Will Saudi Arabia Destabilize global Financial Markets?

By Prof. R Vaidyanathan

At the heart of the matter is 28 pages of the original Congressional report which probed the 9/11 attack on twin towers. These 28 pages were never released since it is supposed to link some members of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as abettors of that crime.

Now the US Congress is considering a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in American courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

As of now the bill is unexpected in a Congress divided by bitter partisanship, especially during an election year. It is sponsored by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York. It has the support of an unlikely coalition of liberal and conservative senators, including Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, and Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas—who is in the race for GOP nomination. It passed through the Judiciary Committee in January without dissent.




Now Saudi Arabia threatens to off –load its holdings of nearly USD 750 billions of US treasury bills etc if US congress proceeds further which might end up large number of claims from KSA by affected citizens. According to a report in New York Times the foreign minister of KSA has given this threat and it could impact markets severely.


There is lots of concern among the Obama administration regarding the fall of the proposed bill. It is argued that it will affect the US actions abroad since foreigners will be able to legally question actions of US citizens in their jurisdiction. But the proponents argue that the bill can be narrowly drawn to cover only terror related activities like 9/11 on US soil.

Obama administration seems to be more worried about fallout of exposing the possible role of some Saudi elites in the terror attacks than about the de-stabilization of markets due to unloading of huge Saudi holdings.

The nature of relationships which Bush and Cheney had with KSA leaders might also be brought into question. The US involvement in KSA is very substantial –military/diplomatic/economic- and there is a concern that this bill might unravel the whole lot of that.

That is one of the major reasons that the 28 pages of the Congressional report was classified as “super confidential” and never got released.

The 60 minute segment of CBS news talked about the 28 pages recently. It says

Is it sensitive Steve, might it involve opening a bit of can of worms, or some snakes crawling out of there, yes. That’s how the latest “60 Minutes” segment ended. [CBS News—10th April 2016]

The comment was in reference to the final chapter of a Congressional investigative report into 9/11 that has been left out of the report due to it being classified. The congressional investigative report is a report that was completed and handed over to the 9/11 commission, who ultimately produced the final “official” report.

The 28 pages that were classified have only been seen by a select few, and allegedly have to do with details around the existence of a possible Saudi support system for the hijackers while they were in the US among other implications of official Saudi involvement.

The push to declassify the documents is being led by then Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, former Senator Bob Grahm (D-FL), who has been a strong advocate of the documents being declassified since the Bush administration classified them due to matters of national security back in 2003.

Point blank, the Democratic senator said the hijackers were “substantially” supported by Saudi government, as well as charities and wealthy people in that country. 

Congressional member Graham [D-FL] was more explicit

“I think it is implausible to believe that 19 people, most of whom didn’t speak English, most of whom 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,” Graham said.

For now only a handful of people know for sure: those who have seen the contents of the 28 classified pages. And here are some notable quotes by those that have actually read these 28 pages:


Interviewer: You believe that support came from Saudi Arabia
Grahm: Substantially
Interviewer: When you say the Saudis you mean the government, rich people in the country, charities
Grahm: All of the above

You can’t provide the money for terrorists and then say I don’t have anything to do with what they were doing.

In general, the 9/11 commission did not get every single detail of the conspiracy. We didn’t have the time, we didn’t have the resources. And we certainly didn’t pursue the entire line of inquiry in regards to Saudi Arabia.

The papers are currently locked in a guarded vault beneath the Capitol called a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Very few people have access to these sites, and


According to other reports




There are also reports that Saudi citizens were flown out of US immediately after 9/11 went there was actually a blanket ban on any flights.



But interestingly how much KSA holds in US assets is not clear since

“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.”

The Obama administration, meanwhile, is far less concerned about the market impact of a Saudi liquidation, and far more worried what a real inquiry into the Saudi role of Sept.11 would reveal (and who it would implicate) and as a result is building straw man arguments that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas. In fact, as the NYT reports, “Obama has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of Sept. 11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.”


Stunning indeed, and yet that’s precisely who the “U.S.” president sides with when attempting to get to the bottom of the 2001 terrorist attacks”.


Increasingly it is becoming clear that those 28 pages contain explosive information on the role of Saudis in 9/11 attack. It will clearly will come out –more of when than if—and if Saudis as threatened off load its billions of asset holding and the global markets will not be what they are.

Interestingly Obama is traveling to KSA this week and whether this issue will dominate is a matter of interest since both the democratic contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have supported the release of the 28 pages.

Already Global markets are reeling under possible recession forecast for USA and bond markets in particular are in turmoil. Many of the bigger banks are in doldrums and a looming threat of Brexit –Britain leaving EU- is making the situation grim.

USA has to choose between punishing the perpetrators of terror –whosoever they are- and turmoil in part of the global markets due to KSA sale of its assets.


Professor of finance at IIMB—views personal


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