Explore Saudi-Sarasota link

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...-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.