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Saudi Arabia Threatens To Sell Off $750 Billion In U.S. Assets If Congress Allows 9-11 Families To Sue

Abdullah_of_Saudi_ArabiaPresident_Barack_ObamaWhile the level of protection afforded Saudi Arabia in Washington is hardly a secret, the level of that support was on display this month when officials pushed the Obama Administration to release long-withheld pages from the 9-11 report, as we previously discussed. Those pages reportedly implicate Saudi Arabia in the 9-11 attacks. Saudi Arabia response with an express threat to sell off hundreds of billions of dollars of assets if Congress were to pass a bill allowing the Kingdom to be held liable for the attacks. One would think that the response would be outrage at the threat. After all, the bill would only allow citizens to sue and a bipartisan group of Senators have joined to support the 9-11 families. Saudi Arabia could still defend itself (and according to its government, vindicate itself) in a court of law. Of course, the United States has a real court system as opposed to the government controlled, Sharia “courts” used in the Kingdom to mete out medieval justice.

The Administration not only is staying silent about this insulting threat but is doing precisely what the Saudis are demanding in trying to block the bill. When push comes to shove between the victims or 9-11 and the Saudis, the choice appears clear.

So that there would be no mistake about the threat,
Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month — threatening a sudden sell-off of $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets to cripple the economy. The rationale is to avoid the assets from being frozen by American courts. Interestingly, this assumes that you are likely to be found guilty of complicity in the worst terrorist attack in United States history. What is interesting is that the use of al-Jubeir seemed calculated to maximize the threat. The same message could have been delivered through leaks that the Saudis were preparing such a selloff for strategic reasons. The open threat was a serious miscalculation by the Saudis in my view. Few Americans would take the threat as anything short of a slap in the face of the victims of 9-11 and the country as a whole.

The Obama Administration is shrugging off the insult to our legal system by a country that violates every core principle of due process and civil liberties in their own country. Instead, it is suggesting that holding Saudi Arabia liable for American deaths could put Americans at legal risk overseas. Whatever the merits of the argument against the access to the courts for these citizens (and I would be very interesting to hear them), the Administration should have delivered a clear message that we do not respond to such threats, particularly when another country is balancing American lives against foreign investments.

What do you think?

122 thoughts on “Saudi Arabia Threatens To Sell Off $750 Billion In U.S. Assets If Congress Allows 9-11 Families To Sue”

  1. There is no question that Saudi Arabia was part of the 911 conspiracy. But there’s another reason why the US Government is fearful of revealing any truth about 911. The reason is simple. The CIA, the FBI, and the US Military also played key roles in the plan. There is overwhelming evidence that many nations got wind of the 911 plan and WARNED the US. But the US Government deliberately shut down all genuine investigations for the reasons I just explained. The grand objective, the motive, is simple and clear. The 911 attacks became the pretext to engage in a pointless, useless, but hugely profitable war, and, as bonuses, they got to further erode civil rights and flood the nation with even more Muslim terrorists, to continue the cycle of terrorism-war-profits.

    Let’s look at the facts involving the many nations that warned the US Government. But note that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were not among the nations that warned the US. Why would they? Partners in crime do not warn one another about something they have planned together. They only give warnings to one another if there is some threat to carrying out their plan.

    General Warnings

    1. In late 2000, British investigators teamed up with their counterparts in the Cayman Islands and began a year long probe of three Afghan men who had entered the Cayman Islands illegally. [Miami Herald, 9/20/01, Los Angeles Times, 9/20/01] In June 2001, the Afghan men were overheard discussing hijacking attacks in New York City, and were promptly taken into custody. This information was forwarded to US intelligence [Fox News, 5/17/02]. In late August 2001, shortly before the attacks, an anonymous letter to a Cayman radio station alleged these same men were al-Qaeda agents “organizing a major terrorist act against the US via an airline or airlines.” [Miami Herald, 9/20/01, Los Angeles Times, 9/20/01, MSNBC, 9/23/01]

