killed 2,996.

Anoud al-Hijji is the daughter of Esam Ghazzawi, a powerful Saudi businessman with long ties to the Saudi royal family. The al-Hijjis have denied any involvement or relationship with the 9/11 hijackers.

But the family abruptly left the Prestancia home that they had lived in for six years roughly a week before the 9/11 attacks, leaving behind clothes, food, children's toys and other living essentials.

In the newly declassified documents, the FBI's Southwest Florida Domestic Security Task Force reported that the exit was done “quickly and suddenly.” The family left no forwarding address at the time, according to Realtors and property managers who were interviewed by the federal agency.

After being alerted to the family's hasty exit by nearby residents and investigating the circumstances and participants, the FBI said it concluded that the family had no connection to the terrorists.

“At no time did the FBI develop evidence that connected the family members to any of the 9/11 hijackers,” Steven E. Ibison, the FBI special agent in charge of the agency's Tampa field office, said in a Sept. 15, 2011, statement made in response to media questioning about the al-Hijjis at that time.

But portions of the FBI documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by BrowardBulldog — a journalism organization led by former Miami Herald reporter Dan Christensen, who has been investigating the attacks — seem to directly contradict those statements.

“Further investigation of the (name deleted) family revealed many connections between the (name deleted) and individuals associated with the terror attacks on 9/11/2001,” a portion of declassified FBI documents state.

The agency redacted many of the names in the 31 pages released under exemptions that protect people's names in law enforcement records. But it is clear who the subjects are because the documents specifically cite the al-Hijjis' residence, which was 4224 Escondito Circle in Sarasota's “Estates at Prestancia” development at the time FBI agents were investigating.

Though the FBI stands by its statements, the documents renew questions — previously raised by former Florida governor and U.S. Sen. Bob Graham and others — that the U.S. has not fully disclosed the extent of its knowledge about links between the 9/11 attacks and Saudi officials.

A majority of the terrorists who orchestrated and participated in the attacks were Saudis.

The story of the Prestancia home came to the fore again this week because of a story by BrowardBulldog. Christensen and his organization has been litigating with the federal government in an effort to obtain classified FBI reports that illustrate the relationship between the al-Hijjis and the 9/11 terrorists.

Abdulazziz al-Hijji could not be reached for comment, but in email correspondence with The (London) Daily Telegraph a year ago, he strongly denied any involvement in 9/11.

“I have neither relation nor association with any of those bad people/criminals and the awful crime they did,” al-Hijji wrote.

Revelations
Among the more explosive revelations in the BrowardBulldog story is that an unidentified “family member” — purportedly of the al-Hijji family — was a flight student at Venice's Huffman Aviation, according to the FBI documents marked “secret” but with the word since crossed through.

Huffman gained notoriety in the wake of 9/11 as the place where suicide hijackers Atta and al-Shehhi learned to fly. Those two men were in the cockpits when jets slammed into the World Trade Center towers.

The story also references documents detailing a third person on a redacted FBI list as having “lived with flight students at Huffman Aviation” and being “arrested numerous times by the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.”

The BrowardBulldog noted that the recently released FBI documents disclosed nothing about Wissam Hammoud, an al-Hijji friend who is now serving a 21-year prison sentence for weapons violations and for attempting to kill a federal agent.

Hammoud, 47, and an “international terrorist associate,” according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, told investigators after his 2004 arrest that al-Hijji may have known some of the hijackers and that he considered Osama Bin Laden “a hero.” Though he acknowledged knowing Hammoud well, al-Hijji denied knowing 9/11 participants or revering Bin Laden in an interview with Christensen last year, the BrowardBulldog reported.

Hammoud was arrested in Sarasota County during July 1995 for driving with a suspended license, according to County Clerk of the Court records. He was subsequently given probation and the case was closed.

Questions
Though much about the allegations and evidence connecting the home in Prestancia to the 9/11 attacks is not new, the matter has lingered because of a lack of closure.

Questions remain, too, for Pat Gallagher, who was among the Prestancia residents who contacted the FBI in the aftermath of the terror attacks after “suspicious activity” — the agency's phrase — at the al-Hijji residence at Escondito Circle, including the family's sudden exit.

Though the house has since been sold twice, at the time it was owned by Ghazzawi, an importer and exporter whose circles included the Bin Laden Group.

Ghazzawi's influence also extends to his children. His 42-year-old son, Adel, is a board member of the New York-based think tank EastWest Institute, which counts the likes of Michael Chertoff, a director of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush and co-author of the Patriot Act, and retired Gen. James L. Jones, a former national security adviser to President Barack Obama, among its members.

The younger Ghazzawi operates Conektas, a firm in the United Arab Emirates that helps multinational companies establish businesses in the Middle East.

Abdulazziz al-Hijji was completing undergraduate work at the University of South Florida when he lived in the Ghazzawi house. He went on to receive a bachelor's in computer science.

FBI records indicate that he took a job after graduation with the Saudi oil concern Aramco in London, though he no longer appears to be working there, BrowardBulldog reported.

Interviewed by the FBI, Anoud al-Hijji said the family's flight was a “regularly scheduled departure.”

But the FBI conducted a substantial investigation centered on the al-Hijji household.

Six weeks after 9/11, agents found that Prestancia's digital scan system had picked up at least two license plates registered to Atta and Ziad Jarrah, another 9/11 terrorist, who had allegedly visited the Escondito Circle house in the months leading up to the attacks. The men purportedly identified themselves to security guards.

But the declassified FBI records say the agency “appears not to have obtained the vehicle entry records of the gated community.”

Graham — the former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee and chairman of the joint congressional inquiry into U.S. intelligence gathering surrounding the terrorist attacks — said he remains convinced that the federal government at several levels has failed to divulge all it knows about 9/11 and its Saudi connections.

He contends that 28 pages of a final report to Congress were censored because they dealt with the Saudi role in 9/11.

Ties
The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have had a special and mutually beneficial relationship since 1957, when the Saudi king made a state visit to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

King Saud visited the U.S. with an entourage of at least 60, one of whom appears to have been Esam Ghazzawi's father, Abbas.

At the time, Eisenhower agreed to sell Saudi Arabia up to $500 million worth of weapons in exchange for permission to maintain an airbase in Saudi territory.

The deal did not gel overnight. Abbas Ghazzawi apparently worked on it, after flying into New York from Madrid on Jan. 25, 1957, according to a passenger list kept by U.S. officials. The elder Ghazzawi was accompanied by three other Saudis, including a man who would later serve as Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S., Faisal al-Hegelan.

The Ghazzawi family's ties to America grew stronger years later when, in 1970, 17-year-old Esam Ghazzawi married American Deborah G. Browning. Their first child, Adel, was born that year on Nov. 19.

The family later established what has been a long presence in Southwest Florida, through the purchase of a pair of bayfront lots on Longboat Key's Putter Lane. Neighbors had little interaction with the man they referred to as “the Arab.”

“That's what we called him,” said former neighbor Betty Blair. “We didn't know his name. All we knew was his kids were in camp so he came for the summer. Two little boys.”

Esam and Deborah Ghazzawi bought the Prestancia home in September 1995, records show.

Five months earlier, Anoud Ghazzawi married al-Hijji. He was 19 and she was 17, their Sarasota County marriage license shows.

While here, they made an effort to blend in, driving popular cars like a Volkswagen Beetle, a Jeep Grand Cherokee and a Chevy Tahoe.

But they did not stay completely under the collective radar. FBI documents reference a dispute with the Prestancia Community Association over unpaid homeowner dues.

The Ghazzawis were frequent visitors to the al-Hijji household, neighbors, acquaintances and an attorney familiar with the case said.

Carla DiBello knew the al-Hijjis and met Esam Ghazzawi on several occasions. “I remember him being very eccentric. He loved going to big dinners and always had a lot of security,” said DiBello, who now lives in Beverly Hills and is in charge of developing business for Kim Kardashian Productions.

As for how Esam Ghazzawi made his living, “all I know about him was that he worked for the King of Saudi from what Anoud told me, but she was always very secretive about what her dad did for them,” DiBello said.

Ghazzawi is still active in business in the Middle East, and sits on the board of the London subsidiary of EIRAD, which makes connections for global firms.

When United Parcel Service wanted to do business in Saudi Arabia, for instance, EIRAD became its handler.

When the al-Hijjis left Southwest Florida for Saudi Arabia “on or about 08/27/2001,” according to the FBI documents, they flew first to Washington, where they met Esam Ghazzawi.

When Ghazzawi left the U.S., Adel Ghazzawi apparently took over the family's affairs here.

It was Adel, then 30 and an American citizen, who tried to get a Prestancia lien lifted so the house could be sold. The lien came after the series of brushes with Prestancia's community association.

“The HOA had great difficulties with them,” said Jone Weist, at that time property manager for much of Prestancia. “It was nothing criminal, but this is not a neighborhood where you let the grass grow for a month.”

Problems mounted when the family departed in 2001, leaving a large mound of garbage at the curb. Eventually, a foreclosure lawsuit was filed.

When not helping his family, Adel Ghazzawi worked with Conektas, a company that “assists multinationals in developing synergistic relationships with credible partners to successfully penetrate and establish solid businesses in the Middle East region.”

“Adel has a vast wealth of business, family and personal relationships within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” his biography reads.

On the EastWest website, Ghazzawi says he has raised more than $1 billion for Middle Eastern projects.

The family ultimately settled the homeowner case and sold the house in September 2003 for $440,000, to Joel Schemmel, records show. Schemmel has since sold the property, according to the county.

Documents
Because Floridians made up his former political constituency and many of the 9/11 terrorists lived in the Sunshine State just prior to the attacks, Graham has made it a personal mission to delve into the connections between the attacks and Saudi Arabia.

Graham, 76, says that neither he, nor his staff, ever received any information regarding the alleged activities in Prestancia from the FBI or other law enforcement.

The FBI contends there is a good reason for that.

“At no time did the FBI develop evidence that connected the family members to any of the 9/11 hijackers,” Ibison said in 2011.

Now, despite the documents from their files, the agency is standing by its assessment.

“What Ibison said back then, that is the conclusion, knowing everything we know today,” David Couvertier, an FBI spokesman, said Tuesday. “The Bulldog is getting information that was already taken into consideration.”

But Graham is unswayed.

In an interview Tuesday, Graham said he is “extremely pleased” with the FBI's release of new documents.

“Basically, they said they had conducted an investigation and hadn't found anything,” Graham said. “Now we know that as far back as April of 2002, they had a statement in their files written by a responsible law enforcement official, who I cannot name, saying there were many connections between the hijackers and this family in Sarasota.”

“There are more than those 30-some pages of documents which would indicate that the public statements of the FBI are not accurate,” Graham said.

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Mystery of Sarasota Saudis deepens as Justice moves to end FOI lawsuit citing national security

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2013/06/mystery-of-sarasota-saudis-deepens-as-justice-moves-end-foi-lawsuit-citing-national-security/

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers, BrowardBulldog.org
June 3, 2013 at 5:59 am

A senior FBI official has told a Fort Lauderdale federal judge that disclosure of certain classified information about Saudis who hurriedly left their Sarasota area home shortly before 9/11 “would reveal current specific targets of the FBI’s national security investigations.”

Records Section Chief David M. Hardy’s assertion is contained in a sworn 33-page declaration filed in support of a Justice Department motion that seeks to end a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed last year by BrowardBulldog.org.

The government’s latest court filings, thick with veiled references to foreign counterintelligence operations and targets, deepen the mystery about a once-secret FBI investigation of Esam and Deborah Ghazzawi and their tenants, son-in-law and daughter, Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji.

The filings by Miami Assistant U.S. Attorney Carole M. Fernandez also seek to justify in the name of national security numerous deletions of information from FBI records about the decade-old investigation that were released recently amid the ongoing litigation.

They do not, however, explain why an investigation the FBI has said found no connection between those Saudis and the Sept. 11th attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people involves information so secret its disclosure “could be expected to cause serious damage to national security.”

The investigation, which the FBI did not disclose to Congress or the 9/11 Commission, was first reported in a September 2011 story published simultaneously by BrowardBulldog.org and The Miami Herald.

It began after neighbors in the gated community of Prestancia reported the al-Hijjis had suddenly departed their home at 4224 Escondito Circle about two weeks before the attacks. They left personal belongings and furniture, including three newly registered cars – one of them brand new.

According to a counterterrorism officer and Prestancia’s former administrator Larry Berberich, gatehouse log books and photographs of license tags were later used by the FBI to determine that vehicles used by the hijackers had visited the al-Hijji home.

The FBI later confirmed the existence of the probe, but said it found no evidence connecting the Ghazzawis or the al-Hijjis to the hijackers or the 9/11 plot.

RECORDS CONTRADICT DENIALS
The newly released FBI records contradict the FBI’s public denials. One dated April 4, 2002 says the investigation “revealed many connections” between the Saudis who fled Sarasota and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.”

The report goes on to list three of those individuals and connect them to the Venice, Florida flight school where suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained. The names of those individuals were not made public.

The FBI removed additional information in the report, citing a pair of national security exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act.

In his declaration to U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch, the FBI’s Hardy sought to explain those deletions and others. He said information was withheld “to protect an intelligence method utilized by the FBI for gathering intelligence data.” Such methods include confidential informants.

Hardy, who stated that he has been designated a “declassification authority” by Attorney General Eric Holder, said redactions regarding the Sarasota investigation were also made to protect “actual intelligence activities and methods used by the FBI against specific targets of foreign counterintelligence investigations or operations.”

“The information obtained from the intelligence activities or methods is very specific in nature, provided during a specific time period and known to very few individuals,” Hardy said.

DAMAGE TO NATIONAL SECURITY?
No details were provided, but Hardy said the information was “compiled regarding a specific individual or organization of national security interest.” He added that its disclosure “reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security.”

Disclosure would reveal the FBI’s “current specific targets” and “allow hostile entities to discover the current intelligence gathering methods used and reveal the criteria and priorities assigned to current intelligence or counterintelligence investigations,” Hardy said.

“With the aid of this detailed information, hostile entities could develop countermeasures which would, in turn, severely disrupt the FBI’s intelligence gathering capabilities” and damage efforts “to detect and apprehend violators of the United States’ national security and criminal laws.”

For months, the FBI claimed it had no responsive documents regarding its Sarasota investigation. But on March 28, Hardy unexpectedly announced the Bureau had located and reviewed 35 pages of records. It released 31 of them.

Prosecutor Fernandez now contends the FBI conducted a “reasonable search” and that “no agency records are being improperly withheld.”

Her motion asks the court to grant summary judgment in the government’s favor.

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Graham: FBI hindered Congress’s 9/11 inquiry, withheld reports about Sarasota Saudis

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/05/3434487/graham-fbi-hindered-congresss.html

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers
BrowardBulldog.org

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has accused the FBI in court papers of having impeded Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 by withholding information about a Florida connection to the al-Qaeda attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The information, first reported byBrowardBulldog.org in 2011, includes a recently declassified FBI report that ties a Saudi family who once lived in Sarasota “to individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.”

“The FBI’s failure to call (to the Joint Inquiry’s attention) documents finding ‘many connections’ between Saudis living in the United States and individuals associated with the terrorist attack(s)…interfered with the Inquiry’s ability to complete its mission,” said Graham, co-chairman of the Joint Inquiry.

Graham said the FBI kept the 9/11 Commission in the dark, too. He said co-chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton and executive director Philip Zelikow all told him they were unaware of the FBI’s Sarasota investigation.

Moreover, Graham stated that Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce, the Bureau’s second in command, personally intervened to block him from speaking with the special agent-in-charge of the Sarasota investigation.

“I am troubled by what appears to me to be a persistent effort by the FBI to conceal from the American people information concerning possible Saudi support of the Sept. 11 attacks,” Florida’s former governor said.

Graham’s remarks are contained in a 14-page sworn declaration made in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought byBrowardBulldog.org in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.

The suit seeks the records of an FBI investigation into Esam Ghazzawi, a former advisor to a senior Saudi Prince – who had he lived was well placed to become king -Ghazzawi’s wife Deborah and son-in-law and daughter Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji.

The Ghazzawis owned the home at 4224 Escondito Circle in the gated-neighborhood of Prestancia where the al-Hijjis lived until about two weeks before 9/11. Their hurried departure – leaving behind cars, furniture and personal effects – prompted neighbors to call the FBI.

News of the subsequent investigation didn’t surface until September 8, 2011 when its existence was disclosed in a story published simultaneously by BrowardBulldog.org and The Miami Herald.

