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| Sep 9/11 Attack: The twin tower burning |
The long-awaited 28 pages of a 2002 congressional report on the 9/11 attacks have been released. The document indicates that prominent members of the Saudi Arabian were involved in planning and financing the terror attacks.
The declassified documents were released by Congress on Friday and released them the same day, release of the documents confirmed suspicions that the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks – most of whom were Saudi nationals – likely received support from high-ranking Saudi intelligence officers.
“While in the United States, some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may have be connected to the Saudi Government,” the report states.“There is information, primarily from FBI sources, that at least two of those individuals were alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers.”
The documents go on to explain that the magnitude of Saudi involvement isn’t clear because the US government only began to “aggressively investigate” after the attack already occurred.
“In their testimony, neither CIA nor FBI witnesses were able to identify definitely the extent of Saudi support for terrorist activity globally or within the United States and the extent to which such support, if it exists, is knowing or inadvertent in nature," the report states.
However, it does list prominent Saudis suspected of being involved with terrorism by US intelligence agencies.
Omar al-Bayoumi, whom the FBI suspected to be a Saudi intelligence officer due to a "half dozen reports," is given a detailed summary in the newly released documents. The report starts that FBI files indicate that al-Bayoumi provided “substantial assistance” to 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the five terrorists who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
In February 2000, al-Bayoumi met with the hijackers in a public place in San Diego “shortly after his meeting with an individual at the Saudi consulate.”
The report says that there is reason to believe that al-Bayoumi’s meeting with the terrorists was not accidental. He had “extensive contact” with Saudi government establishments in the US during the same time as the meeting with the hijackers, making over 100 phone calls to such establishments and received repeated financial support from a Saudi company called "Ercan," which itself received money from the Saudi Ministry of Defense.
A member of Ercan told the FBI that he tried to refuse to pay al-Bayoumi, but the company told him that if al-Bayoumi wasn't paid, it would lose its contract with the Saudi Defense Ministry.
“According to FBI files … al-Bayoumi received a monthly salary [Ercan] even though he had had only been there on one occasion,”the report says. “The support increased substantially in April 2000, two months after the hijackers arrived in San Diego, decreased slightly in December 2000, and stayed at that same level until August 2001. That company reportedly had ties to Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.”
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