    2. In late July 2001, Afghanistan’s Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil learned that Osama bin Laden was planning a “huge attack” on targets inside America. The attack was imminent, and would kill thousands, he learned from the leader of the rebel Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which was closely allied with al-Qaeda at the time. Muttawakil sent an emissary to pass this information on to the US Consul General, and another US official, “possibly from the intelligence services.” Sources confirmed that this message was received, but supposedly not taken very seriously, because of “warning fatigue” arising from too many terror warnings. [Independent, 9/7/02, Reuters, 9/7/02]

    3. Also in late July 2001, the US was given a “concrete warning” from Argentina’s Jewish community. “An attack of major proportions” was planned against either the US, Argentina, or France. The information came from an unidentified intelligence agency. [Forward, 5/31/02]

    4. An undercover agent from Morocco successfully penetrated al-Qaeda. He learned that bin Laden was “very disappointed” that the 1993 bombing had not toppled the World Trade Center, and was planning “large scale operations in New York in the summer or fall of 2001.” He provided this information to the US in August 2001. [Agence France Presse, 11/22/01, International Herald Tribune, 5/21/02, London Times, 6/12/02]

    5. Hosni Mubarak, then President of Egypt, maintained that in the beginning of September 2001 Egyptian intelligence warned American officials that al-Qaeda was in the advanced stages of executing a significant operation against an American target, probably within the US. [AP, 12/7/01, New York Times, 6/4/02] He learned this information from an agent working inside al-Qaeda. [ABC News, 6/4/02]

    Many warnings specifically mentioned a threat coming from the air:

    1. In 1999, British intelligence gave a secret report to the US embassy. The report stated that al-Qaeda had plans to use “commercial aircraft” in “unconventional ways,”“possibly as flying bombs.” [Sunday Times, 6/9/02] On July 16, 2001, British intelligence passed a message to the US that al-Qaeda was in “the final stages” of preparing a terrorist attack in Western countries. [London Times, 6/14/02] In early August, the British gave another warning, telling the US to expect multiple airline hijackings from al-Qaeda. This warning was included in Bush’s briefing on August 6, 2001. [Sunday Herald, 5/19/02]

    2. In June 2001, German intelligence warned the US, Britain, and Israel that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack “American and Israeli symbols which stand out.” Within the American intelligence community, “the warnings were taken seriously and surveillance intensified” but “there was disagreement on how such terrorist attacks could be prevented.” This warning came from Echelon, a spy satellite network that is partly based in Germany. [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9/11/01, Washington Post, 9/14/01]

    3. In late July 2001, Egyptian intelligence received a report from an undercover agent in Afghanistan that “20 al-Qaeda members had slipped into the US and four of them had received flight training on Cessnas.” To the Egyptians, pilots of small planes didn’t sound terribly alarming, but they passed on the message to the CIA anyway, fully expecting Washington to request information. “The request never came.” [CBS, 10/9/02] Given that there were 19 hijackers and four pilots (who trained on Cessnas) in the 9/11 plot, one might think this would now be a big news item. But in fact, the information has only appeared as an aside in a CBS “60 Minutes” show about a different topic.

    4. In late summer 2001, Jordan intelligence intercepted a message stating that a major attack was being planned inside the US and that aircraft would be used. The code name of the operation was Big Wedding, which did in fact turn out to be the codename of the 9/11 plot. The message was passed to US intelligence through several channels. [International Herald Tribune, 5/21/02, Christian Science Monitor, 5/23/02]

    5. Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly stated that he ordered his intelligence agencies to alert the US in the summer of 2001 that suicide pilots were training for attacks on US targets. [Fox News, 5/17/02] The head of Russian intelligence also stated, “We had clearly warned them” on several occasions, but they “did not pay the necessary attention.” [Agence France-Presse, 9/16/01] The Russian newspaper Izvestia claimed that Russian intelligence agents knew the participants in the attacks, and: “More than that, Moscow warned Washington about preparation for these actions a couple of weeks before they happened.” [Izvestia, 9/12/02]

