Declassified U.S. intelligence files and FBI records suggest two Saudi Arabian government employees may have acted as an “advance team” for Al Qaeda operatives who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to documents released this week and interviews with former national security officials.
The records, compiled under an FBI sub-investigation known as Operation Encore, indicate that Riyadh officials Mutaib al Sudairy and Adel Mohammad al Sadhan had prior connections to several of the hijackers and others who assisted them. The files describe visits to the United States beginning in late 1998 and continuing through 2000 during which the two men met people who later supported or housed the hijackers, according to the documents and officials who reviewed them.
FBI records cited in news reports show that al Sadhan first traveled to southern California in December 1998 and later returned with al Sudairy to Washington in June 1999. The files say the pair also traveled to San Diego, where they stayed with Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi student the FBI has previously investigated for ties to Riyadh and for his contacts with hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar arrived in Los Angeles on Jan. 15, 2000; both later helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77, which struck the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
The documents include previously unreleased tapes, phone records, financial information and interview material, according to the reporting. They allege that while in southern California al-Bayoumi “provided a place to live and looked after” the two hijackers “at the same address in San Diego where al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar would later stay near the Al-Ribat mosque.” The Al-Ribat mosque in San Diego was associated with Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-Yemeni cleric and Al Qaeda operative who was killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike.
The files also identify Fahad al-Thumairy, an imam placed by the Saudi embassy at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, Calif., as a contact of al Sadhan. The records say al-Thumairy later provided assistance to al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar during their time in the United States.
A separate entry in the FBI material reports video footage from a 1999 visit to Washington that showed the Saudis filming the U.S. Capitol and the White House, landmarks that were later considered potential targets in the Sept. 11 plot. FBI sources recorded a February 2000 “welcome party” in California for some of the hijackers at which another Saudi government official reportedly appears on tape.
Former federal officials who reviewed portions of the files said the material provides new investigative leads. Bill Evanina, the former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told independent journalist Catherine Herridge that the records “provide new investigative leads” for the FBI and the CIA and show that a support network was active in the United States earlier than previously understood. “I think these records clearly depict, not only the advance team coming here to the United States and setting up shop, facilitating the care and feeding and housing of the hijackers,” he said in a recorded interview cited by the reporting.
The records are a product of Operation Encore, a subcomponent of PENTTBOM, the FBI’s initial and largest investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks. The CIA was briefed on the Operation Encore findings in February 2010, according to the files. In at least one FBI source assessment, an investigator characterized the chance that al-Bayoumi had “advanced knowledge” of the attacks as “50/50.”
Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, said he could not recall whether he had seen the full video of the welcome party, but defended the commission’s final report. “I still believe the overall summary we offered in our report, with all its acknowledged uncertainties, holds up reasonably well,” Zelikow said in a statement to the journalist who reported the newly released files. He noted that the commission had identified at least five people as suspects for possible participation in a clandestine support network in the United States.
Families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks have pursued the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in federal court since 2002, alleging Riyadh’s involvement in the plot. In August, a Manhattan federal judge, George B. Daniels, ruled that the plaintiffs’ complaint could proceed to trial based on what he described as new circumstantial evidence. The newly publicized FBI records were cited in news reports as part of that material.
The Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington issued a statement saying it “respectfully disagrees” with Judge Daniels’s ruling and that it believes it has “solid grounds for appeal.” The embassy categorically denied any involvement by the Saudi government in preparations for the Sept. 11 attacks.
The CIA declined to comment on the newly publicized files. The FBI did not respond to a request for comment in reporting on the documents. The files were first reported by journalist Catherine Herridge and were shared with The New York Post, which published the material and related reporting.
Legal experts and former intelligence officials cautioned that the documents themselves do not establish whether the Saudi employees were acting at the direction of the Saudi government or were independently assisting members of Al Qaeda. The FBI materials, as described in reporting, include investigative leads — phone records, financial transactions and witness interviews — that former officials say warrant further review.
The disclosure adds to a complex, decades-long examination of foreign links to the Sept. 11 plot. U.S. authorities and the 9/11 Commission previously documented multiple international connections and an extensive support network for the hijackers, but the new files, if corroborated in court or in further investigations, could shift or extend timelines about when and how support for the attackers was established on U.S. soil. As the litigation and any related probes proceed, officials and analysts will assess whether the newly disclosed records materially change the factual record or corroborate existing leads in the government’s ongoing historical and legal inquiries.