The
MadCowMorningNews has obtained the
first photo ever published (at right) of the never-before-seen Learjet that flew the so-called Saudi “phantom flight” from Tampa
Florida... a flight FBI and Bush Administration officials
for more than
three years
denied ever
took place.
Last week’s
newly-released FBI documents on flights out of the U.S. after the 9/11 attack by
Saudi Princes and bin Laden family members generated headlines about the
FBI’s admission that Osama bin Laden may himself have chartered one of the planes.
But the
documents contain an even-more startling revelation: the Bush Administration,
the FBI, the FAA, and even defense contractor Raytheon knowingly lied
in repeated denials of newspaper and magazine accounts of the “phantom
flight."
The documents
show that FBI agents and analysts, to buttress what was then the official government position,
misstated, misrepresented, and even
intimidated witnesses (an FBI specialty) into silence.
They
illustrate the inside anatomy of an FBI cover-up,
using the same tactics which eyewitnesses in Florida reported the FBI used after
the 9/11 attack.
"No Such
Flight. Nope. No Sir."
The flight was "not in our logs,"
the FAA told the Tampa Tribune, the newspaper which first
broke the story. "It
didn't occur."
"There
was no such flight," said an FBI spokesman. "Apparently they (the Saudis
in Tampa) had driven,
not flown."
At the time the
newly-released FBI documents (obtained
through a Judicial Watch lawsuit)were being written, FBI, FAA, and Bush Administration officials all denied that the “phantom flight” ever took place.
And the
FBI documents completely support this account.
And that’s where the matter would, normally, have rested.
Case closed.
Rendered inoperative
But then came a surprise. The July 2004 release of
the 9/11 Commission Report presented overwhelming
evidence (from a dozen easily-available sources) that conclusively proved the
flight, in the Commission’s words,“definitely took place.”
What had gone wrong? How had the FBI's conclusions on such a controversial post-9/11 subject been so easily “rendered inoperative?”
The story
broke in the
Tampa Tribune. Here's what the controversy was about:
On Sept 13,
2001, a private Lear jet flew three young Saudi men—a Saudi Arabian prince, the
son of the Saudi Arabian defense minister, and the some of a top Saudi army
commander—from the Raytheon Terminal at Tampa International Airport to Lexington,
Kentucky.
Critics cried
foul, and accused the federal government of giving the Saudis preferential
treatment just two days after 15 Saudi men had helped murder 3000 people in New
York and Washington, D.C.
And they
charged that on a day when every other private plane in the nation was grounded
due to concern about possible follow-up terrorist attacks on America, letting
the Saudis fly had been a slap in the face to Americans mourning their dead.
Snarky asides from "VANITYBOM victims"
The
documents, compiled by the FBI’S PENTBOM TEAM, consist of interview summaries,
notes from intelligence analysts, and a detailed rebuttal to an Oct 2003 article
in Vanity Fair (agents joked that they were
VANITYBOM victims) which detailed the controversy over the
"phantom" Saudi flights. Reading them, you can watch
a cover-up being born.
Excerpts from the
newly-released FBI documents:
“The article
alleges a group of Saudi royals traveled by air from Tampa Florida to Lexington
Kentucky on September 13, 2001, prior to FAA authorization for these types of
flights. It also alleges that a chartered flight left the U.S. with several
members of the bin Laden family without investigation by the FBI. Both of these
allegations are false. There are many other inaccuracies with the article.”
(You can
almost hear the FBI agent, or intelligence analyst, sniffing the air with contempt
for the scandal-mongering press.)
“A chartered
flight departed from Lexington KY on Sept 16, 2001 with fourteen passengers.
Four members of the party arrived in Lexington by car.”
(By car?)
"OK. Here's the shot. Keep a straight face."
“These four
individuals had disobeyed the Prince by traveling by car instead of by jet,
as the Prince had instructed them. Hired security personnel, who have been
quoted in the (Vanity Fair) article and in interviews
with the FBI, have perpetuated the cover story that the four had flown from
Tampa by consistently stating that there was a charter flight into Lexington. No
flights arrived or departed from Lexington KY on September 13,2001.”

