After Trump Bows to Saudis, Decision to Release Evidence of Saudis Funding 9/11 Gets Reversed

President Trump’s change in attitude towards Saudi Arabia has apparently had a trickle-down effect, as a federal judge in Miami has reversed her decision to push for the release of crucial documents revealing information on the funding of the 9/11 attacks.

Judge Cecilia Altonaga is now ruling in favor of the FBI, granting the agency’s request to keep large portions of a slide show titled “Overview of the 9/11 Investigation” secret from the public.

The presentation Altonaga is now helping to keep private, includes sections on “Funding of the 9/11 Attacks,” “Early to Mid-2001 Additional Funding,” “Early to Mid-2000: Pilots/Intended Pilots Arrive U.S.,” “Investigative Findings” regarding hijacker “Identification,” and “Financial: Ample Financing was provided.”

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This decision is the opposite of Altonaga’s ruling from May 16, in which she stated that the documents “should be largely opened for public inspection,” given the fact that the FBI failed to establish Freedom of Information Act Exemption 7(E), which applies when the release of the information would “disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.”

According to Altonaga’s latest ruling, she changed her mind based on the fact that the FBI countered with a technicality. The agency insisted that the contents of “Document 22” reveal “a photo taken by a security camera, which itself does not discuss FBI techniques, but from which a careful viewer could deduce the location of the security camera at the site the photo was taken.”

The lawsuit was initiated by Florida Bulldog, a team of investigative journalists that has spent years probing the connections between the 9/11 hijackers and Saudi Arabia. According to the CIA’s database, 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, and when they first arrived in the United States, nine of them arrived in Florida.

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Florida Bulldog sued the FBI in 2012 for details on the ties between the hijackers and a rich Saudi family that mysteriously left all of their belongings and abandoned their luxury home in Sarasota, Florida, just two weeks before the attacks. The lawsuit led to the release of materials from a 2002 FBI report, which found “many connections” between the Saudi family and “individuals associated with the terrorist attacks on 9/11/2001.”

The idea that a federal judge would go from supporting a group of investigative journalists and pushing for transparency, to supporting the FBI and insisting that protecting the location of a security camera was worth covering up the funding of the 9/11 attacks, may seem bizarre—but it is a common practice under the current administration.

As The Free Thought Project has reported, Trump also went from calling for holding Saudi Arabia accountable for its involvement in 9/11, to ignoring the idea that the country could have had any involvement at all.

After months on the campaign trail, in which he pledged that if he was elected, Americans would “find out who really knocked down the World Trade Center,” Trump made Saudi Arabia the first foreign nation he visited as president of the U.S.

Trump’s visit with Saudi King Salman occurred on May 20—just four days after Judge Altonaga ruled that the FBI should face a Freedom of Information trial in an attempt to pursue transparency surrounding the funding of the 9/11 attacks.

During the visit, Trump announced plans for a $110 BILLION weapons deal with Saudi Arabia, which adds a new level of context that should be considered when looking at why Altonaga then reversed her decision on June 29.

America First? Gov’t Claims No Funds to Stop US Nuclear Waste Leak, While Giving Billions to Dictators

Radioactive waste still flows “freely” into the Columbia River from the U.S. Superfund site at Hanford — a situation desperately in need of remedy, given the number of civilians located nearby — yet the Trump Administration instead decided this week on a multi-billion dollar arms sale to authoritarian nations accused of actively funding terrorist groups.

News of the continuous leak arrived from U.S. EPA Project Manager Dennis Faulk during a meeting of the Hanford Advisory Board, which Courthouse News reports,

“[C]ame as part of a five-year review of cleanup measures taken at the Superfund site. Officials with the EPA and the Department of Energy said at a meeting Wednesday that the review showed most of the cleanup actions at Hanford were properly ‘protective,’ meaning the public was shielded from the worst of the site’s estimated 500 million gallons of potentially radioactive waste.

