Tony Summers was interviewed on the Charlie Rose show on PBS TV.
Anthony Summers – Charlie Rose -
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11800
with Anthony Summers in Current Affairs, Books, History
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Charlie Rose: This fall marks the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The recent killing of Osama Bin Laden marked the defining moment in the fight against al Qaeda. Conspiracy theories still linger about the events of September 11th.
A new book by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan explores some of the questions. An excerpt exploring the connection between Saudi Arabia and the 9/11 hijackers, appears in this months Vanity Fair Magazine. The Kingdom and the Towers
Here’s the book’s co-author Anthony Summers. I’m pleased to have you back. He’s an old friend from a long time ago, welcome. Robby is your coauthor and your wife.
Summers: Both. For twenty years wife.
CR: And five years working together on this project. You began to realize all these conspiracy theories had to do with 9/11, and so you wanted to what?
Summers: When I came to see my publisher at Random House in New York, I found my own publisher, a very senior publisher herself, didn’t believe all the conspiracy theories but felt that in some way the public has been cheated, and there was some secret there.
CR: So your publisher put you on the trail as you say, “there is a lingering sense the nation and the world had been let down.”
Summers: And the other tenant of the conspiracy theories - the Skeptics as they prefer to be called, thought in some way the Bush administration had either had some warning or knew something was coming but allowed it to happen to further their plans to invade the Middle East – as it turned out in Iraq. Or at the extreme ends of conspiracy theories in which they actually provoked the attacks themselves. Here and now it seems daft, but there were enough straws in the wind to say - go look at this.
CR: So now you have a book. So what is it you think happened that we don’t know?
Summers: I hope to successfully dispatch, for a sane America, most of the conspiracy theory ideas.
CR: Send them away.
Summers: Exactly, but I think what happened is those ideas and the lingering thoughts about them have distorted the facts and blurred the things that one should really be concerned about, and there are a lot of things one should still be concerned about this puzzle…
CR: And they are?
Summers: The first of them I think is what US Intelligence actually knew and what it did about it in advance. The first two terrorists who arrived on US soil had been identified by the CIA, they knew that they were al Qaeda, they knew their names, they knew they had US visas, and in once case they learned quite quickly one had arrived in the United States, and yet they did not tell the FBI.
CR: What do you believe was the relationship between the Saudi government or the leading figures in Saudi Arabia and the men who were on those planes on 9/11?
Summers: There are two areas. The first of the areas, in the period - in the years leading up to 9/11 there is good evidence - and we name two of the princes involved in the book Prince Naef, who had been for a long time the head of the interior, the internal intelligence, and Prince Sultan, who was the defense chief in Saudi Arabia, and is now second highest to the throne, it is said - as recorded in the Wall Street Journal, that they raised a lot of money over the years to pay off Bin Laden not to attack Saudi Arabia. He was outside he was in Afghanistan - not to attack Saudi Arabia. In this country if you and I were talking about the Mafia, we would call it protection money. That is one area, and the people who investigated 9/11 and earlier at the CIA, concluded that the Saudis had been paid protection money for a long time.
The second area that I think is especially interesting, that both the joint inquires – and 9/11 Commission delved into it. When the men on the ground in California arrived, they arrived, and the evidence suggests than an Imam, the religious man at the Saudi consulate first gave them a tour of the area in Los Angeles. And that then after that the two of them connected with another Saudi, who was paid from official sources but apparently not for doing any known work, and had been thought of for a long time as a Saudi agent, they connected with him in a meeting that was odd. He said he heard Arabic being talked in a restaurant and the meeting was by pure chance, it doesn’t sound like it. In fact it sounds like a vary bad spy novel; it doesn’t sound like pure chance. He then dropped a newspaper and talked to them as they picked it up. He then gave them help….They didn’t speak English, they were pretty much lost in California, and they were pioneers if you will of the 9/11operation, the guys who arrived first. There were other Saudis who helped them one way or another, - all either left immediately on 9/11 or had left two or three weeks before.
CR: We have the distinguished investigative reporter from Ireland , who I used to know from the BBC, what is it did he discover that ought to draw our attention, and what should be the consequences of that discovery is what I’m asking?
Summers: Back to the beginning of our conversation and you asked me why I was doing the book and I said I wanted to look at the conspiracy stuff, which certainly had elements of it that convinced huge numbers of Americans and equally important huge numbers of people around the world. The last poll I saw suggests that 46% of people abroad, which is what the poll was mostly referring to - people in the middle east, believe that someone other than al Qaeda were responsible. Rubbish, of course al Qaeda was behind it. I wanted to deal with the conspiracy theories but get as close as possible to that elusive thing we call the truth and then……
CR: Of all those conspiracies, which one do you think has merit?
Summers: If you are referring to conspiracy theories, I don’t think any of them have merit.
CR: Okay, so none of the conspiracy theories have any merit, good.
Summers: No. I don’t think so. At the same time, I think that with this book we hope to get closer to clarity to the issues that do seem to matter, and one of the big ones is - were elements of a foreign government involved? And I think we are closer to the idea that elements of the Saudi government were involved.
CR: And the nature of their involvement was what?
Summers: Collaboration with Bin Lade through protection money.
CR: (Did they have) knowledge of what Bin Laden was doing?
Summers: Well, we do have first confirmation, from a former serving CIA officer who was involved in the capture of a bin Laden aide called Abu Zubaydah. And he says that he learned afterwards that when Abu Zubaydah was being questioned, he was intensely questioned over weeks, that at one point he was conned into thinking he was being transferred to Saudi custody, with the idea that he would be terrified to tell what he knew because the Saudis are famous for torture and worse - killing prisoners and so on. And far from that, he instead said, well, let me give you the name and a phone number, which he knew from memory, of a Saudi Prince, not one of the senior ministers, and said he’ll know, and he said tell him I’m here and he’ll know what do to. And he subsequently named two other Saudi princes. All three of those Saudi Princes, and this is a fact, all died within a week of each other shortly thereafter. There is the thought, and of course all things can be explained by chance, but it is extremely interesting and full of implications that all three of them died by chance within a week of each other, and the thought is that maybe it was time to shut them up.
CR: The book is called The Eleventh Day, the True Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, written by Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan.
No comments:
Post a Comment