"Testimony"? No one has been charged with any crime. The President as Commander-in-Chief has authority to direct the intelligence agencies of the US.
Never-the-less, much has been written about Bush's pre 9-11 spiking of an FBI investigation in Saudi activities (and, to be fair, at the time it could have been argued that 'national security' demanded that a 'loyal' US ally such as Saudi Arabia, and such a big oil supplier, should not be subjected to embarassment as a result of a 'mere' domestic FBI investigation....)
Punch in the FBI case # on google, and search for more opinions on the matter yourself:
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FBI Document 199I
What we did discover was serious enough. To begin with, from less-than-happy FBI agents we obtained an interesting document, some 30 pages long, marked "SECRET." I've reproduced a couple of pages here (figure 2.1). Note the designation "199I" -- that's FBI-speak for "national security matter." According to insiders, FBI agents had wanted to check into two members of the bin Laden family, Abdullah and Omar, but were told to stay away by superiors -- until September 13, 2001. By then, Abdullah and Omar were long gone from the United States.
Why no investigation of the brothers bin Laden? The Bush administration's line is the Binladdins (a more common spelling of the Arabic name) are good folk. Osama's the Black Sheep, supposedly cut off from his Saudi kin. But the official line notwithstanding, some FBI agents believed the family had some gray sheep worth questioning -- especially these two working with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which the file labels "a suspected terrorist organization."
Let's be careful here: WAMY may be completely innocent. [ed. note: WAMY has since had it accounts frozen, and fund raising banned in the US and many western countries. Several European countries banned it's activities before the US did.] The FBI targets lots of innocents, too many in fact, but there were plenty of signs that the WAMY crew deserved the organization's scrutiny. WAMY, funded from Riyadh by royal charities, sponsors soccer teams and educational seminars. But in their Florida summer camp, besides the usual arts and crafts for the kiddies, youngsters received a pep talk on what were presented as the good Islamic practices of hostage-taking and suicide killings. (We at BBC obtained a video tape of one of these rap sessions.) WAMY literature was found in the apartment of one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, praising "heroes" who killed unarmed Jews at worship.
No matter how vile WAMY's indoctrination chats, they are none of the FBI's business. Recruitment for terror, however, is. Before 9/11, the governments of India and the Philippines tied WAMY to groups staging murderous attacks on civilians. Following our broadcast on BBC, the Dutch secret service stated that WAMY, "support(ed) violent activity." In 2002, The Wall Street Journal's Glenn Simpson made public a report by Bosnia's government that a charity with Abdullah bin Laden on its board had channeled money to Chechen guerrillas. Two of the 9/11 hijackers used an address on the same street as WAMY's office in Falls Church, Virginia.
The "Back-Off" Directive and the Islamic Bomb
Despite these tantalizing facts, Abdullah and his operations were A-OK with the FBI chiefs, if not their working agents. Just a dumb SNAFU? Not according to a top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity. After Bush took office, he said, "there was a major policy shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back off" from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off-limits for investigation. Osama was the exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, "follow the money," was now violated, and investigations -- at least before 9/11 -- began to die.
And there was a lot to investigate -- or in the case of the CIA and FBI under Bush -- a lot to ignore. Through well-known international arms dealers (I'm sorry, but in this business, sinners are better sources than saints) our team was tipped off to a meeting of Saudi billionaires at the Hotel Royale Monceau in Paris in May 1996 with the financial representative of Osama bin Laden's network. The Saudis, including a key Saudi prince joined by Muslim and non-Muslim gun traffickers, met to determine who would pay how much to Osama. This was not so much an act of support but of protection -- a payoff to keep the mad bomber away from Saudi Arabia.
The crucial question here is that, if I could learn about this meeting, how did the CIA miss it? In fact, since the first edition of this book, other sources have disclosed that the meeting was monitored by French intelligence. Since U.S. intelligence was thus likely informed, the question becomes why didn't the government immediately move against the Saudis?
I probed our CIA contact for specifics of investigations that were hampered by orders to back off of the Saudis. He told us that far bigger fish got away than WAMY. The Khan Laboratories investigation had been effectively put on hold.
You may never have heard of Khan Laboratories, but if this planet blows to pieces this year, it will likely be thanks to Khan Labs' creating nuclear warheads for Pakistan's military. Because investigators had been tracking the funding for this so-called "Islamic Bomb" back to Saudi Arabia, under Bush security restrictions, the inquiry was stymied. (The restrictions were lifted, the agent told me without a hint of dark humor, on 9/11.)4
Clinton Closed an Eye....
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