Showing posts with label saudis. Show all posts

Friday, 27 May 2016

Saudi Press Accuses US Govt of Blowing Up World Trade Centers as Pretext to Perpetual War

In response to the U.S. Senate’s unanimous vote to allow 9/11 victims’ families to sue Saudi Arabia in federal court, a report published in the London-based Al-Hayat daily, by Saudi legal expert Katib al-Shammari, claims that the U.S. masterminded the terror attacks as a means of creating a nebulous “enemy” in order garner public support for a global war on terror.

The report by al-Shammari, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), claims that long-standing American policy is “built upon the principle of advance planning and future probabilities,” which the U.S. has now turned toward the Saudi regime after being successfully employed against first the Taliban and al-Qaeda, then Saddam Hussein and his secular Baathist controlled Iraq.

Al-Shammari claims the recent U.S. threats to “expose” documents implicating the Saudi government are simply the continuation of a U.S. policy, which he refers to as “victory by means of archive.” He highlights that during the initial invasion of Iraq, under George H.W. Bush, Saddam Hussein was left alive and in power to be used as “a bargaining chip,” but upon deciding that he was “no longer an ace up their sleeve” Washington moved to topple his government and install a U.S.-backed ruling party.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 are now the “ace up the sleeve” of the U.S. government, according to al-Shammari.

“September 11 is one of winning cards in the American archives, because all the wise people in the world who are experts on American policy and who analyze the images and the videos [of 9/11] agree unanimously that what happened in the [Twin] Towers was a purely American action, planned and carried out within the U.S. Proof of this is the sequence of continuous explosions that dramatically ripped through both buildings… Expert structural engineers demolished them with explosives, while the planes crashing [into them] only gave the green light for the detonation – they were not the reason for the collapse. But the U.S. still spreads blame in all directions. [This policy] can be dubbed ‘victory by means of archives.”

The impetus behind the attacks, writes al-Shammari, was to create “an obscure enemy – terrorism – which became what American presidents blamed for all their mistakes” and that would provide justification for any “dirty operation” in any nation.

According to al-Shammari’s report in Al-Hayat:

“On September 11, the U.S. attained several victories at the same time, that [even] the hawks [who were at that time] in the White House could not have imagined. Some of them can be enumerated as follows:

1. The U.S. created, in public opinion, an obscure enemy – terrorism – which became what American presidents blamed for all their mistakes, and also became the sole motivation for any dirty operation that American politicians and military figures desire to carry out in any country. [The] terrorism [label] was applied to Muslims, and specifically to Saudi Arabia.

2. Utilizing this incident [9/11], the U.S. launched a new age of global armament. Everyone wanted to acquire all kinds of weapons to defend themselves and at the same time battle the obscure enemy, terrorism – [even though] up to this very moment we do not know the essence of this terrorism of which the U.S. speaks, except [to say that] that it is Islamic…

3. The U.S. made the American people choose from two bad options: either live peacefully [but] remain exposed to the danger of death [by terrorism] at any moment, or starve in safety, because [the country’s budget will be spent on sending] the Marines even as far as Mars to defend you.”

The Saudi press has been in a frenzy since the unanimous Senate vote to allow for the House of Saud to be held liable in U.S. federal court for the 9/11 attacks, with the U.S. being accused of being in alliance with Iran – to press warnings that passage of the “Satanic” bill would “open the gates of hell,” as reported by Breitbart.

Al-Shammari makes extremely clear that he views the problem as the U.S. imperial machine itself, stating, “the nature of the U.S. is that it cannot exist without an enemy.”

“The nature of the U.S. is that it cannot exist without an enemy… [For example,] after a period during which it did not fight anyone [i.e. following World War II], the U.S. created a new kind of war – the Cold War… Then, when the Soviet era ended, after we Muslims helped the religions and fought Communism on their [the Americans’] behalf, they began to see Muslims as their new enemy! The U.S. saw a need for creating a new enemy – and planned, organized, and carried this out [i.e. blamed Muslims for terrorism]. This will never end until it [the U.S.] accomplishes the goals it has set for itself.”

