This transcript is produced from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight. It has been checked against the programme as broadcast, however Newsnight can accept no responsibility for any factual inaccuracies. We will be happy to correct serious errors.
Has someone been sitting on the FBI? 6/11/01
The CIA and Saudi Arabia, the
Bushes and the Bin Ladens. Did
their connections cause America to
turn a blind eye to terrorism?
There is a hidden agenda at the very
highest levels of our government.
JOE TRENTO, (AUTHOR, "SECRET HISTORY
OF THE CIA"):
The sad thing is that thousands of
Americans had to die needlessly.
How can it be that the former President
of the US and the current President of
the US have business dealings with
characters that need to be investigated?
In the eight weeks
since the attacks, over 1,000
suspects and potential witnesses
have been detained. Yet, just days
after the hijackers took off from
Boston aiming for the Twin Towers,
a special charter flight out of the
same airport whisked 11 members of
Osama Bin Laden's family off to
Saudi Arabia. That did not
concern the White House.
Their official line is that the Bin
Ladens are above suspicion - apart
from Osama, the black sheep, who
they say hijacked the family name.
That's fortunate for the Bush
family and the Saudi royal
household, whose links with the Bin
Ladens could otherwise prove
embarrassing. But Newsnight has
obtained evidence that the FBI was
on the trail of other members of the]
Bin Laden family for links to
terrorist organisations before and after
This document is marked "Secret".
Case ID - 199-Eye WF 213 589. 199
is FBI code for case type. 9 would
be murder. 65 would be espionage.
199 means national security. WF
indicates Washington field office
special agents were investigating
ABL - because of it's relationship
with the World Assembly of Muslim
Youth, WAMY - a suspected terrorist
organisation. ABL is Abdullah Bin
Laden, president and treasurer of
This is the sleepy Washington
suburb of Falls Church, Virginia
where almost every home displays
the Stars and Stripes. On this
unremarkable street, at 3411
Silver Maple Place, we located the
former home of Abdullah and another
brother, Omar, also an FBI suspect.
It's conveniently close to WAMY.
The World Assembly of Muslim Youth
is in this building, in a little room in the
basement at 5613 Leesburg
Pike. And here, just a couple
blocks down the road at 5913
Leesburg, is where four
of the hijackers that attacked
New York and Washington are listed as
The US Treasury has
not frozen WAMY's assets, and when
we talked to them, they insisted
they are a charity. Yet, just weeks ago,
Pakistan expelled WAMY operatives.
And India claimed that WAMY was
funding an organisation linked to
bombings in Kashmir. And the
Philippines military has accused
WAMY of funding Muslim insurgency.
The FBI did look into WAMY, but, for
some reason, agents were pulled off
The FBI wanted to investigate these
guys. This is not something that they
didn't want to do - they wanted to,
they weren't permitted to.
The secret file fell into the hands of
national security expert, Joe Trento.
The Washington spook-tracker has
been looking into the FBI's
allegations about WAMY.
They've had connections to Osama Bin
Laden's people. They've had
connections to Muslim cultural and
financial aid groups that have
terrorist connections. They fit the
pattern of groups that the Saudi
royal family and Saudi
community of princes - the 20,000
princes - have funded who've engaged in
Now, do I know
that WAMY has done anything that's
illegal? No, I don't know that.
Do I know that as far
back as 1996 the FBI was very
concerned about this organisation?
Newsnight has uncovered a
long history of shadowy connections
between the State Department, the
CIA and the Saudis. The former head
of the American visa bureau in
Jeddah is Michael Springman.
In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly
ordered by high level State Dept
officials to issue visas to unqualified
applicants. These were, essentially, people
who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia
or to their own country. I complained
bitterly at the time there. I returned to the
US, I complained to the State Dept here,
to the General Accounting Office,
to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security
and to the Inspector General's office.
I was met with silence.
By now, Bush Sr, once CIA director,
was in the White House. Springman
was shocked to find this wasn't
visa fraud. Rather, State and CIA
were playing "the Great Game".
What I was protesting was, in reality,
an effort to bring recruits, rounded
up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for
terrorist training by the CIA. They would
then be returned to Afghanistan to fight
against the then-Soviets.
The attack on the
World Trade Center in 1993 did not shake
the State Department's faith in the Saudis,
nor did the attack on American barracks
at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia
three years later, in which 19 Americans
died. FBI agents began to feel their
investigation was being obstructed.
Would you be surprised to find out that
FBI agents are a bit frustrated that they
can't be looking into some Saudi connections?
MICHAEL WILDES, ( LAWYER)
I would never be surprised with that. They're
cut off at the hip sometimes by supervisors
or given shots that are being called from
Washington at the highest levels.
I showed lawyer Michael Wildes our
FBI documents. One of the
Khobar Towers bombers was
represented by Wildes, who thought
he had useful intelligence for the
US. He also represents a Saudi
diplomat who defected to the USA
with 14,000 documents which Wildes
claims implicates Saudi citizens in
financing terrorism and more.
Wildes met with FBI men who told
him they were not permitted to read
all the documents. Nevertheless, he
tried to give them to the agents.
"Take these with you. We're not going to
charge for the copies. Keep them. Do
something with them. Get some bad guys
with them." They refused.
In the hall of mirrors that is the
US intelligence community, Wildes,
a former US federal attorney, said
the FBI field agents wanted the
documents, but they were told to
"see no evil."
You see a difference between the
rank-and-file counter-intelligence agents,
who are regarded by some as the motor
pool of the FBI, who drive following
diplomats, and the people who are
getting the shots called at the highest
level of our government, who have a different
agenda - it's unconscionable.
State wanted to keep the pro-American
Saudi royal family in control of
the world's biggest oil spigot,
even at the price of turning a
blind eye to any terrorist
connection so long as America was
safe. In recent years, CIA
operatives had other reasons for
not exposing Saudi-backed suspects.
If you recruited somebody who is a
member of a terrorist organisation, who
happens to make his way here to the US,
and even though you're not in touch with
that person anymore but you have used
him in the past, it would be unseemly if
he were arrested by the FBI and word
got back that he'd once been on the
payroll of the CIA. What we're talking
about is blow-back. What we're talking
about is embarrassing, career-destroying
blow-back for intelligence officials.
Does the Bush family
also have to worry about political
blow-back? The younger Bush made
his first million 20 years ago with
an oil company partly funded by
Salem Bin Laden's chief US
representative. Young George also
received fees as director of a
subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation,
a little known private company
which has, in just a few years of
its founding, become one of Americas
biggest defence contractors. His
father, Bush Senior, is also
a paid advisor. And what became
embarrassing was the revelation
that the Bin Ladens held a stake in
Carlyle, sold just after September 11.
You have a key relationship
between the Saudis and the former
President of the US who happens to
be the father of the current
President of the US. And you have
all sorts of questions about where
does policy begin and where
does good business and good profits
for the company, Carlyle, end?
I received a phone call from a high-placed
member of a US intelligence agency. He
tells me that while there's always been
constraints on investigating Saudis, under
George Bush it's gotten much worse. After
the elections, the agencies were told to
"back off" investigating the Bin Ladens
and Saudi royals, and that angered
agents. I'm told that since September 11th
the policy has been reversed. FBI
headquarters told us they could not
comment on our findings. A
spokesman said: "There are lots of
things that only the intelligence
community knows and that no-one
else ought to know.