http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/comp/articleshow?art_id=1030259305
Bush took FBI agents off Laden family trail
RASHMEE Z AHMED
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 07, 2001 09:05:48 PM ]
LONDON: America was itself to blame for the events of September 11 because
the US administration was using "kid gloves" in tracking down Osama bin
Laden and "other fanatics linked to Saudi Arabia", a special BBC
investigation has alleged in a damning indictment of the two presidents
Bush and American foreign policy.
The report, which the BBC claimed was based on a secret FBI document,
numbered 199I WF213589 and emanating out of the FBIs Washington field
office, alleged that the cynicism of the American establishment and
"connections between the CIA and Saudi Arabia and the Bush men and bin
Ladens" may have been the real cause of the deaths of thousands in the
World Trade Centre attacks.
The investigation, which featured in the BBCs leading current affairs
programme, Newsnight, said the FBI was told to "back off" investigating
one of Osama bin Ladens brothers, Abdullah, who was linked to "the
Saudi-funded World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a suspected
terrorist organisation," whose accounts have still not frozen by the US
treasury despite "being banned by Pakistan some weeks ago and India
claiming it was linked to an organisation involved in bombing in Kashmir".
Newsnight said there was a long history of "shadowy" American connections
with Saudi Arabia, not least the two presidents Bushs "business
dealings" with the bin Ladens and another more insidious link revealed by
the former head of the American visa section in Jeddah.
The official said he had been concerned about visas issued to large
numbers of "unqualified" men "with no family links or any links with
America or Saudi Arabia", only to find out later that it "was not visa
fraud" but part of a scheme in which young men "recruited by Osama bin
Laden" were being sent for "terrorist training by the CIA" after which
they were sent on to Afghanistan.
In a reiteration of a now well-known claim by one of George W Bushs former
business partners, the BBC said he made his first million 20 years ago on
the back of a company financed by Osamas elder brother, Salem. But it
added the more disturbing assertion that both presidents Bush had
lucrative stakes along with the bin Ladens in Carlyle Corporation, a small
private company which has gone on to become one of America's biggest
defence contractors. The bin Ladens sold their stake in Carlyle soon after
September 11, it said.
American politicians later told the BBC programme that they rejected the
accusation that the establishment had called the dogs of the intelligence
agencies off the bin Ladens and the royal House of Saud because of a
strategic interest in Saudi Arabia, which has the world's biggest oil
reserve.