The new pearl harbor revisited - Essay Example

Zubaydah had mentioned that some members of the Saudi royal family was in support of al-Qaeda and had been informed in advance that there would be terrorist attacks in America on September 11,2001. Besides Posner’s honesty being in doubt thanks to his past works his information was important in preparing the American public on future attacks by Saudi Arabia in efforts to gain control of the richest oil reserves in the world. (Griffin 142) Zubaydah was one of the main characters in the Commissions report but even then not even once did the commission mention that three members of the Saudi royal family had known about the attacks of 9/11 including Prince Ahmed.

One of the commission’s duties was to cover up any links between Saudi Arabia and the attack of 9/11 and therefore would not mention Posner’s account of Zubaydah’s testimony, for the same reason the CIA destroyed tapes involving Zubaydah’s interrogation(Griffin 150). Later Abu Zubaydah’s testimony was in doubt with Risen wondering whether his recitation of telephone numbers had been well rehearsed earlier on so as to be employed incase he is captured and create discord between the Saudi royal family, which Osama hated, and America. . The CIA however viewed him as a central member of the al-Qaeda with important information to give, a view that was publicly supported by President Bush (Griffin 158).

Posner’s account was in agreement with the FBI’s view that Zubaydah produced most information on traditional interrogation and the CIA’s view that he was a central person in Al-Qaeda. In both cases Zubaydah gave the names of Jose’ Padilla and Khalid Mohammed but no Saudi officials were mentioned. With the information publicly available it becomes impossible to determine whether the testimony by Zubaydah as presented by the Posner account was true. This could however could have been possible if there was a thorough investigation which unfortunately the 9/11 commission did not give (Griffin 160) .

On the issue of al-Qaeda funding, Zubaydah had mentioned that the terrorists got funds from the Saudis. The commission however, did not even mention this reported claim in their report but instead denied even having found any evidence of funding from the Saudi government and the senior Saudi official’s .Later a Los Angeles Times story presented the information to have been politically instigated. The author of the story, Josh Meyer, had interviewed several senior members of the 9/11 commission.

The commission had uncovered that the Saudi Arabian government funded the terrorist group and even provided equipment even maybe directly to Osama. With the commission being bipartisan had wondered how to present this information in its report .They finally decided to deny getting any information on the funding (Griffin169) The 9/11 commission had sent a memo to the FBI headquarters through Ken Williams to which they did not respond. The commission decided to down play this by simply