As the White House ponders unclassifying 28 pages of the 9/11 commission report that may or may not implicate Saudi involvement in the terror attacks on New York City, the Saudi government on April 16 threatened Washington with dumping hundreds of billions in dollar assets as a punishment if they revealed to the public the contents of those pages.
For a long time, Saudi Arabia is believed to have been directly involved in the attacks on 9/11, with 15 of the 18 terrorists being from and funded by the Saudi Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill’s passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation. - New York Times
Americans were perplexed more than a decade ago when the Bush administration went out of its way to protect the Saudi government from investigation, even focusing their efforts towards Iraq and Afghanistan which eventually led to 15 year conflicts with these nations who had limited roles in the attacks. And with the Saudi government out of nowhere offering $10 million to help the victims of 9/11 within weeks of the attacks, the blood money didn’t mollify the American people’s beliefs that the Arab Kingdom was innocent of involvement.
Yesterday’s threats to Washington also underly the dissolving relationship between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. government, especially following Barack Obama’s removal of sanctions against the Kingdom’s primary enemy, Iran. And the loser in this could be the American people if either scenario of not revealing the documents, or the dumping of dollars, is the result from these threats.
Kenneth Schortgen Jr is a writer for Secretsofthefed.com, Examiner.com,Roguemoney.net, and To the Death Media, and hosts the popular web blog, The Daily Economist. Ken can also be heard Wednesday afternoons giving an weekly economic report on the Angel Clark radio show.