New video and documents revive questions about Saudi role in 9/11 attacks

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A newly released video and other documents are reviving questions about whether a Saudi national who FBI officials believe worked for Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service played a role in the 9/11 attacks. The Saudi national, Omar Al-Bayoumi, was the focus of years of investigation by the FBI's San Diego field office because of his association with two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, prior to the attack. The video, which was unsealed in federal court last week, was a self-narrated video that shows Al-Bayoumi giving a tour of landmarks in Washington, DC. The video was shot over several days in 1999 and included footage of entrances, exits and security checkpoints in the U.S. Capitol. Federal officials believe that 9/11 hijackers planned to crash one of the planes, United 93, into the U.S. Capitol before passengers stormed the cockpit and forced it to crash in rural Pennsylvania. Bayomi’s video of Washington was first aired by CBS News last week. NBC News and a San Diego area publication reported the existence of the video soon after the 9/11 attacks. The video was one of the items investigators found in Al-Bayoumi’s apartment in the United Kingdom after the 9/11 attack. They also found a notepad of mathematical calculations related to flying an airplane and a video of a party in San Diego where the two hijackers and Al-Bayoumi were present. The disclosures prompted some former law enforcement officials and the families of some 9/11 victims to call for further investigation. “As a former FBI Special Agent who took part in the investigation of the 9-11 attacks (Flight 93), of which the majority of the terrorists were Saudi, I have so many questions here," William Evanina, who was head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center during the Trump administration, posted on X this weekend. “Evidence is evidence. And it took a civil court case for the release?”” Evanina was referring to a lawsuit brought by the families of 9/11 victims after hundreds of pages of FBI documents were declassified and released in 2022. Attorneys representing the families filed lawsuits requesting that some of the underlying evidence used to create those FBI reports be released as well. Two FBI reports that were among the recently released documents say that Al Bayoumi was believed to work for Saudi intelligence. “Reliable assets and other members of the San Diego Muslim community believe Al-Bayoumi works for the Saudi intelligence service,” one of the documents says. Sept. 11 hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar, left, and Nawaf al-Hazmi. FBI via Reuters file A separate FBI report describes Al-Bayoumi as a paid informant of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency, known by the acronym GIP, and was paid a monthly stipend from the late 1990s to Sept. 11, 2001. Al-Bayoumi is believed to be living in Saudi Arabia. A spokesperson for the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington said it was reviewing NBC News’ questions about Al-Bayoumi and his ties to Saudi Intelligence. In late September 2001, the Metropolitan Police Service in the U.K. searched Al-Bayoumi’s apartment north of London and discovered the handwritten document that contained mathematical calculations related to flying airplanes. The handwriting specifically refers to planes and height. In a report, FBI agents say they had a theory that the document and associated equations could be used to “calculate the rate of descent when flying a plane” A pilot that FBI agents consulted in 2012 told them that the equations could be used to help fly a plane. “Given a distance from a target, the altitude at that location, and the current airspeed,” the pilot said, “one could calculate the rate of descent and plug it into the computer on the plane in order to initiate a descent to that target.” The pilot said he had doubts that someone with limited training could calculate the latitude and longitude and then use those calculations to fly a plane to a target from 35,000 feet. Given the clear weather on 9/11 and at an altitude of 8,000 to 10,000 feet, one could see for approximately 100 miles and use the waypoints on aviation maps and the plane’s autopilot to calculate the distance to certain points, the report says. The pilot apparently told the FBI that “when measuring the distance by hand between waypoints on these maps, one could be accurate” within half a nautical mile or better. The FBI report ends with: “REDACTED could not think of any other reason for the equation given the parameters set forth on the document than to calculate the descent rate from a given altitude.” Questions about whether al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi were aided in San Diego have lingered for years. Both spoke little English and had no ties to the United States. Al-Bayoumi was seen with them on several occasions, according to the 9/11 Commission report and follow-up FBI reports.