BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
NORTON META TAG
24 March 2026
Saudi Prince Is Said to Push Trump to Continue Iran War in Recent Calls & SAUDI TIME BOMB / ANALYSIS-WAHHABISM & At Least Two Saudi Officials May Have Deliberately Assisted 9/11 Hijackers, New Evidence Suggests 24MAR26 & 9NOV01 & 11SEP24
Fires still burned in the rubble of the World Trade Center three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack there. Photo by Mai/Getty Images
THE saudis are used to outsourcing jobs in their kingdom they consider to be "beneath" them and generally the people brought into the country are from third world countries who are seeking more money than they can earn in their own country. These people are often physically abused, sexually abused and cheated out of their wages. The saudi government provides no protection for these people and the wahhabi cult, the apostate form of Sunni Islam, provides no moral protection and support for these foreign workers and their families. It has also become painfully clear saudis are too cowardly to defend their own country and so use their wealth to pay saudi wahhabi terrorist like osama bin laden and the 9 / 11 terrorist ( 15 of the 19 hijackers were saudi) to attack their enemies and hire foreign mercenary militaries to sacrifice their soldiers, sailors, air force and coast guard personnel. We have sacrificed too many American military personnel in the defense of a country (saudi arabia) who is not an ally and is not to be trusted and a country we do not need. These American military sacrifices were also made to defend and increase the profits of the US military-industrial complex and the US crypto-technology complex. If saudi prince bone saw butcher mohammed bin salman wants the war on Iran to be continued so the US and Israel will remake the Middle East let him sacrifice saudi's to achieve his goal. America has bled enough for the nations of the Persian Gulf and the wars that American warmongers have profited from. ENOUGH, this has to end now! From the New York Times, PBS Frontline and Propublica.....
Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been pushing President Trump to continue the war against Iran, arguing that the U.S.-Israeli military campaign presents a “historic opportunity” to remake the Middle East, according topeople briefed by American officials on the conversations.
In a series of conversations over the last week, Prince Mohammed has conveyed to Mr. Trump that he must press toward the destruction of Iran’s hard-line government, the people familiar with the conversations said.
Prince Mohammed, the people familiar with the discussions said, has argued that Iran poses a long-term threat to the Gulf that can only be eliminated by getting rid of the government.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel also views Iran as a long-term threat, but analysts say Israeli officials would probably view a failed Iranian state that is too caught up in internal turmoil to menace Israel as a win, while Saudi Arabia views a failed state in Iran as a grave and direct security threat.
But senior officials in both the Saudi and American governments worry that if the conflict drags on, Iran could deliver ever more punishing attacks on Saudi oil installations and the United States could be stuck in an endless war.
In public, Mr. Trump has swung wildly between suggesting that the war could end soon and signaling it would escalate. On Monday, the president posted on social media that his administration and Iran had held “productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities,” though Iran disputed the idea that negotiations were underway.
The consequences of the war for Saudi Arabia’s economy and national security are enormous. Iranian drone and missile attacks, launched in response to the American-Israeli assault on Iran, have already created huge disruptions in the oil market.
Saudi officials rejected the idea that Prince Mohammed has pushed to prolong the war.
“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has always supported a peaceful resolution to this conflict, even before it began,” the Saudi government said in a statement, noting that officials “remain in close contact with the Trump administration and our commitment remains unchanged.”
“Our primary concern today is to defend ourselves from the daily attacks on our people and our civilian infrastructure,” the government added. “Iran has chosen dangerous brinkmanship over serious diplomatic solutions. This harms every stakeholder involved but none more than Iran itself.”
Mr. Trump has at times seemed open to winding down the war, but Prince Mohammed has argued that would be a mistake, the people briefed on the conversations said, and has pressed for attacks against Iran’s energy infrastructure to weaken the government in Tehran.
This article is based on interviews with people who have had conversations with American officials, and who described the discussions on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of Mr. Trump’s talks with world leaders. The New York Times interviewed people with a variety of views on the wisdom of continuing the war and of Prince Mohammed’s role in advising Mr. Trump.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the administration “does not comment on the president’s private conversations.”
Prince Mohammed, an authoritarian royal who has led a sustained crackdown on dissent, is respected by Mr. Trump and has previously influenced the president’s decision-making. Prince Mohammed has argued that the United States should consider putting troops in Iran to seize energy infrastructure and force the government out of power, according to the people briefed by U.S. officials.
In recent days, Mr. Trump has given more serious consideration to a military operation to seize Kharg Island, the hub of Iran’s oil infrastructure. Such an operation, with airborne Army forces or an amphibious assault by Marines, would be immensely dangerous.
But Prince Mohammed has advocated ground operations in his conversations with Mr. Trump, according to people briefed by American officials.
The Saudi views of the war are shaped by economic factors as much as political ones. Since the war began, Iran’s retaliatory attacks have largely choked off the Strait of Hormuz, hobbling the region’s energy industry. The vast majority of Saudi, Emirati and Kuwaiti oil must pass through the strait to reach international markets.
While Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have built pipelines to circumvent the strait, those alternative routes have come under attack as well.
