Editor’s note: WorldNetDaily brings readers exclusive, up-to-the-minute global intelligence news and analysis from Geostrategy-Direct, a new online newsletter edited by veteran journalist Robert Morton and featuring the “Backgrounder” column compiled by Bill Gertz. Geostrategy-Direct is a subscription-based service produced by the publishers of WorldTribune.com, a free news service frequently linked by the editors of WorldNetDaily.
The U.S. intelligence community has excised significant details of the ties of the Saudi royal family to al-Qaida from a congressional report.
Congressional sources said the 800-page report on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was delayed for months over arguments with the Bush administration on details of Saudi involvement with al-Qaida.
The administration did not want a companion report by the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks to reopen wounds with Riyadh amid its new cooperation with the U.S.-led war against Osama bin Laden’s terror network, the sources said.
The report, which could be released this week, will discuss how the United States underestimated Saudi links to al-Qaida.
The 10-member commission reviewed the FBI failure to detect Saudi aid to two of the 19 al-Qaida hijackers in September 2001.
“There’s little doubt that much of the funding of terrorist groups – whether intentional or unintentional – is coming from Saudi sources,” John Lehman, a member of the independent commission, told a congressional hearing earlier this month.
The sources said the congressional study was completed in December 2002.
The administration kept the report quiet for six months and the commission said the White House withheld documents required for the investigation.
Last week, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., former chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said the report claims that al-Qaida has trained between 70,000 and 120,000 terrorists. Many of those trained were sent to countries around the world, including the United States.
“We have to assume that as those people were placed around the world, some were placed inside the United States,” Graham said. “Some of them are in the United States today.”
Graham, a Democratic presidential candidate from Florida, has criticized the Bush administration for delaying the release of the report. The senator said the Bush administration has approved inclusion of the al-Qaida training estimate in the final report.
“We allowed al-Qaida to regroup and regenerate,” Graham said. “They’ve conducted a series of very sophisticated operations, thus far none of it in the United States, but seven Americans were killed in Saudi Arabia.”
Over the weekend, the United States launched another effort to promote human rights in Saudi Arabia. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Lorne Craner arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday to discuss the human rights situation in the kingdom.
Subscribe to Geostrategy-Direct.
