White House agreed to whisk Saudis away after 9/11
Senator criticizes airlift
By Eric Lichtblau (NYT)
Thursday, September 4, 2003
WASHINGTON: Top White House officials personally approved the evacuation of dozens of influential Saudis, including relatives of Osama bin Laden, from the United States in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when most flights were still grounded, according to a former White House adviser.
Richard Clarke, who ran the White House crisis team after the attacks but has since left the Bush administration, said he agreed to the extraordinary plan because the Federal Bureau of Investigation assured him that the departing Saudis were not linked to terrorism. The White House feared that the Saudis could face "retribution" for the hijackings, Clarke said.
The fact that relatives of bin Laden and other Saudis had been rushed out of the country became public soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. But questions have lingered about the circumstances of their departure, and Clarke's statements provided the first acknowledgment that the White House had any direct involvement in the plan and that senior administration officials had personally signed off on it.......
........Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, seized on Clarke's comments to call on the White House to conduct an investigation into the hasty departures of about 140 Saudis in the days after the attacks.
Schumer said in an interview that he suspected some of the Saudis who were allowed to leave, particularly two relatives of bin Laden who he said had links to terrorist groups themselves, could have shed light on the events of Sept. 11.
"This is just another example of our country coddling the Saudis,"' Schumer said. "It's almost as if we didn't want to find out what links existed"......
........Schumer said in a letter to the White House Wednesday that the Saudis appeared to have had "a free pass" despite possible knowledge about the attacks.
"I find it hard to believe that two days after 9/11, the FBI would even know what questions to ask and who to ask it of," Schumer said in an interview. The New York Times
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