Analysts familiar with Saudi government thinking say that while Prince Mohammed probably preferred to avoid a war, he is concerned that if Mr. Trump pulls back now, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East will be left to confront an emboldened and furious Iran on their own.
In this view, they say, a half-finished offensive would expose Saudi Arabia to frequent Iranian attacks. Such a scenario could also leave Iran with the power to periodically close the Strait of Hormuz.
“Saudi officials certainly want the war to end, but how it ends matters,” said Yasmine Farouk, director of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula project for the International Crisis Group.
A 2019 Iran-backed attack on Saudi oil facilities — which briefly knocked out half of the kingdom’s oil production — pushed the prince to reconsider his antagonistic approach to the Islamic Republic.
Saudi officials later pursued a diplomatic détente, re-establishing relations with Iran in 2023, in part because they realized that their country’s alliance with the United States offered only partial protection from Iran, Saudi officials have said.
Other countries in the region, including the United Arab Emirates, also pursued warmer relations with Iran in the past few years for similar reasons.
After Mr. Trump’s decision to go to war, against the advice of several Gulf governments, Iran responded by shooting thousands of missiles and drones at countries in the region, derailing their efforts to bring Iran into their fold, Gulf officials have said.
“What little trust there was before has completely been shattered,” Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, told reporters last week.
Saudi Arabia has a large stockpile of Patriot interceptors that it is using to protect itself from the barrage of Iranian attacks that have rained down on its oil fields, refineries and cities.
But interceptors are in short supply globally.Drone and missile attacks in Saudi Arabia have already struck a refinery and the U.S. embassy, while fragments from intercepted projectiles have killed two Bangladeshi migrant workers and injured more than a dozen other foreign residents.
Since the beginning of the war, Mr. Netanyahu has pushed for military operations that could force the collapse of Iran’s government. U.S. officials have focused on degrading the country’s missile and naval capabilities and have been more skeptical that the hard-line government in Iran can be driven from power.
Though Israeli strikes have killed a large number of leaders, the hard-line government remains in control.
Saudi officials have long expressed concerns that a failed state in Iran poses a grave threat to them, analysts say. They fear that even if Iran’s government fell, elements of the military — or militias that could emerge in the power vacuum — would continue to attack the kingdom and are likely to focus on oil targets.
Some government intelligence analysts have told other officials that they think Prince Mohammed sees the war as an opportunity for him to increase Saudi Arabia’s influence throughout the Middle East, and that he believes Saudi Arabia can protect itself even if the war continues.
While Saudi Arabia is better positioned than the other Gulf countries to weather the closure of the strait, it could face dire ramifications if the waterway is not reopened soon.
Even before the war began, Prince Mohammed was facing serious financial challenges as he approached the 2030 deadline he had set for himself to transform Saudi Arabia into a global business hub. His government is forecasting budget deficits for several years to come as ambitious megaprojects and vast investments in artificial intelligence strain the country’s limited resources.
A prolonged war with Iran would put all of that at risk. The prince’s success hinges on creating a secure environment for investors and tourists.
Asked last week whether the Saudi government preferred an immediate end to the war or a longer conflict in which Iran’s capabilities were degraded, Prince Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, told reporters that the only thing that officials cared about was halting Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia and neighboring countries.
“We’re going to use every lever we have — political, economic, diplomatic and else-wise — to get these attacks to stop,” Prince Faisal said.
Vivian Nereim in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and David E. Sanger in Washington contributed reporting.
Julian E. Barnes covers the U.S. intelligence agencies and international security matters for The Times. He has written about security issues for more than two decades.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
Eric Schmitt is a national security correspondent for The Times. He has reported on U.S. military affairs and counterterrorism for more than three decades.
What is the role of the religious hierarchy in Saudi Arabia in
relationship to the government?
The religious hierarchy is a governmental institution. Their role is to
justify anything the government wants to do, using religious
authentication.
... You mean they're paid by the government?
Yes, they are. The religious institution in Saudi Arabia is paid and hired
and chosen by the government.
So there's no separation of church and state?
No separation between the Salafi institution and the Saudi government.
You say "Salafi institution." What does that mean?
Salafi is an understanding of Islam which starts in Saudi Arabia 200 years
ago. And it is the official sect in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi government
adopts the Salafi understanding of Islam and implement it on all Saudis.
A Shi'a Muslim who grew up in Saudi
Arabia, he is the executive director of
the Saudi Institute, an independent
human rights watchdog group based
in McLean, Va. In this interview, he
describes the conservative religious
education all children in Saudi Arabia
receive, which is dictated by the
conservative Wahhabi religious
clerics. He believes that the doctrines
of intolerance and hate that are part
of the compulsory Saudi religious
education contributed to the attitude
of Osama bin Laden and the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11. This interview
was conducted on Nov. 9, 2001.
Salafi to us is what we call Wahhabi? Is that the same thing?
Yes. Salafi is what you call in the West Wahhab
And so then Prince Bandar is right when he says to us, "There is no
Wahhabi sect, and this is a misunderstanding," that it's a fundamentalist
sect that leads to extremism?