(Wait a
minute. Hired security personnel perpetuated
the cover story, even in interviews with the FBI?
Wouldn’t that have been a little risky in an
investigation into the murder of 3000 people?)
As if
anticipating the objection, the analyst
closes his memo by writing:
“One of the members of the private protection detail has
confidentially told FBI agents in Lexington the truth about how the
four arrived in Lexington.”
(Confidentially? Is that why the documents have no quotes from the interview?
They can only hint at the truth about a matter of vital
concern to the 9/11 investigation because
the FBI doesn't want to get the Saudi boys in trouble with their Dad?
"Bottom line, the jet
never left."
A
second agent confirms the account told by the first:
“The Saudi
Prince tried to arrange for his son and his son’s friends to fly up from Boca
Raton FL where they were attending school on a chartered jet.”
(We presume
the writer doesn't mean the Saudi boys were attending school on a
chartered jet, but in Boca Raton. But hey. Who knows.)
“They filed a
flight plan but were told if they took off they would be shot down. Bottom line,
the jet never left, at least not on 9/12 and not with the college students. The
prince had ordered them to travel only by air.”
(But wait!
This what they call rank sophistry. No
one suggested the Saudi phantom flight left on Sept 12.
Is this just a slip? Or something
more akin to the Clinton-like equivocation: “It depends on your definition of
‘is’?”)
Remote viewers in the FBI
Let's hear
from Analyst No. 3:
“According to
FBI personnel in Lexington KY, (name redacted) was ordered by Prince Ahmed bin
Salman bin Abdulaziz to fly from Florida to Kentucky, perhaps because he was
concerned for his safety if he drove. However (name redacted)
was not able to fly, due to restrictions. As a result he drove, but told Prince
Ahmed bin Salman and his security personnel (including several off-duty
Lexington police officers) that he flew. End comment.”

And not a
moment too soon. There's also a diagram, detailing
where all the Saudis were, which ends with the following notation:
“FBI
Lexington clearly recall that these individuals attempted to board flights in
Florida but were refused permission to fly.”
(Lexington
must be where those slippery guv’mint folks keep the remote viewers
these days.)
"A favor from former President Bush."
The
newly-released FBI documents do the impossible: they make the 9/11 Commission
Report look good.
Today we only
know about the phantom flight from Tampa because a former Tampa police
officer, Dan Grossi, and a retired FBI Agent, Manuel Perez,
provided security on the flight from Tampa to Lexington KY.
And then,
when asked about it, they told the truth.
In October
of 2001, Grossi confirmed to the Tampa Tribune that he had been on the flight,
and added that he “was told clearance came from the White House after the Saudi
royal family asked a favor from former President Bush.”
Perez agreed
with Grossi’s assessment.
"They got the
approval somewhere," Perez is quoted in the Vanity Fair article telling reporter
Craig Unger. "It must have come from the highest levels of government."
'Inconvenient knowledge' takes its toll

