News Intelligence Analysis
Buchanan: 'Playing with Fire'
Part I – Aid and
Comfort to the Saudis
By John Buchanan
July 5, 2004
Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution provides a clear definition that Treason shall be construed to include “…adhering to” or “giving…aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States in a time of war.
By that definition, given the three decades of secret and still-uninvestigated Bush family collaboration with the Saudi royal family – most notably since 9/11 – George W. Bush is guilty of treason.
Facts on the public record support such an allegation. The time has now come for a thorough independent inquiry in the name of the American people.
In its lead story yesterday, The New York Times reported that “American officials agreed to return five terrorism suspects to Saudi Arabia from Guantánamo Bay…last year as part of a secret three-way deal intended to satisfy important allies in the invasion of Iraq.”
The Times story also noted that the transfer “…initially met with objections from officials at the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department…Those officials questioned whether some detainees were too dangerous to send back and whether the United States could trust Saudi promises to keep the men imprisoned.” Even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld opposed the deal.
“It didn't seem right,” a military official involved in the transaction told the Times. “It was clear that there was a quid pro quo…that we were not aware of.”
The secret exchange took place, the Times noted, “at a time of widespread mistrust among intelligence and law enforcement officials in Washington about the Saudi government's commitment to fight Islamic terrorism.” Over the past two decades, the Saudis have been the world’s #1 supporters and financiers of global terror.
The clandestine Bush administration liberation of the Saudis – in return for the release of five British citizens who claimed they had been tortured by the House of Saud regime into false confessions of terrorist acts – had been proposed in August 2002 by U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Robert Jordan, who happens to be a former George W. Bush personal attorney. A final deal was reached in February 2003, just before Bush invaded Iraq. The Saudi prisoners were transferred to Riyadh in May 2003. The five Brits and two others were freed three months later.
Last week, the Times story noted, “…a spokesman for the National Security Council denied that the Saudi detainees had been transferred in exchange for the British prisoners. ‘There is no recollection here of any linkage between these two actions,’ said the spokesman, Sean McCormick.”
For their part, the always double-talking Saudis “…gave contradictory accounts of the current whereabouts of the five men, saying at first that one or two of them had been released, then denying that any had been freed,” the Times reported. “The officials also gave contradictory accounts of the suspects’ legal status, first saying they had been tried and convicted of seeking to join Taliban forces in Afghanistan, but later saying prosecutions were still pending.”
Even more troubling than the now no longer secret prisoner exchange with the Saudis is a long-forgotten “exclusive report” from NBC Evening News last September that prominent representatives of the Saudi royals had met before and after 9/11 with Osama bin Laden. NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell also noted that Saudi representatives had personally made financial contributions to several of the hijackers. The other major networks, as well as CNN and Fox News, let the explosive story die.
To this day, the Bush White House has made no public acknowledgement of that report, nor any public statement chastising the duplicitous Saudis for their deadly subterfuge. More recently, the secret flight of 142 Saudis out of the U.S. on September 13, 2001 remains uninvestigated by the corporate-controlled “mainstream” media, despite eyewitness accounts in Craig Unger’s book, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World’s Two Most Powerful Dynasties (Scribner, 2004).
Unger reported that one of the Saudi émigrés told former Tampa, Florida police officer turned private investigator Dan Grossi – retained to supervise “the great escape,” as Unger dubbed it – was “good friends with George Bush senior.” Another Saudi on a flight out of Orlando – Khalil Binladin – had international terrorist connections, according to German wire service Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
Still, there have been no calls from Capitol Hill for a proper investigation of these three Saudi-Bush transgressions, nor has the White House or the Bush family publicly atoned for their sins.
It is politics as usual.
CNN White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux reported yesterday that “no one has called for an investigation” of the secret Saudi prisoner exchange.
The only recourse left now is a treason investigation – and trial.
John Buchanan is a journalist and investigative reporter whose work has appeared in more than 100 newspapers and magazines over the past 35 years. His first book, Fixing America: A Citizen’s Manual for Change, will be published after the Republican National Convention. He can be reached by e-mail at jtwg50@comcast.net.
This article is the first of a series of weekly articles that John Buchanan will be writing between now and Election Day. We will feature a new article every Monday.
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