Well, they don't say it's a sect. The Salafis do not say they are a sect. They say
they are a movement, a religious renewal movement. But it is, in practically, a
sect, because it differs from everybody else, from Sunni Muslims and from
Shi'a Muslims. And they have different ideas about life, about God, about
religion, about relationship between men and among each other, which is
totally different, probably, from the general Islam [ideas].
... You say totally different. Why totally different? ...
It's intolerant toward other Muslims who are not Salafis. You can see a book that is printed [by] a branch of Imam
Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud University in Washington area, and they printed this book where they say that 95
percent of Muslims are claimant to Islam, ... [that] they are not called Muslims. They are claimant to Islam, or claim
to be Muslims.
So the official religion of Saudi Arabia says that 95 percent of people who say they're Islamic are just claiming
to be Islamic?
Exactly. This is what is reflected in the textbook, and the books that [are] printed by the government. ...
The government obviously controls defense and the army and the economy, right?
Yes.
What does the religious side control?
The religious cleric in Saudi Arabia control the religious education. And they control any religious material that is
public, in media and television. The Saudi television, government television, or government books, or any books that
you find in the library, only represent Salafi understanding of Islam.
They control all education?
They don't control the education, but they control the religious curriculums for all schools, and they control the
women's education.
[Are they] in public schools? Is it private schools? Are there parochial schools? How does it work?
They control all education. Saudi Arabia private and public schools, their curriculum is prescribed by the
government. The religious curriculums are written and monitored and taught by Salafi Saudis only. And a Sunni
cannot teach the religion. Shi'a cannot teach religious subjects in Saudi Arabia. It's against the law, especially for a
woman. A Shi'a woman cannot teach religious subject for history in Saudi Arabia. And they are not even allowed to
study history in college, because history, according to the Salafi interpretation, is much different.
Can you show me an example of what the teaching is in the schools?
Well, here, this is a book, Hadeeth, for ninth grade. Hadeeth is a statement of Prophet Mohammed. This is a book
that starts for ninth graders. This is talking about the victory of Muslims over Jews. This is a Hadeeth that I truly
believe it's not true, as a Muslim:
"The day of judgment will not arrive until Muslims fight Jews, and Muslim will kill Jews until the Jew hides behind
a tree or a stone. Then the tree and the stone will say, 'Oh Muslim, oh, servant of God, this is a Jew behind me. Come
and kill him.' Except one type of a tree, which is a Jew tree. That will not say that." This is taught for 14-year-old
boys in Saudi Arabia.
In middle schools...
In middle schools, yes. Official middle schools. This is a book printed by Saudi government Ministry of Education.
In what year?
This is in the year 2000. So this is a current curriculum. Also, curriculum talks about not only non-Muslims, but
about Muslims, about Saudi citizens, in the same manner. That they will burn in hell, that they are paganist, that they
will be destroyed in the day of judgment. The government has taken some steps to curb some of these curriculums.
In 1993, there was a curriculum calling Shi'a derogatory terms ... and it was pulled after almost an uprising. People
left schools because of that curriculum, and it was pulled. But the same writer, the same guy who wrote those books,
he still write these books or curriculums. ...
So this is the attitude towards Shi'a? You are a Shi'a?
Yes, I am a Shi'a, and the attitude toward Shi'a is that they ... are not Muslims; they are not full Muslims, at best.
Some clerics stated [that] they should sometime be either killed or thrown away or deported, and they should not be
allowed even to work. There's a cleric who wrote this in 1992, I think. He said that they should not be allowed even
to work in any government position, and all their mosques should be controlled by the government. Their businesses
should be taken over. And there's another cleric who will say, "Shi'a must be slaughtered," this word. And this guy is
an official in the government.
This year, there is an another fatwa by a government official, who is still working for the government, who said the
same thing: that jihad should be waged against Shi'a. So the hate message ... that some Salafi carries, started against
it locally ... until it reached New York.
What do you mean, it reached New York?
Well, when it was a local problem, the American media did not really care much about it. But until Sept. 11, you saw
how this faith of hate, I call it, did to all of us, to New Yorkers and to the rest of the world, honestly.
You're saying that the official government version of Islam inspired what happened on Sept. 11?
Yes, I am saying that. Because the hijackers, 15 hijackers who are Saudis, they studied this thinking -- destructive
thinking -- in Saudi Arabia. They spent a few months in Afghanistan. But they lived their life, they studied this in
government mosques. They studied this kind of curriculum that I talked to you about. ... Government curriculum
inspired what happened in New York.
Prince Bandar says, to use his phrase, [that] this is bullshit. Wahhabism, or what we call Wahhabism, is
purely a religion that comes from someone who made an alliance with his family many years ago. It has done
no harm to anyone, and it is only trying to go back to basics.
I like Prince Bandar. But I think he has not been looking in his backyard. I have books distributed that I picked up
from the embassy myself, that carries a message of hate against Saudi citizens who are not Salafi, books that says
Jews and Christians are free game for violent acts. And these are books I picked up from the Saudi Embassy in
Washington D.C., where Prince Bandar works. ...
So it's no surprise then that the Saudi government and its clerics would be supporters of the Taliban, for
instance?
