FBI Memo Hints At Saudi Arabia's Involvement With 9/11 Attack Hijackers

The FBI memo, which had been classified until now, showed links between Omar Bayoumi, at the time a student but suspected to have been a Saudi intelligence operative, and two of the Al-Qaeda operatives who took part in the 9/11 attacks.

The Biden administration declassified an FBI memo Saturday that fortified suspicions of official Saudi involvement with the hijackers in the September 11, 2001 attacks, but it fell well short of proof that victims' families suing Saudi Arabia had hoped for. The memo from April 4, 2016, which had been classified until now, showed links between Omar Bayoumi, at the time a student but suspected to have been a Saudi intelligence operative, and two of the Al-Qaeda operatives who took part in the plot to hijack and crash four airliners into targets in New York and Washington. Based on 2009 and 2015 interviews with a source whose identity is classified, the document details contacts and meetings between Bayoumi and the two hijackers, Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Midhar, after the two arrived in Southern California in 2000 ahead of the attacks. It also strengthens already-reported links between the two and Fahad al Thumairy, a conservative imam at the  King Faad mosque in Los Angeles and an official at the Saudi consulate there.