Two Panelists Detail Allies' Al Qaeda Ties
WASHINGTON — The chairman and another member of the Sept. 11 commission said Sunday that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, two key U.S. allies in the war on terrorism, had turned a blind eye to Al Qaeda operations and operatives in their countries for years before the terrorist group struck the United States in 2001.
Republican commissioner John F. Lehman said on the NBC program "Meet the Press" that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had before Sept. 11 "been paying a kind of blackmail by allowing a kind of free operations" to Islamic radicals affiliated with Al Qaeda, which protected the two nations from attacks within their borders.
Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a former GOP governor of New Jersey, made similar remarks on the ABC program "This Week With George Stephanopoulos."
"There's no question the intelligence services in Pakistan were very much for the Taliban and worked with the Taliban very, very strongly, because they thought that was a help for them in their war with India and then their problems with Iran," Kean said. "The Taliban and Al Qaeda became almost the same organization, Al Qaeda being the military arm, in some ways, of the Taliban."
The comments from Lehman and Kean came in reaction to a Times story published Sunday.
The article said senior members of the Sept. 11 commission and U.S. counterterrorism officials had come to think that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had helped set the stage for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by cutting deals with the Taliban in Afghanistan that allowed Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization to flourish and become a global network. Those deals appeared to have shielded Pakistan and Saudi Arabia from Al Qaeda attacks, the officials said in the story.
The independent commission was created by Congress to investigate the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The bipartisan panel is expected to produce a final report in July, including recommendations to guard against similar attacks.
Saudi Arabia's foreign policy advisor, Adel Jubeir, disputed some of the story's assertions on another talk show, CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."
"We see these charges or these myths being perpetrated about Saudi Arabia in order to malign our country," Jubeir said. "I believe this myth will also be dispelled when the [Sept. 11 commission] report comes out."
Jubeir said that Saudi officials had initiated negotiations with the Taliban after Bin Laden went to Afghanistan in 1996, but said it was done to persuade the Taliban to extradite the Saudi exile.