I'll ask you this. Tell me, how many Saudi clerics have condemned Taliban, and how many Saudi clerics have
condemned bin Laden? None. And they cannot force them. Since Sept. 11, there have been no Saudi official cleric
that condemned Taliban by name, or condemned bin Laden by name. They condemned terrorism, yes, but they didn't
condemn bin Laden. They didn't condemn Taliban.
Clerics, maybe. But the Saudi government has condemned what happened on September 11. Prince Bandar
says that the Saudi government has cut the Taliban off over the last three years.
I don't know if he cut the Taliban off from the last years. I'm not aware of such. But the Taliban Embassy was
working in Riyadh, and it had officials working in it. And they had no problems visiting Saudi Arabia, and coming
and going.
Yes, Prince Nayif condemned bin Laden, and other princes... Prince Turki condemned bin Laden. They did not
condemn that message. They condemned bin Laden. ... Bin Laden learned this in Saudi Arabia. He didn't learn it in
the moon. That message that bin Laden received, it still is taught in Saudi Arabia. And if bin Laden dies, and this
policy or curriculum stays, we will have other bin Ladens.
So this religious education is compulsory for all students in Saudi Arabia?
Yes. Religious education in Saudi Arabia is compulsory, and you have no choice but to study this. You're Salafi or
you're not Salafi, you have to study it, even if you don't believe in it -- which I don't believe in most of it.
So the Shi'a have to learn this as well?
Shi'a have to learn this. And they not only they have to learn it, they cannot teach their own understanding of Islam
to their own children in homes or mosques. ... even in private schools, it's a Shi'a area are not allowed to teach
different version of Islam, or their own version of Islam.
So how are those Shi'a beliefs passed down?
Passed down through secret channels, secret books, tapes. This is the only way Shi'a survives in Saudi Arabia. ...
If you go to school in Saudi Arabia, what do you learn about people who are not followers of Wahhabi, of the
prophet?
The religious curriculum in Saudi Arabia teaches you that people are basically two sides: Salafis, who are the
winners, the chosen ones, who will go to heaven, and the rest. The rest are Muslims and Christians and Jews and
others.
They are either kafirs, who are deniers of God, or mushrak, putting gods next to God, or enervators, that's the lightest
one. The enervators of religion who are they call the Sunni Muslims who ... for instance, celebrate Prophet
Mohammed's birthday, and do some stuff that is not accepted by Salafis.
And all of these people are not accepted by Salafi as Muslims. As I said, "claimant to Islam." And all of these people
are supposed to be hated, to be persecuted, even killed. And we have several clergy -- not one Salafi clergy -- who
have said that against the Shi'a and against the other Muslims. And they have done it in Algeria, in Afghanistan. This
is the same ideology. They just have the same opportunity. They did it in Algeria and Afghanistan, and now New
York.
In other words, the definition of people who are not believers in the true believers in the right view of Islam is
that they're basically subhuman.
Exactly. If you don't believe in Salafi, you are not a human being. You are something of a lower grade, that you can
be persecuted or hurt, and it is OK, accepted, in that ideology. It's accepted to be killed, or maimed... The religious
authority in Saudi Arabia control the justice system. This is very important. ... All the judges in Saudi Arabia are
Salafi. ... And mostly Nejdi from the central region in Saudi Arabia, which creates a lot of problems for the rest of
Saudi citizens. ...
What's the nature of the history that you learn in school in Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia, you learn Islamic history only. You don't learn history of Europe, you know, of the Americas, of Asia.
You only learn Islamic history, and you learn the Saudi state history, and you learn what they call the Salafi Da'wah,
the Salafi movement ... in the West, the so-called Wahhabi movement. And of course, doesn't teach you anything
about the world. It teaches you about Islamic history, and the Islamic states, until today. But nothing about the rest of
the Western world, or Asia, or anything else. ...
Prince Bandar says that they are a government who are ahead of their people. The people are more
conservative than the government, and they can't get too far ahead of the people. The people of Saudi Arabia
are, as he would put it, very fundamentalist, very strict, and very much in favor of this view.
It's untrue. Yes, a lot of Saudis are conservative, you know. They follow Islam. But there are a lot of Saudis who are
liberals....They want the government to move ahead. When it comes, for instance, to women ID card...
Women ID card? What do you mean?
Women in Saudi Arabia do not own ID card. They are not human, either, Because they are legally, from a legal point
of view, Saudi women have a legal standing of a car, because they are transferred from their fathers to their
husbands.
Property.
Property. And this is against Islam. This is against 95 percent, 98 percent of Islamic ... of Muslims who would think
Saudi Arabian government stand only next to Taliban when it comes to this point that women have no legal weight.
They cannot sign anything.
If a woman in Saudi Arabia is ill and she needs surgery, she can't sign the papers. Her son who is 15 can do that. If he
is sick, she cannot sign for him. A woman who is 90 years old cannot accept a proposal of marriage, or sign papers of
marriage. Her grandson can. And she cannot for herself, because again, she is not considered a full-functioning
human being.
We hear reports that when Sept. 11 happened, there was a quiet celebration amongst many people in Saudi
Arabia.