“Radioactive sludge in shuttered reactors, contaminated soil in landfill sites and equipment that was once used to refine the uranium that fueled the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki were all properly contained, according to the report.”

But that information, welcome though it may be, comprised the rosiest news — since, on a darker note, Mike Cline, director of the Department of Energy’s Soil and Groundwater Division, asserted hexavalent chromium– and strontium-90-tainted groundwater has been “flowing freely” into the Columbia.

Concerns for the stretch of river abutting the Superfund site, called Hanford Reach — designated a national monument 17 years ago by then-President Bill Clinton — were stirred because the area faces potential review by Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for a possible revocation of its status and, thus, evaporation of funds for amelioration.

To protect the Columbia River and surrounding environs by containing the radioactive water, agencies sought to construct a “permeable reactive barrier” and build stronger wells — but the Department of Energy and EPA face a cut under Trump’s proposed budget of around $120 million.

Cleanup of Hanford already languishes from a minimal budget — cuts that deep, officials asserted, could paralyze the imperative program.

Worse, Trump and his administration have been preoccupied with procuring multi-billion dollar deals on arms and military equipment with a pair of known human rights-abusing, terrorist-funding governments — Saudi Arabia and Qatar — complicated infinitely by on ongoing feud between the two on the topic of, unironically, funding and supporting terrorists.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted to reject a bill blocking $110 billion in total arms sale to the Saudis — an authoritarian kingdom and apparent Teflon-coated ally to the U.S. — criticism of whose human rights abuse and double-dealing with nefarious entities never negates the American government’s lustful need for imported oil.

At present, growing public awareness harpoons the House of Saud and its government for an effective blockade of Yemen — which some intone could constitute a violation of international law — as well as for a persistent bombing campaign, both of which have left innocent civilians in dire need of assistance with scores dying of malnutrition.

Qatar was recently skewered by the Saudis — and a subsequent succession of Gulf Cooperation Council states — for support of militants fighting in Yemen and elsewhere.

Trump, aligning with the Ally Who Can Do No Wrong, sided with the Saudis in excoriating only Qatar for being a terrorist nation; yet — nearly in the same breath — proceeded to green light a $12 billion arms deal with the Defense Department.

However — and, again, unironically — the Saudi and Qatari governments both featured prominently in documents revealed by Wikileaks from a cache leaked from Hillary Clinton’s emails from 2015 for being known funders of the menacing Islamic State.

Pots, meet kettles.

In other words, despite the U.S. State Department and associates of Clinton, having long been cognizant of the active funding of ISIL by the Saudis and Qataris, the administration of Donald Trump rewarded each of the disputing states with billions in sales of yet more weapons.

Elucidation on the ironic morass can be gleaned from each of the three nations’ fealty to oil and the business of fossil fuels than can ever be derived from a logical analysis attempting to justify massive exchanges of weapons and cash and the training and support of terrorists otherwise ambivalent to all three.

All of this political, economic, and industry wrangling — much of which occurred to the condemnation by the American public as wasteful, if not foolish, spending — ignores the offensive lack of budget monies for sites like the Hanford Reach and many others.

It’s a veritable guarantee the heft of the U.S. populace would champion the need to contain radioactive, noxious contaminants inside the nation’s borders over that to supply known terrorist-friendly countries with untenable arms deals.

But that’s precisely what Trump and his ilk have decided — and, it appears, the rest of us will instead be left to collectively shrug our shoulders. This is, after all, egregiously characteristic of Washington’s wearisome business-as-usual.

Rand Paul Rages on Twitter Over US Giving Arms to 9/11 Terrorist-Funding Saudis

While the double standards the United States sets for its close ally, Saudi Arabia, have been criticized by members of the public, it is not often that politicians call out the hypocrisy—and then there’s Rand Paul—the man, who on Wednesday, was dodging .556 rounds fired at him by an anti-Trump lunatic.

The Republican senator from Kentucky went off on an aggressive Twitter rant, before taking to the Senate floor on Tuesday to speak out against the proposed $350 billion arms deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which was praised by President Trump during his first official trip abroad.

“Saudi Arabia is causing a humanitarian crisis with a war in Yemen,” Paul wrote on Twitter. “It funds extremism worldwide. Abuses human rights. Stop arming them now.”

The vote will be close. It is time we stop the counterproductive and harmful practice of arming a country that promotes extremism

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 13, 2017

Today we will discuss issues of war & peace, which we rarely do. We have been in conflict over 15 years.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 13, 2017

During his speech, Paul noted that by arming Saudi Arabia, the U.S. is directly supporting the Saudis’ horrific war in Yemen, which has resulted in the deaths of over 10,000, and has left millions of civilians malnourished, and in desperate need of food assistance.

“Should the United States be actively involved with refueling Saudi planes, with picking targets, with having advisors on the ground? Should we be at war in Yemen?” Paul said on the Senate floor. “If you remember your Constitution, it says no president has that authority. Only to repel imminent attack, but no president alone has the unilateral authority to take us to war. And yet, here we are on the verge of war.”

Paul also said that while it won’t solve every problem the Yemeni people are currently facing, he believes halting the arms sale will have an impact on helping to stop some of the suffering.

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“One group said that the impending famine in Yemen may reach biblical proportions — think about that,” He said. “It is astounding what is being done, and it is not being done with your weapons, but with your — we will force this vote for these children in Yemen because we have a chance today to stop the carnage. We have a chance to tell Saudi Arabia we’ve had enough.”

17 million live in edge of starvation. Crisis may well be worse than Syria. And our country is going to further arm one side of this war

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 13, 2017

And we are going to give them weapons? I say no.

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 13, 2017

Paul then went on to bring up the fact that less than one year ago, Congress supported giving the families of 9/11 victims the right to sue Saudi Arabia for the attacks. When President Obama vetoed the bill in September 2016, it became the first veto of his presidency that Congress overturned.

“There is an abundance of evidence that high level Saudis were complicit in 9/11,” Paul wrote on Twitter. “The 28 pages show that. Why would we give them arms?”

A year ago the Senate voted to let 9/11 victims sue Saudi Arabia. Now we are going to sell them weapons? What are we thinking?

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 13, 2017

In a segment of the speech posted on his Facebook page, Paul quoted former President Dwight Eisenhower, who said he was worried the U.S. would start to make decisions in the name of the military industrial complex, rather than national defense.

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“I am embarrassed that people would bring up trying to feather the nests of corporations in order to sell these weapons,” Paul said. “This should be made pure and simple on our national defense. Saudi Arabia is not a reliable ally. Saudi Arabia should not get these weapons. For every supposed good thing they do, they do five things that are bad for America.”

Senator Paul Speaking in Opposition to the Saudi Arms Deal

I am embarrassed that people would bring up trying to feather the nests of corporations in order to sell these weapons. This should be made pure and simple on our national defense. Saudi Arabia is not a reliable ally. Saudi Arabia should not get these weapons. For every supposed good thing they do, they do five things that are bad for America. They are the biggest purveyor of hatred of christianity and judaism. I request a no vote.

Posted by Senator Rand Paul on Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Paul was joined by Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) on Tuesday. The senators sought to invoke the Arms Export Control Act of 1976, in order to force a vote on blocking the portion of the arms sale that would be used to deepen the conflict in Yemen. As a result, 47 senators voted the halt the sale, and 53 senators voted to provide the weapons to Saudi Arabia.

“Today, a bipartisan group of senators took a stand against the escalating war Saudi Arabia is waging with Yemen,” Paul said in a press release. “This is just the beginning, and we will continue to take a stance against waging an undeclared war and fueling an arms race in the Middle East. I applaud those who voted with me to block this proposed arms sale, and I hope this sends a clear message to Saudi Arabia that the United States will not just stand by as they massacre their unarmed neighbors.”