Waxman presses for investigation of post-9/11 Bin Laden Airlift [View All]

[JackRiddler]

Another big one, goes to the heart of 9/11 questions: The White House in Sept. 2003 admitted that it authorized the Bin Laden airlift in the "no-fly" days after 9/11! How did they know to judge the guilt or innocence of those let go, in advance? Keep in mind how Pakistani taxi drivers were being rounded up wholesale at the exact same time, no appeal to back-channels!

Now Waxman is demanding an investigation!

http://thehill.com/news/021104/waxman.aspx

California Democrat Henry Waxman is calling on Attorney General John Ashcroft to reveal who cleared members of Osama bin Laden’s family and other Saudi citizens to leave the country immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Citing press accounts and congressional testimony on the issue, Waxman says the public “needs reassurance” that the Bush administration conducted an “appropriate investigation” of the Saudis that were allowed to leave.

“If such investigation did not occur, the public deserves to know why,” Waxman said. The lawmaker, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, has been increasingly active in his minority oversight role. A committee aide said Waxman decided to send the letter now “because there was never any satisfactory answer” on the questions that were out there.

Waxman asked for the identity of all Saudi citizens allowed to leave in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, specifically inquiring about Abdullah and Omar bin Laden. In his letter, he argued that bin Laden’s family members may have had both general or specific information on the al Qaeda terrorist network, including the terrorist leader’s whereabouts.

At a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing last year, Richard Clarke, who has headed the National Security Council’s counterterrorism security group, said: “What happened was that shortly after 9-11, when it became clear that most of the terrorists of 9-11 were Saudis, the Saudi government feared that there would be retribution and vigilantism in the United States against Saudis. That seemed to be a reasonable fear.”