Yes. Saudi Arabia people celebrated. Not all, but there are people who celebrated who were happy to see this,
because there is general dissatisfaction with the United States. But there are people who were so happy to see it, and
they still today, they are happy and they support what happened in New York, because they are from the Salafi
school of Islam.
There are people who said, "Well, maybe American now will taste what other people taste. They might reconsider
their policy." And there are people who condemned it, obviously. But the people who first, or most supported what
happened on Sept. 11 are followers of Salafi Islam. ...
Is bin Laden a folk hero of sorts in Saudi Arabia?
Bin Laden is a folk hero to a lot of Saudis who are followers of the Salafi school of Islamists.
It would seem to me that he's a folk hero because he defies the United States, or he defies the royal family, no?
Yes. He is a folk hero because he defies the United States, and because he defies the royal family. And because he is
a symbol of this rich man who left all of this, and lost his relationship with the royal family, who gave him millions
and millions of dollars to stand behind his message. ...
When I asked Prince Bandar about the Saudis involved in Sept. 11, he said, "They're a very small minority in
the country. They're like Baader-Meinhof gang in Germany, or the Weather Underground in the United
States," that it's a fringe group.
It's not really a fringe group, because these people were recruited from Saudi Arabia just recently, less than two years
ago. There are a lot of them who are willing to do the same. And bin Laden in Afghanistan has a few hundred Saudis
with them, with him now, fighting. Some of them have been killed already in the American bombing. And these
people receive support from the clerics, the official clerics who get paid by the government. ...
It seems like the government then is sort of schizophrenic. On the one hand, it embraces the United States.
They sell us oil, they do our bidding with OPEC, they invest in the United States. On the other hand, you're
saying they support a clergy that hates the United States.
They do support the clergy that hates the United States, and I do not know why, because it is not for the benefit of the
royal family and for Saudi Arabia. If Saudi Arabia needed to modernize, they should sever this historic relationship
between the House of Saud and the House of Abd al-Wahhab. This has done tremendous harm to the nation. ... I
really thought about why... the Saudi Arabia government. I really thought hard about why also [they] insist on allying
themself with Abd al-Wahhab, the Salafi family who [founded] Salafis.
I think it is a ... a Nejdi thing. Nejd is the center of religion in Saudi Arabia. This is where Salafi Islam started. And
because all Saud are Nejdis, they and Nejdis by nature -- and I'm originally Nejdi myself -- are very racist people.
And they think themselves of a higher standing than others. ...
The chosen people?
The chosen people. And this is a racist thing, because the system in Saudi Arabia is a monarchy that's based on tribal
alliances and religious alliances. And because it started from Nejd, religion has been given to Abd al-Wahhab, and
politics has been to Al Saud, and they don't want to change that equation. ...
I'm a little confused. You're saying that there is unrest in Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia, there is different type of unrest. There is people who are talking on the Internet, for instance. They find
their freedom on the Internet. Although the Internet [is] very, very tightly controlled. ...
It's tightly controlled in Saudi Arabia?
Yes, in Saudi Arabia. It is probably one of the [only] country in the world that controls Internet access. And they
block websites that does not fit with them, especially the political website, where people express their views. And I
am personally responsible for setting up several chat rooms, or chat boards, for Saudis to be able to talk, and say
anything they want. And these sites are usually blocked, so we have to move them all the time.
So the government blocks the Internet; requires a fundamentalist religious education, even of Shi'a, of a
peculiar brand of Sunni Muslim belief.
Yes.
Women are not allowed to work?
They're allowed to work only in woman education and health care.
That's it?
That's it. That's why women unemployment rate is over 70 percent. And that's not by choice, as they say. It is
because many of them are not able to find a job -- for years.
And for men, what is the overall unemployment rate?
I think they admitted to one million unemployed, the Saudis. But I think the number is twice as that.
One million out of...
Fourteen million? Saudi work force now [is] maybe four, maybe six million. One million is unemployed. This is
according to the government numbers. I believe the number is much higher.
And Prince Bandar would say to us, "Wait a minute. These dissidents who you've talked to, they're not
democrats. Like Saad Fagih, they want a more restrictive fundamentalism. They want a more restrictive
fundamentalism than we have currently."
True. That opposition that Prince Bandar is talking about is not democratic, and they are not advocating democracy.
... But people, liberals in Saudi Arabia like myself and others, who want more openness, who want a parliament, who
want free press, who want more freedom of religion, of human rights organization. I have asked them to set up a
human rights party in Saudi Arabia. They declined. I didn't ask them to overthrow the government.
Who declined?
The government, the Saudi government.
Let me understand. Saad Fagih is a fundamentalist?
Yes. Victor Saad Fagih is a fundamentalist. He is a Salafi. He is Salafi more than the government. I know Victor
Saad, and I know his ideas. He is more extreme than the official Salafi institution.
But he says he is not a backer of bin Laden.
...What does that mean, he is not a backer of bin Laden?
He doesn't believe in violence, he says.
I think he doesn't. I think he doesn't. My knowledge of him, he doesn't believe in violence himself. But I haven't seen
Victor Saad also condemning it. He didn't condemn it.
