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Sooner or later, this special relationship...
... with a regime that Amnesty International condemns...
... as a widespread human-rights violator...
... would come back to haunt the Bushes.
Now, after 9/11, it was an embarrassment.
And they preferred that no one ask any questions.
Investigation should have begun on September 12th.
There's no reason it shouldn't have. Three thousand were dead.
It should've gotten started immediately.
First, Bush tried to stop Congress from setting up...
- ... its own 9/11 investigation. - It's important for us...
...to not reveal how we collect information.
That's what the enemy wants. And we're fighting an enemy.
When he couldn't stop Congress, he then tried to stop...
... an independent 9/11 commission from being formed.
The president's position was a break from history.
Independent investigations were launched after Pearl Harbor...
...and President Kennedy's assassination.
But when Congress did complete its own investigation...
... the Bush White House censored 28 pages of the report.
The president is being pressed by all sides to declassify the report.
U.S. Officials tell NBC News most of the secret sources...
...involve Saudi Arabia.
We've given extraordinary cooperation with Chairmen Kean and Hamilton.
We haven't gotten the materials we needed...
...and haven't gotten them in a timely fashion.
Will you testify before the commission?
This commission? You know, I don't... Testify? I'd be glad to visit with them.
What it will do is, the hole that's in my heart...
...and has been in my heart since September 11 th...
I lost my husband of 15 years. I am now by myself.
I need to know what happened to him.
I know what I got back from the autopsy.
That man was my life, and I have no plan.
I was taking a class, and they asked me...
...what was I gonna do in the next five years.
And if I'm not doing something with this, I don't know what reason...
...I have to live. So it's very important.
Very important. Okay.
Okay.
Ignored by the Bush administration...
... more than 500 relatives of 9/11 victims...
... filed suit against Saudi royals and others.
The lawyers the Saudi defense minister hired...
... to fight the 9/11 families?
The law firm of Bush family confidant, James A. Baker.
So right here in the center of three important American landmarks...
...the Watergate Hotel and office building...
...the Kennedy Center over there...
...and the embassy of Saudi Arabia.
Yeah.
How much money do the Saudis have invested in America, roughly?
I've heard figures as high as $860 billion.
- Eight hundred and sixty billion? - Billion.
- That's a lot of money. - A lot, yeah.
And what percentage of our economy does that represent?
It seems like a lot.
Well, in terms of investments on Wall Street in American equities...
...it's roughly 6 or 7 percent of America.
They own a fairly good slice of America.
Most of that money goes into the great blue-chip companies.
Citigroup, Citibank, the largest stockholder is a Saudi.
AOL-Time Warner has big Saudi investors.
So I read where, like, the Saudis have a trillion dollars...
...in our banks of their money. What would happen...
...if they pulled that trillion out?
A trillion dollars? That would be an enormous blow to the economy.
Can I speak to you for a moment, please, sir?
- How are you doing? - Good, how you doing?
Steve Kimball with the Secret Service. We're just ascertaining information.
Are you doing a documentary on the Saudi Arabian Embassy?
No. I am doing a documentary, and part of it is about Saudi Arabia.
Even though we were nowhere near the White House...
... the Secret Service had shown up to ask us what we were doing...
... standing across the street from the Saudi Embassy.
- We're not here to cause any trouble. - Okay.
- You know. Is that...? - No, that's fine.
We just wanted to get some information as far as...
What's going on, yeah.
I didn't realize the Secret Service guards foreign embassies.
- Not usually, no, sir. - No. Do they give you any trouble?
- Saudis? - No comment on that.
Okay, I'll take that as a yes.
Good. Thank you very much.
It turns out that Saudi Prince Bandar is perhaps...
... the best-protected ambassador in the U.S.
The U.S. State Department provides him with a six-man security detail.
Considering how he and his family and the Saudi elite...
... own 7 percent of America, it's probably not a bad idea.
Prince Bandar was so close to the Bushes...
... they considered him a member of the family.
They even had a nickname for him: Bandar Bush.
Two nights after September 11 th, George Bush invited Bandar Bush...
... over to the White House for a private dinner and a talk.
Even though bin Laden was a Saudi...
... and Saudi money had funded al Qaeda...
... and 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis...
... here was the Saudi ambassador, casually dining with the president...
... on September 13th.
What were they talking about?
Were they commiserating or comparing notes?
Why would Bandar's government...
... block American investigators from talking to the relatives...
... of the 15 hijackers?
