After his two-year special counsel probe, Robert Mueller declared that Russian interference in the 2016 election “deserves the attention of every American.”
But former FBI investigators say that as director of the FBI, he showed no such concern when they uncovered a systematic effort by the Saudi government to assist the 9/11 hijackers, reports investigative reporter Paul Sperry in the New York Post.
Sperry reported Mueller covered up evidence pointing back to the Saudi Embassy and Riyadh, and he may have even misled Congress about what he knew.
Some agents contend Mueller was merely following the orders of the Bush White House.
“Any letting the Saudis off the hook came from the White House,” former Agent Mark Rossini said. “I can still see that photo of Bandar and Bush enjoying cigars on the balcony of the White House two days after 9/11.”
In any case, a 9/11 survivor who now is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia, Sharon Premoli, noted that in October 2001, Mueller shut down the government’s investigation after only three weeks.
Premoli said in an affidavit in the lawsuit that Mueller then “took part in the Bush [administration’s] campaign to block, obfuscate and generally stop anything about Saudi Arabia from being released.”
Roadblocks
Citing former FBI investigators, Sperry said Mueller put roadblocks in the path of his own investigators while making it easier for Saudi suspects to escape questioning.
Then, according to the 9/11 lawsuit, he got rid of evidence his agents did manage to uncover.
Former FBI Agent Stephen Moore, who headed a 9/11 task force investigating local contacts made by two of the 15 Saudi hijackers, testified in an affidavit for the suit that “diplomatic and intelligence personnel of Saudi Arabia knowingly provided material support to the two hijackers and facilitated the 9/11 plot.”
Yet he and his team were not allowed to interview them, he said.
Former FBI Agent John Guandolo, who specialized in terrorist cases, said then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar “should have been treated as a terrorist suspect” for giving money to a woman who funded two of the 9/11 hijackers.
Instead, Mueller obliged Bandar’s request within days of the attacks to help evacuate from the United States dozens of Saudi officials, including at least one Osama bin Laden relative on the terror watch list.
Sperry reported that agents who should have been interrogating the Saudis instead acted as their bodyguards, ensuring their safe exit.
Awlaki let go
In 2002, Mueller prevented agents from arresting the infamous al-Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, turning him over to a Saudi representative and allowing him to leave the United States.
“Shortly thereafter, the Fort Hood shooting occurred and Awlaki’s fingerprints were all over that incident,” former FBI agent Michael Biasello told Sperry.
Mueller even tried to shut down a congressional investigation into the Saudi hijackers and their contacts in Los Angeles and San Diego, said former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who led the joint inquiry as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman.
Graham said in a 2017 interview with Harper’s magazine that the “strongest objections” to his staff investigators visiting FBI offices there came from Mueller himself.
Sperry noted that Mueller, along with the White House, redacted 28 pages detailing Saudi-9/11 ties from the congressional report.
Moore claims Mueller misled Congress in an October 2002 closed-door hearing.
Mueller testified he found out about Saudi-9/11 connections only as a result of the congressional investigative work.
But Moore said he gave Mueller “daily” briefings on such connections in 2001.
Mueller also testified the hijackers “contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the United States.”
But the FBI’s own case files showed they had contact with at least 14 terrorist suspects and sympathizers in the U.S. prior to 9/11.
Former FBI Agent Mark Wauck said his former boss has a long history of acting as a “servant of the deep state,” the permanent D.C. ruling class.