So he and others look at bin Laden as, in a sense, a positive force from their perspective?
Well, maybe Victor Saad Fagih see bin Laden as from a political point of view, that bin Laden helps Saad Fagih. Bin
Laden is the extreme, and Saad Fagih looks much better next to bin Laden. And maybe that is why Saad Fagih likes
the presence of bin Laden. ...
Does it surprise you that the blind sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, was invited to teach at a girls' school in Saudi
Arabia?
No. In Saudi Arabia, because he's blind ... a lot of blind clerics are allowed to teach, because they don't see the girls.
...
But he's a revolutionary. He's a fundamentalist's fundamentalist.
At that time, there was no clashes with the West. He didn't have clashes with the West. He was just developing. But
he carried that Salafi understanding of Islam, and they wanted somebody, and they wanted to bring him over, and
they liked so many Muslim clerics, seeing the lure of petrodollar, came to Saudi Arabia. They denounced their own
background because they wanted to live in a villa and drive a Mercedes. They came from Egypt, they came from
Syria, from Sudan. And they became Salafi, because they like the dollar. ...
So it's really the fact that these fundamentalists had the backing of all the Saudi money -- that they were able
to spread this form of Islam?
Yes, true. ...
So it's all the oil money, linked from the government, that has helped to spread this form of Islam throughout
Yes. That's true. The Saudi government has systematically financed the propagation of Salafi Islam, by spending
hundreds of millions of dollars on three out of seven universities in Saudi Arabia [that] are religious universities.
They built thousands of mosques around the world, including the United States. They have given free scholarships to
non-Saudis, to come and study Salafi and become Salafi. They sent 2,000 Salafi clerics around the world every
summer. They print books by the millions in every languages to promote Salafi Islam. They have conventions,
conferences.
They spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars supporting the Salafi thinking of Islam. They do not
support Sunni Islam, they don't support Shi'a Islam. And I noted that, in our report about religious freedom in Saudi
Arabia, they don't give money to other Muslims. If they were interested in spreading Islam, they don't give other
Muslims. This is the government. ...
Are there any other excerpts you want to read to us from any of these books?
It says here, it says number four: It is permissible in Islam to destroy, burn, and vandalize the fortresses of kofar.
American or Christians are kofar. And everything that they destroy, everything that they use ... against Muslims ... if
the destruction was to support Islam and destroy the kofar. This is very hard.
And Americans are kofar?
Yes. American. The United States of America.
Why is that?
Because you're non-Muslim. You're non-Muslim. You are kofar because you have denials of God. This is what this
[is].
And this is an official ... printed by the government?
This is an official book. This is printed, yes. This is for ninth grade, printed by the year 2000. This says here, the
minister of education decided to teach this book, and print it on its own cost. And this is the first page
And it's distributed...
This is to school curriculum. It's taught. It's mandatory for ninth graders in Saudi Arabia
Newly revealed information also raises questions about whether the FBI and CIA mishandled or downplayed evidence of the kingdom’s possible ties to the plotters.
From the start of U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the question of whether the Saudi government might have been involved has hovered over the case.
The FBI, after the most extensive criminal probe in its history, concluded that a low-level Saudi official who helped the first two hijackers in California met them by chance and aided them unwittingly. The CIA said it saw no evidence of a higher-level Saudi role. The bipartisan 9/11 commission adopted those findings. A small FBI team continued to dig into the question, turning up information that raised doubts about some of those conclusions.
But now, 23 years after the attacks, new evidence has emerged to suggest more strongly than ever that at least two Saudi officials deliberately assisted the first Qaida hijackers when they arrived in the United States in January 2000.
Whether the Saudis knew the men were terrorists remains unclear. But the new information shows that both officials worked with Saudi and other religious figures who had ties to al-Qaida and other extremist groups.
Most of the evidence has been gathered in a long-running federal lawsuit against the Saudi government by survivors of the attacks and relatives of those who died. That lawsuit has reached a critical moment, with a judge in New York preparing to rule on a Saudi motion to dismiss the case.
Already, though, information put forward in the plaintiffs’ case — which includes videos, telephone records and other documents that were collected soon after the attacks but were never shared with key investigators — argues for a fundamental reassessment of the Saudi government’s possible involvement with the hijackers.
The court files also raise questions about whether the FBI and CIA, which repeatedly dismissed the significance of Saudi links to the hijackers, mishandled or deliberately downplayed evidence of the kingdom’s possible complicity in the attacks that killed 2,977 people and injured thousands more.
“Why is this information coming out now?” asked retired FBI agent Daniel Gonzalez, who pursued the Saudi connections for almost 15 years. “We should have had all of this three or four weeks after 9/11.”
Saudi officials have long denied any involvement in the plot, emphasizing that they were at war with al-Qaida well before 2001.
They have also leaned on earlier U.S. assessments, especially the one-page summary of a joint FBI-CIA report that was publicly released by the Bush administration in 2005. That summary said there was no evidence that “the Saudi Government or members of the Saudi royal family knowingly provided support” for the attacks.
Pages of the report that were declassified in 2022 are more critical of the Saudi role, describing extensive Saudi funding for Islamic charities linked to al-Qaida and the reluctance of senior Saudi officials to cooperate with U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
The plaintiffs’ account still leaves significant gaps in the story of how two known al-Qaida operatives, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, avoided CIA surveillance overseas, flew into Los Angeles under their own names and then — despite speaking no English and ostensibly knowing no one — settled in Southern California to start preparing for the attacks.
Still, the lawsuit has exposed layers of contradictions and deceit in the Saudi government’s portrayal of Omar al-Bayoumi, a middle-aged Saudi graduate student in San Diego who was the central figure in the hijackers’ support network.
Almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, FBI agents identified Bayoumi as having helped the two young Saudis rent an apartment, set up a bank account and take care of other needs. Bayoumi, then 42, was arrested on Sept. 21, 2001, in Birmingham, England, where he had moved to continue graduate studies in business. Scotland Yard terrorism investigators questioned him for a week in London as two FBI agents monitored the sessions.
Bayoumi dissembled from the start, newly released transcripts of the interrogations show. He said he barely remembered the two Qaida operatives, having met them by chance in a halal cafe in the Los Angeles suburb of Culver City, after he stopped at the Saudi Consulate to renew his passport. The evidence shows he actually renewed his passport the day before the encounter in the cafe, one of many indications that his meeting with the hijackers was planned.
After pressure from Saudi diplomats, Bayoumi was freed by the British authorities without being charged. U.S. officials did not try to have him extradited.
Two years later, in Saudi Arabia, Bayoumi sat for interviews with the FBI and the 9/11 commission that were overseen by Saudi intelligence officials. Again, he insisted that he was just being hospitable to the hijackers. He knew nothing of their plans, he said, and was opposed to violent jihad.
Gonzalez and other FBI agents were dubious. Though Bayoumi was supposedly a student, he did almost no studying. He was far more active in setting up a Saudi-funded mosque in San Diego and spreading money around the Muslim community. (The Saudi government paid him surreptitiously through an aviation-services company in Houston.)
FBI officials in Washington accepted the Saudi depiction of Bayoumi as an amiable, somewhat bumbling government accountant trying to improve his skills, and as a devout but moderate Muslim — and not a spy. The lead agent on the FBI team that investigated him, Jacqueline Maguire, told the 9/11 commission that by “all indications,” Bayoumi’s connection with the hijackers had been the result of “a random encounter” at the cafe.
The 9/11 commission accepted that assessment. The commission’s investigators noted Bayoumi’s “obliging and gregarious” manner in interviews and called him “an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists.” The panel found “no credible evidence that he believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups.”
But in 2017, the FBI concluded that Bayoumi was, in fact, a Saudi spy — although it kept that finding secret until 2022, after President Joe Biden ordered agencies to declassify more documents from the 9/11 files.
A page from an exhibit submitted by the plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit against the Saudi government over the role it may have played in the 9/11 attacks. The exhibit contains screenshots from a video by a Saudi official, Omar al-Bayoumi, who toured Washington, D.C., in 1999.Obtained by ProPublica from the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York
Exactly whom in the Saudi government Bayoumi was working for remains unclear. FBI reports describe him as a “cooptee,” or part-time agent, of the Saudi intelligence service, but say he reported to the kingdom’s powerful former ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. (Lawyers for the Saudi government have continued to repeat Bayoumi’s earlier denials that he ever had “any assignment” for Saudi intelligence.)
Another layer of Bayoumi’s hidden identity has emerged from documents, videotapes and other materials that were seized from his home and office at the time of his arrest in England. The plaintiffs had sought that information from the Justice Department for years but received almost nothing until the British authorities began sharing their copies of the material in 2023.
Although Saudi officials insist that Bayoumi merely volunteered at a local mosque, the British evidence points to his deeper collaboration with the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. The Saudi royals had established the ministry in 1993 as part of a governing pact with the powerful clergy. In return for political support, they gave the clerics effective control over domestic religious matters and funded their efforts to spread their fundamentalist Wahhabi brand of Islam overseas.
From the start of the FBI’s 9/11 investigation, agents pored over a short excerpt of a videotape recorded at a party that Bayoumi hosted for some two dozen Muslim men in February 2000, soon after Hazmi and Mihdhar arrived in San Diego.
It was another coincidence, Bayoumi claimed, that he held the event in the hijackers’ apartment. The two young Saudis had nothing really to do with the gathering, he said, but he needed to keep his wife and other women in his own apartment, sequestered from male guests according to conservative Muslim custom.
The FBI did not share a full copy of the VHS recording with either its own field agents or the 9/11 families, who sought it repeatedly. (An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on the bureau’s handling of the Bayoumi evidence.) But the full recording was provided to the plaintiffs by the British police last December.
The longer version casts Bayoumi’s gathering in a different light. Although the nominal guest of honor is a visiting Saudi cleric, the two hijackers are carefully introduced to the other guests and are seemingly at the center of the proceedings.