    6. Five days before 9/11, the priest Jean-Marie Benjamin was told by a Muslim at an Italian wedding of a plot to attack the US and Britain using hijacked airplanes as weapons. He wasn’t told time or place specifics. He immediately passed what he knew on to a judge and several politicians in Italy. Presumably this Muslim confided in him because Benjamin has done considerable charity work in Muslim countries and is considered “one of the West’s most knowledgeable experts on the Muslim world.” [Zenit, 9/16/01] Benjamin has not revealed who told him this information, but it could have come from a member of the al-Qaeda cell in Milan, Italy. This cell supplied forged documents for other al-Qaeda operations, and wiretaps show members of the cell were aware of the 9/11 plot. [Los Angeles Times, 5/29/02, Guardian, 5/30/02, Boston Globe, 8/4/02] For instance, in August 2000, one terrorist in Milan was recorded saying to another: “I’m studying airplanes. I hope, God willing, that I can bring you a window or a piece of an airplane the next time we see each other.” The comment was followed by laughter [Washington Post, 5/31/02]. In another case in January 2001, a terrorist asked if certain forged documents were for “the brothers going to the United States,” and was angrily rebuked by another who told him not to talk about that “very, very secret” plan. [Los Angeles Times, 5/29/02] In March 2001, the Italian government gave the US a warning based on these wiretaps. [Fox News, 5/17/02]

    Israel gave the US several specific warnings of the 9/11 attacks.

    1. In the second week of August 2001, two high-ranking agents from the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, came to Washington and warned the CIA and FBI that 50 to 200 al-Qaeda terrorists had slipped into the US and were planning an imminent “major assault on the US” aimed at a “large scale target” [Telegraph, 9/16/01, Los Angeles Times, 9/20/01, Ottawa Citizen, 9/17/01 Fox News, 5/17/02]. Near the end of August, France also gave a warning that was an “echo” of Israel’s. [Fox News, 5/17/02]

    2. In October 2002, the story broke in Europe and Israel that on August 23, 2001, the Mossad had given the CIA a list of 19 terrorists living in the US. The Mossad had said that the terrorists appeared to be planning to carry out an attack in the near future. It is unknown if these are the same 19 names as the actual hijackers, or if the number is a coincidence. However, the four names on the list that are known are names of the 9/11 hijackers: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, and Mohamed Atta. [Die Zeit, 10/1/02, Der Spiegel, 10/1/02, BBC, 10/2/02, Ha’aretz, 10/3/02] These are also probably the four most important of the hijackers (and two of the pilots). From them, there were many connections to the others. The CIA had already been monitoring three of them overseas the year before, and two, Alhazmi and Almihdhar, were put on a watch list the same day the Mossad gave this warning. [AFP, 9/22/01, Berliner Zeitung, 9/24/01, Observer, 9/30/01, New York Times, 9/21/02]

  2. pseudo-patriot, the only mounting evidence that you’ve proven is that you have your occipital parietal region inserted deep within the recesses of your own noxious nether zone. Inhale deeply. Repeat.

  3. slohrss29:
    “The impetus was there, all they did was fill out the paperwork.”

    Actually, Saddam filled out the casus belli.

    President Bush made clear, like Presidents HW Bush and Clinton did before him, that the decision was in Saddam’s hands. In order to switch off enforcement at any time from 1990 onward, let alone in Saddam’s “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441), Iraq simply only needed to comply with the UNSCR 660-series resolutions, including the Gulf War ceasefire obligations that Saddam agreed to in 1991 in order to suspend the Gulf War.

    Indeed, with Operation Desert Fox in 1998, President Clinton had determined, “Iraq has abused its final chance” and then “a change of regime in Baghdad is inevitable”. Yet, while carrying forward President Clinton’s hard line on Iraqi compliance, President Bush opted to take a step back and provide Saddam a second final chance to switch off enforcement with “full and immediate compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions with its obligations” (UNSCR 1441).

    Unfortunately, rather than accept the lifeline in his “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441), Saddam chose to reject even the 1st step (ie, a verified total declaration of Iraq’s entire WMD program) of the 1st step (ie, the ceasefire disarmament process) of the “governing standard of Iraqi compliance” (UNSCR 1441) for Iraq to switch off enforcement.

    stevegroen,

    Again, see the answers to the questions linked in my comment at April 18, 2016 at 5:11 pm.

