{"id":6046,"date":"2004-06-02T10:36:26","date_gmt":"2004-06-02T17:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/06\/02\/flight-risk-3.html"},"modified":"2004-06-02T10:36:26","modified_gmt":"2004-06-02T17:36:26","slug":"flight_risk_3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/06\/02\/flight_risk_3.html","title":{"rendered":"Flight Risk"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the recurring J’accuse<\/i> rumors related to 9-11 is the idea that the White House secretly shuttled out of the US high-ranking Saudis, especially members of the bin Laden family <\/a>— as part of some secret deal with the devil. It’s supposed to be part of the charges that Michael Moore dallies with in his new Fahrenheit 911<\/i> flick.<\/p>\n

But now it seems the mystery who gave the okay for all this has been solved, without implicating the Bush or his political operatives. And it’s been solved by someone who’s been very much in the slam-the-president news of late<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Richard Clarke, who served as President Bush’s chief of counterterrorism, has claimed sole responsibility for approving flights of Saudi Arabian citizens, including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, from the United States immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
\nIn an interview with The Hill yesterday, Clarke said, “I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again.”
\nMost of the 26 passengers aboard one flight, which departed from the United States on Sept. 20, 2001, were relatives of Osama bin Laden, whom intelligence officials blamed for the attacks almost immediately after they happened.
\n[…] “It didn’t get any higher than me,” he said. “On 9-11, 9-12 and 9-13, many things didn’t get any higher than me. I decided it in consultation with the FBI.”
\n[…] Clarke said yesterday that the furor over the flights of Saudi citizens is much ado about nothing. “This is a tempest in a teapot,” he said, adding that, since the attacks, the FBI has never said that any of the passengers aboard the flight shouldn’t have been allowed to leave or were wanted for further investigation.
\nHe said that many members of the bin Laden family had been subjects of FBI surveillance for years before the attacks and were well-known to law-enforcement officials. “It’s very funny that people on the Hill are now trying to second-guess the FBI investigation.”
\nThe Sept. 11 commission released a statement last month declaring that six chartered flights that evacuated close to 140 Saudi citizens were handled properly by the Bush administration.<\/p>\n

I still expect to see this one pop up on the conspiracy theory boards, though.<\/p>\n

(via Roger L. Simon<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the recurring J’accuse rumors related to 9-11 is the idea that the White House secretly shuttled out of the US high-ranking Saudis, especially members of the bin Laden…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-11"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":17202,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/04\/24\/we-laughed-we-cried-we-solved-the-mysteries-of-the-universe.html","url_meta":{"origin":6046,"position":0},"title":"We laughed, we cried, we solved the mysteries of the universe …","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 24-Apr-10 8:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"... but, unfortunately, a technical gaffe meant that the Second Stupid Evil Bastard Podcast vanished into the aether \/ bit bucket. 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