The story reported that a counterterrorism officer, as well as Prestancia’s former administrator Larry Berberich, said that gatehouse logbooks and photographs of license plates showed that vehicles used by the future hijackers had visited the al-Hijji home. Analysis of phone records also linked the hijackers to their house, the counterterrorism officer said.

Sen. Graham told reporters in September 2011 that while Congress had relied on the FBI to provide all of its information about 9/11, he had not been made aware of the Sarasota probe.

After the story broke, the FBI acknowledged its investigation but claimed itfound no evidence to connect the Ghazzawis or the al-Hijjis to the hijackers or the 9/11 plot. Agents maintained, too, that the FBI made all of its 9/11 records available to Congress.

The Freedom of Information lawsuit was filed last September, after the FBI declined to release any records on the matter.

In March, as the case moved toward trial this summer, the Bureau unexpectedly released 31 of 35 pages it said had been located. The partially censored records flatly contradict the FBI’s earlier public comments and state that the Sarasota Saudis had “many connections” to persons allied with the hijackers.

Last month, the Department of Justice asked U.S. District Judge William Zloch to end the lawsuit, citing national security and saying the FBI has identified and released all documents responsive to its Sarasota probe.

But in his declaration, Graham, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said those few pages “do not appear to be the full record of the FBI investigation.” He dismissed the government’s assertion that it lacks further documentation as “entirely implausible.”

“On a matter of this magnitude and significance, my expectation is that the FBI would have hundreds or even thousands of pages of documents,” Graham stated.

As evidence that records continue to be withheld, Graham cited a Sept. 16, 2002 FBI report about Sarasota that he was allowed to see after making inquiries at the FBI. That report should have been released, he said, but was not.

Graham’s declaration, and several by others involved in the case, were filed Friday along with a memorandum by BrowardBulldog.org attorney Thomas Julin asking the judge to deny the government’s request to shut down the lawsuit and to set the case for trial.

Julin is a partner in the Miami law firm of Hunton & Williams.

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9/11 Families Press for Documents on Saudis From Sarasota

http://sarasota.patch.com/articles/9-11-families-press-for-documents-on-saudis-from-sarasota

By Linda Hersey

The coalition of families whose loved ones died in the terrorism attacks allege that the al-Hijji family had connections to the hijackers who attended a Venice flight school.

A coalition of families that lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks is urging the FBI to release the full results of an investigation into a Saudi family that formerly resided in Sarasota.

The nonprofit group called "9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism" – comprised of 6,600 people – is alleging that Anoud and Abdulazziz al-Hijji, who lived in the Prestancia Estates in south Sarasota for six years, had ties to the 9/11 hijackers.

The Saudi family abruptly moved away, leaving behind their belognings, a week prior to the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But their home was owned by a businessman with connections to the Bin Laden Group, according to the Herald-Tribune.

Now the "9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism" are "seeking information that would shed light on alleged Saudi financing of the terrorist attacks," according to the PR News Wire.

The group is endorsing efforts by the Broward Bulldog, a Florida non-profit corporation, and its founder Dan Christensen, to obtain documents related to the federal investigation into the Sarasota family. The Broward Bulldog was provided with some results of that investigation, but other documents were withheld or portions were deleted.

The Broward Bulldog is suing the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida.

The Bulldog has published a series of investigative pieces on the Saudi family and events leading up to the 9/11 attacks. The most recent post – Mystery of Sarasota Saudis deepens as Justice moves to end FOI lawsuit citing national security – alleges that the FBI is withholding documents because "disclosure about Saudis who hurriedly left their Sarasota area home shortly before 9/11 'would reveal current specific targets of the FBI’s national security investigations.' "

The Broward Bulldog reported:

"According to a counterterrorism officer and Prestancia’s former administrator Larry Berberich, gatehouse log books and photographs of license tags were later used by the FBI to determine that vehicles used by the hijackers had visited the al-Hijji home.

"The FBI later confirmed the existence of the probe, but said it found no evidence connecting the Ghazzawis or the al-Hijjis to the hijackers or the 9/11 plot."

On June 5, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL), who also co-chaired the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, filed a declaration in support of the FOIA request, writing, "I am troubled by what appears to me to be a persistent effort by the FBI to conceal from the American people information concerning possible Saudi support of the September 11 attacks."

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9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism Demand FBI Come Clean About Sarasota Saudis Suspected of 9/11 Ties

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/911-families-united-to-bankrupt-terrorism-demand-fbi-come-clean-about-sarasota-saudis-suspected-of-911-ties-210471621.html

NEW YORK, June 6, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Steering Committee of the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism endorses the efforts of investigative reporters Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers and calls on the FBI to come clean regarding an investigation involving a Saudi family, former residents of Sarasota, Fla., who may have provided aid to the 9/11 hijackers. Broward Bulldog, Inc., a Florida non-profit corporation, and its founder Dan Christensen filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to obtain documents they were denied and are suing the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida.

On June 5, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL), who also co-chaired the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, filed a declaration in support of the FOIA request, writing, "I am troubled by what appears to me to be a persistent effort by the FBI to conceal from the American people information concerning possible Saudi support of the September 11 attacks."

The 9/11 family members also seek information that would shed light on alleged Saudi financing of the terrorist attacks in their lawsuit, In Re Terrorist Attacks of September 11.

"First President Obama promises me personally to release the 28 pages removed from the congressional committee's report and doesn't, and now the FBI is pulling this stunt," said Bill Doyle, father of Joseph M. Doyle who died in the World Trade Center. "The FBI keeps contradicting itself. On one hand, they say they found no evidence connecting the Sarasota Saudis to 9/11. On the other hand, they say releasing the information would threaten national security. But they can't have it both ways. And the Courts should not let them get away with it."

Read the full statement by the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism, a group comprised of over 6,600 family members of those killed and injured in the attacks of 9/11 that is using the civil legal system to pursue those who financed and provided support for those cowardly terrorist attacks. The case is In Re Thomas E. Burnett, Sr., et al. v. Al Baraka Investment & Development Corp., et al.; In Re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001. The families are represented by Motley Rice LLC.

SOURCE 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism

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9/11 Family Members Demand FBI to Come Clean about Sarasota Saudis Suspected of 9/11 Ties

http://www.justiceagainstterrorism.org/press-releases.php

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Alicia G. Ward
June 6, 2013

(843) 216-9548 office
(843) 532-7011 cell

On Behalf of the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism

Former Senator and 9/11 Congressional Investigation Co-Chair Bob Graham, Says the FBI Never Gave Information to Congressional Investigation or 9/11 Commission

The Steering Committee of the 9/11 Families United To Bankrupt Terrorism publicly endorses the efforts of investigative reporters Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers and calls on the FBI to come clean regarding an investigation involving a Saudi family, former residents of Sarasota, Fla., who may have provided aid or assistance to the 9/11 hijackers. Broward Bulldog, Inc., a Florida non-profit corporation, and Dan Christensen, founder, operator and editor of the BrowardBulldog.org website, have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to gain access to documents they have been denied and are suing the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida.

On Wednesday, June 5, former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham (D-FL), who also co-chaired the Joint Inquiry of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence into intelligence community activities before and after 9/11, filed a declaration in support of the FOIA request, in which he wrote, “I am troubled by what appears to me to be a persistent effort by the FBI to conceal from the American people information concerning possible Saudi support of the September 11 attacks.”

Graham further declared:

“I have contacted the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton and I have asked them if the 9/11 Commission ever learned of the FBI’s Sarasota investigation. Both advised me that they were unaware of it. Kean told me that if the 9/11 Commission had learned of the Sarasota investigation it would have worked it hard because it seemed implausible that the hijackers had completed the planning of the September 11 attacks alone. Phil Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission’s executive director, also told me that the 9/11 Commission did not receive any documents from the FBI concerning the Sarasota investigation.”

“I also contacted Porter Goss, chairman of the U.S. House of Representative Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 2002 and co-chair with me of the Joint Inquiry, and Eleanor Hill, staff director of the Joint Inquiry to ask them if he ever had become aware of the FBI’s Sarasota investigation. They said they had no awareness of that investigation.”

Citing the fact that vehicles used by the 9/11 hijackers apparently had visited the home of the Sarasota Saudis as recorded in the gated community’s security logs, and the sudden departure from the U.S. of the Saudi family just before the attacks, the 9/11 family members are also seeking information that would shed light on alleged Saudi financing of the terrorist attacks in their lawsuit, In Re Terrorist Attacks of September 11. However, instead of coming clean, the FBI continues to try to block a request under the Freedom of Information Act in Christensen’s case, claiming it would somehow damage national security. This continues a pattern of obstruction lasting more than a decade, including failure to disclose this information to Congress and to the 9/11 Commission.

“After almost 12 years, the time has come for the Department of Justice, the FBI and this administration to give the American people access to the truth about who financed the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11,” said Sharon Premoli of Dorset, Vt., who was pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center and maintains the advocacy website, www.JusticeAgainstTerrorism.net (http://www.JusticeAgainstTerrorism.net). “It is simply implausible that release of this information would interfere with any current national security investigation. Rather, the FBI’s obstruction creates at least the perception of a cover-up to protect Saudi potentates. We owe Bob Graham a debt of gratitude for his persistence.”

“I wholeheartedly believe these documents will lead us to our ultimate goal of truth, accountability and justice we so desperately seek. This administration owes the families, survivors and those sick and dying from 9/11 the transparency they so passionately talk about. We will never be a safer America if we can’t stop the financial support to the terrorists who continue to plan and plot against us. I applaud Bob Graham for his dedication and action he is taking in exposing the FBI and DOJ's lies and deceit,” said Terry Strada of New Vernon, N.J., widow of Tom Strada, who died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Graham recently had the opportunity to review certain documents related to the FBI’s Sarasota investigation — documents that had never been provided to the Joint Inquiry.

In his declaration to the Court, Graham wrote that these documents, “contradicted the FBI’s public statements concerning its Sarasota investigation. To me, the documents reflected that the investigation was not a robust inquiry concerning suspicions related to Saudi nationals who resided in Sarasota before September 11, 2001, that an important investigative lead was not pursued, and that unsubstantiated statements were accepted as true.”

“First President Obama promises me personally to release the 28 pages removed from the congressional committee’s report and doesn’t and now the FBI is pulling this stunt,” said Bill Doyle of The Villages, Fla., father of Joseph M. Doyle who died in the World Trade Center. “The FBI keeps contradicting itself. On one hand, they say they found no evidence connecting the Sarasota Saudis to 9/11. On the other hand, they say releasing the information would threaten national security. But they can’t have it both ways. And the Courts should not let them get away with it.”

The 9/11 family members and survivors praised Graham for his leadership in seeking to reveal the truth about alleged Saudi involvement in 9/11, and for his support of their litigation to hold accountable all those who helped finance the murder of their loved ones and injury to countless others.

The original FOIA claim was filed in September 2011 to declassify certain documents regarding a “closed anti-terrorism investigation into the activities of Saudi nationals who lived in and/or owned a residence at 4224 Escondito Circle, near Sarasota, Florida prior to 9/11.” The residents were Abdullazziz Al-Hijji and his wife, Anoud. The homeowners were Anoud AI-Hijji's parents, Essam and Deborah Ghazzawi. The FBI investigation began in the fall of 2001 and continued into at least 2003.

The 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism

This group is comprised of over 6,600 family members of those killed and injured in the attacks of 9/11. They are united in the cause of pursuing justice and deterring future terrorist attacks. To do so, they are using the civil legal system to pursue those who financed and provided support for those cowardly terrorist attacks. The case is In Re Thomas E. Burnett, Sr., et al. v. Al Baraka Investment & Development Corp., et al., Case No. 03-CV-9849 (GBD); In Re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, 03 MDL 1570. The families are represented by complex civil litigation firm Motley Rice LLC.

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9/11 family members demand the FBI ‘come clean’ about Sarasota Saudis

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/07/3438694/911-family-members-demand-the.html

By Dan Christensen
BrowardBulldog.org

A group representing 6,600 survivors and relatives of those killed and injured in the 9/11 attacks has called on the FBI to “come clean” about its investigation of Saudis in Florida who may have aided the terrorist hijackers.

The reaction by 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism on Thursday followed news that former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham had accused the FBI in court papers of concealing the existence of its Sarasota investigation and impeding Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“After almost 12 years, the time has come for the Department of Justice, the FBI and this administration to give the American people access to the truth about who financed the murder of 3,000 people on 9/11,” said Sharon Premoli, who was pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center.

Graham, co-chairman of the congressional probe, discussed the FBI’s performance in a sworn declaration given in support of a Freedom of Information lawsuit pending in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.

BrowardBulldog.org filed the suit last summer while seeking FBI records of its investigation of Esam Ghazzawi, a former advisor to a senior Saudi prince — who, had he lived, was well placed to become king — Ghazzawi’s wife, Deborah, and son-in-law and daughter, Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji.

The Ghazzawis owned the upscale home at 4224 Escondito Circle where the al-Hijjis lived until about two weeks before 9/11. Neighbors called the FBI after the family’s hurried departure — leaving behind cars, furniture and other possessions.

Sources have said that security records — including photos of license plates — from the gated community where the al-Hijjis lived later revealed that vehicles used by the future hijackers had visited the al-Hijji home.

The FBI, however, has publicly denied finding any evidence linking the family to 9/11.

Yet 31 pages of FBI documents released to BrowardBulldog.org in March say something very different: that the Sarasota Saudis had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.”

The Justice Department recently asked U.S. District Judge William Zloch to end the lawsuit, citing national security and declaring that it has no more documents to produce.

Bill Doyle, who lives in The Villages, lost his son Joseph in the attacks.

“The FBI keeps contradicting itself,” Doyle said in a statement released by the group on Thursday. “But they can’t have it both ways. And the courts should not let them get away with it.”

Survivor Premoli is a Vermont resident who maintains the advocacy websitewww.JusticeAgainstTerrorism.net. “It is simply implausible that release of this information would interfere with any current national security investigation,” she said. “Rather, the FBI’s obstruction creates at least the perception of a cover-up to protect Saudi potentates.”

Terry Strada, a Mount Vernon, N.J., resident whose husband Tom died in the World Trade Center, said through the group that she believes the Sarasota “documents will lead us to our ultimate goal of truth, accountability and justice we so desperately seek.”

Since 2002, the 9/11 Families group has been suing an array of individuals, banks, corporations and Islamic charities that the group’s lawyers have said were “historically implicated in the sponsoring of al-Qaeda’s terrorist activities.”

The suit, pending in federal court in New York, seeks more than $1 trillion in damages.

Broward Bulldog is a not-for-profit online only newspaper created to provide local reporting in the public interest. www.browardbulldog.org (http://www.browardbulldog.org) 954-603-1351

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Post 9/11: Questions for Obama

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/13/3497610/post-911-questions-for-obama.html

BY BOB GRAHAM
Bob.graham@grahamcos.com

In the swirl of revelations, contradictions and confusion about the United States data mining program, Mr. President, you have called for a national debate on liberty and security in post 9/11 America.

I welcome this call, but the difficulties with your proposal include: how to have a debate on a subject you don’t know exists; and how to have a debate if the facts necessary to engage in an informed discussion are withheld?

As reported over many months in the U.S. and abroad — notably in the Miami Herald and BrowardBulldog.com — a 9/11 series of events that go to the heart of the issue of how to ensure that security is compatible with liberty have arisen from Sarasota.

At the core of this episode is a central, lingering question. Saddled with linguistic and cultural ignorance and limited personal experience, could the 19 hijackers have conducted such a complex operation alone? The co-chair of the 9/11 commission said it was “implausible.” Did the terrorists have the support of a network, perhaps directed by elements of a foreign nation state?

The events in Sarasota are directly relevant to those questions. Prior to 9/11, according to law enforcement investigators, neighbors and other witnesses, a prominent Saudi family living in Sarasota had extensive contacts with several of the future hijackers — including key operatives training to be pilots at a nearby flight school. About 10 days before 9/11, apparently in great haste, these Saudis left their Sarasota home and — accompanied by the occupant’s father-in-law who had long been an aide to a senior Saudi prince — returned to Saudi Arabia.

When these allegations were disclosed 10 years later, the FBI stated publicly that a thorough investigation in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 revealed no connections between the family and the hijackers. And further, that all of the information derived from the investigation had been made available to the 9/11 commission and the joint congressional inquiry.

Recently released primary source documentation (uncovered through a Freedom of Information request) based on evidence collected by law enforcement agents who participated in the investigation disclosed there had been “many connections between the (name of family redacted) and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 . . .” The leadership of the 9/11 commission and the congressional joint inquiry have affirmed they were unaware of the pre-9/11 events or the subsequent investigation.

