Long-secret report on 9/11 reveals doubts, but no proof, about Saudis

In the years before the 9/11 terror attacks, the U.S. counterterrorism officials trying to hunt down Osama bin Laden were convinced that they were being stonewalled by a Saudi Government that was trying to cover up ties between Islamic extremists and members of the Saudi royal family, according to a long-classified section of a congressional report that was publicly released Friday, 14 years after it was written.

The Saudi lack of cooperation with the CIA on matters relating to bin Laden was memorialized in a blunt May 1996 memo from the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center that is revealed for the first time in the “28 pages” of a congressional report that were finally cleared for release by the Obama administration after years of controversy.

The Saudis had stopped providing background information or other assistance on bin Laden, the memo states, because the al-Qaida leader “had too much information on official Saudi dealings with Islamic extremists in the 1980s for Riyadh to deliver him into U.S. hands.”

The release of the 28 pages (which turned out to actually be 29 pages), coming after years of controversy and speculation, seems likely to reignite the debate about the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia — a longtime ally in the Middle East. The newly released section of the congressional report contains no new smoking guns that prove Saudi complicity in the 9/11 attacks themselves.

But the report does provide fascinating new details about behind-the-scenes tension between Washington and Riyadh over the mounting threat posed by Islamic extremism.

The lack of Saudi assistance in counterterrorism investigations — which extended to requests by the U.S. for information about Saudi charities that were believed to be funding Islamic terror groups — continued right up to the months before the 9/11 attacks, according to the report. One veteran FBI agent is quoted as saying the Saudis had been “useless and obstructionist.” When the U.S. government in May 2001 asked the Saudis to help them track down a suspect who was “most likely aware of an upcoming” al-Qaida operation, the Saudis refused to cooperate, demanding more information about what the U.S. knew — information that U.S. intelligence officials were reluctant to give, apparently for fear of disclosing sensitive sources and methods to a government about whom they had deep suspicions.

The frayed relations between U.S. and Saudis fed suspicions among some U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agents that Saudis with links to the government may have provided aid and support to the 9/11 hijackers while they were plotting their attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon.

Those links — including multiple contacts between several Saudis suspected of intelligence ties and two of the hijackers in San Diego — are spelled out with some new details in the report. But even the report acknowledges that the connections were speculative at best and only showed it was “possible” there had been some kind of Saudi complicity in 9/11. And top Obama administration and congressional officials immediately noted that many of the allegations contained in the 28 pages were later investigated — and in some cases dismissed — by the 9/11 commission, the bipartisan body created by Congress to investigate the terror attacks.

“These pages include unconfirmed allegations and raw reporting and have been the subject of conspiracy theories for years,” Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the chair and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a rare joint statement. Citing later investigations by the CIA and FBI “that debunk many of the allegations” in the congressional report, the senators continued: “We need to put an end to conspiracy theories and idle speculation that do nothing to shed light on the 9/11 attacks.”

Indeed, Director of National Intelligence Officer James Clapper on Friday released a 2005 report, co-signed by the directors of the FBI and CIA, that concluded “there is no evidence that either the Saudi government or members of the Saudi royal family knowingly provided support” for the 9/11 attacks.

Yet that same 2005 report, signed by then FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA director Porter Goss, also concluded “there is evidence that official Saudi entities” and nongovernment entities had provided “financial and logistical support” to some individuals “associated with terrorism-related activity.” And, Mueller and Goss added, “the Saudi government and many of its agencies have been infiltrated and exploited by individuals associated with or sympathetic” to al-Qaida.

Indeed, at a minimum, the release of the 28-page section of the congressional report appears likely to embolden the families of 9/11 victims to continue their legal battle to hold the Saudi government responsible for the attacks — litigation that could be aided by legislation now pending in Congress that could clear the way for them to make their case in federal court.

“Utter disgust,” said Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband was killed in the attack on the World Trade Towers and has been a leader among the 9/11 families. “The bottom line is they didn’t investigate this information [about Saudi support for terrorism] prior to 9/11 because the Saudis were deemed an ally. To me, the 9/11 attacks should have been prevented, the Saudis should have been named a state sponsor of terrorism [after the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000] and my husband would be alive today.”

The report was written in 2002 by a joint Senate-House inquiry that conducted the first independent inquiry into 9/11 and had access to raw FBI and CIA files. Its most sensational passages detail the activities of two Saudis in the U.S., Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan — both of whom were suspected of ties to Saudi intelligence — who had provided assistance to two of the hijackers after they flew to Los Angeles in Jan. 2000, helping them settle in an apartment complex in San Diego. Neither of the hijackers had spoken English. After meeting with a cleric at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, Bayoumi had later told investigators that he had by chance bumped into the hijackers at a local restaurant and offered to drive them to San Diego, cosigning their lease to an apartment and throwing them a welcoming party.

The report details how Bayoumi was working at the time for a subsidiary of a huge Saudi aviation company, Dallah Avco — with close ties to the Saudi Ministry of Defense — and was being paid a monthly salary even though he barely showed up for work. Bayoumi had made over 100 phone calls to Saudi government establishments between January and May of 2000, according to the report, including three individuals in the Saudi Embassy.

Bassnan, whose wife was receiving financial support from the Saudi Embassy at the time, (and who also befriended the hijackers in San Diego) is described in the report as “an extremist and supporter” of bin Laden who spoke of the al-Qaida leader “as if he were a god.”

But these and other intriguing leads — including the presence of a half-brother of bin Laden working at the Saudi Embassy in Washington at the time — were never enough to persuade FBI or CIA officials that they and other Saudis were directly involved in the 9/11 attacks, the 2005 report signed by Mueller and Goss concluded.

“There is no information to indicate either Omar al-Bayoumi or Osama 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,” Mueller and Goss wrote.

For his part, Adel Al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, claimed vindication. He said the report shows “there’s no there there” and that its release should “put to rest” the “outrageous charges” that have been leveled against his government about Saudi complicity in 9/11.