Then
somebody got to Perez and Grossi, and they clammed up. Even
three years later, after the 9/11 Commission Report confirmed
the flight had taken place, Dan Grossi wouldn't talk.
"The White House, the FAA and the
FBI all said the flight didn't happen," Grossi told the Tampa Trib. "Those are
three agencies that are way over my head, and that's why I'm done talking about
it."
According to
the paper's story, the plane had taken off from a
private hanger at Raytheon, which is a major defense-intelligence industry
player.
Four years ago, in
an attempt to confirm the Tribune's story in the face of persistent government
denials, we contacted Raytheon to ask, naively, we admit, who owned the Lear jet
in question.
We were told
we would have to ask the owner of the plane to ask Raytheon to tell us who owned
the plane. A Raytheon spokesman said, "I checked our policy on disclosing
owner/customer information and we decline to do so unless that owner requests
that we release the information."
Raytheon knows which side the butter is on
We didn’t
know who the owner was, we explained. That’s why we called you. Our logic may have been impeccable, but it
cut no ice with the Raytheon spokesman.
As it
happens, Raytheon had already lied about the phantom flight,
giving an identification number for the Learjet to the Tampa Tribune that
didn’t exist, after the paper
ascertained that airport records showed Raytheon collected landing
fees from only two aircraft on Sept. 13.
One of them was a Lear 35. But according
to Raytheon, the registration on the Lear was 505RP,
which, according to federal records, is a tail number assigned to a Cessna Citation based in
Kalamazoo, Mich.
Adding insult to injury, when
the Tampa Tribune called Hop-a-Jet in 2004, an official there who wouldn't
identify himself said the company doesn't own an aircraft with the registration
number 505RP.
Furthermore, he said, if that tail number is assigned to a Cessna Citation, the
company doesn't own any Citations, either.
"You can't find it unless you wanna find it."
Finding
the Lear jet that had flown the Saudis out of Tampa turned out to be easy.
Just read Appendix B to the 9/11 Commission
Report.
Here’s how
they found it:
9/11
Commission investigators called officials at Tampa International Airport,
and were told that Tampa has a system that captures the noise made by planes
taking off and landing at the airport and then attaches that information to the
aircraft type and flight identification number.
At the
request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, officials at Tampa
International Airport confirmed that the flight did take place, and supplied
details.
Wow. That
sure was simple. How come the FBI hadn’t done it right after the 9/11 attack?
Airport
officials found the records for the Learjet, labeled HP (for Hop-A-Jet)32. The
airport had recorded the plane’s departure at 4:37 PM.
Then 9/11
Commission investigators went to Hop-A-Jet, and talked to the pilot, Chris
Steele. He said he’d followed standard procedures and filed his flight plan with
the FAA prior to the flight, noting, “I was never questioned about it.”
Another (criminal) boo-boo at the FAA

Remember
the FAA’s denial that the phantom flight ever took place? The FAA
spokesman saying, "It's not in our logs. It didn't occur?"
But when they checked
this time, the FAA found records
which showed that pilot Steele filed his flight plan at 3:30 P.M. on September
13, 2001, indicating the plane was flying from Tampa to Lexington, and then back
to Tampa.
A Tampa
police officer and a retired FBI agent were quoted in Vanity Fair and the Tampa Tribune saying they’d
flown security on the flight. So the 9/11 Commission investigators interviewed them.
Strangely,
neither man mentioned a "cover story" for the Prince to the 9/11 Commission
researchers. They said they’d driven the three young Saudi men to the Raytheon
Terminal at Tampa International Airport.
Tampa Detective Mike Fendle also told Commission investigators
he’d seen a plane that looked like a “cream-colored Learjet” on the tarmac
outside the Raytheon facility.
So the search
had narrowed. We were looking for a cream-colored Learjet owned by
Hop-A-Jet.
And, guess
what? They only own one. It's crème-colored. (see picture.)
The 9/11 Commission Report cover story
But
before getting too excited about the truthiness of the 9/11 Report
(it wasn't), we must ruefully admit that the "powers that be"
somehow always manage to have the last word after all.
They
change the
"terms of engagement" at will.
When the FBI
was insisting the Saudi boys in Tampa never flew to Lexington, KY, on Sept 13,
the FBI documents state that if there was a phantom flight:
"Such a
flight would have been in violation of the FAA's flight ban."
Also, that:
"FAA
reports that full flight restrictions were in effect on 9/13/2001."
But when the
9/11 Commission Report admits the flight actually did happen, there's a catch:
"The flight
definitely took place, and there is nothing improper about it" because "both
the national airspace and Tampa Airport were open."
And:
"At the
time this charter flight took off, both the national airspace and Tampa
Airport were open."

So.
There you are. You see? You can't win. So stop trying. Wrong is
right. Up is down. War is peace.
Ann Coulter is really a woman.
And there's
nothing to see here.
So move
along.
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