The FBI Declassified the First 9/11 Investigation Document

The FBI released the first in a series of documents relating to its investigation into the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Saudi government’s suspected support for the hijackers, following an executive order from President Joe Biden. CNN reports it. The document dates back to 2016 and provides several details about the FBI’s investigation into the alleged logistical support that a Saudi consular official and a suspected Saudi intelligence agent in Los Angeles allegedly offered to at least two of the men who hijacked the planes there.

September 11, 2001. According to the FBI, there is no evidence of direct involvement of the Saudi Arabian government in the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US. In particular, the dossier describes multiple connections and testimonies that led the FBI to suspect Omar al-Bayoumi, officially an Arab student in Los Angeles. But whom the Federal Bureau of Investigation questioned was a Saudi intelligence agent who would later provide “travel assistance, accommodation and funding” to help the two hijackers.

The Saudi Embassy in Washington said Wednesday that it “welcomed the release” of the FBI documents but that “any accusation against Saudi Arabia of complicity in the 9/11 attacks would be categorically false.” Biden’s executive order came after more than 1,600 people, injured, or family members of the attacks’ victims wrote him a letter. They asked him to refrain from going to Ground Zero in New York to celebrate the 20th anniversary unless he had published information on the terrorist attack that changed our lives forever.

Brett Eagleson, whose father, Bruce, was killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, said the declassification of the FBI material “accelerates our search for truth and justice.” Jim Kreindler, a lawyer for the victims’ relatives, argues that the findings and conclusions of this FBI investigation validate the arguments they have brought into the dispute over the Saudi government’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.

And it shows how Al Qaeda has acted with Saudi support “, he added, citing phone calls between Saudi officials and al Qaeda agents and” accidental “encounters with the hijackers of the planes who would have had logistical support for accommodation and flight schools.

In addition, as evidenced by already declassified documents, the United States has investigated some Saudi diplomats and others with ties to the Saudi government who knew the hijackers after they arrived in the United States. Still, the Commission’s report on 9/11 2004 did not find “No evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials funded” the attacks designed by al Qaeda while pointing out that Saudi charities may have sent money to the extremist group.