Neither of the FBI’s public assertions appears to be correct. The FBI has declared all the remaining documentation of the Sarasota events and subsequent investigation classified.

How is the public supposed to know or evaluate the truth of the matter?

One way to start would be to open the debate with questions that would illuminate the context of specific actions — such as the recently disclosed National Security Agency’s Prism program — but would not necessitate access to classified information.

For example:

Under what circumstances is it acceptable for the government to withhold information from — even deceive — the public?

In the summer of 1943, after the Tehran conference attended by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Churchill said, “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Churchill’s statement was justified at that time — decisions on the final battle plans of World War II were made at Tehran.

Some would say we have been in a continuous time of war since 9/11. Let’s have a debate as to whether and to what the Churchillian dictum applies today.

• What should be done if it is determined that a governmental agency has deceived the American people and then withheld the evidence of its incompetence or perfidy by the shield of classification? We need a public conversation as to whether it would be salutary to insert provisions in the Freedom of Information Act or elsewhere to sanction an agency which has engaged in this practice.

• Why have the Saudis been treated in a distinctively different manner than other nationalities? This stark difference was highlighted after the Boston marathon bombing in April.

Within hours of the massacre, the FBI was aggressively investigating whether the two Muslim Russian Chechen bombers had acted with the connivance of Muslims from Russia’s volatile North Caucasus region. Yet, more than 10 years after 9/11 it appears everything possible is being done to conceal Saudi assistance to the 19 hijackers — 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

• Should the FBI continue to be the domestic intelligence agency for the United States? MI 5 in the United Kingdom and Shin Bet in Israel are stand alone, non-law enforcement related domestic intelligence agencies. One rationale for this separation is difference of mission. Law enforcement agencies are primarily directed to gather sufficient evidence after a crime has been committed to convict the perpetrator beyond a reasonable doubt. Domestic intelligence is structured to gather information to detect a peril and avoid it.

• Has the performance of the FBI been such as to convince Americans we are best protected by an agency that combines these goals?

Mr. President, those are some of the questions that concern Americans. We recall President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s call to duty in his 1961 farewell address:

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” Today the situation is different. But, the challenge to properly mesh security concerns with the protection of our liberties continues.

Let the debate begin.

Bob Graham served for 18 years in the U.S. Senate and eight years as governor of Florida. He was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee (2001-2003) and co-chair of the congressional joint inquiry into the role of the intelligence community in 9/11. He is the author of the novel “Keys to the Kingdom.”

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Censored, Withheld Records: Sarasota, Saudis and 9/11

http://www.theledger.com/article/20130913/EDIT01/130919593/1036?p=1&tc=pg

Published: Friday, September 13, 2013 at 12:07 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, September 13, 2013 at 12:07 a.m.

The reported links between the 9/11 terrorists and a Saudi Arabian family that lived in Sarasota are slowly coming into focus, despite the FBI's tenacious efforts to conceal them.

A Sarasota Herald-Tribune story Wednesday — the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks — reported that recently obtained FBI documents appear to confirm "many connections" between the family and the 9/11 hijackers who received flight training in Venice.

More could be revealed if a federal lawsuit filed against the FBI by a South Florida online newspaper is successful. The lawsuit seeks additional documents and agents' field notes related to their investigation of the family.

Among those interested is Bob Graham, the former Florida governor and U.S. senator who co-chaired a congressional panel that investigated the 9/11 attacks. Graham has filed a statement with the court in support of the lawsuit.

Tuesday, Halifax Media Holdings, the owner of the Herald-Tribune and The Ledger, asked the federal judge for the lawsuit for permission to file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the plaintiffs.

These are the latest developments in a mystery that came to light two years ago when the Sarasota-Saudi-9/11 links were first reported in the online publication, the Broward Bulldog, as well as the Herald-Tribune and other Florida newspapers.

The public deserves a true accounting.

UNTOLD STORY
Twelve years after the 9/11 attacks one of the few untold stories is: Who financed and supported the attacks?

The question is crucial, Graham said. He told the Broward Bulldog that the final 28-page section of the inquiry's 2003 report, dealing with "sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers," was censored by order of then-President George W. Bush. It is still being withheld from the public.

Graham said he believes that the information was concealed to provide "protection of the Saudis from embarrassment, protection of the administration from political embarrassment ... some of the unknowns, some of the secrets of 9/11."

The Saudi connections to the terrorist attacks are well-established. Most of the hijackers were Saudis. Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaida, who claimed responsibility for the attacks, was the member of a wealthy Saudi family.

Whether the Saudi family in Sarasota had any role leading up to the attacks is unknown. The FBI investigation of the family was not reported to Congress or mentioned in the independent 9/11 Commission report.

What is known is that the family, closely related to a prominent Saudi financier, abruptly abandoned their home an subdivision two weeks before 9/11. They left behind clothes in the closets, food in the refrigerator, and three cars in the driveway and garage.

NEW INFORMATION
The 2011 story by the Broward Bulldog, reprinted by the Herald-Tribune, said phone records and subdivision gate records obtained by the FBI linked the family to the 9/11 hijackers training 15 miles away at the Venice airport.

The FBI confirmed that it had investigated the family but said the case was "determined not to be related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot."

Yet, as the Herald-Tribune reported, the FBI this spring mailed Broward Bulldog editor Dan Christensen 31 pages of heavily redacted documents that state, in part: "Further investigation of the [name deleted] family revealed many connections between the [name deleted] and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 09/11/2001."

Pollick noted that it's clear who the subjects are because the documents specifically cite the Saudi family's home in Prestancia.

Even if the FBI has been truthful and none of information it obtained links the Saudi family to the 9/11 attacks, why not make their records public?

"The question is," Graham told Pollick, "why are they doing this? What interest does the FBI have in denying the existence of its own documents?"

"Beyond that, they have thrown a blanket of national security over virtually everything, and why are they doing that for an event that occurred ... 12 years ago?"

Those are good questions. The federal court should find that the public deserves answers and a full accounting of the Saudi family's apparent connection to the perpetrators of 9/11.

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Graham: FBI held back Fla. 9/11 links
The former Florida senator accused the FBI in court papers of failing to give Congress details about a Saudi family in Sarasota and its possible connection to the attacks.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/25/3650008/graham-fbi-held-back-fla-911-links.html

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has accused the FBI in court papers of having impeded Congress' Joint Inquiry into 9/11 by withholding information about a Florida connection to the al-Qaida attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.

The information, first reported by BrowardBulldog.org in 2011, includes a recently declassified FBI report that ties a Saudi family who once lived in Sarasota "to individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001."

"The FBI's failure to call [to the Joint Inquiry's attention] documents finding 'many connections' between Saudis living in the United States and individuals associated with the terrorist attack[s] . . . interfered with the Inquiry's ability to complete its mission, " said Graham, who was co-chairman of the Joint Inquiry.

Graham said the FBI kept the 9/11 Commission in the dark, too. He said co-chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton and executive director Philip Zelikow all told him they were unaware of the FBI's Sarasota investigation.

Moreover, Graham stated that Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce, the Bureau's second-in-command, personally intervened to block him from speaking with the special agent-in-charge of the Sarasota investigation.

"I am troubled by what appears to me to be a persistent effort by the FBI to conceal from the American people information concerning possible Saudi support of the Sept. 11 attacks, " said Graham, who is also a former Florida governor.

Graham's remarks are contained in a 14-page sworn declaration made in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by BrowardBulldog.org in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.

The suit seeks the records of an FBI investigation into Esam Ghazzawi, a former adviser to a senior Saudi Prince - who, had he lived, was well-placed to become king - as well as Ghazzawi's wife Deborah and son-in-law and daughter Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji.

The Ghazzawis owned the home in the gated-neighborhood of Prestancia, where the al-Hijjis lived until about two weeks before 9/11. Their hurried departure - leaving behind cars, furniture and personal effects - prompted neighbors to call the FBI.

News of the subsequent investigation did not surface until Sept. 8, 2011, when its existence was disclosed in a story published simultaneously by BrowardBulldog.org and The Miami Herald.

The story reported that a counterterrorism officer, as well as Prestancia's former administrator, Larry Berberich, said that gatehouse logs and photographs of license plates showed that vehicles used by the future hijackers had visited the al-Hijji home. Analysis of telephone records also linked the hijackers to their house, the counterterrorism officer said.

Graham told reporters in September 2011 that while Congress had relied on the FBI to provide all of its information about 9/11, he had not been made aware of the Sarasota probe.

After the story broke, the FBI acknowledged its investigation but claimed it found no evidence to connect the Ghazzawis or the al-Hijjis to the hijackers or the 9/11 plot. Agents maintained, too, that the FBI made all of its 9/11 records available to Congress.

The Freedom of Information lawsuit was filed last September, after the FBI declined to release any records on the matter.

In March, as the case moved toward trial this summer, the Bureau unexpectedly released 31 of 35 pages that it said had been located. The partially censored records flatly contradict the FBI's earlier public comments, and state that the Sarasota Saudis had "many connections" to persons allied with the hijackers.

Last month, the Department of Justice asked U.S. District Judge William Zloch to quash the lawsuit, citing national security and saying the FBI had identified and released all documents responsive to its Sarasota probe.

But in his declaration, Graham, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said those few pages "do not appear to be the full record of the FBI investigation." He dismissed the government's assertion that it lacks further documentation as "entirely implausible."

"On a matter of this magnitude and significance, my expectation is that the FBI would have hundreds or even thousands of pages of documents, " Graham stated.

As evidence that records continue to be withheld, Graham cited a Sept. 16, 2002, FBI report about Sarasota that he was allowed to see after making inquiries at the FBI. That report should have been released, he said, but was not.

Graham's declaration, and several by others involved in the case, were filed Friday along with a memorandum by BrowardBulldog.org attorney Thomas Julin asking the judge to deny the government's request to shut down the lawsuit and to schedule the case for trial.

Julin is a partner in the Miami law firm of Hunton & Williams.

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9/11's lingering questions
OUR OPINION: Public deserves answers about Sarasota connection

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/16/3649683/911s-lingering-questions.html

Reports of a previously unknown Saudi connection to the events of 9/11 in Florida cry out for a full airing. There are simply too many troubling questions surrounding the mystery of a hastily-abandoned house in Sarasota days before the attacks to sweep this matter under the rug.

The three-bedroom home in an upscale, gated residential compound was owned by a Saudi financier whose daughter, son-in-law and two young children lived there. They left a few days before 19 terrorists - 15 of whom were Saudis - carried out the plot to attack targets in this country. They left behind three cars, rooms of expensive furniture, food supplies, and other evidence of an abrupt exit, including clothes hanging in the closets, dirty diapers, mail left on the table and so forth.

More worrisome, they also had ties to the al Qaida terrorists. FBI agents, acting on a tip from a neighbor weeks later, found gate logs of vehicle tags showing that a car owned by hijacker Mohamed Atta had visited the compound. More information indicated that he and Ziad Jarrah, another hijacker, were in the car. Agents reportedly linked phone calls from the house to the Saudi attackers.

On Thursday, the FBI issued a statement saying it had followed up the information on the Sarasota house and "there was no connection found to the 9/11 plot." The bureau said it had informed Congress and the 9/11 Commission about its investigation.

That should not be the end of it, however. If there was an investigation, when did it end and what did they find? Who did they tell? What about the visits and phone calls? What was the nature of the connection between the hijackers and those who owned the house and lived there? There may be an explanation without connection to al Qaida, but after 10 years the public deserves answers.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired the congressional investigation into the hijackings, emphatically disputes the assertion that the FBI informed Congress. That, too, should be cleared up. U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, whose district includes Sarasota, has asked the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to investigate, and Mr. Graham has asked President Obama's counterterrorism advisor to pursue the matter. Both of those requests should be honored in order to get a public accounting of what this all means.

The Saudi connection to the events of 9/11 has always been a matter of speculation and controversy. Over the years, the Saudi kingdom has itself come under attack by al Qaida terrorists. Its authorities have worked to diminish the influence of Islamic extremism, reportedly updating the scholastic curriculum to eliminate textbook references to jihad, slaying infidels and so forth, and hosting conferences of Islamic scholars to denounce terrorism.

That's progress. Unfortunately, some prominent Saudi officials still don't seem to get it. In an opinion article in The New York Times earlier this week, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States and former director of its intelligence services, bluntly warned that U.S. failure to support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations would be a mistake. The headline: "Veto a state, lose an ally."

A proper regard for the lingering pain of Americans would dictate that the Saudis, of all people, should know better than to issue threats to this country on the anniversary of 9/11.

Ten years later, much about the Saudi connection remains unknown. An investigation prompted by the Sarasota connection would help to clarify matters.

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Graham seeks deeper probe of 9/11 links
FBI records say a Saudi family in Sarasota was 'associated' with the terrorist hijackers, and the former Florida senator believes a new investigation is needed.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/18/3649925/graham-seeks-deeper-probe-of-911.html

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers

New FBI records connecting Saudis who lived in Sarasota before 9/11 to "individuals associated with the terrorist attacks" has spurred a renewed push to find out whether the al-Qaida suicide hijackers who killed almost 3,000 people had help.

"One question that has gone unanswered through the investigation of 9/11 is, 'Did the hijackers operate alone or did they have accomplices who facilitated their ability to act?' " said former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla. "I think the information we have now makes a very strong case that they did."

Graham, co-chair of Congress' Joint Inquiry into the attacks a decade ago, met Tuesday with Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., to discuss disclosures in the FBI records released to BrowardBulldog.org.

"He's very interested in getting to the bottom of the events in Sarasota, " said Graham, who plans to meet with senior Obama administration officials next week in Washington.

"The fact is that most of the hijackers spoke no English and had not been in the U.S. before, yet were able to carry out a very complicated plot while maintaining anonymity, " said Graham. "What we've discovered in Sarasota may be another step toward exposing a larger network of Saudi-related individuals who assisted the hijackers."

The FBI records provide new information about an investigation into what took place prior to 9/11 at the upscale home of Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his family in the gated community of Prestancia. Information in the records contradicts prior FBI statements that no evidence was found connecting the al-Hijjis to 9/11.

The names of individuals were redacted before the reports were made public, but are apparent because the documents describe unique, known events. The records were released in response to a specific request for information about the probe at al-Hijji's former residence at 4224 Escondito Cir.

Agents determined the al-Hijjis "fled" their home on Aug. 27, 2001 - two weeks before the attacks - leaving behind three cars, furniture, clothing, toys, food and other items.

"Further investigation of the [name deleted] family revealed many connections between the [name deleted] and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001, " an April 16, 2002, FBI report states.

The report lists three of those individuals. Two, including one described as a "family member, " were described as students at the nearby Venice airport flight school where suicide hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained. The third person lived with some flight students, the report states.

BrowardBulldog.org previously reported that a counterintelligence officer speaking on condition of anonymity said an FBI examination of gatehouse log books and photos of license tags revealed that vehicles linked to the future hijackers visited al-Hijji's residence. Telephone records also reportedly showed indirect ties to the hijackers.

FBI agent Gregory Sheffield was the lead agent on the case. He wrote two 2002 reports that have been released, including one citing connections between al-Hijji and others tied to the attacks, the counterterrorism official said. Sheffield's name is blanked out of the FBI documents, too.

On July 22, 2002, Sheffield interviewed al-Hijji's wife, Anoud, and mother-in-law, Deborah Ghazzawi "regarding possible terrorist activity." The women, who had returned briefly to the home, denied fleeing before 9/11 or knowing certain unnamed individuals, according to the 2002 reports.

Soon after, Sheffield was transferred to the FBI's foreign counterintelligence, or FCI, division and left the area, according to the counterintelligence officer. The transfer suggested Sheffield may have recruited an al-Hijji family member as a source of information, the source said.

If so, that could explain why the FBI has reported finding only 35 pages of records regarding an investigation that records and interviews indicate resulted in the filing of numerous investigatory reports over a period of at least three years.

"I believe that the transfer of Sheffield to the FCI side of the bureau speaks volumes as to the lack of information available. If he was able to recruit a family member, then all information up to that point will be off limits under the National Security Act, " the counterintelligence source said.

Likewise, that scenario could account for a curious statement in another FBI report written after the Sarasota probe became public in September 2011. The report states, "The FBI appears not to have obtained the vehicle entry records of the gated community."

According to the counterintelligence officer, that statement is "not true." In fact, the source said, Agent Sheffield took the Sarasota files, apparently including the gatehouse and phone records, with him when he departed to his new, more-secretive FBI position.

