After that one-hour meeting, he and that companion go to a Middle Eastern restaurant in Los Angeles to have lunch. They overhear Arabic being spoken at a nearby table. They invite the two young men who are at that table to come and join them. It turns out those two young men are Alhazmi and Almihdhar, two of the 9/11 terrorists. When I asked the staff director of the 9/11 commission about this, he thought it was just a coincidence that they met at this restaurant. I did some independent research. There are at least 134 Middle Eastern restaurants in Los Angeles. So the statistical odds of these two groups meeting at the same Middle Eastern restaurant at the same time are staggering.

You don't believe the meeting was a coincidence?

I'm almost certain this was a prearranged meeting. Later, Bayoumi takes the two terrorists to San Diego, where he introduces them to people who arrange for them to obtain [phony] Social Security cards and flying lessons.

Did the White House specifically request classification of the section on the Saudis?

Technically, it was done by the CIA, but it was at the direction of the White House. I cannot tell you with 100 percent certainty, but I am 90 percent sure that was the case. The White House played a heavy role throughout not only our investigation but the investigation of the 9/11 commission.

You obviously don't believe the Bush administration was justified in classifying the 27 pages.

No. Sen. Shelby, who was the vice chairman of the [Senate intelligence] committee and who is a Republican, reread those pages shortly after they were classified. And I also reread them. Independently, we both came to the same assessment that 95 percent of the material that had been classified could have been released to the public. It did not represent concealment of national secrets or of sources and methods by which information is obtained.

Why do you think the White House is so intent on keeping that information from the public?

I think there are several possible reasons. One is that it did not want the public to be aware of the degree of Saudi involvement in supporting the 9/11 terrorists. Second, it was embarrassing that that support took place literally under the nose of the FBI, to the point where one of the terrorists in San Diego was living at the house of a paid FBI informant. Third, there has been a long-term special relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and that relationship has probably reached a new high under the George W. Bush administration, in part because of the long and close family relationship that the Bushes have had with the Saudi royal family.

In the book, you describe being furious with the FBI for blocking your committee's attempts to interview that paid FBI informant. You write that the panel needed the bureau to deliver a congressional subpoena to the informant because he was in the FBI's protective custody and could not be located without the bureau's cooperation. But the FBI refused to help. What happened? And what do you think the bureau was trying to hide?

We had just finished a hearing and had asked various representatives of the FBI to come into a conference room and discuss our strong interest in being able to interview the San Diego informant. It was clear that the FBI representatives were not going to voluntarily allow that to happen, and we had already prepared a subpoena, which I had in my coat pocket. I walked over to the principal representative for the FBI, Ken Wainstein, and I was approaching him with this subpoena, he clasped his hands tightly behind his back. I tried to hand him the subpoena, but he acted as if it were radioactive. Finally he said he didn't want to take the subpoena, but he would get back to us on the following Monday. Well, nobody ever got back to us. It was the only time in my senatorial experience that the FBI has refused to deliver a legally issued congressional subpoena.

Later, the FBI congressional affairs officer sent a letter to [co-chairman] Porter Goss and me, saying, "The administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source, nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena on the source." What that tells me is the FBI wasn't acting on its own but had been directed by the White House not to cooperate.

Did the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, play any role in what you describe as the support network for these two hijackers? As you know, Bandar is a great friend of the Bush family.

Most of the things that he did are, frankly, still classified. But he has clearly demonstrated that he has a close relationship with President Bush. You have no doubt seen that famous picture of the two of them together at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. And then there's the fact that within a few hours after 9/11, Prince Bandar was able to gain access to the president to make the case for why 140 or so Saudis should be given permission to leave the United States immediately.

Did the Saudi Embassy play a role?

I'm going to have to defer answering that question. Those things that still have not been made available to the public, such as this issue of what Prince Bandar's participation was, I did not include in the book.

It sounds then as if the role of Bandar and the Saudi Embassy is addressed in those 27 classified pages of the panel's report?

Most of it would be addressed there, yes.

Most of it? That implies you know other relevant information that's not in the classified report.

Yes. Some information came to our attention too late to be included in the report, or it was not directly related to the events of 9/11.

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