Declassified: 9/11 Saudi connection coverup

The Biden administration has declassified a 16-page FBI report tying 9/11 hijackers to Saudi nationals living in the United States.

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Families of the 9/11 victims have long sought after the report, which painted a starkly different portrait than the one described by the 9/11 Commission Report in 2004.

While the Commission was largely unable to tie the Saudi men to the hijackers, the FBI document describes multiple connections and phone calls.

Years ago, the Commission wrote that when it came to the Saudi diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy, "We have not found evidence that Thumairy provided assistance to the two hijackers." A decade later, it appears FBI agents came to a different conclusion. The report says Thumairy "tasked" an associate to help the hijackers when they arrived in Los Angeles, and told the associate the hijackers were "two very significant people," more than a year before the attacks.

The report also casts new light on the meeting of a Saudi government employee with the hijackers in a restaurant. What was once portrayed as a chance meeting is now painted as a preplanned, well orchestrated event. The 2004 9/11 Commission had described the Saudi employee, Omar al-Bayoumi, as "gregarious." Investigators wrote that they found him "to be an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamic extremists."

The ENCORE report, however, says a witness to the meeting saw Bayoumi waiting by the window for the hijackers to arrive rather than running into them by chance, and engaged in a lengthy conversation with them.

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While the report does not draw any direct links between hijackers and the Saudi Arabian government as a whole, Jim Kreindler, who represents many of the families suing Saudi Arabia, said the report validates the arguments they have made in the case.

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The [...] document is the first of many documents the Biden administration has promised to release in coming months.

  NPR