Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah denies all involvement

What is known about Saudi involvement in 9/11 is damning enough. The 28-page section of the 9/11 report detailing Saudi involvement in the September 11, 2001 jihad attacks was finally released in 2016 (albeit with substantial portions still redacted), and it is now clear why one president who held hands with the Saudi King and another who bowed to him worked so hard all these years to keep these pages secret: they show that it is highly likely that the 9/11 jihad murderers received significant help from people at the highest levels of the Saudi government.

The report states that Omar al-Bayoumi, who “may be a Saudi intelligence officer,” gave “substantial assistance to hijackers Khalid al-Mindhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi after they arrived in San Diego in February 2000. Al-Bayoumi met the hijackers at a public place shortly after his meeting with an individual at the Saudi consulate.”

Around the same time, al-Bayoumi “had extensive contact with Saudi Government establishments in the United States and received financial support from a Saudi company affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Defense.” That company “reportedly had ties to Usama bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida.”

Another possible Saudi agent, Osama Bassnan, who “has many ties to the Saudi government” and was also a supporter of Osama bin Laden, boasted that he did more for al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi than al-Bayoumi did. He also “reportedly received funding and possibly a fake passport from Saudi government officials.” The report says that at one point, “a member of the Saudi Royal Family provided Bassnan with a significant amount of cash,” and that “he and his wife have received financial support from the Saudi ambassador to the United States and his wife.”

That ambassador was Prince Bandar, about whom the New York Times later noted: “No foreign diplomat has been closer or had more access to President Bush, his family and his administration than the magnetic and fabulously wealthy Prince Bandar bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia.”

Then there was Shaykh al-Thumairy, “an accredited diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and one of the ‘imams’ at the King Fahad mosque in Culver City, California,” who also “may have been in contact” with al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi. Saleh al-Hussayen, “reportedly a Saudi Interior Ministry official, stayed at the same hotel in Herndon, Virginia where al-Hazmi was staying. While al-Hussayen claimed after September 11 not to know the hijackers, FBI agents believed he was being deceptive. He was able to depart the United States despite FBI efforts to locate and re-interview him.” Who got him out of the country?

There is much more. The report redacts the name of “another Saudi national with close ties to the Saudi Royal Family,” but notes that he “is the subject of FBI counterterrorism investigations and reportedly was checking security at the United States’ southwest border in 1999 and discussing the possibility of infiltrating individuals into the United States.” There is no telling who this could have been, but Prince Bandar’s unlisted phone number turned up in a phone book of Abu Zubaida, “a senior al-Qa’ida operative captured in Pakistan in March 2002.” Abu Zubaida also had the number of “a bodyguard at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC.”

The report also mentions a CIA memorandum that “discusses alleged financial connections between the September 11 hijackers, Saudi Government officials, and members of the Saudi Royal Family.” This memorandum was passed on to an FBI investigator; yet “despite the clear national implications of the CIA memorandum, the FBI agent included the memorandum in an individual case file and did not forward it to FBI Headquarters.”

Why? There is still more, and with this much smoke, there is almost certainly fire: the Saudi connection to 9/11 goes to the highest levels of the Saudi government. All this information should be released, and there needs to be a further investigation as well: why has this been covered up for so long, and this sham alliance maintained with a nation whose highest officials were apparently involved with those who attacked us?

The FBI has released its first declassified 9/11 document exactly 20 years after the deadly terror attack which claimed the lives of 2,996 people. The document was published Saturday evening, a week after President Biden signed an executive order directing the agency to make the secret files available to the public for the first time.

The order to release the documents came amid significant pressure from the families of 9/11 victims, who are eager to probe potential Saudi government links to the attack. The FBI file that is significantly redacted details a 2015 interview with an official who worked at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.

He admitted that he allowed two hijackers to use his apartment and helped them travel around LA. He was found to be an al-Qaeda ‘facilitator’ by the FBI and the Saudi Consul General wanted to fire him for distributing extremist Muslim literature. He was also a close associate of two other Saudis, Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, who the helped the hijackers.

The new FBI file reveals that al-Bayoumi, who has admitted befriending them, worked as a ‘ghost employee’ at a Saudi aviation firm in the US. And it details how al-Thumairy gave the hijackers money, travel assistance and lodging. The Saudi official, who is only referred to as PII and who applied for US citizenship in 2015, is thought to be Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah who worked at the Saudi Consulate in Washington, DC.

Al-Jarrah’s name was accidently left unredacted in separate court papers penned by an FBI official. However, he has vigorously denied any involvement and insists he did not know any of the hijackers. Of the 19 hijackers on board the four doomed 9/11 planes, 15 were Saudi nationals.