While it seems fighting Islamic terrorism is great for increasing fear and state propaganda meant to elicit compliant civilian populations that passively accept loss of liberty for promises of greater security, the military-industrial complex needs a bigger enemy to justify their $600 billion dollar-a-year budgets, thus beginning the transition to labeling Russia/China as “aggressive Russia/China,” in an effort to begin to pivot away from one boogeyman to other, more profitable, ones.

Jay Syrmopoulos is a geopolitical analyst, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has been published on Ben Swann’s Truth in Media, Truth-Out, Raw Story, MintPress News, as well as many other sites. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.

From The Free Thought Project @ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/saudi-press-drop-truth-bomb-america-u-s-govt-911-terrorist-attacks/

After 40 Years of Secrecy, United States Admits Saudi Arabia Owns $117 Billion of Its Debt

by Amando Flavio

Many commentators describe it as one of the biggest mysteries in global finance, the amount of United States debt owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. For more than four decades, the two countries have refused to let transparency in their financial dealings prevail. They have remained in a secret partnership with each other on their finance, allowing speculation to take over.

However, the secret financial dealings between the two nations seem to have finally come to an end. The United States Treasury Department has made a surprise announcement that the oil-rich nation of Saudi Arabia has accumulated $116.8 billion of the country’s Treasuries, as of March 2016. The announcement was made on Monday 16th May.

This stunning revelation, therefore, makes Saudi Arabia the 13th largest foreign holder of United States debt. The biggest holders of United States debt are China and Japan. Each country owned over $1 trillion. As of May 2016, the United States’ total national debt stands over $19 trillion.

Since the early 1970s, the United States has refused to specifically reveal how much Saudi Arabia has accumulated with its debt. It is said Saudi’s holdings of United States debt were added together with that of other oil exporting nations, including Venezuela and Iraq, making it difficult for one to know the exact holding figure by Saudi Arabia.

CNN reports that the current disclosure of the Saudi figure was through the initiative of Bloomberg News, based on a Freedom of Information Act request. Acting on the request, the Treasury Department disclosed precise holdings by specific countries that were previously grouped together, revealing the Saudi figure. It seemed many observers were interested in knowing the Saudi figure.

However, a Treasury official told CNNMoney that the disclosure was made following a review aimed at trying to provide more “comprehensive and transparent” data for the public’s right to know.

Apart from the Saudi figure, the new Treasury report also revealed that the Cayman Islands, a country of less than 60,000 people, owned $265 billion of United States Treasuries as of March 2016. The Cayman Islands does not have a corporate tax, encouraging multinational companies to store vast sums of money in tax avoidance.

Bermuda, another popular tax haven, is also holding $63 billion of the debt. CNN reveals that previously, both the Cayman Islands and Bermuda were lumped together in a group of Caribbean banking center nations like the oil exporting nations, which included Saudi Arabia.

Despite even the disclosure of the Saudi figure, some observers are still skeptical. This is because Saudi Arabia’s central bank is reported to have listed owning $587 billion of foreign reserves as of March 2016. Observers say that the central banks park the majority of their foreign reserves in the United States Treasuries.

Some observers believe that the disclosure of the Saudi figure did not come about only through the Freedom of Information Act request by Bloomberg News.

Tensions have been building between the United States and Saudi Arabia over the past months. An anonymous source in the Treasury Department revealed that Saudi Arabia recently threatened to sell off American assets if Congress passed a bill that would allow 9/11 victims to sue foreign governments. It is said the Saudis were serious about the threat, and were making preparation to sell off those assets.

The United States has realized the level of the threat, and therefore wants to begin to transparently deal with the Saudis. The threat has also left the Obama administration in confusion. Recently, President Obama admitted publicly that if Congress passes the bill that would allow 9/11 victims to sue foreign governments, he will veto it. Obama, therefore urged Congress not to pass such a bill.

This article (After 40 Years of Secrecy, United States Admits Saudi Arabia Owns $117 Billion of Its Debt) is a free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.

