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Congress released info detailing Saudi Arabia's 9/11 ties
| New York Daily News | - |
Classified
documents detailing the Saudi government's alleged ties to the 9/11
terrorist attack will be released by Congress as early as Friday,
according to several reports.
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Congress releases classified info naming Saudi nationals suspected of helping terrorists before 9/11 attack
Documents revealing Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11 set for release
NY Daily News
The newly declassified document named people believed to have helped the Al Qaeda terrorists before they attacked the U.S. on 9/11 and killed nearly 3,000 people.
Many of the hijackers — 15 out of 19 — were Saudi nationals who spoke little English and had little experience living in the U.S.
Yet they were able to open bank accounts, rent aparments, find local mosques and even sign up for flying lessons — apparently with the support of some Saudi Arabians with ties to the government and in some cases the royal family.
Documents revealing Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11 set for release
The 28 pages were part of a 2002 joint congressional hearing into the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
But they were redacted from the official report and ordered classified by the Bush administration.
Lawmakers and 9/11 victims family members battled for 13 years to see them. Two years ago President Obama put them up for security review, clearing the way for Congress to publish the pages online Friday.
The classified pages were part of the 2002 congressional investigation into Sept. 11 — but were never made public.
(Monaster, Thomas)Saudi Arabia identifies one of three suicide bombers
Among the revelations in the 28 pages are details about Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who helped two of the hijackers in California.
At the same time, he was suspected of being a Saudi intelligence officer.
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,” the document said.
It also noted that the “company reportedly had ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida,” the terror group that orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.
According to the FBI document, al-Bayoumi got $465 a month for “allowances.”
Questions remain about how much Saudi government officials knew of the terrorists’ plans to fly commercial airliners into multiple U.S. locations.
(Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)Nine months later, when one hijacker left the area, al-Bayoumi’s pay dropped to $3,200. It stayed there until he left the country in August 2001, a month before Al Qaeda terrorists drove two commercial airliners into the Twin Towers, one into the Pentagon and one into an empty field in rural Pennsylvania.
Another paragraph also points to Osama Bassnan, who lived across the street from two of the hijackers in California.
He later told the FBI he met them through al-Bayoumi, the document said, and claimed “he did more than al-Bayoumi did for the hijackers.”
Bassnan’s wife also apparently got money directly from Princess Haifa Bint Sultan, the wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
From 1999 to early 2002, Bassnan’s wife got $2,000 a month — roughly $74,000 — for “nursing services,” although there was no evidence she performed any such duties.
President Obama in April said he would lift the restriction and allow the documents to be released.
(Carolyn Kaster/AP)Bassnan also got money directly from Ambassador Banda. In 1998, he cashed a check for $15,000, the FBI said.
The agency’s notes on Banda’s wife said she is known to give money to many individuals around the world.
“But maybe if we can discover that she gives to 20 different radical groups, well, gee, maybe there’s a pattern here,”the FBI wrote.
The FBI also learned that in 1992, Bassan hosted a party at his house in D.C. for Omar Abdel-Rahman, aka “The Blind Sheikh,” currently serving a life sentence on charges linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Elsewhere in the 28 pages, the FBI described finding an Al Qaeda operative’s phone book and tracing an unlisted number in it to a corporation managing a Colorado home of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
Al-Bayoumi and Bassan were also cleared of knowingly helping the hijackers.
The office of the Director of National Intelligence on Friday also released part of a 2005 FBI-CIA memo that said “there is no information to indicate that either (Bayoumi) or (Bassnan) materially supported the hijackers wittingly, were intelligence officers of the Saudi government or provided material support for the 11 September attacks, contrary to media speculation.”
Saudi Arabia has urged the release of the chapter since 2002 so the kingdom could respond to any allegations and punish any Saudis who may have been involved in the attacks.
“We hope the release of these pages will clear up, once and for all, any lingering questions or suspicions about Saudi Arabia’s actions, intentions, or long-term friendship with the United States,” Abdullah Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S., said in a statement Friday
“Saudi Arabia is working closely with the United States and other allies to eradicate terrorism and destroy terrorist organizations,” he added.
The 9/11 Commission chairs also issued a statement about the 28 pages, noting they were “based almost entirely on raw, unvetted material that had come to the FBI.”
After thorough investigations in later years into the FBI leads, the 9/11 Commission concluded none of it checked out.
As it said in its initial report released years ago, the commission found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” Al Qaeda, the statement concluded.
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