Saudi Prince Blames 9/11 on U.S.

He is partly right. The U.S. government deserves blame along with the Saudi Arabians, many of whom incited hatred against the United States. It is the United States cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia that paved the way. Lets not forget most of the 9-11 terrorists were Saudis, along Bin Laden. In addition, the Bush family has been very friendly to Bin Laden family for many years:

Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan blamed al Qaeda's Sept. 11 attacks on the United States' failure to consult the kingdom's security authorities in a "serious and credible manner."

"Saudi security was actively following the movements of most of the terrorists with precision," Bandar, the national security advisor to Saudi King told the Arabic satellite network, Al-Arabiya, Thursday.

"If U.S. security authorities had engaged their Saudi counterparts in a serious and credible manner, in my opinion, we would have avoided what happened," Bandar said.

Sounds like an attempt at rewriting history on the part of the Prince:

Former White House counterterrorism official Dick Clarke dismissed Bandar's statement as untrue.
"The Saudis were uncooperative and did not engage in significant info sharing on al Qaeda prior to 9/11 despite repeated U.S. attempts to engage them," said Clarke.

Another former intelligence official said there is no reason to believe the Saudi government was tracking the 9/11 hijackers.

The truth is very much different:

The 27 classified pages of a congressional report about Sept. 11 depict a Saudi government that not only provided significant money and aid to the suicide hijackers but also allowed potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to flow to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups through suspect charities and other fronts, according to sources familiar with the document.

One U.S. official who has read the classified section said it describes "very direct, very specific links" between Saudi officials, two of the San Diego-based hijackers and other potential co-conspirators "that cannot be passed off as rogue, isolated or coincidental."

Said another official: "It's really damning. What it says is that not only Saudi entities or nationals are implicated in 9/11, but the [Saudi] government" as well.

And this from former Senator Bob Graham:

Two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers had a support network in the United States that included agents of the Saudi government, and the Bush administration and FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship, Senator Bob Graham wrote in a book to be released Tuesday.

The discovery of the financial backing of the two hijackers "would draw a direct line between the terrorists and the government of Saudi Arabia, and trigger an attempted coverup by the Bush administration," the Florida Democrat wrote.

And in Graham's book, "Intelligence Matters," obtained by The Miami Herald yesterday, he makes clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry's final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Graham also disclosed that General Tommy Franks told him on Feb. 19, 2002, four months after the invasion of Afghanistan, that many important resources -- including the Predator drone aircraft crucial to the search for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda leaders -- were being shifted to prepare for a war against Iraq.

Here is another account of Saudis complicity, although somewhat controversial:

In his book "Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11," Gerald Posner makes an explosive allegation: Top figures in the Saudi and Pakistani governments had been directly assisting Osama bin Laden for years and knew al-Qaida was going to strike America on Sept. 11. Posner cites two unnamed U.S. government sources, both of whom he asserts are "in a position to know," who he said gave him separate, corroborating reports. One source is from the CIA and the other is a senior Bush administration official "inside the executive branch," he told Salon in an interview.

According to Posner's account, four Saudi princes and the head of Pakistan's air force were deeply involved with Osama bin Laden for years, some of them meeting with him well after al-Qaida began its terror attacks on U.S. targets overseas in the mid-1990s. The fact that some of the figures were so highly placed makes it hard to dismiss the possibility, if the allegations are true, that the heads of the Saudi and Pakistani governments signed off on the policy.

Bottomline: Saudi Arabia did very little to help America from al Qaeda