There has been no greater boon to historians and others seeking the truth of government actions than the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI and Intel agencies hate it. Bureaucrats despise it – mostly because it piles on lots of extra paperwork duties. And Administrations from LBJ’s White House to the present have been embarrassed by what researchers – professional and amateur – have been able to bring to light.

The latest FOIA bombshell comes to us via Judicial Watch. You may recall these folks from the Clinton scandals, specifically their assistance to Paula Jones. At that time, the left accused them of being a right wing smear machine funded by Richard Mellon Scaife.

I wonder what the left is saying about them today?

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released new documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) related to the “expeditious departure” of Saudi nationals, including members of the bin Laden family, from the United States following the 9/11 attacks. According to one of the formerly confidential documents, dated 9/21/2001, terrorist Osama bin Laden may have chartered one of the Saudi flights.

The document states: “ON 9/19/01, A 727 PLANE LEFT LAX, RYAN FLT #441 TO ORLANDO, FL W/ETA (estimated time of arrival) OF 4-5PM. THE PLANE WAS CHARTERED EITHER BY THE SAUDI ARABIAN ROYAL FAMILY OR OSAMA BIN LADEN…THE LA FBI SEARCHED THE PLANE [REDACTED] LUGGAGE, OF WHICH NOTHING UNUSUAL WAS FOUND.” The plane was allowed to depart the United States after making four stops to pick up passengers, ultimately landing in Paris where all passengers disembarked on 9/20/01, according to the document.

Overall, the FBI’s most recent document production includes details of the six flights between 9/14 and 9/24 that evacuated Saudi royals and bin Laden family members. The documents also contain brief interview summaries and occasional notes from intelligence analysts concerning the cursory screening performed prior to the departures. According to the FBI documents, incredibly not a single Saudi national nor any of the bin Laden family members possessed any information of investigative value.

This is more than curious. It is suspicious. At a National Security Council meeting at 3:30 PM on 9/11, CIA Chief George Tenet said that it was “virtually certain” that Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda were behind the attacks. FBI Director Mueller was also at this meeting and heard Tenet’s analysis, including the NSA’s interception of al-Qaeda communications revealing the terrorists congratulating one another on the success of the operation. (Even the more cautious 9/11 Commission said of this meeting “At about 3:15, President Bush met with his principal advisers through a secure video teleconference. Rice said President Bush began the meeting with the words, “We’re at war,” and that Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said the agency was still assessing who was responsible, but the early signs all pointed to al Qaeda.”)

So if the US government had even an inkling that al-Qaeda was behind the attacks, why did they allow a flight out of the country carrying Osama bin Laden? Already a wanted man for the embassy bombings in Africa, what possible excuse involving stupidity, incompetence, or any other human failing could account for this monumental blunder?

Let’s ask Richard Clark:

First, we found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001.24 To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened.25

Second, we found no evidence of political intervention. We found no evidence that anyone at the White House above the level of Richard Clarke participated in a decision on the departure of Saudi nationals. The issue came up in one of the many video teleconferences of the interagency group Clarke chaired, and Clarke said he approved of how the FBI was dealing with the matter when it came up for interagency discussion at his level. Clarke told us, “I asked the FBI, Dale Watson . . . to handle that, to check to see if that was all right with them, to see if they wanted access to any of these people, and to get back to me. And if they had no objections, it would be fine with me.” Clarke added, “I have no recollection of clearing it with anybody at the White House.”26

Although White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card remembered someone telling him about the Saudi request shortly after 9/11, he said he had not talked to the Saudis and did not ask anyone to do anything about it. The President and Vice President told us they were not aware of the issue at all until it surfaced much later in the media. None of the officials we interviewed recalled any intervention or direction on this matter from any political appointee.27

To make matters worse, the FBI apparently did not do a thorough job of searching and interrogating the Saudis on those flights – even if Osama was not among them:

Overall, the FBI’s most recent document production includes details of the six flights between 9/14 and 9/24 that evacuated Saudi royals and bin Laden family members. The documents also contain brief interview summaries and occasional notes from intelligence analysts concerning the cursory screening performed prior to the departures. According to the FBI documents, incredibly not a single Saudi national nor any of the bin Laden family members possessed any information of investigative value.

Moreover, the documents contain numerous errors and inconsistencies which call to question the thoroughness of the FBI’s investigation of the Saudi flights. For example, on one document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 20 of 23 passengers on the Ryan International Airlines flight (commonly referred to as the “Bin Laden Family Flight”). On another document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 15 of 22 passengers on the same flight.

It bears repeating that 9/11 Cassandra Richard Clark appears to be responsible for allowing these flights to begin with. Sort of puts a dent in Mr. Clark’s self-proclaimed anti-terrorism bona fides, no? Maybe the next time he shows up on one of the Sunday morning talkies, some intrepid journalist will ask him about this?

Not likely.

Perhaps most shocking to me is that the FBI failed at the most basic level of investigative competence possible; they seemed not to be curious about who was on those flights and what they might know about 9/11. I realize this will bring the 9/11 kooks and loons out of the closet with explanations of the Bush family’s close ties to the Saudis and how they wanted Osama to escape anyway. Unfortunately for them, Richard Clark (no friend of Bush, my tin-foil hat wearing friends) appears to be the highest level government official who knew of these flights in advance and authorized them. There is zero evidence that Bush or Cheney knew of these charters or authorized them in any way.

Another nagging question is what the 9/11 Commission staffers made of these memos when they read them? One would think that a mention of Osama Bin Laden in an FBI report on the Saudi flights would have raised every red flag possible and led to hauling Mueller, Clark, and the investigating agents before the Commission to explain themselves. The fact that Commission staffers either missed these reports or never acted upon them is just more evidence that the Commission itself had flawed investigative procedures.

Or they never saw the reports at all. This raises other, more troubling questions, about what else the FBI failed to give the Commission.

I will say that the idea that Osama was in the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 seems implausible. But given the incompetence of our intelligence, counter intelligence, administrative, and political national security infrastructure that was exposed by 9/11, it is not out of the realm of the impossible.

UPDATE AND AN APOLOGY - SORT OF

This report has been denied outright by the FBI who assures us that they investigated the Saudis thoroughly before allowing them to leave.

While I have no doubt that the Osama angle has been overblown – and I apologize to my readers for being dumb enough to forget what Neo was kind enough to point out in the comments; that Osama was in Afghanistan just hours after the towers fell answering questions about the attack, I still think the Judicial Watch reports raise difficult questions for the FBI and, by extension, the 9/11 Commission.

But my reaction to the idea that Osama may have been on one of the planes or even that he may have chartered one of the flights was so wrong as to be laughable. For that, I apologize.