Then, on Sept. 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda operatives -- 15 identified as Saudi nationals -- hijacked four U.S. commercial jets and used them to inflict some 3,000 deaths in New York, at the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania. At the time, Bandar was the Saudi ambassador in Washington and so close to the Bush family that he was nicknamed "Bandar Bush."
Bandar was also very close to the bin Laden family. After the 9/11 attacks, Bandar acknowledged having met Osama bin Laden in the context of bin Laden thanking Bandar for his help financing the Afghan jihad project. "I was not impressed, to be honest with you," Bandar told CNN's Larry King about bin Laden. "I thought he was simple and very quiet guy."
However, immediately after 9/11, Bandar undermined the FBI's opportunity to learn more about the connections between Osama bin Laden's relatives and the perpetrators of 9/11 when Bandar arranged for members of the bin Laden family to flee the United States on some of the first planes allowed back into the air -- after only cursory interviews with the FBI.
The only part of the 9/11 Commission's report to be blacked out as "classified" was the section dealing with alleged Saudi financing for al-Qaeda.
Thus, even as Official Washington's neocons dutifully attack President Obama as Neville Chamberlain for negotiating an interim agreement with Iran to constrain but not eliminate its nuclear program, Prime Minister Netanyahu must decide how far he feels he can go with his new Saudi friends -- and just how much of a backlash he might face if he is seen as complicit in a resurgence of al-Qaeda terrorism.
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