    Actually, consistent with the 2002 AUMF, in his 05FEB03 presentation to the UN Security Council, Secretary of State Powell reiterated “serious consequences” would be triggered “if Iraq did not comply” with “its obligations, stretching back over 16 previous resolutions and 12 years”:
    “This is important day for us all as we review the situation with respect to Iraq and its disarmament obligations under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441. Last November 8, this council passed Resolution 1441 by a unanimous vote. The purpose of that resolution was to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had already been found guilty of material breach of its obligations, stretching back over 16 previous resolutions and 12 years. Resolution 1441 was not dealing with an innocent party, but a regime this council has repeatedly convicted over the years. Resolution 1441 gave Iraq one last chance, one last chance to come into compliance or to face serious consequences. No council member present in voting on that day had any illusions about the nature and intent of the resolution or what serious consequences meant if Iraq did not comply.”

    Again, the pre-war intelligence did not and could not trigger enforcement. By procedure, OIF was triggered by Iraq’s material breach of its obligations under the UNSC resolutions, including Saddam’s failure to disarm as mandated. The condition overlooked in the discourse on OIF is the intelligence could be off the mark and Saddam could be guilty of the material breach that triggered enforcement at the same time because the “the resolutions of the Council constitute the governing standard of Iraqi compliance” (UNSCR 1441), not the intelligence.

    Although predictively imprecise, the pre-war intelligence, per the normal role of intelligence and its actual role in the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement, correctly indicated the Saddam regime was engaged in proscribed armament and terrorist activity that breached the Gulf War ceasefire. The predictive imprecision of the intelligence was due to Saddam’s effective “denial and deception operations” (Iraq Survey Group), which also breached the Gulf war ceasefire. The ability of Iraqi counter-intelligence to deceive UN inspectors and adapt to Western intelligence-gathering was a known issue in the disarmament process and accounted for with Iraq’s presumption of guilt, standard of compliance, and burden of proof.

    Paul Schulte,

    Indeed, the deliberation preceding OIF wasn’t strictly necessary, which is demonstrated by that the content of the 2002 AUMF wasn’t novel, but rather reiterated and updated the standing terms of the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement. The Congressmen who had worked with Bush’s 2 immediate predecessors on the “national emergency” (HW Bush, Clinton) posed by Saddam’s noncompliance were more experienced with the issue, including the intelligence aspect, than the young President.

    Policy-wise, Bush’s case against Saddam in Saddam’s “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441) carried forward Clinton’s case against Saddam from “Iraq has abused its final chance” (Clinton, 16DEC98), including Saddam’s distinctive combined terrorism-and-WMD threat. Legally, President Clinton conveyed to President Bush the mature authority and operative procedure to enforce the UNSCR 660-series resolutions, including the precedent for military enforcement.

    Rather, working with Congress was consistent with the conscientiousness that was a hallmark of President Bush’s approach to his duties as a Commander in Chief – though to be fair, Bush carried forward the practice from HW Bush and Clinton, who also worked with Congress at each stage of the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement with Iraq as it progressed over a decade-plus to its ultimate conclusion.

  5. Pseudo-patriot, nobody with any intelligence or knowledge of the 911 crime believes any of your subhuman rubbish. Your links are all disinformation spread by the CIA, who has infiltrated the 911 pseudo-:truth” movement to make it serve its purposes. You are just a dupe, dope, or shill for them.

  7. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.

    So, pretty much everyone agrees that we can’t trust our government’s honesty and allegiance because of how it handled the 9/11 commission redacted pages, and its support of savage regimes like the UAE.

    But a surprising number of people want to hand over more control to the government in the form of socialized medicine, a socialist presidential nominee, and further government encroachment.

    Does the government inexplicably work in its own interests instead of its citizens in only one aspect? Curious.

    ????