From We Are Anonymous @ http://anonhq.com/40-years-secrecy-united-states-finally-admits-saudi-arabia-owns-117-billion-debt/

For more information about 9/11 see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/911

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Saturday, 23 April 2016

Hideous Despots Blackmail USA: Real Assassins Behind 9/11 Threaten West (Again)

Hideous Despots Blackmail USA

Real Assassins Behind 9/11 Threaten West (Again)

https://politicalsift.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/cu5jtpxw4aacbk9.jpg?w=599

Saudi Royals Supported Al Qaeda; Did They Finance the 9/11 Attacks? Saudi King and Princes Blackmail U.S. Government

By Eric Zuesse

Saudi Arabia, owned by the Saud family, are telling the U.S. Government they’ll wreck the U.S. economy, if a bill in the U.S. Congress that would remove the unique and exclusive immunity the royal owners of that country enjoy in the United States, against their being prosecuted for their having financed the 9/11 attacks, passes in Congress, and becomes U.S. law.

As has been well documented even in sworn U.S. court testimony, and as even the pro-Saudi former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged privately, “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” She didn’t name any of those “donors” names, but the former bagman for Osama bin Laden, who had personally collected all of the million-dollar+ donations (all in cash) to Al Qaeda, did, and he named all of the senior Saud princes and their major business-associates; and, he said, “without the money of the — of the Saudi you will have nothing.”

So, both before 9/11, and (according to Hillary Clinton) since, those were the people who were paying virtually all of the salaries of the 19 hijackers — even of the four who weren’t Saudi citizens. Here’s that part of the bagman’s testimony about how crucial those donations were:

Q: To clarify, you’re saying that the al-Qaeda members received salaries?

A: They do, absolutely.

So: being a jihadist isn’t merely a calling; it’s also a job, as is the case for the average mercenary (for whom it doesn’t also have to be a calling). The payoff for that job, during the jihadist’s life, is the pay. The bagman explained that the Saud family’s royals pay well for this service to their fundamentalist-Sunni faith. Another lifetime-payoff to the jihadists is that, in their fundamentalist-Sunni culture, the killing of ‘infidels’ is a holy duty, and they die as martyrs. Thus, the jihadist’s payoff in the (mythological) afterlife is plenty of virgins to deflower etc. But, the payers (the people who organize it, and who make it all possible) are the Saud family princes, and their business associates — and, in the case of the other jihadist organizations, is also those other Arabic royal families (the owners of Qater, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman). However, 9/11 was virtually entirely a Saudi affair, according to Al Qaeda’s bagman (who ought to know).

The report of the threat by the Saud family comes in veiled form in an April 15th news-story in The New York Times, headlined, “Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill.” It says that the Saud family’s Foreign Minister is “telling [U.S.] lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in [U.S.] treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.” The NYT says that this threat is nothing to take seriously, “But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.” While the carrying-out of this threat would be extremely damaging to the Saud family, the NYT ignores the size of the threat to the Sauds if their 9/11 immunity were removed — which could be far bigger. Consequently, this matter is actually quite a bit more than just “another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.”

Russian Television is more direct here: “Saudi Arabia appears to be blackmailing the US, saying it would sell off American assets worth a 12-digit figure sum in dollars if Congress passes a bill allowing the Saudi Government to be held responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” (The Saudi Government is owned by the Saud family; so, even that statement is actually a veiled way of referring to the possibility that members of the royal Saud family — the individuals name by the bagman — could be held responsible for 9/11.)

Even immediately in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, there had been some mentions in the U.S. press of the U.S. Government making special allowances for Saud Prince Bandar al-Saud, a close friend of the Bush family (and he was also one of the Saudi Princes mentioned specifically by the bagman), to fly out of the country to avoid being sought by prosecutors. Furthermore, Newsweek’s investigative journalist, Michael Isikoff, headlined on 12 January 2001, “The Saudi Money Trail”, and he reported statements from royal Sauds, that they didn’t really mean for their donations to be going to such a thing as this. (Perhaps those individuals didn’t, but Bandar almost certainly did, because he was the Saud Ambassador to the U.S. at the time of 9/11.) However, now that the U.S. Government is relying heavily upon Saudi money to pay for the U.S. weapons and to help to organize the operation to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria and to replace him with a fundamentalist-Sunni leader, there is renewed political pressure in the United States (from the victim-families, if no one else), for the arch-criminals behind the 9/11 attacks to be brought to American justice. After fifteen years, this process might finally start. That would be a drastic change.