After identifying many of the party guests for the first time, the plaintiffs’ lawyers were able to document that many went on to play significant roles in the hijackers’ support network, helping them set up internet and telephone service, sign up for English classes and buy a used car.
“Bayoumi hand-picked these individuals because he knew and assessed that they were well-suited to provide the Al Qaeda operatives with important forms of support,” the lawyers wrote of the party guests.
Another videotape taken from Bayoumi’s Birmingham home is even more at odds with the image he conveyed to the FBI and the 9/11 commission. The video follows Bayoumi as he tours Washington, D.C., with two visiting Saudi clerics early in the summer of 1999.
Lawyers for the Saudi government called the recording an innocent souvenir — “a tourist video that includes footage of artwork, flowerbeds, and a squirrel on the White House lawn.” But the plaintiffs’ lawyers posit a more ominous purpose, especially as Bayoumi focuses on his main subject: an extensive presentation of the Capitol building, which is shown from a series of vantage points and in relation to other Washington landmarks.
“We greet you, the esteemed brothers, and we welcome you from Washington,” Bayoumi says on the video. Later, standing before the camera, he reports as “Omar al-Bayoumi from Capitol Hill, the Capitol building.”
The footage shows the Capitol from various angles, noting architectural features, entrances and the movement of security guards. Bayoumi sprinkles his narration with religious language and refers to a “plan.”
“Bayoumi’s video footage and his narration are not that of a tourist,” the plaintiffs contend in one court document, citing the analysis of a former FBI expert. The video, they add, “bears the hallmarks of terror planning operations identified by law enforcement and counterterrorism investigators in operational videos seized from terror groups including Al Qaeda.”
Lawyers for the Saudi government dismissed this conclusion as preposterous.
But the video’s timing is noteworthy. According to the 9/11 commission report, Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders began discussing their “planes operation” in the spring of 1999. Although they disagreed on which U.S. landmarks to strike, the report states, “all of them wanted to hit the Capitol.”
The two Saudi clerics who joined Bayoumi on the trip, Adel al-Sadhan and Mutaeb al-Sudairy, were so-called propagators — emissaries of the Islamic Affairs ministry sent to proselytize abroad. U.S. investigators later linked them to a handful of Islamist militants.
Another page from the plaintiffs’ exhibit shows two Saudi religious officials, Mutaeb al-Sudairy and Adel al-Sadhan, during a trip in the Washington, D.C., area with Bayoumi early in the summer of 1999.Obtained by ProPublica from the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York
Most notably, Sudairy, whom Bayoumi describes as the emir, or leader, of the Washington trip, spent several months living in Columbia, Missouri, with Ziyad Khaleel, a Palestinian-American al-Qaida member who delivered a satellite phone to bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1998. The Qaida leader used the phone to coordinate the deadly bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, FBI officials have said.
Sudairy and Sadhan, who had diplomatic status, had previously visited California, working with Bayoumi and staying at a small San Diego guesthouse where the hijackers later lived. Many new details of their travels were revealed in the British documents. The two Saudis had previously denied even knowing Bayoumi, one of many false claims in depositions coordinated by the Saudi government.
The new evidence also shows that Sadhan and Sudairy worked with the other key Saudi official linked to the hijackers, the cleric Fahad al-Thumairy. According to one FBI source, it was Thumairy, the 32-year-old imam of a prominent Saudi mosque in Culver City, who received the hijackers when they arrived on Jan. 15, 2000, and arranged for their temporary housing and other needs.
Thumairy, a Ministry of Islamic Affairs official who was also assigned to the Saudi consulate, insisted he had no memory of Hazmi and Mihdhar, although the three were seen together by several FBI informants. Thumairy also denied knowing Bayoumi, despite telephone records that show at least five dozen calls between them. Thumairy’s diplomatic visa was withdrawn by the State Department in 2003 because of his suspected involvement with terrorist activity.
In an extensive analysis of telephone records produced by the FBI and the British authorities, the plaintiffs also documented what they called patterns of coordination involving Bayoumi, Thumairy and other Saudi officials. (Lawyers for the Saudi government said the calls were about mundane religious matters.)
Two weeks before the hijackers’ arrival, for example, the records show calls among Bayoumi, Thumairy and the Islamic Affairs director at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. Bayoumi and Thumairy also made a number of calls around that time to a noted Yemeni American cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, who later emerged as an important Qaida leader in Yemen.
It has long been known that Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011, had some contact with Hazmi and Mihdhar in San Diego and met two other 9/11 hijackers after moving to a mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. But many FBI investigators believed he was radicalized well after 9/11 and may not have known the hijackers’ plans.
New evidence filed in the court case points to a more significant relationship. Awlaki appears to have met Hazmi and Mihdhar as soon as they arrived in San Diego. He joined Bayoumi in helping them rent an apartment and set up bank accounts, and he was seen by others to have served as a trusted spiritual advisor.
Awlaki’s worldview “matched quite closely to al-Qaida’s at the time,” said Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, a biographer of Awlaki who served as an expert for the plaintiffs. “The new information now becoming public, on top of what we already know about his teachings and associations, makes it reasonable to conclude that Awlaki knew the hijackers were part of the al-Qaeda network.”
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