    1. Smarty M.: Handing over healthcare to government and a so-called socialist candidate are not good analogies because it is the private sector that starts all of our wars including the retribution that resulted in 911.

      Let’s hand it over all over to Jesus Cruz, Payday Clinton, Donald “I know What to Do” Drumpf, or John “I don’t think there is any long-term permanent peace solution [in Israel], and I think pursuing that is the wrong thing to do” Kasich. Any of these folks is a much better choice because they’ll keep sending kids to war while they’re busy making money and bombing the urine out of alleged lower-tiered human beings.

  9. Eliminating sovereign immunity would bring a string of reprisals across the globe, none of them good for the US. The Saudis selling off US based assets, meh.

  10. Let the Fed buy them back. They had no problem creating almost $30 trillion to bail out the banks to big to fail or jail, so another $750 billion is chump change to them.
    Oops! The Fed is a part of the global corporate elite fascist oligarchy. It won’t happen until the people storm the gate with pitchforks and torches.

    By the way, the Saudis were asked to participate in the 9/11 false flag operation, that also included Dubya and the rest of the Nazi Bush family, dick Cheney, the Carlyle Group, Donald Rumpsfeld, and others. They are the most dangerous domestic terrorists in the history of the US, and no one is doing a thing to see that they are prosecuted. Remember, there is no statue of limitations for treason.

  14. slohrss29,

    Just setting the record straight. It’s evident that stevegroen somehow fundamentally misunderstood the grounds for the Iraq intervention despite that the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement versus the Saddam regime’s breach of ceasefire was headline-news current event for over a decade leading up to Saddam’s “final opportunity to comply” (UNSCR 1441) and that the why of OIF is plainly stated in the law and policy of the Gulf War ceasefire enforcement.

    1. Eric – many people do not know that the Gulf War (parts I and II) fall under the same UN directives. Hence, they think at least part II was an illegal war. What they don’t realize is that there was just a ceasefire, no peace talks, no peace treaty. So, part II is a re-engagement of hostilities from part I.

    2. Eric: Apparently, for no good reason, Congress spent long hours debating evidence for the WMD allegations and Colin Powell spoke of it persuasively at the UN in arguing a basis to sanction what everyone but you and Paul call the 2003 Iraq War.

      1. stevegroen – Congress spends long hours debating all sorts of s**t. You can call them sanitation engineers, but they are still garbage men. Technically, it was just a continuation of the war, not a new war.

  16. O’s loyalty is to Sunni Muslim Oil billionaires residing in World Jihadi Headquarters and not to the American people. O’s permanent default: obscure the truth of things as much as possible. Change you better believe in and always for the worse.

  17. Yeah, I hope Eric is getting paid overtime for this. What else do we need to see? I am pretty sure most knew the Sauds were involved after they were the only ones to fly the next couple of days. And this deal will stand. People better wake up and realize the United States of America exists inside of I-495, and the rest of us are just squatters who get in the way. A lot of people made a lot of money (bloodmoney) on the backs of the Americans who truly wanted to serve their country and gave their lives after all that. And all the working people who died that day just because they went to work. Tells us what our government thinks of us.

    Seems General Clark was correct about his government contact who told him our plan was to roll all the governments in the ME.

    I apologize for the angry tone. I like my statements to be more analytical.

  19. So the families who have already extorted millions of dollars from the tax payers, and then manipulated people’s heartstrings to gain even more money, and of course collected insurance payouts are now looking to find more people to take money from.

    It is obscene to say the least. What happened to the families of the 9/11 victims is tragic but no more tragic than the families who died on 9/10. Those families just didn’t turn the death of a loved one into a lottery.

    As far as suing a government for the actions of some of the rulers family members or even for the actions of the government itself? I don’t think that is a precedent America would like to set. We’ve done more than our fair share of interference and attacks on foreign nations, creating and overturning them, attacks on citizens, etc, etc. Not saying what we did was wrong or right. Just pointing out that with such a precedent we could be sued for far more than what the handful of families would gain.

    1. Patriot – the Director of Studies just collects the papers. And it appears he did not do a good job at that.

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