Much remains unclear. Chunks of the released reports are blanked out for national security and other reasons. Four pages were withheld in their entirety.

Graham believes that what happened in Sarasota points to the idea that there was a broader support network of Saudis who provided aid and sympathy for the future hijackers.

Graham cites a "common outline" with events in San Diego, Calif., involving Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the five Saudi hijackers aboard the American Airlines jet that was flown into the Pentagon.

The Joint Inquiry and 9/11 Commission reports describe how Omar al-Bayoumi, another Saudi living in San Diego, provided extensive assistance al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi, including housing.

One report said al-Bayoumi had access to "seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia" and that "one of the FBI's best sources in San Diego" reported al-Bayoumi appeared to be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power. The FBI also learned that al-Bayoumi "has connections to terrorist elements, " the report said.

"There is no evidence that Bayoumi knew what was going on; just that he'd been told to take care of these men, " said Graham, who has criticized the FBI for withholding key information about what happened in San Diego.

A former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Graham believes a new investigation is now needed to get the truth.

"My goal is to have the investigation reopened and do a full inquiry into the Saudi aspects and then make the results available to the American people, " Graham said.

Such an inquiry should not be led by the FBI, Graham said.

"They are the ones who have significantly been responsible for us not knowing 10 years ago what the Saudi role was by withholding information and withholding witnesses, " he said.

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Graham: Still no records on 9/11 probe
The FBI has been unable to prove that it shared information with Congress about possible links between a Saudi family in Sarasota and some 9/11 hijackers.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/11/3649780/graham-still-no-records-on-911.html

By Dan Christensen
Special to The Miami Herald

In September, news about a previously unknown FBI investigation into possible ties between 9/11 hijackers and a Saudi family living near Sarasota led the agency to deny there was any connection and assert that it made all of its files available to congressional investigators a decade ago.

But two months later, the FBI has been unable or unwilling to substantiate that it disclosed any information regarding its Sarasota investigation to Congress, says former Florida U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress's inquiry into the terrorist attacks.

"My suspicion is that either, one, the documents don't exist; two, that if they do exist they can't find them; or three, they did find them and they did not substantiate the statements that they've made and that they are withholding them, " said Graham. He has long contended the FBI stonewalled Congress about what it knows about possible Saudi support for the 9/11 hijackers.

The FBI investigation began shortly after 9/11 when residents of the gated community of Prestancia, south of Sarasota, reported the abrupt departure of a Saudi family about two weeks before the attacks. The family left for Saudi Arabia, leaving cars, clothes, and a refrigerator full of food.

Neighbors said agents searched the house. But the most important information came when the FBI examined gatehouse security logs and photographs of license plates, according to then-homeowner's association administrator Larry Berberich and a counterterrorism agent.

They said the security records revealed that the home was visited by vehicles used by 9/11 terrorist leader Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah. Atta piloted the first plane to strike the World Trade Center. Jarrah was at the controls when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa.

The counterterrorism agent, who asked that his name not be disclosed, said an analysis of phone records found additional links between the residence and other hijackers and terrorist suspects, including Adnan Shukrijumah, a former Miramar resident who is on the FBI's Most Wanted list.

FBI agents in Tampa and Miami denied that any connection existed between the family and the terrorists.

Graham has said that he and other members and staff of the joint inquiry were not made aware of the Sarasota investigation by the FBI.

Graham asked the FBI in September to provide him with file numbers about the Sarasota inquiry and the dates those records were provided to congressional investigators. Graham said FBI agents produced 10 file numbers. But intelligence committee personnel determined "there was no information in any of the 10 files that was relevant" to the Sarasota investigation, he said.

Graham said, "The FBI asked [that] instead of finding the documents could they brief us instead. I said, 'No, that would not be acceptable.' "

The FBI turned down a Freedom of Information request The Miami Herald and Broward Bulldog that sought records about agents' findings in Sarasota, saying release of the records would be an invasion of the family's privacy.

[Gold9472]

Miami Herald joins suit asking FBI for 9/11 documents

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130927/ARTICLE/130929683/2055/NEWS?Title=Miami-Herald-joins-suit-asking-FBI-for-9-11-documents

By Michael Pollick
Published: Friday, September 27, 2013 at 1:39 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, September 27, 2013 at 1:39 p.m.

The Miami Herald Media Co. has joined the Herald-Tribune Media Group in urging a federal judge to make the FBI disclose details of its long-running Sarasota 9/11 investigation.

The two media companies want to be heard in an existing federal lawsuit against the agency by an independent news gathering organization in Fort Lauderdale, Broward Bulldog.

The FBI documents could shed light on the alleged interactions of a high-echelon Saudi family — living in Sarasota's Prestancia neighborhood just before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon — and three hijacker pilots who trained in Venice about the same time.

The newspapers are seeking to persuade a federal judge that an FBI assertion of privacy interests is outweighed by the public's need to know what happened.

“The (Miami) Herald has covered, and will continue to cover, connections between 9/11 and Florida,” the media company's court filing says. “Several of the 9/11 hijackers had links to South Florida, the Herald's core coverage area.”

“The Herald has grave concerns about the connections between the 9/11 hijackers and the State of Florida,” the filing continues. “More importantly, the Herald would like to examine the thoroughness and outcome of the FBI's investigation, as well as determine whether the FBI misrepresented its findings to Congress or the public.”

U.S. District Court Judge William J. Zloch is presiding over the case, which was initiated in September 2012 by the Broward Bulldog and its Miami attorney Tom Julin.

U.S. attorneys representing the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice already have objected to the Herald-Tribune's request to intervene.

Saudi investigation
In late June, Judge Zloch denied the government's original motion to dismiss the case, filed by the FBI's attorney, assistant U.S. Attorney Carole M. Fernandez.

Zloch went further, asking Julin to describe in writing how the FBI might conduct a more thorough search for information relevant to the Broward Bulldog's Freedom of Information request.

The judge is expected to rule soon on the government's second attempt to get the case thrown out, known as a motion for summary judgment.

Fernandez, the federal attorney, has pointed to government efforts to satisfy Broward Bulldog editor Dan Christensen's request and she has followed up by noting how big a volume of material could still be searched.

She indicated that the FBI's Tampa office alone has hundreds of thousands of pages of documents related to the 9/11 investigation.

“The manual review which plaintiffs are requesting is not reasonable; nor is it warranted,” Fernandez said in an August court filing.

Records from the front gate at Prestancia from that time show that some of the 9/11 hijackers who trained in Venice visited the Saudi family, according to sources cited by the Broward Bulldog and a former security consultant involved in the case who was interviewed by the Herald-Tribune.

What started the back-and-forth over documents was the Bulldog's 10th anniversary 9/11 story, published on the news organization's website and also in the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald.

The article revealed details about a large, previously undisclosed FBI investigation centering on 4224 Escondito Circle, the home in Prestancia owned by prominent Saudi businessman Esam Ghazzawi.

His daughter, Anoud, and her husband, Abdulazziz al-Hijji, lived there until two weeks prior to 9/11, before departing suddenly for their homeland. They left food on the counter, a dirty diaper, three vehicles and an empty safe.

“Phone records and the Prestancia gate records linked the house on Escondito Circle to the hijackers,” the Broward Bulldog said.

Within days, the FBI issued a news release seeking to discredit the article's findings and sourcing.

That prompted Christensen to file state and national public record requests.

Those efforts have also drawn another ally. Bob Graham, the former Florida governor and U.S. senator, filed his own highly detailed declaration for the suit in May, in which he suggested that the government is obfuscating.

Graham, a former co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, had already been trying within two presidential administrations to make public the chapter of the commission's report on how the terrorists were financed and supported.

[Gold9472]

9/11 victims' group lauds media suit over Saudi family

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20131002/ARTICLE/131009884/-1/news?Title=9-11-victims-group-lauds-media-suit-over-Saudi-family

By Michael Pollick
Published: Wednesday, October 2, 2013 at 10:07 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, October 2, 2013 at 10:07 p.m.

SARASOTA - A support group for families who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks is applauding the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald for intervening in a federal lawsuit that seeks information about a Saudi family who abruptly left Sarasota just prior to the attacks.

The 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism contends that the FBI has covered up information that could shed light on alleged Saudi financing of the terror plot, which killed more than 3,000 in New York and outside Washington, D.C.

“Maybe someday soon we’ll finally get to hear the truth,” said Bill Doyle, whose son, Joseph, died when the World Trade Center collapsed a dozen years ago.

“On the one hand, they say they have no evidence connecting the Sarasota Saudis to 9/11,” Doyle — who lived on Staten Island and now resides in The Villages near Orlando — said of the FBI. “On the other hand, they say releasing the information would threaten national security. Both of those things cannot be true. The federal court should not let them get away with it.”

In late September, the Miami Herald joined the Herald-Tribune Media Group in urging a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale to make the FBI disclose details of its long-running Sarasota 9/11 investigation.

The FBI documents could shed light on the alleged interactions between the terrorists and the one-time local family, relatives of well-connected Saudi businessman Esam Ghazzawi.

Ghazzawi owned the home at 4224 Escondito Circle in Prestancia, which was occupied by his daughter, Anoud, and her husband, Abdulazziz al-Hijji, until two weeks prior to 9/11.

When they departed, the couple left food in their refrigerator, dirty diapers lying about, an empty safe and cars in their driveway.

Records from Prestancia’s front gate show that some of the 9/11 hijackers who trained in Venice visited the al-Hijji household on multiple occasions, according to the Broward Bulldog, a Fort Lauderdale-based independent news organization, and a former security consultant interviewed by the Herald-Tribune.

But the FBI has stated publicly that it has cleared the family of any involvement in the plot.

“I don’t understand who they are protecting here,” said Sharon Premoli, a 9/11 survivor and a spokeswoman for 9/11 Families United, which has filed its own lawsuit in New York seeking details about the attacks. “I don’t understand why it is so intense, this shield, after the murder of 3,000 people.”

Premoli was on the 80th floor of the North Tower when a hijacked airliner slammed into her building. “That I am alive is a miracle,” she said.

Broward Bulldog founder Dan Christensen uncovered the Prestancia connection in 2011, and filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department and the FBI the following year.

Prior to the lawsuit, the FBI had dismissed Christensen’s story as baseless and denied access to investigative files that he requested.

“I think it is important for the newspapers to participate to underscore the importance of the documents we are seeking,” said Christensen’s attorney, Thomas R. Julin. “Now, what you are seeing from the 9/11 families is this is not just a matter of local interest but a matter of national interest.”

Besides ruling on whether the media groups can chime in, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Zloch has two other critical motions to determine: a request to compel the government to do a better search for documents, as outlined by Julin in a court document requested by the judge this summer, and a motion by the government to throw the case out.

“My hope is that he will rule very soon, and that we will get a trial date set,” Julin said. “Then we can get an order requiring disclosure of all these documents that we know exist.”

[Gold9472]

Judge lets Herald-Tribune join suit over 9/11 case

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20140320/ARTICLE/140329952?p=1&tc=pg

By Michael Pollick
michael.pollick@heraldtribune.com
Published: Thursday, March 20, 2014 at 11:47 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, March 20, 2014 at 11:47 p.m.

A federal judge has approved requests by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald to join in a Freedom-of-Information lawsuit seeking to force the FBI to disclose details of its long-running Sarasota 9/11 investigation.

In a ruling issued Wednesday, Judge William J. Zloch gave friend-of-the-court status to the news organizations, allowing them to add their voices in the suit, initiated by an independent news organization based in Fort Lauderdale, The Broward Bulldog Inc.

“We see that as a good thing, recognizing the public importance of the documents that are being sought,” said the Broward Bulldog's attorney, Thomas R. Julin.

The Bulldog's case seeks case files about a Saudi family who abruptly left Sarasota just before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Florida nonprofit and its founder and editor, Dan Christensen, filed the original lawsuit in September 2012.

Attorney Carol Jean LoCicero, who represents the Herald-Tribune's parent company, Halifax Media Holdings LLC, has until noon Tuesday to file a brief.

“We are already working on it,” LoCicero said Thursday. “We are trying to show how broad the public interest is in this potential Sarasota relationship related to a national tragedy. The local angle is important. The Tampa field office was involved in investigating leads related to 9/11.”

A support group for families who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks applauded the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald in October 2013 for seeking to intervene in the federal case.

Of particular interest are agency documents that would shed light on the alleged interactions of a high-echelon Saudi family — living in Sarasota's Prestancia neighborhood just before the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon — and three hijacker pilots who trained at Venice Airport around the same time.

Records from the front gate at Prestancia from that time show that 9/11 hijackers visited the home owned by prominent Saudi businessman Esam Ghazzawi and occupied by his daughter Anoud and her husband Abdulazziz al-Hijjii, the Bulldog reported in a 10th anniversary piece published on the news organization's website and also in the Herald-Tribune, the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times.

The article revealed the existence of a large, previously undisclosed FBI investigation centering on 4224 Escondito Circle in Prestancia.

Within days of publication, the FBI issued a press release seeking to discredit the article's findings and sourcing. That prompted Christensen to file state and national public record requests, which have yielded some corroborating information.

Al-Hijjii was still of interest to FBI Florida agent Leo Martinez and Sarasota Sheriff's office detective Michael Otis in April 2004. They interviewed former Sarasota cell phone shop operator Wissam Hammoud, who was in Tampa awaiting federal trial on unrelated but serious charges. A summary of the interview showed up in a document turned over by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

According to Hammoud, al-Hijji's acquaintances included Adnan El Shukrijumah, who in 2010 was federally indicted for his alleged role in a terrorist plot to attack New York City's subway system. The FBI offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to El Shukrijumah's capture, and listed him as one of the “most-wanted terrorists.”

Hammoud told investigators that El Shukrijumah and al-Hijjii showed up together at informal soccer games on property surrounding a Sarasota mosque. Sukrijumah is from the east coast of Florida.

In an interview with the London Telegraph in February 2012, al-Hijjii emphatically denied any connection to hijackers, stating that he loved America.

Al-Hijjii acknowledged knowing Hammoud, but said Shukrijumah's name did not ring a bell.

[Gold9472]

Citing broad public interest, newspapers ask judge to deny U.S. bid to block 9/11 lawsuit

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/03/citing-huge-public-interest-newspapers-ask-judge-to-deny-u-s-bid-to-block-911-lawsuit/

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers
BrowardBulldog.org 911weremember

Two Florida newspapers have asked a Fort Lauderdale federal judge to deny the Justice Department’s effort to shut down a Freedom of Information lawsuit seeking records from an FBI investigation into apparent terrorist activity in Sarasota shortly before 9/11.

BrowardBulldog.org filed the suit in September 2012 alleging the government was improperly withholding records on the matter. The government, after unexpectedly releasing 31 highly censored pages last spring, argued the court should end the case due to national security considerations and asserted that a “reasonable search” had determined “there are no agency records being improperly withheld.”

Court papers filed Tuesday by attorneys for The Miami Herald and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune say they were intervening “to stress that the outcome of this case is a matter of intense interest to the media and the public generally.” The newspapers also argued that “government officials charged with investigating terrorist connections in our state must also be held fully accountable.”

“The Broward Bulldog has provided this court with ample evidence establishing that the FBI could not have possibly conducted adequate searches in response to its federal Freedom of Information Act request,” said the joint brief filed by Tampa attorneys Carol LoCicero and Rachel Fugate. “The stakes are simply too great to accept as a matter of law the government’s vague, often second hand conclusions as to the adequacy of its document searches.”

The newspapers’ friend-of-the-court brief asks U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch not to be “too quick” to accept an agency’s claim that it conducted “an appropriate search,” citing examples where records that should have been produced were not.

One cited case involves the conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, which sued in 2012 seeking records about the Obama Administration’s alleged coordination with the producers of Zero Dark Thirty, the motion picture about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Allegations had been made that the White House provided the filmmakers with access to highly sensitive national security records in order to burnish President Obama’s reputation prior to the 2012 election.

A judge ordered the CIA to produce records about the matter, “but it was only months later that additional ‘overlooked’ documents were produced that included illuminating correspondence among the White House, the Department of Defense and the CIA suggesting a coordinated effort to provide a heightened level of access to the filmmakers and a desire that the administration be portrayed positively.”

Broward Bulldog.org, represented in the suit by Miami attorney Thomas Julin, first disclosed the existence of the FBI’s Sarasota investigation in September 2011.

The story reported how, a decade earlier, the FBI had found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and a young Saudi couple, Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji, who appeared to have hurriedly departed their upscale home in a gated community in the weeks before 9/11 – leaving behind cars, furniture, clothing, a refrigerator full of food and an open safe in the master bedroom.

