Fahrenheit 9/11 Transcript: The Saudi Flights (Aaron Swartz: The Weblog) Page 1 of 9

Fahrenheit 9/11 Transcript: The Saudi

Flights
What follows is a verbatim transcript of the portion q/Tahrenheit 9/11 which deals with the
facts of the Saudi flights out of the US. I have checked the transcript several times for
accuracy and I am quite confident it is correct. The film goes on to make jokes and argue why
this is important; I have included only the factual portion here. Moore provides
documentation for his claims on his website.

[A plane flies overhead before landing.]

[Scenes of stranded travelers in airports.]

MOORE (VO): In the days following September 11, all commercial and private airline traffic
was grounded.

[An airport flight monitor listing all planes as cancelled.]

[A lot of planes parked on the ground.]

MALE SPOKESMAN: The FAA has taken the action to close all the airports in the United
States.

[Bush I and Barbara enter a dark car.]

MALE NEWSMAN (VO): Even grounding the President's father, former President Bush, on a
flight forced to land in Milwaukee.

[More stranded travelers.]

MALE NEWSMAN (VO): Thousands of travelers were stranded. [Ricky Martin.] Among
them, Ricky Martin, due to appear at tonight's Latin Grammy awards.

MOORE (VO): Not even Ricky Martin could fly. But really, who wanted to fly? [A dog
walked by the police in an airport terminal.] No one. [Osama bin Laden.] Except the bin
Ladens.

[A large plane takes off, apparently dodging missiles(???).]

SONG: We gotta get out of this place, if it's the last thing we ever do...

SEN. BYRON DORGAN (D-ND), Senate Subcommittee on Aviation: We had some airplanes
authorized at the highest levels of our government to fly to pick up Osama bin Laden's family
members and others from Saudi Arabia and transport them out of this country.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001375 7/6/2004
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Other items in this section.

What Fahrenheit 9/11 Says About the Saudi Flights Out of
Mike's Message
the Country After September 11 Mike's Latest News
FAQ
WHAT THE FILM SAYS:

Sen. Byron Dorgan: We had some airplanes authorized at the highest

levels of our government to fly to pick up Osama Bin Laden's family Breaking News
members and others from Saudi Arabia and transport them out of this Fahrenheit 9/11 Facts
country. Mike In The News
Statements
Wacko Attacko
Narration: It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick
up the bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis. At least six private
jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and
the Bin ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, More of Fahrenheit 9/11 Fad
including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave
the country. Newsweek: Howard Rubenstein or Dav
Rubenstein?
YOU MAKE THE CALL

Michael Isikoff and Newsweek Magazir

Additionally, in an interview with author Craig Unger, the film makes Deceive the Public About Fahrenheit 9
reference to the fact that these individuals were briefly interviewed
before they were allowed to leave. What Fahrenheit 9/11 Says About the £
Flights Out of the Country After Septer

What Fahrenheit 9/11 Says About The

Relationship Between The Families Of
WHY WE SAY IT: W. Bush And Osama Bin Laden

1. THE FLIGHTS - WHO GOT OUT WHEN

The facts stated in Fahrenheit 9/11 are well documented and are based Mike's Fahrenheit 9/11 Facts Archive
entirely on the findings contained in the 9/11 commission draft report,
which states, "After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142
people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States Featured
between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, ATA Michael & the ALA
departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of i f\ i/\l Moore donat
them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin." National Commission on Terrorist American Library Associa
Attacks Upon the United States, Threats and Responses in 2001, Staff Spectrum Initiative to recr
minority librarians. You can read more ab
Statement No. 10, The Saudi Flights, p. 12
here, and you can make your own donati<

Unfortunately, some news organizations have misinterpreted what the film

says. Some have said Fahrenheit 9/11 alleges that these flights out of the
country took place when commercial airplanes were still grounded. The film
does not say this. The film states clearly that these flights left after Read More Articles
September 13 (the day the FAA began to slowly lift the ban on air traffic).

2. WHO APPROVED THESE FLIGHTS AND WHY Check out the real news..

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/f911 facts/index.php?id=3 5 7/6/2004

48. Will Michael Moore's Facts Check Out?

PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times

MICHAEL MOORE is not coy about his hopes for "Fahrenheit 9/11," his blistering documentary
attack on President Bush and the war in Iraq. He wants it to be remembered as the first big-
audience, election-year film that helped unseat a president.

"And it's not just a hope," the Oscar-winning filmmaker said in a phone interview last week,
describing focus groups in Michigan in April at which, after seeing the movie, previously
undecided voters expressed eagerness to defeat Mr. Bush. "We found that if you entered the
theater on the fence, you fell off it somewhere during those two hours," he said. "It ignites a fire in
people who had given up."

The movie's indictment of the president is nothing if not sprawling. Mr. Moore suggests that Mr.
Bush and his administration jeopardized national security in an effort to placate Bush family
cronies in Saudi Arabia, that the White House helped members of Mr. bin Laden's family to flee
the United States after Sept. 11 and that the administration manipulated terrorism alert levels in
order to scare Americans into supporting the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Moore's previous films generated a cottage industry of conservative commentators eager to
prove sloppiness and exaggeration in his films; a handful of mainstream critics have also found
flaws. But if "Fahrenheit 9/11" attracts the audience Mr. Moore and his distributors are predicting,
Mr. Moore may face an onslaught of fact-checking unlike anything he — or any other
documentary filmmaker — has ever experienced. After all, White House officials and the Bush
family began impugning the film even before any of them had seen it.

"Outrageously false," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, last month
when told about the film's assertion of a sinister connection between Mr. Bush and the family of
Osama bin Laden. The former president George H. W. Bush was quoted in The New York Daily
News calling Mr. Moore a "slime ball" and describing the documentary as "a vicious personal
attack on our son."

So how will Mr. Moore's movie stand up under close examination? Is the film's depiction of Mr.
Bush as a lazy and duplicitous leader, blinded by his family's financial ties to Arab moneymen
and the Saudi Arabian royal family, true to fact?

Mr. Moore and his distributors have refused to circulate copies of the film and its script before the
film's release this Friday; his production team said that as of last Wednesday, there was no final
script because the film was still undergoing minor editing — for clarity, they said, not accuracy.

After a year spent covering the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, I was
recently allowed to attend a Hollywood screening. Based on that single viewing, and after
separating out what is clearly presented as Mr. Moore's opinion from what is stated as fact, it
seems safe to say that central assertions of fact in "Fahrenheit 9/11" are supported by the public
record (indeed, many of them will be familiar to those who have closely followed Mr. Bush's
political career).

Mr. Moore is on firm ground in arguing that the Bushes, like many prominent Texas families with
oil interests, have profited handsomely from their relationships with prominent Saudis, including
members of the royal family and of the large and fabulously wealthy bin Laden clan, which has
insisted it long ago disowned Osama. Mr. Moore spends several minutes in the film documenting
ties between the president and James R. Bath, a financial advisor to a prominent member of the