Why would Saudi Arabia become reluctant...
... to freeze the hijackers' assets?
The two of them walked out on the Truman Balcony...
... so that Bandar could smoke a cigar and have a drink.
In the distance, across the Potomac, was the Pentagon, partially in ruins.
I wonder if Mr. Bush told Prince Bandar not to worry...
... because he already had a plan in motion.
You come in September 12th...
You come in September 12th...
...to plot our response to al Qaeda. Let me talk about the response...
...you got from top administration officials.
On that day, what did the president say to you?
The president, in a very intimidating way, left me and my staff...
...with the clear indication he wanted us to come back...
...with the word that there was an Iraqi hand behind 9l11.
They planned to do something about Iraq before they came into office.
Did he ask about any other nations other than Iraq?
No, not at all. It was, "Iraq, Saddam, find out, get back to me."
Were his questions more about Iraq than al Qaeda?
Absolutely. He didn't ask me about al Qaeda.
And the reaction you got from the defense secretary, Rumsfeld...
...from his assistant, Paul Wolfowitz?
Donald Rumsfeld said... When we talked about bombing...
...the al Qaeda infrastructure in Afghanistan...
...he said, "There are no good targets in Afghanistan.
Let's bomb Iraq."
And we said, "But Iraq had nothing to do with this."
That didn't make much difference. The reason they had...
...to do Afghanistan first was, it was obvious al Qaeda attacked us.
And it was obvious that al Qaeda was in Afghanistan.
Americans wouldn't stand by if we'd done nothing on Afghanistan.
The United States began bombing Afghanistan...
... just four weeks after 9/11. Mr. Bush said he was doing so...
... because the Taliban government of Afghanistan...
... had been harboring bin Laden.
We will smoke them out of their holes.
We're gonna smoke them out.
- We'll smoke him out of his cave. - Let's rush them and smoke them out.
For all his tough talk, Bush really didn't do much.
Well, what they did was slow and small.
They put only 11,000 troops into Afghanistan.
There are more police here in Manhattan.
More in Manhattan than there are U.S. Troops in Afghanistan.
The president botched the response. He should have gone after bin Laden.
The U.S. Special Forces didn't get into the area where bin Laden was...
...for two months. - Two months?
A mass murderer who attacked the United States...
... was given a two-month head start?
Who in their right mind would do that?
- Dang! Anybody say "nice shot"? - Nice shot.
Hell of a shot.
Or was the war in Afghanistan really about something else?
Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas.
In 1997, while George W. Bush was governor of Texas...
... a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston...
... to meet with Unocal executives...
... to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan...
... bringing natural gas from the Caspian Sea.
And who got a Caspian Sea drilling contract...
... the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal?
A company headed by a man named *** Cheney. Halliburton.
From the point of view of the U.S. Government...
...this was kind of a magic pipeline...
...because it could serve so many purposes.
And who else stood to benefit from the pipeline?
Bush's number-one campaign contributor, Kenneth Lay...
... and the good people of Enron.
Only the British press covered this trip.
Then in 2001, just five and a half months before 9/11...
... the Bush administration welcomed a Taliban envoy...
... to tour the United States...
... to help improve the image of the Taliban government.
You have imprisoned the women. It's a horror, let me tell you.
I'm sorry to your husband. He must have a difficult time with you.
Here is the Taliban official visiting our State Department...
... to meet with U.S. Officials.
Why would the Bush administration allow a Taliban leader...
... to visit the United States, knowing that the Taliban...
... were harboring the man who bombed the U.S.S. Cole...
... and our African embassies?
Well, I guess 9/11 put a stop to that.
When the invasion of Afghanistan was complete...
... we installed its new president, Hamid Karzai.
Who was Hamid Karzai?
He was a former adviser to Unocal.
Bush also appointed, as our envoy to Afghanistan...
... Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also a former Unocal adviser.
I guess you can probably see where this is leading.
Faster than you can say, "Black gold, Texas tea, " Afghanistan signed...
... an agreement with her neighboring countries...
... to build a pipeline carrying natural gas from the Caspian Sea.
Oh, and the Taliban?
Oh, they mostly got away.
As did Osama bin Laden and most of al Qaeda.
Terror is bigger than one person.
And he's a person who's now been marginalized.
So I don't know where he is.
I just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.
Didn't spend much time on him? What kind of president was he?
I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office...
...in foreign policy matters with war on my mind.
With the war in Afghanistan over and bin Laden forgotten...
... the war president had a new target:
The American people.