Anoud al-Hijji is the daughter of the home’s owner, Esam Ghazzawi, a long-time adviser to a senior Saudi prince. Ghazzawi was also a focus of FBI interest after 9/11 when agents sought to lure him back to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia to close the transaction when the home was sold, according to a lawyer for the homeowner’s association.

Agents searched gatehouse logbooks and license plate snapshots and found evidence that vehicles used by the hijackers, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, had visited the home, according to a counterterrorism agent who spoke on condition of anonymity. A sophisticated analysis of incoming and outgoing phone calls to the home also established links to Atta and other terrorists, including Adman Shukrijumah, the agent said.

Shukrijumah, a former Miramar resident, is currently on the FBI’s “most wanted” list and the State Department is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

The FBI publicly acknowledged its investigation but said it had found nothing connecting the al-Hijjis to 9/11.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who chaired Congress’ Joint inquiry into the attacks, has said the FBI never informed Congress or the subsequent 9/11 Commission about its Sarasota investigation.

The story has taken several twists since news of the investigation first broke.

In February 2012, Florida Department of Law Enforcement documents obtained using the state’s public records law showed that in April 2004 Wissam Hammoud, a now imprisoned “international terrorist associate” then under arrest in Hillsborough County, told the FBI that al-Hijji considered Osama bin Laden a “hero” and may have known some of the hijackers who trained at a flight school in Venice, about 10 miles from the al-Hijji residence. Hammoud also told the FBI then that al-Hijji had introduced him to Shukrijumah at a soccer game at a local mosque prior to 9/11. Hammoud confirmed making those statements in an interview.

Al-Hijji was reached in London in 2012 where he worked for Aramco Overseas, the European subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, the state oil company. He told The Telegraph that he knew Hammoud, but denied any involvement with terrorists. He called 9/11 “an awful crime.”

One year ago, six months after the lawsuit was filed, the FBI suddenly made public 31 redacted pages about its Sarasota investigation. The records flatly contradicted the Bureau’s earlier public statements that it had found no evidence connecting the al-Hijjis to the hijackers. Instead, the FBI records said the family had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.”

The declassified documents tied three individuals, with names blanked out, to the Venice flight school where Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi trained. One of those individuals was described as a relative of the al-Hijjis, whose names were also redacted.

Last June, the Justice Department moved to end the lawsuit, citing national security. A senior FBI official told the judge disclosure of certain classified information about the Sarasota Saudis “would reveal current specific targets of the FBI’s national security investigations.”

The FBI did not explain how an investigation that it previously said had found no connection between those Saudis and the 9/11 attacks involved information so secret that its disclosure “could be expected to cause serious damage to national security.”

[Gold9472]

Judge orders thorough search of 9/11 records, rejects FBI’s bid to end lawsuit

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/04/judge-orders-thorough-search-of-911-records-rejects-fbis-bid-to-end-lawsuit/

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers
BrowardBulldog.org fbilogo

A federal judge Monday ordered the FBI to conduct a more thorough search of its vast files to identify documents about its once secret investigation of terrorist activity in Sarasota prior to 9/11.

Fort Lauderdale U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch’s order also rejected a request by the Department of Justice to throw out the Freedom of Information case filed by BrowardBulldog.org in September 2012. Justice has argued that the release of certain information about the matter “would reveal current specific targets” of national security investigations.

The suit alleges the government has improperly withheld information about a local Saudi family’s apparent connections to terrorists including 9/11 hijack pilot Mohamed Atta and Adnan Shukrijumah, the former Broward resident and alleged al-Qaeda figure who’s got a $5 million federal bounty on his head.

“This is a huge step in the right direction,” said Miami attorney Thomas Julin, who represents the four-year-old news organization. “The decision tells the FBI that this federal judge wants to make sure that the truth comes out.”

In his four-page order, Judge Zloch said he would issue a separate order detailing steps the FBI must take to comply with his order requiring the additional records search.

BrowardBulldog.org asked the court in July to compel the additional document search. The suit was filed after the FBI denied the news organization’s record requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

FBI RECORDS CONTRADICT PUBLIC STATEMENTS
Six months after the lawsuit was filed, the Bureau unexpectedly released 35 heavily redacted pages, including four pages that were completely blanked out, and asserted it had no more responsive documents to produce. The declassified pages flatly contradicted earlier public statements by FBI agents in Sarasota and Miami that the decade-old investigation had found no evidence of terrorist activity.

In his order, Zloch noted the government has provided him with un-redacted copies of those pages “for the court’s inspection.” Whether that information played a role in the judge’s decision is not known.

The Miami Herald and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, in a friend of the court brief last week, argued to the court, “The Broward Bulldog has provided this court with ample evidence establishing that the FBI could not have possibly conducted adequate (record) searches.

In the motion requesting a better search, attorney Julin proposed a number of measures the FBI could take to identify records: Use its $440 million Sentinel computer system, employ better word searches and conduct a manual review of all 15,342 documents about its 9/11 investigation, code-named PENTTBOM, said to be stored in the FBI’s Tampa field office.

The FOIA lawsuit seeks FBI records about its investigation of “activities at the residence at 4224 Escondito Circle in the Prestancia development near Sarasota, Florida prior to 9/11/2001 The activities involved apparent visits to that address by some of the deceased 9/11 hijackers.”

TIES TO TERRORISTS, TIES TO ROYALS
The address was the home of Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji until August 2001, when the couple quit their home and returned to Saudi Arabia –leaving behind cars, furniture, clothing, food and other items. Anoud al-Hijji’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, a longtime advisor to a senior Saudi prince, owned the home.

Within hours of the attacks on New York and Washington, the al-Hijji’s neighbors began calling the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to tell them about the couple’s abrupt departure.

BrowardBulldog.org first disclosed the FBI’s Sarasota investigation in September 2011. The story reported how agents who searched Prestancia’s gatehouse found logbooks and snapshots of license plates that provided evidence that vehicles used by the hijackers, including Atta, had visited the home. An analysis of phone calls to and from the home also found links to Atta and Shukrijumah, according to a law enforcement source.

An FBI informant later reported that prior to 9/11 al-Hijji had introduced him to Shukrijumah at a soccer game at a Sarasota mosque.

Records obtained from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement show the FBI continued to investigate until at least 2004, when the informant was interviewed. The Bureau, however, never disclosed the existence of its investigation to either Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the attacks or the subsequent 9/11 Commission, according to former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the Joint Inquiry.

Graham has accused the FBI of impeding Congress’s inquiry into 9/11.

The 31 pages of FBI records released one year ago say that the Sarasota Saudis who “fled” their home before the attacks had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.”

The records list three individuals, including one identified as a relative of the al-Hijjis, but their names were blanked out. All three, however, were tied to the Venice, Fl. flight school where Atta and fellow hijack pilot Marwan al-Shehhi trained.

Attorney Julin said Monday’s federal court ruling could lead to a better public understanding of the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

“Maybe now we’ll get a chance to find out what the FBI knew about the Sarasota Saudis and why it did not tell Congress,” said Julin.

[Gold9472]

A conservative judge rebukes FBI as he orders it to find and turn over 9/11 documents

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/04/a-conservative-judge-rebukes-fbi-as-he-orders-it-to-find-and-turn-over-911-documents/

April 6, 2014 at 6:01 am
By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers, BrowardBulldog.org

Fort Lauderdale U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch has a reputation as a no-nonsense, conservative judge who can be short on patience, but is long on courtroom preparation and does not recoil from speaking his mind.

On Friday, after months of legal wrangling, Zloch spoke his mind for the first time on the FBI’s handling of a Freedom of Information lawsuit by BrowardBulldog.org that seeks records from the Bureau’s investigation into apparent pre-9/11 terrorist activity in Sarasota.

In a stinging, 23-page order, Zloch told the Department of Justice that it had failed to convince him that the FBI’s prior records searches had been “reasonably calculated to uncover all relevant documents,” as courts have said the law requires.

Zloch ordered the FBI to do something it had not done: use its sophisticated, $440 million Sentinel case management system to lead the search for relevant documents while adhering to various court-ordered conditions, including specific automated text searches. The judge gave the Bureau until April 18 – two weeks – to produce photocopies for his private inspection of all documents it identifies.

Zloch’s ruling is a “strong, clear directive to the FBI,” said former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who in 2002 chaired Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks and has pushed Washington to release the FBI’s files about what happened in Sarasota.

“Since 2002 many sources, including the U.S. Senate, have been attempting to get information such as that which is likely to be disclosed under Judge Zloch’s order made available. This is the closest in 12 years that we’ve been to achieving that objective,” said Graham.

A MANUAL REVIEW OF HUGE PENTTBOM FILE
Further, Zloch ordered the FBI to conduct a manual review of all documents in its Tampa field office regarding the Bureau’s investigation of the 9/11 attacks, code-named PENTTBOM. He gave the FBI until June 6 to complete that more time consuming task.

The Department of Justice has opposed any additional search. In court papers filed last August, it argued that a manual review would require “extraordinary effort, time and resources to conduct.”

“The manual review which plaintiffs are requesting is not reasonable; nor is it warranted,” the department argued in court papers filed in August. “The FBI’s Tampa office alone has more than 15,352 documents (serials), which together contain, potentially, hundreds of thousands of pages of records related to the 9/11 investigation.”

Zloch disagreed. He decided a more thorough search is necessary due to “inconsistencies and concerns” about the government’s searches to date, as well as his need to assure himself that “the documents in dispute exist.”

Zloch noted, too, that early FBI assertions that its initial searches had yielded no responsive documents were followed months later, after the lawsuit was filed, by the release of 35 heavily redacted pages. Those pages, some partially blacked out on grounds of national security, contained no investigative reports yet did include some summary information that contradicted prior FBI public statements about the findings of its Sarasota investigation.

AN INVESTIGATION WITH NO DOCUMENTS?
“An investigation took place during this time period that apparently resulted in certain findings, yet seemingly, the search yielded no documentation. This alone moves the court to believe that a further search is necessary,” the order says.

Miami attorney Thomas Julin, who represents the non-profit news organization, said it appears Judge Zloch “definitely wants to get to the bottom of this and doesn’t like the fact that the FBI put out public statements trying to discredit the Bulldog’s reporting…His order makes it sound like he believes the government may be deliberately covering up.”

Zloch’s order goes beyond instructing the FBI to search and produce its own investigative reports. It also requires both the Justice Department and the FBI to “advise the court of any documented communications between defendants and other government agencies concerning the investigation” of the Sarasota Saudis. Again, Zloch wants that information by June 6.

“He’s showing real sensitivity to the likelihood that the FBI is acting under the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency,” said Julin. “If the FBI is simply following orders then he is telling the FBI he wants to know what those orders are and from who they are coming, whether it’s the CIA, the NSA or the President.”

The lawsuit was filed in September 2012, after the FBI denied requests under the Freedom of Information Act for copies of the agency’s reports about its Sarasota investigation.

A year earlier, BrowardBulldog.org had first disclosed the existence of the investigation in a story that reported how Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji, a young Saudi couple, had abruptly moved out of their home in Sarasota’s Prestancia development and returned to Saudi Arabia two weeks before September 11, 20001. Anoud’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, a longtime advisor to a senior Saudi prince, owned the home.

Law enforcement focused on the al-Hijjis after suspicious neighbors called following the attacks to report that the couple had appeared to depart in haste, leaving behind their cars, furniture, clothing and even food in the kitchen.

HIJACKERS AT THE GATE
The story reported that agents who later searched Prestancia’s gatehouse found evidence in logbooks and snapshots of license plates that vehicles used by the hijackers, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, had visited the al-Hijji’s home. A law enforcement source said an analysis of phone calls to and from the home also found links to Atta and former Broward resident Adnan Shukrijumah, a fugitive and alleged al-Qaeda leader with a $5 million bounty on his head.

Documents obtained by BrowardBulldog.org from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement stated that a now imprisoned terrorist figure, Wissam Hammoud, told the FBI in 2004 that al-Hijji was an acolyte of Osama bin Laden who prior to 9/11 had introduced him to Shukrijumah at a soccer game at a Sarasota mosque.

Al-Hijj was interviewed last year by the London Telegraph. He acknowledged knowing Hammoud, but denied any wrongdoing.

The FBI never disclosed the existence of its Sarasota investigation to either Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the terror attacks or the subsequent 9/11 Commission, ex-Sen. Graham has said.

In his order, Judge Zloch explained that his doubts about the quality of the FBI’s prior records searches was rooted in part in the “gaps and inconsistencies” he observed in the handful of documents the FBI has produced to date.

He noted, for example, that one FBI document written after the Sarasota story broke in 2011 states that the investigation found no evidence connecting the Sarasota Saudis to the 9/11 hijackers while another, dated April 2002, says authorities found “many connections” between the family and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks.”

“These statements seem to be in conflict, and there is nothing in defendant’s 35 produced pages that reconciles this stark contradiction,” the order says.

[Gold9472]

Unraveling Sarasota's 9/11 ties
FBI's handling of document requests is unacceptable

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20140408/OPINION/304089997/2198/OPINION?template=printpicart

Published: Tuesday, April 8, 2014 at 1:00 a.m.

Instead of following the law and producing documents that could show whether or not Saudis living in Sarasota provided aid and assistance to the 9/11 terrorists, the FBI, a federal judge recently found:

• Provided records with "apparent" and unexplained chronological "gaps."

• Presented to the court "located documents" that "seem incomplete."

• Submitted "summary documents" that "do in fact seem to contradict each other."

The FBI's handling of requests for documents related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, which had links to locations and venues in Sarasota County, is unacceptable.

We and anyone interested in knowing more of the truth about 9/11 are grateful that U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch has steadily sought to require the FBI to adequately search for, find and release to the court documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

In contrast, it's troubling that the nation's top law-enforcement agency would not only be intransigent but would submit documents with gaps and contradictions to a federal court. The fact that the documents sought are relevant to one of the United States' greatest domestic tragedies compounds the concerns.

Saudis in Sarasota

The background:

In September 2011, two independent reporters writing for BrowardBulldog.org reported that a family from Saudi Arabia, who lived in Sarasota County's prestigious Prestancia development prior to September 2001, had connections with individuals associated with terrorism.

The report, reprinted three years ago by the Herald-Tribune, cited documents showing phone calls to the house were made by hijackers who trained in Venice to fly airplanes. The report also said the family was visited by people using a car licensed to Mohammed Atta -- who crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

The FBI subsequently said the family was not "related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot."

Yet neither the FBI nor anyone else has explained why the family, closely related to a prominent Saudi financier, abruptly left its Prestancia home two weeks before 9/11 -- leaving clothes in closets, food in the refrigerator and three cars in the driveway and garage.

Given the involvement of Saudi terrorists in the attacks, and evidence of Saudi financial support for them, the public deserves more than contradictory and incomplete information from the FBI.

The agency's credibility in this matter is not helped by the fact that its investigation of the family was not reported to Congress or mentioned in the independent 9/11 Commission report.

A more thorough search

In September and October 2011, the Broward Bulldog and reporter/editor Dan Christensen went to federal court to demand that the FBI release documents relevant to its investigation of the family. (Subsequently, Halifax Media Holdings, which includes the Herald-Tribune, and the Miami Herald filed "friend of the court" briefs in support of the plaintiffs.)

Judge Zloch, a Reagan appointee, has repeatedly ruled that the FBI is not complying with the Freedom of Information Act. The "gaps and consistencies" in documents provided to the court "underscore the need for a more thorough search," Zloch wrote in an order issued Friday.

The judge went to the trouble of identifying specific search functions for the FBI to perform -- citing the names, phrases and software to be used. Zloch gave the bureau deadlines, including one later this month, for conducting the additional search and submitting the relevant documents for his review.

It's vital to note that it's not known publicly whether the Saudi family had any role leading up to the attacks. But we do know, according to the FBI, that the family had "many connections" with "individuals associated with the terrorist attacks." Yet, according to Zloch, the search conducted by the FBI "yielded no documentation" of the investigation.

"This alone moves the court to believe a further search is necessary," Zloch wrote.

The judge emphasized that the efficacy of the investigation is not the matter before his court. At this point, Zloch wrote, the focus is on whether the FBI has submitted the documents required by federal law.

"Based on the limited information before it now," Zloch stated, "the court is unable to glean the whole truth."

The same can be said, unfortunately, for the nation as it relates to many things that happened before and after 9/11.

[Gold9472]

Judge waits for FBI's Sarasota Saudi documents

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20140417/ARTICLE/140419703/-1/sports?Title=Judge-waits-for-FBI-s-Sarasota-Saudi-documents

By Michael Pollick
Published: Thursday, April 17, 2014 at 10:16 a.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, April 17, 2014 at 10:16 a.m.

