Saudi Arabia

From 9/11 Encyclopedia:

The role of Saudi Arabia, a former business partner of the United States, regarding the September 11th attacks, 
was very simple to describe: Oil , Money and Visas. 

Saudi Aramco, the national company owned by the government, which was created by nationalizing the interests of Exxon, Chevron, Mobil and Texaco in the 1970s, still has estimated oil reserves of 260 billion barrel. (Compare: Russia 48 billion, Iraq 113-250 est., Iran 90, Kuweit 97, Kasachstan 8)

In 2002, Saudi Arabia had 26 per cent of the world's oil reserves. 15 of the 19 official hijackers received a visa at the Consolate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. While the role of Saudi Arabia was downplayed for almost one year after September 11th, some journalists tried to find out, if it really was just "incompetence", which happened in Saudi Arabia or the beginning of a smart plot of a foreign secret service.

Finally Joel Mowbray of National Review found the original visa applications and stumbled about the oddities. The myth on the so called incompetence in Jeddah, was already debunked as false, by former Jeddah-Consulate Employee Springman, J Michael. He gave various interviews to RAI or BBC 
(Greg Palast ->) and basically confirmed , that Jeddah was a CIA controlled consulate and okayed 100s of visas in the last 5 years before 2001. 

Springman didn't support that, protested at various US Offices and later resigned. Springman repeated his accusations at the Press Conference of Unansweredquestions.Org in June 2001, which was taped and distributed worldwide. However the US Government never responded on these disturbing facts.

It looked now like a political strategy to either blackmail or start a war against Saudi Arabia. As Newsweek reported, payments reached the hijackers, possibly via two Saudi students living in the United States who had obtained them from an account in the name of Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of the Saudi ambassador to Washington. An aide to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir, made the round of Sunday talk shows to deny the princess intended to fund the hijackers with the $2,000-a-month payments. The possible money trail from the Saudi government was confirmed to two of the hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who already got observed by the CIA in 2000, and by the FBI. (-> CIA observations) 

Newsweek said, the FBI had found a steady stream of payments to the family of one of the students, Omar al-Bayoumi, beginning early in 2000. Bayoumi had befriended the hijackers in San Diego several months earlier. The Saudi spokesman acknowledged Princess Haifa gave money to the family of Osama Basnan to help defray medical costs. Bayoumi was a friend of Basnan's. Sen. Bob Graham (->) of Florida, then leading Democrat on the intelligence panel, asked whether only two of the 19 hijackers received this kind of support?

Graham was fighting for a declassification of some September 11th related CIA-files. Sources described the saudi financial records as "explosive" and said the information has spurred an intense, behind-the-scenes battle between congressional leaders and the Bush administration over whether evidence highly embarrassing to the Saudi government should be publicly disclosed. 

The FBI has uncovered financial records showing a steady stream of payments to the family of one of the students, Omar Al Bayoumi. The money moved into the family's bank account beginning in early 2000, just a few months after hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi arrived in Los Angeles from an Al Qaeda planning summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, according to the sources. Within days of the terrorists' arrival in the United State, Al Bayoumi befriended the two men who would eventually hijack American Flight 77, throwing them a welcoming party in San Diego and guaranteeing their lease on an apartment next door to his own. 

Al Bayoumi paid $1,500 to cover the first two months of rent for Al Midhar and Alhazmi, although officials said it is possible that the hijackers later repaid the money. Sources familiar with the evidence say the payments--amounting to about $3,500 a month--came from an account at Washington's Riggs Bank in the name of Princess Haifa Al-Faisal, the wife of Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and the daughter of the late Saudi King Faisal. With U.S. investigations of the allegations ongoing, Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut criticized the Bush administration for not investigating the matter more fully. 

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona questioned the White House's policy toward Saudi Arabia, and Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, demanded an independent investigation by the Justice Department's inspector general. Already known are George Bush's ties with Saudi Arabia. In April, 2002 Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia met with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, officially to discuss a Palestine-Israel Peace plan.

Saudi Arabia, as a monarchy under King Abd-el-Aziz, started to dig on oil in 1923 with the support of United Kingdom. In 1933 Standard Oil Company of California started to drill in Saudi Arabia In December 2002, Saudi Arabia's Interior Minister Prince Naif Ibn Abdul Aziz made the following remarks in the Arabic-language Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al Siyasa: "We know that the Jews have manipulated the September 11 incidents and turned American public opinion against Arabs and Muslims," Prince Naif was quoted as saying in the Arabic text, while Ain-Al-Yaqeen's English version referred to "Zionists" instead of "Jews." Source: http://www.ain-al-yaqeen.com/issues/20021129/feat6en.htm