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Saudi Arabia Threatens To Liquidate Its Treasury Holdings If Congress Probes Its Role In Sept 11 Attacks

Back in January, when the market was watching in shocked silence as oil prices were crashing to decade lows and as concerns emerged that Saudi Arabia may need to commence selling its vast, if unquantified, USD reserves, we wrote a post titled "Attention Finally Turns To Saudi Arabia's "Secret" US Treasury Holdings" where we noted something very surprising: whereas we do know that Saudi Arabia is the owner of the world's third largest USD reserves...

... their actual composition remains as a secret, because while the US discloses the explicit Treasury holdings of all other nations, Saudi Arabia's holdings, for some unknown reason, are not officially disclosed.

"It’s a secret of the vast U.S. Treasury market, a holdover from an age of oil shortages and mighty petrodollars," Bloomberg wrote of Saudi Arabia’s US Treasury holdings.

"As a matter of policy, the Treasury has never disclosed the holdings of Saudi Arabia, long a key ally in the volatile Middle East, and instead groups it with 14 other mostly OPEC nations including Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Nigeria,” Bloomberg goes on to note, adding that the rules are different for almost everyone else. Although Saudi Arabia's "secret" is protected by "an unusual blackout by the U.S. Treasury Department," for more than a hundred other countries, from China to the Vatican, the Treasury provides a detailed breakdown of how much U.S. debt each holds."

So who does know how much US paper the Saudis are sitting on? Well, the Saudis of course,"a handful of Treasury officials," and some bureaucrats at the Fed, Bloomberg says, noting that “for everyone else, it’s a guessing game."

Yes, a “guessing game,” but one that will very soon have profound consequences for markets and for geopolitics.

We closed with a simple, if suddenly very prophetic question:

"who would be the new patron saint of the US Treasury Department in the event the Saudis drawdown all of their reserves and decide to diversify away from USD assets... Put differently, who will monetize the US deficit if relations between Washington and Riyadh hit the skids over Iran?"
It is this question that has suddenly reemerged with a bang, and could rock the US administration to its core as what until recently was a "fringe conspiracy theory" is suddenly exposed as an all too unpleasant fact, and becomes the biggest political scandal to rock the U.S. in years, in the process maybe even crushing the friendly diplomatic relations the U.S. has held for years with its biggest Mid-East ally, Saudi Arabia.

* * *

First, a quick tangent: we have been greatly surprised by the reemergence of the topic of September 11 in recent weeks, and specifically the taboo - in official circles - issue whether there was a "Saudi connection" in the biggest terrorist attack on US soil. Just last weekend, out of the blue, 60 Minutes held segment on the "28 pages" that were classified in the Congressional investigative report into 9/11 - pages that allegedly confirm the Saudi connection.

To be sure, Saudi officials have long denied that the kingdom had any role in the Sept. 11 plot, and the 9/11 Commission found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.” But critics have noted that the commission’s narrow wording left open the possibility that less senior officials or parts of the Saudi government could have played a role. Suspicions have lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot.

Those conclusions, contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly. It was the surprising rekindled focus on these 28 pages in recent days that suggested that something may have been afoot.

Something was...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-04-16/saudi-arabia-threatens-us-it-will-liquidate-its-treasury-holdings-if-congress-passes

28 Pages

The following script is from "28 Pages" which aired on April 10, 2016. Steve Kroft is the correspondent. Howard Rosenberg and Julie Holstein, producers.

In 10 days, President Obama will visit Saudi Arabia at a time of deep mistrust between the two allies, and lingering doubts about the Saudi commitment to fighting violent Islamic extremism.

It also comes at a time when the White House and intelligence officials are reviewing whether to declassify one of the country's most sensitive documents -- known as the "28 pages." They have to do with 9/11 and the possible existence of a Saudi support network for the hijackers while they were in the U.S.

For 13 years, the 28 pages have been locked away in a secret vault. Only a small group of people have ever seen them. Tonight, you will hear from some of the people who have read them and believe, along with the families of 9/11 victims that they should be declassified.

Bob Graham: I think it is implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn't speak English, most of whom had never been in the United States before, many of whom didn't have a high school education-- could've carried out such a complicated task without some support from within the United States.

Steve Kroft: And you believe that the 28 pages are crucial to this? Understand...

Bob Graham: I think they are a key part.

Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham has been trying to get the 28 pages released since the day they were classified back in 2003, when he played a major role in the first government investigation into 9/11.

Bob Graham: I remain deeply disturbed by the amount of material that has been censored from this report.

At the time, Graham was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and co-chair of the bipartisan joint congressional inquiry into intelligence failures surrounding the attacks. The Joint Inquiry reviewed a half a million documents, interviewed hundreds of witnesses and produced an 838 page report -- minus the final chapter which was blanked out -- excised by the Bush administration for reasons of national security.

"I remain deeply disturbed by the amount of material that has been censored from this report."

Bob Graham won't discuss the classified information in the 28 pages, he will say only that they outline a network of people that he believes supported the hijackers while they were in the U.S.

Steve Kroft: You believe that support came from Saudi Arabia?

Bob Graham: Substantially...

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-911-classified-report-steve-kroft/

9/11, THE SAUDIS AND THOSE 28 PAGES

Somewhere — between those who blindly accept what the government says about 9/11, and those who blindly accept various theories about who was really behind the 9/11 attacks — is a space we call journalism.

It is a space we at WhoWhatWhy have sought to inhabit on this incredibly controversial, explosive topic (and on many other such topics.) It has earned us criticism from “both sides.”

We are proud of what we have done.

On April 10, the venerable CBS magazine show, 60 Minutes, airs a segment on a key piece of the puzzle: the report on 9/11 by a congressional inquiry and, in particular, 28 pages that were never publicly released.

Those pages, we are told, contained highly sensitive material on Saudi Arabia, the country from which Osama bin Laden and a majority of the alleged 9/11 hijackers came...

http://whowhatwhy.org/2016/04/10/911-saudis-28-pages-whowhatwhy-backgrounder/

60 Minutes does John Brennan’s job for him

Fear is flammable, and on this week’s episode of 60 Minutes, host Scott Pelley seemed determined to kindle it.

Pelley interviewed CIA Director John Brennan at CIA headquarters last Sunday about the security threats facing the United States in 2016, and the threat of ISIS in particular. Pelley opens the show with the claim that ISIS has, “the manpower, the means, and the ruthlessness to attack the US,” Dun dun dun.

Then Pelley sets out to prove his point with a series of leading questions, starting with his first, and punctuated throughout the 13-minute segment:

“Is ISIS coming here?”

“So you’re expecting an attack in the United States?”

“Does ISIS have chemical weapons?”

“Do they have the capabilities to bring them to the West?”

“What do you think our policy would be after an ISIS-directed attack in the United States?”
As if that’s a foregone conclusion.

Pelley is committing a double disservice here. Not only is he not providing context around the complex quandary of how the US should deal with ISIS, his questions inflate existing fears, implying that the ISIS threat in the US is imminent and inevitable...

http://www.cjr.org/hit_or_miss/60_minutes_fans_fear.php