Relatives of 9/11 victims are eagerly watching the legal struggle over information held by the FBI concerning a Saudi Arabian family in Sarasota with possible ties to terrorists, even as calls in Congress ramp up for more disclosure about how the attackers were funded.

On Friday, a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale is expected to receive FBI documents pertaining to the agency's investigation of the Saudi family that abruptly left Sarasota just before the September 2001 attacks.

This month, the judge ordered the FBI to turn over the materials as part of a lawsuit by a South Florida news organization that has been joined by both the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald.

In his blistering 23-page order, the judge scolded the FBI for failing to conduct a comprehensive search initially for documents stemming from its investigation.

“Defendants' eagerness to assert exemptions and wooden method of interpreting Plaintiffs' (Freedom of Information Act) requests essentially deprives the Court of its role in examining any relevant documents and independently determining whether any exemptions may apply,” U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch wrote of the FBI, the defendant in the case.

Zloch ordered a more exhaustive new search, with the resulting documents to be delivered — uncensored — to him for review Friday. Additional documentation is due in June.

Family members have strongly denied any ties to the 9/11 terrorists.

If the judge eventually makes those documents public, the 16-month-old lawsuit could dovetail with a larger effort to shed more light on who financed the jet attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

One effort is centered in New York federal court, where a 12-year-old case seeks $1 trillion in damages for the relatives of nearly 10,000 9/11 victims.

In that case, families are attempting to sue the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and charities that it established.

In Congress, meanwhile, there is a growing drumbeat to make public a censored 28-page chapter about the terrorists' financing, pulled by unnamed government censors from the report of the “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001.” The joint Congressional report, minus the censored chapter, runs about 800 pages and was published in late 2002.

The classified section is believed by activists to be based on FBI and CIA documents, and to point fingers at Saudi Arabia, a longtime ally of the United States and a key oil supplier.

“It all ties together about financing power, leading back to the Saudis,” said Bill Doyle, a retired stockbroker who lives in the Central Florida community of The Villages, and whose youngest son, Joseph, died after being trapped in the World Trade Center.

Doyle is among the lead plaintiffs in one of three lawsuits against Saudi Arabia that have been combined into a single federal court action entitled “In Re: Terrorist Attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 (Saudi Arabia et al.)”

He said he also believes the Sarasota connection — in which a Saudi family abruptly departed the U.S. two weeks before the attacks, leaving behind many possessions — could answer questions about larger issues.

“You take off a week or so before 9/11 and go back to Saudi Arabia and leave dirty diapers, food, two brand- new cars and a house. And there is also evidence that some of the people who were training over at Huffman Aviation in Venice were visiting their house,” Doyle said.

“It all ties together.”

Saudi Arabia arguments
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court will likely soon decide if it will hear arguments from the kingdom's attorneys, who want their client removed as a defendant.

If successful, it would mark the second time that those lawyers have convinced a court to drop Saudi Arabia as a defendant.

In the first case, they argued that U.S. law does not allow suits against sovereign nations for damages. But a federal appeals court reversed that decision in December.

“We anticipate hearing from the Supreme Court in late June,” said Robert Haefele, an attorney who represents more than half of the 10,000 plaintiffs in the combined suits.

Sharon Premoli, co-chairwoman of activist group 9/11 Families United for Justice Against Terrorism, is also pushing for all FBI documents to be made public.

“The 28 pages are part and parcel of the FBI documents,” said Premoli, who survived the terror attacks and narrowly escaped from the Trade Center's north tower. “It is all one big cover-up.”

Doyle and Premoli's efforts are in sync with those of retired U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired the joint congressional inquiry that published the 800-page report. The former Florida governor has battled for years to have the censored chapter about possible terror financing declassified.

Recently, a pair of congressmen have also called on President Barack Obama to declassify the censored pages, and written a form letter to other members of Congress urging them to review the missing chapter.

“The information contained in the redacted pages is critical to U.S. foreign policy moving forward and should thus be available to the American people,” said Rep. Walter Jones Jr., R-North Carolina.

Jones and Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, have also introduced a House resolution to declassify the 28 pages, which has drawn some bipartisan support.

Both had to go through a lengthy process to read the 28 pages, which are kept under tight security, and each was monitored by a federal agent making sure that notes were not taken and the pages were not copied or removed.

President Obama has publicly promised to make the chapter public, but thus far has not done so.

“We have a burning question,” Premoli said. “We would like to know if President Obama has read the 28 pages.”

Local connections to 9/11
What already is clear — and has been since shortly after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — is that three of the 9/11 terrorists paid for flight training at Venice Airport.

Unclear is how they paid for that training and other activities.

The terror cell living in Sarasota County was one of a number scattered around the nation. Others are known to have existed in Los Angeles and San Diego, and in Falls Church, Va.

In the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Fort Lauderdale's Broward Bulldog — joined as “friends of the court” by the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald — the Justice Department acknowledged that it has tens of thousands of documents related to the Southwest Florida portion of its overall 9/11 investigation.

To date, the Bulldog and its media partners have received 35 heavily redacted pages.

In a 10th anniversary story by the Broward Bulldog published in the Herald-Tribune and Miami Herald, the Fort Lauderdale news organization claimed that the same terrorists who trained in Venice visited a home in the gated Prestancia community owned by Saudi businessman, Esam Ghazzawi, who had close ties to the Saudi royal family.

For six years prior to 9/11, the home was occupied by Ghazzawi's daughter, Anoud, and her husband, Abdulazziz al Hijji. “Phone records and the Prestancia gate records linked the house on Escondito Circle to the hijackers,” the Bulldog reported.

The FBI initially refused a Bulldog request to search for the family's names in its archives, claiming that would amount to an invasion of privacy.

In his early April order, Judge Zloch described the FBI's initial search as “preemptively narrowed in scope based on agency decisions that categories of documents are exempt, and thus, will not even be sought.”

Zloch then ordered the agency to use its most advanced document search system, and provided specific search terms — including the family's names — that the FBI was required to use.

The Reagan appointee and former Notre Dame quarterback also ordered the original uncensored documents to be delivered to him for private review.

That is known in legal terms as “in camera.”

[Gold9472]

Judge grants FBI more time to gather Sarasota 9/11 documents

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20140418/ARTICLE/140419642/-1/news?Title=Judge-grants-FBI-more-time-to-gather-Sarasota-9-11-documents

By Michael Pollick
Published: Friday, April 18, 2014 at 4:23 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, April 18, 2014 at 4:23 p.m.

A federal judge has granted the FBI additional time to process records sought by the media concerning a Saudi Arabian family in Sarasota that hastily departed the United States in the days before the 9/11 attacks.

The documents had been due to the judge for review on Friday but late Thursday, the government asked for more time. The assistant U.S. attorney representing the FBI and Justice Department said the materials that need to be searched comprise 23 boxes and 92,000 pages at the agency’s Tampa field office — some of which carry a “secret” classification.

U.S. District Court Judge William J. Zloch gave the agency until April 25 to produce photocopies of the documents.

The FBI had sought to substitute “digitized” versions of the documents on a CD to the judge on May 2. Judge Zloch said he was willing to wait that long for the digital version in a searchable format but still wanted hard copies by late next week.

The judge had ordered the FBI to turn over the materials as part of a lawsuit filed by the South Florida news organization Broward Bulldog that has been joined by both the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald as “friends of the court.”

Judge Zloch had previously scolded the FBI for failing to initially conduct a comprehensive search for documents stemming from its investigation. Earlier this month, he ordered a new and more exhaustive search, with the resulting documents to be delivered — uncensored — to him.

The judge said the FBI must comply using its most advanced document search system, called Sentinel, to search for records pertaining to the year-and-a-half old Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by Broward Bulldog.

Under the judge’s order, the FBI also must search for documents related to the Saudi family, a home in Sarasota’s gated Prestancia subdivision and the investigation following the 2001 attacks using Sentinel and multiple other search systems.

The agency initially refused to search for the family’s names, claiming that would result in an invasion of privacy. The judge said he plans to deal with the privacy issue after he has seen the documents.

Judge Zloch ordered the FBI to also inform the court of any documented communications between it and other government agencies concerning the investigation. That information, and an explanation of how the FBI is complying with the judge’s order, is due by June 6.

In joining the case in mid-March, the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald cited articles written about the Prestancia case and described ways in which a further search would be in the public’s interest.

To date, the FBI has turned over 35 pages of heavily redacted documents — out of the tens of thousands it has acknowledged were part of its Florida inquiry into the 9/11 attacks.

The home in Sarasota was owned by Saudi businessman Esam Ghazzawi and his wife, Deborah. Ghazzawi is known to have connections to the Saudi royal family.

For the six years before the terror attacks, the home was occupied by their son-in-law, Abdulaziz Al-Hijji, and their daughter, Anoud.

The Al-Hijjis came to the FBI’s attention after the couple apparently returned abruptly to Saudi Arabia two weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., leaving behind clothes, food, children’s toys and cars.

Federal agents also linked phone calls from the Prestancia home — some dating to a year before the attacks — to known 9/11 suspects, the Bulldog has reported. The calls were made to, or received from Mohamed Atta, fellow pilots and 11 other terrorist suspects, the Bulldog reported. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi had learned to fly at the former Huffman Aviation at the Venice Municipal Airport. Ziad Jarrah also took flying lessons nearby, at the Florida Flight Training school.

Family members have denied any relationship with the terrorists.

[Gold9472]

FBI’s attempt to water down judicial order denied; 9/11 documents begin to flow to judge

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/04/fbis-attempt-to-water-down-judicial-order-denied-911-documents-begin-to-flow-to-judge/?fb_action_ids=10152459897187122&fb_action_types=og.likes

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers

A Fort Lauderdale federal judge Friday gave the FBI another week to produce tens of thousands of pages from its massive 9/11 investigation for his inspection, but forcefully denied government requests that he water down his own previous order requiring disclosure.

Hours after the order was filed, a government lawyer filed court papers saying the Justice Department had delivered “27 pages of classified material” to the court for the judge’s private, or “in camera,” inspection.

The legal developments are among a flurry of recent activity in the Freedom of Information case that was filed by BrowardBulldog.org in 2012. The suit seeks records from a once secret FBI investigation into apparent pre-9/11 terrorist activity in Sarasota.

“What’s important here is that the Justice Department was seeking wholesale reconsideration of the prior order and the judge instead issued a stern rejection of the idea that he undo what he had previously ordered,” said the Bulldog’s Miami attorney, Thomas Julin.

The investigation focused on a Saudi family with ties to the Royal family and apparent connections to some of the 9/11 hijackers and another terrorist figure who once lived in Broward. The investigation began after Abdulaziz al Hijji and his wife, Anoud, abruptly moved out of their upscale home in a gated community about two weeks before the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, leaving behind cars, furniture, clothing and food in the kitchen.

NEIGHBORS CALL THE AUTHORITIES
Suspicious neighbors summoned authorities starting the day of the attacks. Sources have said agents later found evidence that 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta, several other hijackers and former Miramar resident Adnan Shukrijumah had visited the al Hijji’s home. Shukrijumah is now believed to be an al Qaeda leader and is wanted by the FBI.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement records obtained by BrowardBulldog.org show the FBI continued to investigate al-Hijji until at least 2004. Yet the Bureau never disclosed the existence of the Sarasota probe to either Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11, or the subsequent 9/11 Commission, according to former Florida Sen. Bob Graham who co-chaired the Joint Inquiry.

On April 4, U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch ordered the FBI to conduct a thorough search of its records for documents responsive to the news organization’s Freedom of Information request and produce photocopies to him by April 18. The order informed the FBI that it had failed to convince him that its prior records searches were adequate under the law.

The order included specific instructions to the FBI as to how it is to conduct the latest search, from requiring it to search using its new $440 million Sentinel case management system down to the names and words that are to be used in text searches.

Sen. Graham applauded Zloch’s order, saying it gave “a strong, clear directive to the FBI. He called it “the closest in 12 years that we’ve been to achieving” the release of government information that might shed new light on who was behind the terrorist attacks.

But the government pushed back.

GOVERNMENT SEEKS MORE TIME, LESS REQUIREMENTS
On Thursday, Miami Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee filed a motion seeking a two-week delay – until May 2 – to turn over what he estimates is 92,000 pages of 9/11 records from the FBI’s Tampa field office.

Lee also told Zloch the FBI was scanning each of those pages, which fill 23 boxes and include some records labeled secret, and asked for permission “to deliver the Tampa (9/11) sub file to the court in a searchable CD format, in lieu of photocopies.”

The judge, however, signaled that he won’t tolerate much delay. He granted just a one-week extension of his deadline and told the government it must produce both the photocopies and the digitized version of the records in searchable format. He gave the FBI until May 2 to turn over the digitized records.

Zloch denied outright the government’s request that it not be required to conduct a manual search of its records. Lee had proposed instead that the government be allowed to use an optical character reader to search the newly digitized records.

“Defendants may employ the OCR search capability, but not as a substitute for the manual review ordered by the court,” the judge’s order said.

Finally, Judge Zloch dismissed the government’s request that he reconsider his prior order directing the FBI to conduct additional text searches using the names of specific individuals, including Abdulaziz al Hijj and his father-in-law Esam Ghazzawi, once an adviser to a Saudi prince and the owner of the home apparently visited by the hijackers.

The government has contended the privacy interests of al Hijji, Ghazzawi and others outweigh the public’s interest in disclosure of records the FBI may have on them.

[Gold9472]

More secret 9/11 documents identified, but FBI has yet to turn them over to judge

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/04/30/4090497/more-secret-911-documents-identified.html

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers
Posted on Wednesday, 04.30.14

Contradicting an earlier assertion made under oath by a senior FBI official, an attorney for the Justice Department said Wednesday that the FBI has identified four more boxes of “classified” 9/11 documents held by its Tampa field office.

The government, however, has yet to comply with a federal judge’s orders Friday that it turn over copies of that massive9/11 file — now said to total 27 boxes — for his personal inspection.

U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch issued those orders in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by BrowardBulldog.org seeking records about the FBI’s investigation into apparent pre-9/11 terrorist activity in Sarasota.

In an email to the news organization’s attorney, Thomas Julin, Miami Assistant U.S. Attorney Dexter Lee said the government was prepared to file the documents with the court last Friday “as ordered.” The Justice Department, however, determined that Zloch’s chambers do not have a safe with “storage capability for classified documents.”

“The plan at present is to deliver the safe [which can hold four boxes] on Thursday, May 1, 2014, along with the first four boxes of classified materials,” Lee said. “When the court has completed its review of the four boxes, chambers will be contacted and I will deliver four more boxes, as well as retrieving the material already reviewed.”

Lee said, too, that he will deliver to the court on Friday CD ROMs containing scanned versions of the classified documents.

POSSIBLE DELAYS
The government’s piecemeal document delivery plan deviates substantially from Zloch’s orders, which require the production of photocopies of the FBI’s entire 9/11Tampa file all at once. If approved, it would delay the production of records to the judge for inspection by weeks or months.

The existence of four additional boxes of 9/11 records could add to any delay.

Lee’s disclosure about the additional four boxes calls into question the accuracy of the sworn declaration submitted to the court two weeks ago by FBI records section chief David M. Hardy.

Hardy told the court that the entire Tampa 9/11 “sub file” was “comprised of 23 boxes of records” including “a substantial, but undetermined amount of material classified at the ‘secret’ level.” Prosecutor Lee did not explain why the file is now said to be 27 boxes.

The FBI probe that is the focus of the Freedom of Information lawsuit focused on a Saudi family with ties to the Royal Family and apparent connections to some of the 9/11 hijackers, including ringleader Mohamed Atta, and former Broward resident and currently suspected al Qaeda leader Adnan Shukrijumah.

The investigation began after neighbors in the upscale south Sarasota gated community of Prestancia called authorities to report that Abulaziz al-Hijji and his wife, Anoud, had suddenly moved out of their home two weeks before 9/11, leaving behind cars, furniture, clothing and food in the kitchen.

Sources have said agents later found gatehouse logs and photographs of license tags and phone records showing that Atta, Shukrijumah and others had visited the al-Hijji’s home.

Al-Hijji, who later worked for the European subsidiary of the state oil company Saudi Aramco, told London’s Daily Telegraph last year that he condemned the terror attacks and had no involvement in them. The FBI has said publicly that its Sarasota investigation found no evidence connecting the family to either the hijackers or the 9/11 plot.

