From that same article according to Clarke himself it instead required FBI approval which was asked of and granted by the FBI. We do not know who requested it,

From that same article according to Clarke himself it instead required FBI approval which was asked of and granted by the FBI. We do not know who requested it, reps from both State and FBI deny that they did. The shuttle flight happened in the evening of the 13th when by other accounts some other private and commercial flights began. In any case we are pretty far away from "Clarke was one of the guys who OKed the return of the bin Laden family on 9/11" at this point. >>> In the days immediately after 9/11—he doesn’t remember exactly when—Clarke was approached in the Situation Room about quickly repatriating the Saudis. “Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, leave the country,” Clarke says. “My role was to say that it can’t happen until the F.B.I. approves it. And so the F.B.I. was asked—we had a live connection to the F.B.I.—and we asked the F.B.I. to make sure that they were satisfied that everybody getting on that plane was someone that it was O.K. to leave. And they came back and said yes, it was fine with them. So we said, ‘Fine, let it happen.’” Clarke, who has since left the government and now runs a consulting firm in Virginia, adds that he does not recall who initiated the request, but that it was probably either the F.B.I. or the State Department. Both agencies deny playing any role whatsoever in the episode. “It did not come out of this place,” says one source at the State Department. “The likes of Prince Bandar does not need the State Department to get this done.” “I can say unequivocally that the F.B.I. had no role in facilitating these flights one way or another,” says Special Agent John Iannarelli, the F.B.I.’s spokesman on counterterrorism activities.