Quick one…

…or, every time I try to get out, they pull me back in. New York Times this morning:

Mr. Moore may also be criticized for the way he portrays the evacuation of the extended bin Laden family from the United States after Sept. 11. As the Sept. 11 commission has found, the Saudi government was able to pull strings at senior levels of the Bush administration to help the bin Ladens leave the United States. But while the film clearly suggests that the flights occurred at a time when all air traffic was grounded immediately after the attacks (“Even Ricky Martin couldn’t fly,” Mr. Moore says over video of the singer wandering in an airport lobby), the Sept. 11 commission said in a report this April that there was “no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace” and that the F.B.I. had concluded that no one aboard the flights was involved in Sept. 11.

St. Petersburg Times, 6/9/04:

TAMPA – Two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, with most of the nation’s air traffic still grounded, a small jet landed at Tampa International Airport, picked up three young Saudi men and left.

The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky.
The men, one of them thought to be a member of the Saudi royal family, were accompanied by a former FBI agent and a former Tampa police officer on the flight to Lexington, Ky.

The Saudis then took another flight out of the country. The two ex-officers returned to TIA a few hours later on the same plane.

For nearly three years, White House, aviation and law enforcement officials have insisted the flight never took place and have denied published reports and widespread Internet speculation about its purpose.

But now, at the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, TIA officials have confirmed that the flight did take place and have supplied details.

Update: Brendan from Spinsanity points out via email that the wording of the St. Petersburg Times article is vague enough that the out-of-country flight to which it refers could still have occurred after normal air travel resumed. That wasn’t how I read the article, but it is at least a plausible interpretation, so I’m pulling my earlier suggestion that the NY Times needs to run a correction. (Not to imply that the Times gives a rat’s ass what I think, of course…)

However: whatever the specifics are, it’s pretty clear that a lot of people were lying about something.

Perez, the former FBI agent on the flight, could not be located this week, and Grossi declined to talk about the experience.

“I’m over it,” he said in a telephone interview. “The White House, the FAA and the FBI all said the flight didn’t happen. Those are three agencies that are way over my head, and that’s why I’m done talking about it.”

Various edits as I read through this. Now I have seriously got to get back to packing…