The FBI, however, kept the investigation secret until BrowardBulldog.org first disclosed it in September 2011.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, has said that the FBI did not disclose the existence of the Sarasota investigation to either the Joint Inquiry or the subsequent 9/11 Commission.

The FOIA lawsuit was filed in September 2012 after the FBI denied administrative requests for the release of its records about the matter. In March 2013, the government unexpectedly released more than two-dozen heavily censored records that nevertheless undercut the bureau’s previous public denials.

The documents state that the Sarasota Saudis had “many connections” to “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.” One document lists three individuals, with names blacked out, and ties them to the Venice, Fla., flight school where suicide hijackers Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained.

Last week, the government provided 27 pages of classified documents to Judge Zloch that bear the blanked-out case number affixed to the April 16, 2002 FBI report disclosing the family’s “many connections” to terrorists.

The judge’s order directs the government to immediately produce any documents responsive to the news organization’s Freedom of Information request. Attorney Julin has asked the government to say whether any of those 27 pages are responsive and nonexempt, and if so to make them public.

The prosecutor said he’s working with the FBI to respond to Julin’s inquiry.

[Gold9472]

Attorney says four more boxes of records tied to Saudis found

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20140501/ARCHIVES/405011074/-1/search10?Title=Attorney-says-four-more-boxes-of-records-tied-to-Saudis-found

Published: Thursday, May 1, 2014 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 11:50 p.m.

An attorney for the U.S. Justice Department reversed sworn court testimony by stating that the FBI had recently identified four previously unknown boxes of potentially relevant documents.

Previously, in a lawsuit against the agency brought by news organization the Broward Bulldog and its editor, Dan Christensen, it was asserted that only a limited number of documents pertaining to the Saudi family and Sarasota existed.

Attorney Dexter Lee also appeared to countermand a federal judge's order that all known materials -- now 27 boxes of documents -- be delivered to the federal court in Fort Lauderdale by last Friday.

Judge William Zloch ordered the FBI to deliver the documents after granting the agency an extension to comply with a ruling to turn over all relevant materials in the case.

But the Justice Department waited until Wednesday -- five days after that deadline -- to inform the Bulldog's attorney that it intends to deliver the documents to the judge piecemeal, and only after a secure safe is installed in the judge's chambers.

The Bulldog's attorney, Tom Julin, said he received word from Lee via email.

"One can imagine many scenarios that would pose difficulties," said Julin. "They are giving him a safe that only holds four boxes. What they are saying is, once he has notified us that he has reviewed the four, we will take those back and give him a fresh four."

In joining the case in mid-March, the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald cited articles written about the family and their home in the Prestancia neighborhood of Sarasota, and how additional information about them would serve the public interest.

To date, the FBI has turned over 35 pages of heavily redacted documents in the lawsuit -- out of tens of thousands of pages it acknowledges were part of its Florida inquiry into the 9/11 attacks.

On April 18, the agency turned over another 27 pages for the judge alone to view -- documents that were determined by the FBI to be exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests and the Bulldog lawsuit.

Many of the documents are thought to contain information about the Prestancia home, which was then owned by Saudi businessman Esam Ghazzawi and his wife, Deborah.

Ghazzawi is known to have connections to the Saudi royal family.

For the six years before 9/11, the home was occupied by their son-in-law, Abdulaziz Al-Hijji, and their daughter, Anoud.

The Al-Hijjis came to the FBI's attention after the couple returned abruptly to Saudi Arabia two weeks before the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., leaving behind clothes, food, children's toys and cars.

Federal agents also linked phone calls from the Prestancia home -- some dating back a year before the attacks -- to known 9/11 suspects, the Bulldog has reported.

The calls were made to, or received from, alleged terrorist ringleader Mohammed Atta and 11 other terrorist suspects, the Bulldog reported.

Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi had learned to fly at the former Huffman Aviation flight school at the Venice Municipal Airport.

Terrorist Ziad Jarrah also took flying lessons nearby, at the Florida Flight Training school.

Al-Hijji family members have denied any relationship to the terrorists.

[Gold9472]

Keeping the FBI honest
Judge wisely cautious about documents on Sarasota Saudi family

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20140501/OPINION/305019996/-1/sports03?Title=Keeping-the-FBI-honest

Published: Thursday, May 1, 2014 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 30, 2014 at 6:34 p.m.

A federal judge recently gave the FBI more time to submit records related to a Saudi family's mysterious departure from Sarasota two weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But, to his credit, Judge William Zloch did not cut the agency any slack.

Zloch, a district the Southern District judge denied the FBI's request to turn over records only in their electronic form.

The Southern District judge preserved his order that the FBI produce, for his inspection, records in a digitized, searchable format. He also demanded that the agency submit, for the court's review, "hard copies" of the documents.

Good, sharp decision.

The FBI had proposed, according to Herald-Tribune reporter Michael Pollick, to send the hard-copy records to an unidentified location in Virginia for transformation into a digital format. However, Zloch wisely required the agency to provide him copies of the originals -- perhaps, we suspect, to ensure that all of them are included in the digitized format.

In other words, the judge took a prudent step to ensure that records -- which he previously deemed "incomplete" -- didn't become even less complete in digital format.

Records with 'gaps'
According to the court's docket, the FBI delivered 27 pages of records, in hard-copy form, on April 28. The FBI has until Friday to provide the digitized versions.

After the records are received by the court, Zloch will review them privately to determine if they are exempt, by law, from public disclosure.

The judge's skepticism of the FBI's willingness to comply with his orders and his insistence that the agency turn over records in multiple forms is warranted. As we noted in an earlier editorial, Zloch determined that the FBI previously:

• Provided records with "apparent" and unexplained chronological "gaps."

• Presented to the court documents that "seem incomplete."

• Submitted "summary documents" that "do in fact seem to contradict each other."

Zloch has steadily sought to require the FBI to adequately search for, find and release to the court documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

In September 2011, two independent reporters writing for BrowardBulldog.org wrote that a family from Saudi Arabia, who lived in Sarasota County's prestigious Prestancia development prior to September 2001, had connections with individuals associated with the Sept. 11 terrorists.

The report, reprinted three years ago by the Herald-Tribune, cited documents showing phone calls to the house were made by hijackers who trained in Venice to fly airplanes.

The report also said the family was visited by people using a car licensed to Mohammed Atta -- who crashed the first plane into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

Agency's credibility in question
Judge Zloch, a Reagan appointee, has repeatedly ruled that the FBI is not complying with the Freedom of Information Act. The "gaps and consistencies" in documents provided to the court "underscore the need for a more thorough search," Zloch wrote in an order issued April 18.

The FBI has maintained that the family was not "related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot." Yet neither the FBI nor anyone else has explained why the family, closely related to a prominent Saudi financier, abruptly left its Prestancia home two weeks before 9/11 -- leaving clothes in closets, food in the refrigerator and three cars in the driveway and garage.

The agency's credibility in this matter is not helped by the fact that its investigation of the family was not reported to Congress or mentioned in the independent 9/11 Commission report.

It can be said that the Herald-Tribune has a dog in this hunt. Halifax Media Holdings, which includes the Herald-Tribune, and the Miami Herald have filed "friend of the court" briefs in support of the plaintiffs.

Zloch has emphasized that the efficacy of the investigation is not the matter before his court. The focus is, he wrote, on whether the FBI has submitted the documents required by federal law.

We'll soon learn, based on Zloch's actions so far, whether the FBI considers itself above -- or subject to -- the law.

[Gold9472]

Documents cite ‘many connections’ between 9/11 figures, Florida family

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/09/4108305/documents-cite-many-connections.html?fb_action_ids=10152508730337122&fb_action_types=og.likes

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers
BrowardBulldog.org

The Justice Department Friday made public four new, heavily censored documents confirming that by 2002 the FBI had found “many connections” between 9/11 terrorist figures and the Florida family of “an allegedly wealthy international businessman” with ties to the Saudi Royal family.

“On or about 8/27/01 his family fled their house in Sarasota leaving behind valuable items in a manner indicating they left quickly without prior preparation,” says an FBI “case narrative” written on April 16, 2002.

The name of the international businessman, Esam Ghazzawi, is blanked out in the narrative. Ghazzawi’s name, however, is included on another page — an FBI form that accompanied a letter acquired by FBI agents in Tampa as “evidence” in July 2002. Details about the letter were not released.

The release of Ghazzawi’s name is the first time the government has confirmed Ghazzawi’s involvement in the FBI investigation that lasted until at least 2004, yet was never disclosed to the 9/11 Commission or congressional investigators.

Ghazzawi, advisor to a senior Saudi prince, owned the upscale south Sarasota home where his daughter, Anoud, and her husband, Abdulaziz al-Hijji lived prior to 9/11. Law enforcement sources have said that after 9/11 investigators found evidence — telephone records and photographs of license tags and security gate log books — showing that hijack pilot Mohamed Atta, former Broward resident and fugitive al Qaeda leader Adnan Shukrijumah and other terror suspects had visited the home. The home is about 10 miles from the Venice airport, where Atta and the two other hijack pilots trained.

The four pages were released amid ongoing Freedom of Information litigation brought by BrowardBulldog.org after the FBI declined to release any records about the matter.

In April, Fort Lauderdale U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch ordered the FBI to conduct a thorough search of its records to identify documents about the once-secret probe. The judge said the Justice Department had failed to convince him that the FBI’s prior searches had been adequate.

With Friday’s action, a total of 39 pages have been released since the lawsuit was filed in September 2012. That includes four pages that were censored in their entirety.

The FBI withheld certain information from the just-released documents, saying disclosure would constitute “an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” or reveal techniques and procedures of law enforcement.

The four pages released Friday were all declassified shortly before their release.

FBI records chief David M. Hardy said in a declaration under oath that the bureau has processed the Tampa field office’s complete “sub file” on 9/11 and is in the process of turning it over to the judge as ordered. Hardy said the file consists of 80,266 pages, divided into 411 “individual documents sections,” burned onto three CDs in a searchable format.

The documents, and parallel hard copies, were provided for Judge Zloch’s private inspection. He will then decide whether any of those documents are releasable under the Freedom of Information Act.

[Gold9472]

Judge peruses Southwest Florida's 9/11 secrets

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20140517/ARTICLE/140519708?p=1&tc=pg

By Michael Pollick
michael.pollick@heraldtribune.com
Published: Saturday, May 17, 2014 at 6:04 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, May 17, 2014 at 6:04 p.m.

The FBI is so concerned about keeping “Secret” 9/11 documents just that — a tighly held secret —that it pushed last month to have a special safe installed in a federal judge’s chambers.

The agency pressed for U.S. District Court Judge William Zloch to install the special vault to keep some delicate materials under wraps: the 80,266 pages of investigative material into a Saudi family that left Sarasota abruptly before 9/11.

The vault idea was a step beyond the already-tight security at the Tampa federal courthouse.

The FBI’s Tampa field office had stamped the documents — supposedly that office’s entire file of investigations into the terror attacks — as classified and “Secret” shortly after its investigation concluded.

“The file itself, as received, was classified at the ‘Secret’ level as it contains classified material at the ‘Secret’ level interspersed throughout,” David M. Hardy, an FBI section chief in charge of records management in Winchester, Virginia, wrote to the judge on May 9.

The Fort Lauderdale news organization Broward Bulldog has been battling the FBI and the Justice Department in federal court to get access to the documents on that Sarasota family, along with materials on related investigations.

The Bulldog has been joined by both the Herald-Tribune and the Miami Herald as so-called “friends of the court.” The two papers have emphasized that there is a compelling public interest in gaining more clarity on exactly what federal investigators discovered in Southwest Florida. The region was, among other things, the site of flight training by 9/11 hijackers.

Underlying the delivery of the documents and the supposed need for a vault to keep them secure is a larger issue about the classification of the material itself: Who can do that, and when?

“One of my concerns about this whole process is how opaque it is,” Bob Graham, a onetime senator, told the Herald-Tribune this past week.

“My experience has been that often classification has more to do with covering up mistakes and avoiding embarrassment than it does with any reasonable definition of national security,” said Graham, who co-chaired a congressional committee that independently investigated the terror attacks.

“Having seen some of the documents now being withheld, I would state with high confidence that they are more likely to have been withheld because of embarrassment at agency actions, rather than any reasonable standard of national security.”

The current system for classifying material was established in 2009 under Executive Order 13526 by President Barack Obama.

It supplanted a series of earlier executive orders on the same topic governing how material can be tagged as secret.

There are a handful of grounds on which the government can classify a document as a matter of national security: by claiming pages contain military plans, foreign government information or “scientific, technological or economic matters relating to national security.”

In the case of the Saudi family and the subsequent FBI inquiry, the agency has said the material relates to “intelligence activities, sources, or methods, or cryptology.”

That could mean the FBI has, or had, an agent or a confidential informant who requires protection, or it could refer to the bureau’s system for detecting patterns in telephone calls.

In the case of the Saudi family, it is believed the 9/11 terrorists phoned the residents of the Sarasota house, located in the Prestancia neighborhood, in the months leading up to 9/11.

The executive order provides the government with immense power to classify what it deems secret without review.

“Typically the ones who have the authority are the ones who have the information,” said Sheryl Shenberger, director of National Archives National Declassification Center in College Park, Maryland.

But there is room for the judiciary to move, too.

“Federal judges do have the authority to order declassification of government documents, but they rarely do it,” said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

“Usually they just order new reviews, and almost every time there is a new review, plaintiffs get additional documents.”

The lawsuit involving the FBI and the Saudi family began in 2012, after the Bulldog’s Dan Christensen published a story tied to the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

The bureau and Justice denied the validity of the story, which asserted that the Saudi family in Prestancia was connected to at least three of the terrorists who had trained at Venice Airport to fly planes into the World Trade Center and other targets.

The Bulldog countered with a Freedom of Information Act request for documents from the agency’s analysis. After being told that no documents existed that could be released, the news organization sued the FBI and the Justice Department.

In April, Judge Zloch ordered the FBI to deliver paper files and digital copies to his chambers, to determine if the FBI was satisfying Freedom of Information Act requests made by the Broward Bulldog.

At issue was whether the three 9/11 terrorists who’d received flight training at Venice Airport had a U.S. support system that might have included the Saudi family.

In leaving Sarasota two weeks before the attacks, the family left food in the refrigerator, cars in the driveway, clothes in closets and an open, empty safe.

“In order for the Court to conduct its review in this case, it must know whether such documents exist,” Zloch wrote in an April 4 order.

But Hardy, the FBI’s records section chief, cautioned that much of the material presented to the judge could be classified — based on the agency’s determination.

Personnel in Virginia “took the file as they found it and did not undertake a process to segregate unclassified material from classified material,” Hardy wrote to the judge.

Instead, they divided the pages into 411 document sections. At the beginning of each section they prepared a set of cover sheets to tell the judge which parts were “Secret” and which were unclassified.

Most of the files likely were determined to be classified immediately in the wake of the attacks and subsequent investigation, analysts note. But at least one file that had been deemed classified was declassified in March 2013, five months after the FOIA suit began.

Dated April 16, 2002, the document is marked SECRET at the top, followed by the name of the agency.

At the bottom is a separate coding system that explains when and why it was determined that the document should remain SECRET.

DATE: 03-14-2013

REASON: 1.4(C)

DECLASSIFY ON: 03-14-2038

The 1.4(C) refers to an agency code that pertains to cryptology and other sensitive areas related to national security.

The document was significant, though, because it contradicted the FBI’s assertion that the Bulldog’s Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit was baseless.

“Further investigation of the (redacted) family revealed many connections between the (redacted) and individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 09/11/2001,” the document read.

Another declassified document refers to an agency file on Esam Ghazzawi — a highly influential Saudi businessman who owned the Prestancia house. For about six years prior to 9/11, the home had been occupied by his daughter and her husband, Abdulazziz Al-Hijji.

The Al-Hijjis have vehemently denied any involvement with the terrorists.

The Bulldog’s attorney says the murky nature of the classified documents only adds to the intrigue.

“We don’t understand who is classifying these documents,” said Tom Julin, the Miami lawyer representing the Bulldog and Christensen.

“There is no indication of the reason they were classified. It calls into question whether they were properly classified in the first instance.”

Whether the documents were classified properly is critical, because it would give the judge room to ask for further review.

So while Judge Zloch might not declassify “Secret” documents, he could rule the FBI’s decision to classify some documents in error and find that an exemption to keep documents from the public does not apply.

“ ‘I really want the document’ is not a compelling argument,” said Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on National Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

“But it looks like the plaintiffs were successful in persuading the judge that he needed to look more closely at the government’s position,” Aftergood said. “And that is already a huge breakthrough.”