Clearly, the threat from the Sauds is real, and the royal response to this bill in the U.S. Congress reflects a very great fear the owners of Saudi Arabia have, regarding the possible removal of their U.S. immunity, after 15 years.

Prosecution of those people will become gradually impossible as they die off. But a lot more time will be needed in order for all of the major funders of that attack to die natural deaths and thus become immune for a natural reason — the immunity of the grave. The U.S. Government has protected them for 15 years; but, perhaps, not forever.

To say that this threat from the Sauds is just “another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States” seems like saying that a neighbor’s threat to bomb your house would constitute just “another sign of escalating tensions” between you and your neighbor. The passing-into-law of this bill in Congress would actually constitute a change from the U.S. Government being a friend and partner of the Sauds, to becoming their enemy.

Obviously, there is little likelihood of that happening; and, on April 20th and 21st, U.S. President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with Saudi King Salman al-Saud. Without a doubt, this topic will be on the agenda, if it won’t constitute the agenda (which is allegedly to improve U.S. relations “with Arab leaders of Persian Gulf nations” — not specifically with Saudi King Salman and with his son Prince Salman).

If President Obama represents the American public, then the Sauds will have real reason to fear: the U.S. President will not seek to block passage of that bill in Congress. However, if the U.S. President represents instead the Saud family, then a deal will be reached. Whether or not the U.S. Congress will go along with it, might be another matter, but it would be highly likely, considering that the present situation has already been going on for fifteen years, and that the high-priority U.S. Government foreign-policy objective, of overthrowing Bashar al-Assad, is also at stake here, and is also strongly shared not only by the Sauds but by the members of the U.S. Congress. Furthermore, the impunity of the Saud family is taken simply as a given in Washington. And, the U.S. Government’s siding with the Sauds in their war against Shia Muslims (not onlyagainst one Shiite: Assad) goes back at least as far as 1979. (Indeed, the CIA drew up the plan in 1957 to overthrow Syria’s Ba’athist Government, but it stood unused until President Obama came into office.)

Furthermore, the U.S. Government is far more aggressive to overthrow Russia-friendly national leaders, such as Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, and Viktor Yanukovych, than it is to stop the spread of fundamentalist Sunni groups, such as Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc.; and, a strong voice for U.S. foreign policy, the Polish Government, even said, on April 15th, that as AFP headlined that day, “Russia ‘more dangerous than Islamic State’, warns Poland foreign minister”; and Russia itself is, along with Shiite Iran, the top competitor against the fundamentalist Sunni Arab royal families in global oil-and-gas export markets. So, clearly, the U.S. Government is tightly bound to the Saud family. Terrorism in Europe and America is only a secondary foreign-policy concern to America’s leaders; and the Saud family are crucial allies with the U.S. Government in regards to what are, jointly, the top concerns of both Governments.

Consequently, there is widespread expectation that some sort of deal will be reached between U.S. President Barack Obama and the Saudi leaders, King and Prince Salman, and that the Republican-led Congress will rubber-stamp it, rather than pass the proposed bill to strip the Saud family’s immunity.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

The original source of this article is Global Research @ http://www.globalresearch.ca/saudi-royals-supported-al-qaeda-saudi-king-and-princes-blackmail-u-s-government/5520496

Fahrenheit 911 – Full Documentary
(NEVER FORGET)

Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill

President Obama at a Sept. 11 ceremony in 2015. The Obama administration argues that the bill would put Americans at legal risk overseas. Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

By MARK MAZZETTI

Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom’s message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by American courts.

Several outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom’s economy. But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The administration, which argues that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas, has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.

