An interesting excerpt:
What is so astounding is most people in this country do not know this, don't know about when the grounding of the air traffic happened in this country right after September 11, what happened --
MICHAEL MOORE: And I think -- right, Amy. If you explain this to the average American out there, that after all the planes were grounded and none of us could fly, and my wife and I know this very specifically because we were stuck in L.A. We were supposed to fly that day back here and we had to get a car and drove 3,000 miles.
So nobody could fly -- I mean, nobody. All planes were grounded for two, three, actually up to four days. Right away, the Bush administration gave permission for private Saudi jets to be allowed to fly around America and pick up 24 members and associates of the bin Laden family in four or five cities and fly them to Boston, where they got together and then, after a few more days, were then flown out of the country to Paris without any kind of investigation by the F.B.I. or real interrogation.
Not only that, according to the New York Times last month, there's now up to 160 members of the royal family and other Saudi officials who were in the country at the time who also got free plane rides and picked up and taken out of the country when no one else could fly. So no one could fly in America on September 12 or 13 unless your name was bin Laden.
Just stop and think about that for just a few seconds. And I don't mean -- I'm not saying that just because your name is bin Laden you're automatically something -- that's not what I'm saying -- but common sense will tell anyone that, Amy, if your brother has just been accused of committing the worst mass murder in American history, would it be wrong for the police maybe to just come and ask you a few questions?
Not that you had anything to do with it, but just, if he calls, could you let us know?
AMY GOODMAN: Were these people questioned?
MICHAEL MOORE: Here's where they were questioned. They all got on the plane to Boston to get their free trip to Paris, they then allow a couple F.B.I. guys on to the plane to check passports.
Their questions were: what's your name, let me see your passport. They had just a few minutes, and they were out of there.
AMY GOODMAN: Vanity Fair quotes the head of Logan airport saying she was absolutely shocked when they were dealing with the crisis of the planes having come from Logan that hit the World Trade Center, they were now being told, while others weren't allowed to fly, they were to prepare to make sure that they could fly out.
MICHAEL MOORE: And those orders, we now know, came directly from the White House.
So here's Bush trying to deal with everything on September 11, 12, 13, you know, I mean, you remember the total state of chaos and people, just everyone, all of us, discombobulated by the whole thing.
And he had the time to be thinking, what can I do to help the bin Laden family right now?
You know, all these elaborate plans were made because they were spread out throughout the country, to be able to pick them up, get them to Boston, and then get them to Paris.
Of course, what they'll say, if you were to ask them, well, we did it for protection, worried about Americans. Americans may respond to a hostile way to anyone named bin Laden.
Well, first of all, I'm glad he has such a high opinion of us American citizens. That's not really how people are. And secondly, again, let me use the Clinton example. Imagine after the days or days after Oklahoma city, Clinton sitting around the White House going, I wonder how the McVeigh family is doing out in Buffalo right now. I hope they're OK. We don't want anything to happen -- why don't we give them a free trip to Paris. Call them up and let's arrange free planes to get the McVeighs to Paris.
That's exactly, exactly what happened with bush and the bin Ladens. And the F.B.I., and I'm making this film right now that will hopefully get this out sometime next year, and I just interviewed one of the F.B.I. agents, and they were appalled. They couldn't believe that procedures weren't followed. I said, what is the procedure in a case like this? He said the procedure would be that each of the bin Ladens would have been subpoenaed, they would have come and Testified. We would have subpoenaed their phone records, just done a check. |