[Gold9472]

Down the rabbit hole with the FBI: Saying 9/11 documents don’t exist when they do

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/06/down-the-rabbit-hole-with-the-fbi-saying-911-documents-dont-exist-when-they-do/

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers, BrowardBulldog.org 9-11

In its only public statements about the Sarasota Saudis who suspiciously quit their home in a gated community in haste two weeks before 9/11 – leaving behind numerous personal belongings — the FBI has said it investigated, but found no connection to the 9/11 plot.

Nearly three years later, however, the FBI has yet to back up its assertions by producing investigative reports written by agents who conducted the probe.

In fact, the few FBI records that have been released in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed in 2012 by BrowardBulldog.org flatly contradict the Bureau’s public statements. They say the Sarasota Saudis had “many connections” to 9/11 terrorist figures – a determination in line with the recollections of a counterterrorism officer with knowledge of the investigation.

The officer, who has asked not to be named, said authorities found gatehouse vehicle and telephone records indicating that Mohamed Atta and other terrorist figures visited the luxury home of Abdulaziz and Anoud al-Hijji.

KEY RECORDS HAVEN’T SURFACED
The gatehouse and phone records haven’t surfaced – despite the completion this month of a court-ordered search of more than 80,000 pages of FBI 9/11 records. Neither have specific FBI documents mentioned in the handful of FBI records that have trickled out to date, or others that former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, co-chair of Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, says he was shown by the FBI after the story broke in 2011.

What’s going on?

The answer appears to lie in an obscure provision of federal law enacted decades ago that allows the FBI to say that certain sensitive records don’t exist when they actually do exist.

“That sounds like the most likely thing because you know beyond any question that records were created and they’re not showing up where they should show up,” said Washington, D.C. attorney James Lesar, a veteran FOIA litigator. “They’ve simply kept them secret.”

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act into law in 1966. It provides access to federal agency records, but there are nine exemptions, including personal privacy, which agencies can invoke to withhold records from public inspection. There are also three less common “exclusions” used to suppress information about sensitive law enforcement and national security matters.

A 1986 amendment to the act incorporated an exclusion that allows the FBI to treat classified records about foreign intelligence or counterintelligence, or international terrorism as “not subject to the requirements” of the act.

Justice Department guidelines established by Reagan-era Attorney General Edwin Meese say that means that those who request excluded records can be told, “there exist no records responsive to your FOIA request.”

NO LYING?
“The approach has never involved ‘lying,’ as some have suggested,” Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich told Sen. Charles Grassley, the ranking Iowa Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee in a Nov. 2011 letter. “The logic is simple: When a citizen makes a request pursuant to the FOIA, either implicit or explicit in the request is that it seeks records that are subject to the FOIA; where…records that exist are not subject to the FOIA, the statement “there exist no records responsive to your FOIA request” is wholly accurate.”

Still, such answers can “mislead,” as California U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney observed in a 2011 ruling in another FOIA case.

When the law is invoked “the government will routinely submit an in camera declaration addressing that claim, one way or the other,” the guidelines say. “In camera” is legal terminology for privately in the judge’s chambers.

That appears to be what happened in federal court in Fort Lauderdale this month when the FBI filed Records Section Chief David Hardy’s fourth declaration in BrowardBulldog.org’s FOIA case. A footnote in the declaration says the FBI simultaneously filed Hardy’s fifth declaration in camera and ex parte (without providing a copy to the news organization).

Miami attorney Thomas Julin represents BrowardBulldog.org.

“We intend to challenge the FBI’s claim that it has no records or that they can be treated as not subject to the Freedom of Information Act,” said Julin. “The judge can make a determination that these records should be open to the American public and I would expect him to do that if he finds that disclosure of these records would not endanger national security.

“We have every reason to believe that this is the case since Sen. Graham has been espousing the view that the existence of a Saudi network in the United States is something that should be disclosed to the American people and would not endanger the United States,” Julin said. Former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fl., chaired Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch continues his review of Hardy’s latest declarations and more than 80,000 pages of un-redacted 9/11 documents the FBI has produced for his private inspection.

QUESTIONS ABOUT AN FBI AGENT’S TRANSFER
FBI records released to date and the observations of the counterterrorism officer appear to fit the FOIA exemption scenario.

The FBI agent in charge of the Sarasota Saudi investigation was Gregory Sheffield. According to the counterterrorism officer, Sheffield wrote two released 2002 reports, including one citing connections between al-Hijji and others tied to the attacks.

On July 22, 2002, Sheffield interviewed al-Hijji’s wife, Anoud, and mother-in-law Deborah Ghazzawi “regarding possible terrorist activity.” The women, who had returned briefly to the home, denied fleeing before 9/11 or knowing certain unnamed individuals, according to the reports.

Soon after, according to the counterterrorism officer, Sheffield was transferred to the FBI’s foreign counterintelligence (FCI) division and left the area. The officer said the transfer suggested Sheffield may have recruited an al-Hijji family member as a source of information.

“I believe that the transfer of Sheffield to the FCI side of the Bureau speaks volumes as to the lack of information available. If he was able to recruit a family member then all information up to that point will be off limits under the National Security Act,” the counterintelligence officer said in an interview last year.

[Gold9472]

New FBI records: A chilling find in a dumpster; 9/11 “person of interest” re-enters U.S.

http://www.browardbulldog.org/2014/07/new-fbi-records-a-chilling-find-in-a-dumpster-911-person-of-interest-re-enters-u-s/

July 1, 2014 at 5:01 am

Freshly released, but heavily-censored FBI documents include tantalizing new information about events connected to the Sarasota Saudis who moved suddenly out of their home, leaving behind clothing, jewelry and cars, about two weeks before the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The documents were released to BrowardBulldog.org Monday amid ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation. The news organization sued in 2012 after being denied access to the Bureau’s file on a once secret investigation focusing on Abdulaziz al-Hijji, his wife, Anoud and her father Esam Ghazzawi, an advisor to a Saudi prince.

An FBI letter accompanying the documents, the fourth batch to be released since the suit was filed, cites national security and other reasons to justify why certain information was withheld. The letter does not explain why the documents were not previously acknowledged to exist.

One FBI report, dated April 3, 2002 recounts a chilling discovery made by the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office on Halloween 2001.

Deputies were called after a man with a Tunisian passport was observed disposing of items in a dumpster behind a storage facility he’d rented in Bradenton.

The man’s name is blanked out, but the report says authorities who searched the dumpster found “a self-printed manual on terrorism and Jihad, a map of the inside of an unnamed airport, a rudimentary last will and testament, a weight to fuel ratio calculation for a Cessna 172 aircraft, flight training information from the Flight Training Center in Venice and printed maps of Publix shopping centers in Tampa Bay.”

The Flight Training Center is where 9/11 hijack pilot Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of United Flight 93 when it crashed in Shanksville, Pa, took flying lessons.

The three paragraphs that follow are completely blanked out. The reasons cited include information “specifically authorized under criteria established by (presidential) executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy.”

The documents were located via court-ordered text searches using the names of the al-Hijjis and Ghazzawi. U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch is currently reviewing more than 80,000 pages of 9/11 records.

Miami First Amendment attorney Thomas Julin represents BrowardBulldog.org.

“This release suggests that the FBI has covered up information that is vitally important to public safety,” said Julin. “It’s startling that after initially denying they had any documents they continue to find new documents as the weeks and months roll by. Each new batch suggests there are many, many more documents.”

“There needs to be a full scale explanation of what’s going on here,” said Julin.

The report of the Bradenton incident includes information about the al-Hijjis. The excisions, however, keep secret how what happened there ties back to the al-Hijjis.

The same is true about another FBI document dated Feb. 2, 2012.

On that day, FBI offices in Tampa and Charlotte received information from Washington stamped “secret” stating that a “person of interest” in the FBI’s massive 9/11 investigation had returned to the United States.

The person, whose name is redacted, was reported to be “traveling to Texas and LA for business/tourism.” The person apparently told authorities upon entering the country that he could be reached in Charlotte. He provided a phone number “associated with furniture manufacturers in North Carolina,” the report says.

Details about that were blanked out. But the report also says, “Tampa is notified that a person of interest to Tampa regarding the PENTTBOMB investigation has a valid visa for re-entry into the U.S.” PENTTBOMB is the FBI’s code name for its 9/11 investigation.

In all, the FBI released 11 pages Monday. They contain statements reiterating that the al-Hijjis had departed the U.S. in haste shortly before 9/11 and that “further investigation” had “revealed many connections” between them and persons associated with “attacks on 9/11/2001.”

Those statements flatly contradict the FBI’s public statements that agents found no connection between the al-Hijjis and the 9/11 plot.

Yet they dovetail with the account of a counterintelligence source who has said investigators in 2001 found evidence – phone records and photographs of license plates snapped at the entrance to the al-Hijji’s Sarasota area neighborhood – that showed Mohamed Atta, other hijackers and former Broward resident and current al Qaeda fugitive Adnan Shukrijumah had visited the al-Hijji’s home.

None of that information, or even the fact that an investigation in Sarasota took place was disclosed by the FBI to Congress’s Joint Inquiry into the attacks or the 9/11 Commission, according to former Florida Sen. Bob Graham. Graham co-chaired the joint inquiry.

The documents, while stamped secret, are marked as having been formally classified earlier this month in accordance with the National Security Information Security Classification. The parts of the documents that were not released are to be kept secret until 2039.

Among other things, the government asserted that classification is necessary because the censored information pertains to foreign relations or foreign activities, including confidential sources.

“This could be about information considered embarrassing to Saudi Arabia,” said Julin. Fifteen of the 19 suicide hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The April 2002 FBI report contains additional new information, though the deletions make its full meaning difficult to discern.

It says the Tampa FBI office “has determined that (blank) is an antagonist of the United States of America. (Blank) resides in Jerusalem. (Blank) allegedly has held regularly and recurring meetings at his residence to denounce and criticize the United States of America and its policies. (Blank) is allegedly an international businessman with great wealth.”

In November 2001, (blank) visited the United States for the first time. He traveled to Sarasota, Florida, opened a bank account and made initial queries into the purchase of property in south central Florida. (Blank) intends to establish a Muslim compound in Central Florida. (Blank) revealed that (blank) is fearful of (blank) and fears that (blank) intends to begin offensive operations against the United States if he is able to purchase property and establish a Muslim compound in Central Florida.”

Three follow-up lines are blanked out.

[Gold9472]

Al-Qaida figure’s death complicates Sarasota-linked 9/11 probe

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article4395183.html

By Dan Christensen
12/09/2014 9:42 PM

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article4395183.html#storylink=cpy

A top al-Qaida operative shot dead in a weekend raid by the Pakistan army was a key figure in the FBI’s Sarasota investigation of a Saudi couple who declassified FBI documents say had “many connections” to the 9/11 hijackers.

Adnan G. El Shukrijumah, a former Miramar resident who attended Broward College in the late 1990s, was killed early Saturday in a helicopter gunship assault on a hideout in a mountainous region of northwest Pakistan near Afghanistan.

Described by authorities as al-Qaida’s chief of global operations, Saudi-born Shukrijumah was a fugitive from a 2010 federal indictment in New York for his alleged role in plots to attack New York City’s subway system and London’s Underground. The charges included conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

At the time of his death, the United States was offering a $5 million reward for information leading to Shukrijumah’s capture.

BrowardBulldog.org, working with Irish journalists and authors Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, first reported in September 2011 that Shukrijumah was among a number of terrorist figures identified by the FBI as having visited the Sarasota area home of Abdulazziz alHijji and his wife, Anoud, prior to Sept. 11, 2001, according to a law enforcement source.

They included 9/11 hijack pilots Mohamed Atta and Marwan alShehhi, who were at the controls of the passenger jets that slammed into the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center, and Ziad Jarrrah, who crashed another jetliner into a Pennsylvania field. Also allegedly at the residence was Walid alShehri, who flew with Atta and three other hijackers aboard American Airlines Flight 11.

TIE TO ROYALS
The Hijjis came under FBI scrutiny after neighbors had reported that the family abruptly moved out of their home under suspicious circumstances about two weeks before the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The owner of the home at 4224 Escondito Circle was Anoud alHijji’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, an advisor to a member of the Saudi royal family.

The existence of the FBI’s investigation of the Hijjis was never disclosed to Congress or the 9/11 Commission, according to former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, co-chairman of Congress’ Joint Inquiry into the attacks.

When the matter finally became public in 2011, FBI officials in Tampa and Miami acknowledged the investigation, but said it had turned up no connection to 9/11 — statements later contradicted by a handful of FBI records made public in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by BrowardBulldog.org.

A Fort Lauderdale federal judge is currently reviewing for possible public release more than 80,000 additional pages of classified 9/11 records he ordered the FBI to produce for his inspection last spring.

Graham said Monday that Shukrijumah’s death forecloses one avenue for learning more about what went on in Sarasota prior to 9/11.

“This is another price we’re paying by delaying full disclosure of what happened before and after 9/11,” Graham said.

While the 9/11 Commission found nothing to firmly connect Shukrijumah to the Sept. 11 plot, it did note he was a “well-connected al-Qaida operative” known as “Jafar the Pilot” and that he apparently accompanied Atta on a May 2, 2001, visit to the Miami District Immigration Office. Also present that day was a third man, who the commission concluded was United 93 hijack pilot Jarrah, for whom Atta was seeking a visa extension.

‘75 PERCENT SURE’
An immigration inspector who dealt with the trio readily remembered Atta when interviewed later. And after looking at Shukrijumah’s Most Wanted photo, she told authorities that “she was ‘75 percent sure’ that she could identify the man who was with Atta as Shukrijumah.”

A report by the commission staff, titled “9/11 and Terrorist Travel,” also noted that “Shukrijumah’s father is a well-known imam in South Florida, having testified on behalf of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman during his trial for the conspiracy to destroy New York landmarks” in 1995. Rahman, known as the “blind sheikh,” is serving a life sentence.

Gulshair Shukrijumah, once a prayer leader at a Brooklyn mosque where Rahman preached, moved his family to Miramar in the mid-1990s and became a religious leader at the Masjid al Hijra. He died in 2004.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement records obtained by BrowardBulldog.org using Florida’s public records law also tie Shukrijumah to Hijji and pre-9/11 events in Sarasota.

Wissam Hammoud, identified by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons as an “international terrorist associate,” told an FBI agent and a Sarasota County Sheriff’s detective in April 2004 that Hijji introduced him to his “friend” Shukrijumah at a soccer game at a Sarasota mosque in 2000 or 2001.

Hammoud also told the agents that Hijji considered Osama bin Laden a “hero” and may have known some of the 9/11 hijackers, the records say.

Hammoud is currently serving 21 years in prison after his 2005 guilty plea in Tampa to federal weapons violations and attempting to kill a federal agent and a witness. He reaffirmed his previous statements to the FBI in 2012 interviews. His wife and sister-in-law also corroborated Hammoud’s account.

Hijji, who in 2012 lived in London where he worked for Aramco Overseas — the European subsidiary of Saudi Arabia’s state oil company — told the Daily Telegraph then that Hammoud was his friend, but strongly denied any involvement in the 9/11 plot.

“I have neither relation nor association with any of those bad people/criminals and the awful crime they did. 9/11 is a crime against the USA and all humankind, and I’m very saddened and oppressed by these false allegations,” Hijji said by email. “I love the USA, my kids were born there, I went to college and university there, I spent a good time of my life there and I love it.”

‘DOESN’T RING A BELL’
In a brief interview outside his office, Hijji also said he did not know Shukrijumah. “The name doesn’t ring a bell,” he said.

The FDLE previously declined to release its file on Shukrijumah, a citizen of Guyana.

Shukrijumah’s movements around the time of 9/11 are unclear. The Miami Herald reported in 2011 that the FBI said he had left the country in the weeks before 9/11. ABC News reported a decade ago that the FBI said Shukrijumah was in the United States until shortly after 9/11.

Whatever the truth, Shukrijumah appears to have quickly risen through the ranks of al-Qaida, eventually assuming a position that NBC News reported was once held by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Pakistani forces caught up with Shukrijumah early Saturday in Wazikiristan, a region that was a key Taliban stronghold in Pakistan.

A military official told the London Daily Mirror that security forces first heard that Chinese hostages were held at the location where the assault took place, learning only later about Shukrijumah’s presence and planning a larger operation.

The Mirror reported that two intelligence officers said militants opened fire on the Pakistani military and Shukrijumah was killed in the ensuing gun battle. Shukrijumah’s wife and four children were reportedly taken into custody.

One soldier was killed and another wounded, the Mirror reported.