“It’s stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens,” said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and who is part of a group of victims’ family members pushing for the legislation…

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Saudi officials have long denied that the kingdom had any role in the Sept. 11 plot, and the 9/11 Commission found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.” But critics have noted that the commission’s narrow wording left open the possibility that less senior officials or parts of the Saudi government could have played a role. Suspicions have lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot.

Those conclusions, contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly.

The dispute comes as bipartisan criticism is growing in Congress about Washington’s alliance with Saudi Arabia, for decades a crucial American ally in the Middle East and half of a partnership that once received little scrutiny from lawmakers. Last week, two senators introduced a resolution that would put restrictions on American arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which have expanded during the Obama administration.

Families of the Sept. 11 victims have used the courts to try to hold members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks and charities liable because of what the plaintiffs charged was Saudi financial support for terrorism. These efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in American courts.

The Senate bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on United States soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the Sept. 11 lawsuits.

Obama administration officials counter that weakening the sovereign immunity provisions would put the American government, along with its citizens and corporations, in legal risk abroad because other nations might retaliate with their own legislation. Secretary of State John Kerry told a Senate panel in February that the bill, in its current form, would “expose the United States of America to lawsuits and take away our sovereign immunity and create a terrible precedent.”

The bill’s sponsors have said that the legislation is purposely drawn very narrowly — involving only attacks on American soil — to reduce the prospect that other nations might try to fight back.

In a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on March 4, Anne W. Patterson, an assistant secretary of state, and Andrew Exum, a top Pentagon official on Middle East policy, told staff members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that American troops and civilians could be in legal jeopardy if other nations decide to retaliate and strip Americans of immunity abroad. They also discussed the Saudi threats specifically, laying out the impacts if Saudi Arabia made good on its economic threats.

John Kirby, a State Department spokesman, said in a statement that the administration stands by the victims of terrorism, “especially those who suffered and sacrificed so much on 9/11.”

Edwin M. Truman, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said he thought the Saudis were most likely making an “empty threat.” Selling hundreds of billions of dollars in American assets would not only be technically difficult to pull off, he said, but would also very likely cause global market turmoil for which the Saudis would be blamed.

Moreover, he said, it could destabilize the American dollar — the currency to which the Saudi riyal is pegged.

“The only way they could punish us is by punishing themselves,” Mr. Truman said.

The bill is an anomaly in a Congress fractured by bitter partisanship, especially during an election year. It is sponsored by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. It has the support of an unlikely coalition of liberal and conservative senators, including Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas. It passed through the Judiciary Committee in January without dissent.

“As our nation confronts new and expanding terror networks that are targeting our citizens, stopping the funding source for terrorists becomes even more important,” Mr. Cornyn said last month.

The alliance with Saudi Arabia has frayed in recent years as the White House has tried to thaw ties with Iran — Saudi Arabia’s bitter enemy— in the midst of recriminations between American and Saudi officials about the role that both countries should play in the stability of the Middle East.

But the administration has supported Saudi Arabia on other fronts, including providing the country with targeting intelligence and logistical support for its war in Yemen. The Saudi military is flying jets and dropping bombs it bought from the United States — part of the billions of dollars in arms deals that have been negotiated with Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf nations during the Obama administration.

The war has been a humanitarian disaster and fueled a resurgence of Al Qaeda in Yemen, leading to the resolution in Congress to put new restrictions on arms deals to the kingdom. Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, one of the resolution’s sponsors and a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Congress has been “feckless” in conducting oversight of arms sales, especially those destined for Saudi Arabia.

“My first desire is for our relationship with Saudi Arabia to come with a greater degree of conditionality than it currently does,” he said.

Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

From The New York Times @ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-warns-ofeconomic-fallout-if-congress-passes-9-11-bill.html

The Smoking Gun: "Document 17" Links Saudi Embassy In Washington To Sept 11

by Tyler Durden

With the topic of Saudi Arabia's involvement in the Sept 11 attack on everyone's lips, if certainly not those of president Obama who is currently in Riyadh where he is meeting with members of Saudi royalty in what may be his last trip to the Saudi nation as US president, many have been clamoring for the information in the suddenly notorious "28-pages" (following the recent 60 Minutes episode) to be released to the public so the US population can finally relegate all those "conspiracy theories" surrounding the real perpetrator behind the Sept 11 terrorist attack to the "conspiracy fact" pile.

