LONDON – The Saudi royal family has taken issue with Michael Moore's (search) film "Fahrenheit 9/11" for claiming that high-ranking Saudi nationals were allowed to flee the United States immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Prince Turki al-Faisal (search), the Saudi Arabian ambassador to London and a half-brother of Crown Prince Abdullah (search), said in an interview published Sunday that Moore did not do proper research for his documentary on the aftermath of the terror attacks.
In the film, Moore claims that the Bush administration helped a number of Saudi princes and members of the bin Laden family (search) to flee the United States at a time when American airspace had been closed to all commercial traffic.
Al-Faisal, who was in charge of Saudi intelligence at the time, said his country has been completely exonerated of any role in the attacks by the 9/11 commission.
The commission's report found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals took place before the reopening of national airspace on Sept. 13.
"It would have been far better if Michael Moore had been able to read the 9/11 report before he made his film," al-Faisal told The Sunday Telegraph. "It shows that all the protocols were strictly observed."
Al-Faisal said that Moore was granted a visa to visit Saudi Arabia but never went.
"He missed an important opportunity to find out key facts," he said. "In my opinion he should have made every effort to go to a country he has taken to task so heavily in his film."
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox