Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the families of the victims are still fighting to learn whether Saudi government agents helped the men who murdered nearly 3,000 Americans.
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On Oct. 7, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan is scheduled to hear Saudi Arabia’s appeal of a ruling that allowed the families’ lawsuit against the kingdom to proceed. According to the New York Post, attorneys representing nearly 10,000 victims and relatives believe two videos involving Saudi national Omar al-Bayoumi provide critical evidence of a Saudi role in the attacks.
After hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar arrived in California in January 2000, Al-Bayoumi helped them find an apartment, assisted them in opening a bank account and introduced them to the local Muslim community. Both men later took part in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon.
One of the videos, recorded during a 1999 trip to Washington, shows al-Bayoumi filming the U.S. Capitol and discussing such details as the building’s entrances, security and proximity to Reagan National Airport. At one point, he refers cryptically to a “plan.” Flight 93, which passengers brought down in Pennsylvania, is believed to have been headed for the Capitol.
Another video reportedly shows al-Bayoumi hosting a gathering for Hazmi and Mihdhar shortly after they arrived in California. Lawyers for the families contend that it was a welcome party arranged as part of the support network awaiting the future hijackers.
The families have also produced a page from al-Bayoumi’s notebook containing a drawing of an airplane and mathematical calculations. They argue that the calculations concern guiding an aircraft toward a target. Saudi Arabia’s attorneys say the Capitol footage was merely a tourist video and that the airplane drawing appears to have been part of a child’s math assignment.
Those explanations might be more persuasive if al-Bayoumi had merely been a super helpful Saudi student. But a 2017 FBI document reportedly identified him as a paid “cooptee” of Saudi intelligence from the late 1990s through the attacks.
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The evidence stands in stark contrast with the 9/11 Commission’s conclusions, which reported that it had found no credible evidence that al-Bayoumi believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups. Yet British police had recovered the Capitol video during a search of his home shortly after 9/11. The commission apparently never saw it.
As American Thinker noted in 2023, the mystery may extend beyond Saudi Arabia. Former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke believed that Saudi intelligence, acting as an intermediary for the CIA, may have attempted to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar as informants. If so, the CIA’s failure to alert the FBI that the two known al-Qaeda operatives were in the United States takes on even greater significance.
American Thinker also reported in 2016 that the congressional inquiry’s previously classified 28 pages portrayed U.S. intelligence as failing to investigate Saudi connections adequately. In 2018, when a judge first permitted the families to pursue claims involving al-Bayoumi and Saudi diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy, this site argued that national-security considerations should not be allowed to bury the truth.
None of the newly public evidence on its own proves that Saudi leaders authorized or even knew about the attacks, but it does demonstrate that important evidence concerning a suspected Saudi intelligence operative was out of public view for more than two decades.
The victims’ families are now asking President Trump to declassify additional FBI and intelligence records, including telephone logs involving al-Bayoumi and the hijackers. Whatever those files reveal, the American people, especially the families of those murdered, deserve the whole truth.
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