It won't have to wait that long.

As The Times writes today, new evidence has come to light of a definitive link between Saudi Arabian officials and the 9/11 terrorist attacks "further raising tensions as President Obama travels to the kingdom."

According to the report, Ghassan Al-Sharbi, a Saudi who became an al-Qa’ida bomb maker, is believed to have taken flying lessons with some of the 9/11 hijackers in Arizona but did not take part in the attacks on New York and the Pentagon that killed 3,000 people in 2001.

He was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and has since been held at Guantanamo Bay. According to a US memo, known as document 17, written in 2003 and quietly declassified last year, the FBI learnt that he had buried a cache of papers shortly before he was captured.

Think of "Document 17" as a mini version of the "28 pages" whose content has yet to be revealed. The document was written by two US investigators examining the possible roles of foreign governments in the attacks.

One detail leapt out at the FBI agents from the papers that Sharbi had tried to hide: his US flight certificate was in an envelope from the Saudi embassy in Washington.

A car pulls into the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, AP Photo

And there is your smoking gun, which has been fully available to the US government for the pat 13 years. It should have also been available to the American public.

Understandably, Brian McGlinchey, the activist who uncovered document 17, asked a simple question: "The envelope points to the fundamental question hanging over us today: to what extent was the 9/11 plot facilitated by individuals at the highest levels of the Saudi government?"

Here is the problem. As the Times puts it, "president Obama is expected to meet on Wednesday with King Salman, whose kingdom is under pressure from low oil prices, an emboldened Iran and Washington’s tougher stance. The Saudi government threatened last week to dump $750 billion in US Treasury securities and other American assets if congress passes a bill that would clear a path for the families of 9/11 victims to file lawsuits against the kingdom."

In other words, Obama will not ask any questions of King Salman, let alone the "fundamental" one.

So perhaps it is time to get a president who will ask the question: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidates, backed the bill, which Mr Obama has signaled he will veto. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the leading Republicans in the race, have warned Saudi Arabia that its relationship with the US must change. “Friends do not fund jihadists that are seeking to murder us,” Mr Cruz said.

Sp even as all of Obama's potential replacements have at least promised to investigate further, we wonder: just why is Obama so terrified of the US public getting access to the truth?

If he is so worried about the Saudi liquidation threat, he shouldn't be: after all the Fed would be deliriously happy at the opportunity to monetize another $750 billion in assets and inject three-quarters of a trillion in fresh "reserves" aka liquidity into the system.

Meanwhile, Obama has other problems: the US president also faces calls to release a redacted 28-page portion of a joint congressional report on the 9/11 attacks, produced in 2002 and thought to link senior Saudi figures to the plot. He suggested on Monday that a decision was imminent.

We are confident his "decision" in this matter will be to likewise prevent the truth from emerging, because as Congressman Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, said: "I had to stop every couple of pages ... to rearrange my understanding of history." No further comment necessary.

Meanwhile the lies go on.

Bob Graham, a former chairman of the US senate intelligence committee, has alleged that Saudi Arabia was the principal financier of 9/11. “The effect of withholding [the pages] has been to embolden Saudi Arabia to be a continuing source of financial and human terror resources,” he said.

Document 17, written by Dana Lesemann and Michael Jacobson, will deepen suspicions. Ms Lesemann is said to have been sacked from the 9/11 commission after she circumvented her boss to access the 28 pages.

Mr Jacobson was the principal author of the 28 pages, and document 17 hints at his suspicions. "How aggressively has the US government investigated possible ties between the Saudi government and/or royal family and the September 11th attacks?" it asks.

The answer: not at all. It's about time the American people asked why not.

From Zero Hedge @ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-20/smoking-gun-document-17-links-saudi-embassy-washington-sept-11