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Saudi Arabia may be tied to 9/11, former U.S. senators say BY ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times Service
WASHINGTON — For more than a decade, questions have lingered about the possible role of the Saudi government in the attacks on Sept. 11, even as the royal kingdom has made itself a crucial counterterrorism partner in the eyes of U.S. diplomats. Now, in sworn statements that seem likely to reignite the debate, two former senators who were privy to secret information on the Saudis’ activities say they believe that the Saudi government might have played a direct role in the attacks. “I am convinced that there was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia,” former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who led a joint 2002 congressional inquiry into the attacks, said in an affidavit filed as part of a lawsuit brought against the Saudi government and dozens of institutions in the country by families of Sept. 11 victims and others. His former Senate colleague, Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat who served on the separate 9/11 Commission, said in a sworn affidavit of his own in the case that “significant questions remain unanswered” about the role of Saudi institutions and that “evidence relating to the plausible involvement of possible Saudi government agents in the September 11th attacks has never been fully pursued.” Their affidavits, which were filed Friday and have not previously been disclosed, are part of a multibilliondollar lawsuit that has wound its way through federal courts since 2002. An appellate court, reversing an earlier decision, said in November that foreign nations were not immune to lawsuits under certain terrorism claims, clearing the way for parts of the Saudi case to be reheard in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Lawyers for the Saudis, who have already moved to have the affidavits thrown out of court, declined to comment on the assertions by Graham and Kerrey. Officials at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, who have emphatically denied any connection to the attacks in the past, did not respond to requests for comment. The Saudis are seeking to have the case dismissed in part because they say U.S. inquiries have essentially exonerated them. But Kerrey and Graham said the findings should not be seen as an exoneration and that many important questions about the Saudis’ role were never fully examined.
INTERNATIONAL EDITION
U.S. talks tough on Iran ahead of Netanyahu visit BY JOHN WALCOTT Bloomberg News
Obama administration officials are escalating warnings that the United States could join Israel in attacking Iran if the Islamic republic doesn’t dispel concerns that its nuclear-research program is aimed at producing weapons. Just days before Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in Washington, Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz said the Joint Chiefs of Staff have prepared military options to strike
Iranian nuclear sites in the event of a conflict. “What we can do, you wouldn’t want to be in the area,” Schwartz told reporters in Washington on Wednesday. Pentagon officials said military options being prepared start with providing aerial refueling for Israeli planes and also include attacking the pillars of the clerical regime, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its elite Qods Force, regular Iranian military bases and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security.
• TURN TO WARNINGS, 2A
Radical theory puts Europeans in N. America 20,000 years ago BY BRIAN VASTAG
Washington Post Service
When the crew of the Virginia scallop trawler Cinmar hauled a mastodon tusk onto the deck in 1970, another oddity dropped out of the net: A dark, tapered stone blade, nearly eight inches long and still sharp. Forty-two years later, this rediscovered prehistoric slasher has reopened debate on a radical theory about who the first Americans were and when they got here. Archaeologists have long
held that North America remained unpopulated until about 15,000 years ago, when Siberian people walked or boated into Alaska and down the West Coast. But the mastodon relic turned out to be 22,000 years old, suggesting the blade was just as ancient. Whoever fashioned that blade was not supposed to be here. Its makers likely paddled from Europe and arrived in America thousands of years ahead of the western migration, argues Smithsonian In-
stitution anthropologist Dennis Stanford, making them the first Americans. “I think it’s feasible,” said Tom Dillehay, a prominent archaeologist at Vanderbilt University. “The evidence is building up, and it certainly warrants discussion.” At the height of the last Ice Age, Stanford says, mysterious stone-age European people known as the Solutreans paddled along an ice cap jutting into the North Atlantic. They • TURN TO AMERICA, 2A
Associated Press
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30,000-pound “bunker-buster” bombs could put Iran’s deeply buried uranium enrichment plant at Fordo out of commission. The latest U.S. warnings of possible military action against Iran come after a series of meetings between top Israeli and Obama administration officials failed to resolve differences over when an attack would become necessary, according to officials of both countries who have participated in the discussions.
BONNIE JO MOUNT/ WASHINGTON POST SERVICE
BY MAGGIE MICHAEL
TO PUMP UP VOTE, IRAN PUTS DOWN WEST, 3A
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because Pentagon plans are classified. “There’s no group in America more determined to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapon than the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Army Gen. Martin Dempsey told the House Budget Committee. “I can assure you of that.” Separately, unnamed U.S. officials told The Washington Post that U.S. military planners are increasingly confident that sustained attacks with the Air Force’s
The Smithsonian’s Dennis Stanford, left, and Bruce Bradley of England’s University of Exeter theorize that the first Americans came here from Europe and reached the Chesapeake region at least 20,000 years ago.
U.S. nonprofit workers fly out of Egypt CAIRO — Seven U.S. citizens on trial over charges their pro-democracy groups fomented unrest flew out of Egypt on Thursday after the United States posted nearly $5 million in bail. Their departure eased a deep diplomatic crisis between the United States and Egypt that had been building for two months, following a crackdown on pro-democracy and human rights groups by the Egyptian government. Though the seven U.S. citizens were safely on their way home, Washington indicated that its anger over the affair has not abated. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland expressed relief that the U.S. citizens were free, but she pointedly noted that no decision has been made about U.S. aid to Egypt.
FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012
109TH YEAR I ©2012 THE MIAMI HERALD
Stolen Stratfor e-mails point to value of encryption BY MARK SEIBEL
McClatchy News Service
KHALIL HAMRA/AP
Protesters disrupt proceedings during a trial of employees of pro-democracy groups in Cairo. As the crisis unfolded past two months, furious including U.S. Secretary Hillary Clinton, warned
GOP’S HOPES FOR RECAPTURING CONTROL OF SENATE DIM, 5A
over the billion in military aid and $250 milofficials, lion in economic assistance slated of State the $1.3 • TURN TO EGYPT, 2A
EUROPE LOOKS FOR GROWTH AMID RECORD UNEMPLOYMENT, BUSINESS FRONT
lished — drip, drip, drip, 100 or so per day — by the website WikiLeaks, which has provided access to all of the documents to 25 organizations around the world, including McClatchy. The e-mails, whose publication began Monday, contain some startling assertions, almost none of which have been confirmed. In one, from Jan. 26, 2011, the company’s vice president for intelligence, a former State Department counter-terrorism officer named Fred Burton, claimed to know the disposition of a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “We have a sealed grand jury indictment,” he wrote.
WASHINGTON — On April 24, 2010, George Friedman, the chief executive and founder of Stratfor, an Austin-based company that specializes in writing analyses of international political developments, sent an e-mail from his BlackBerry to one of his employees. It was a response to a suggestion that the company buy e-mail encryption software. He no doubt rues his short missive today. “40k is a lot of money to spend on that obviously,” he wrote. “It probably prices the solution out of our means right now.” Nearly two years later, Stratfor’s internal e-mails, more than 5 million pieces, are being pub- • TURN TO WIKILEAKS, 2A
THE REAL VICTIM IN THE RYAN BRAUN SAGA, SPORTS FRONT
INDEX THE AMERICAS..........4A WORLD NEWS ...........6A OPINION........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ..6B
3/2/2012 5:08:20 AM