Wilkerson: Saudi 9/11 Role Was ‘Verboten’ to U.S. Intelligence

In an interview with 28Pages.org, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the Cheney-Bush Administration, described how the Congressional intelligence on Saudi Arabia’s role in the 9/11 attacks was not just classified away from the public. It was made a “verboten” subject in the CIA and broader intelligence community as well, Colonel Wilkerson said. This was enforced from Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff, on down.

Wilkerson stressed that the Iraq War was launched by suppression of the indicated Saudi involvement in the attacks which killed 3,000 Americans.

“‘They wanted to go to war with Iraq. Anything that supported al Qaeda connections with Baghdad, therefore, was good. Saudi Arabia just confused things so keep that out of it.’…

“Wilkerson says the topic was taboo even within the Bush Administration. ‘It was verboten. It really was. You talked about it at your peril. You understood that the White House was going to close down anything associated with that sort of talk, so to what avail were you going to do it? I think one of the byproducts of Cheney’s unprecedented eleven visits to CIA was to impress upon the most prominent of the intelligence agencies — and of course the Director of Central Intelligence himself — that you don’t want to go there,’ says Wilkerson.”

Wilkerson told 28Pages.org that regardless of how strong the evidence pointing toward Saudi Arabia was, Cheney effectively dampened discussion of it — even within the intelligence community that was charged with solving the immense crime.

“‘My first meeting with [CIA director] George Tenet out at Langley when we were getting ready to get going on Powell’s presentation to the United Nations, reinforced that in spades, by simply having John Hannah from the vice president’s office start everything off with his clipboard that was jam-packed with Scooter Libby’s smorgasbord … from which we could pick and choose as we wanted — except, his saying “There’s nothing in here about Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia will not be discussed,”‘ says Wilkerson.”

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