Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard said during a Fox News interview on Thursday night that the United States government is “hiding the truth” about the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Gabbard, a Representative from Hawaii, told Tucker Carlson that she believes that the U.S. government is covering up Saudi Arabia’s role in the attacks which killed thousands of Americans.
“This story that we’re hearing from the families of those who were killed on 9/11 pushes this issue to the forefront where, for so long, leaders in our government have said, ‘well, Saudi Arabia is our great ally, they’re a partner in counterterrorism’ — turning a blind eye or completely walking away from the reality that Saudi Arabia time and again, has proven to be the opposite,” Gabbard said.
“They’re undermining our national security interests … they are the number one exporter of this Wahhabi extremist ideology,” Gabbard continued. “They’re a fertile recruiting ground for terrorists, like al Qaeda and ISIS around the world. They’re directly providing arms and assistance to al Qaeda, in places like Yemen, and in Syria.”
“And as we are seeing here, it is our government, our own government that is hiding the truth … and the many other families of those who were killed on 9/11,” Gabbard concluded. “For what? Where do the loyalties really lie?”
Gabbard concluded her remarks by saying that people should “follow the money trail. It goes back to the military-industrial complex.”
In a 2016 article in Politico Magazine, Zalmay Khalilzad — a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the United Nations — wrote:
On my most recent trip to Saudi Arabia, I was greeted with a startling confession. In the past, when we raised the issue of funding Islamic extremists with the Saudis, all we got were denials. This time, in the course of meetings with King Salman, Crown Prince Nayef, Deputy Crown Mohammad Bin Salman and several ministers, one top Saudi official admitted to me, “We misled you.” He explained that Saudi support for Islamic extremism started in the early 1960s as a counter to Nasserism—the socialist political ideology that came out of the thinking of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser—which threatened Saudi Arabia and led to war between the two countries along the Yemen border. This tactic allowed them to successfully contain Nasserism, and the Saudis concluded that Islamism could be a powerful tool with broader utility.
Under their new and unprecedented policy of honesty, the Saudi leadership also explained to me that their support for extremism was a way of resisting the Soviet Union, often in cooperation with the United States, in places like Afghanistan in the 1980s. In this application too, they argued, it proved successful. Later it was deployed against Iranian-supported Shiite movements in the geopolitical competition between the two countries.
But over time, the Saudis say, their support for extremism turned on them, metastasizing into a serious threat to the Kingdom and to the West. They had created a monster that had begun to devour them. “We did not own up to it after 9/11 because we feared you would abandon or treat us as the enemy,” the Saudi senior official conceded. “And we were in denial.”
WATCH:
Families who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks want the truth, and they deserve the truth. Join me in demanding all information regarding Saudi involvement in 9/11 attack: https://t.co/zVa2levIBv pic.twitter.com/0nqz6VvLQo
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) November 1, 2019