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The 9/11 Saudi files: the evidence kept from investigators
The same investigation, restaged one beat at a time. Drive it with the arrow keys, space, or autoplay. Nothing is cut from the piece — long runs are split across frames. Read the full investigation or open the CIA Crimes hub.
The 9/11 Saudi files.
Two Saudi officials, the first two hijackers, and 23 years of evidence that key investigators and the victims' families were never shown — until a lawsuit and a declassification order pried it loose.
The official story — a chance encounter, no higher Saudi role — rested on a portrait of Omar al-Bayoumi that the FBI's own later finding demolished: he was a Saudi spy.
The documented facts are FACT; the plaintiffs' 'deliberately assisted' conclusion is attributed; and whether the agencies mishandled or deliberately buried the evidence is the open question worth demanding answers to.
The official verdict was: coincidence, and no higher Saudi hand.
After the most extensive criminal probe in FBI history, the bureau concluded that the Saudi official who helped the first two hijackers in California — Omar al-Bayoumi — met them by chance and aided them unwittingly; the CIA said it saw no evidence of a higher-level Saudi role; the bipartisan 9/11 Commission adopted those findings. The lead FBI agent told the Commission Bayoumi's link to the hijackers was 'a random encounter'; the panel called him 'an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement.'
In 2017 the FBI concluded Bayoumi was a Saudi spy — and kept it secret until 2022.
The chance-encounter story rested on Bayoumi being a bumbling accountant. But in 2017 the FBI concluded he was in fact a Saudi intelligence 'cooptee' who reported to the kingdom's powerful former ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan — and it kept that finding classified until 2022, after a Biden declassification order. The Saudi government paid him surreptitiously through a Houston aviation-services company. The pillar of the official account was, by the FBI's own later judgment, false.
The withheld evidence: a Capitol 'tour' video, a party tape, and a wall of phone records.
Evidence collected soon after the attacks was never shared with key investigators or the families. British authorities began handing plaintiffs materials seized from Bayoumi in 2023: a full party tape (FBI shared only an excerpt) in which the hijackers are at the center and guests later formed their support network; and a 1999 video in which Bayoumi films the U.S. Capitol from many angles, referencing a 'plan' — which a former FBI expert says bears the hallmarks of terror pre-operational surveillance (Saudi lawyers call it a tourist video). Phone records show ~60 calls between Bayoumi and cleric Fahad al-Thumairy, who both denied knowing each other; Thumairy's diplomatic visa was revoked in 2003 for suspected terrorism ties. The existence and prior withholding of this evidence = FACT; the terror-planning reading = the plaintiffs' attributed interpretation.
The bureau concluded in 2017 that the central figure in the hijackers' support network was a Saudi intelligence asset, then kept it classified for five years until a presidential order forced disclosure — 21 years after 2,977 people were killed. 'We should have had all of this three or four weeks after 9/11,' said retired FBI agent Daniel Gonzalez, who pursued the Saudi connections for nearly 15 years.
ProPublica (2024); FBI declassified records
'Deliberately assisted' is the plaintiffs' case — serious, sourced, and not yet adjudicated.
The claim that Bayoumi and Thumairy deliberately assisted the hijackers — not just helped them by chance — is the contention of the 9/11 families' suit against the Saudi government, now before a New York judge weighing a motion to dismiss. ProPublica frames it as what the new evidence 'suggests,' not a proven fact; whether the Saudis knew the men were terrorists 'remains unclear.' We grade the underlying facts FACT and the deliberate-assistance conclusion SOME SMOKE, attributed to the plaintiffs and the court record, pending the ruling.
“Why is this information coming out now? We should have had all of this three or four weeks after 9/11.”
How this page is graded.
- FACT: the original FBI/CIA/9/11-Commission findings; the 2017 FBI 'Saudi spy' finding on Bayoumi (declassified 2022) and his reporting line to Prince Bandar; the surreptitious Saudi payments; the ~60 Bayoumi–Thumairy calls and Thumairy's 2003 visa revocation; that the videos and materials existed and were withheld from investigators and families until 2022–2023.
- SOME SMOKE / attributed: that the officials 'deliberately assisted' the hijackers (the plaintiffs' unadjudicated case); the 'terror pre-surveillance' reading of the Capitol video.
- OPEN QUESTION we raise, not assert: whether the FBI/CIA mishandled or deliberately downplayed the Saudi-complicity evidence — ProPublica poses it; retired agents allege it; it is unresolved.
Why it matters — and what to demand.
The public was told a clean story — a chance encounter, no state hand — and the evidence that complicated it sat unshared for two decades, including the FBI's own conclusion that the key figure was a foreign spy. Whether that was bureaucratic failure or a deliberate choice to protect the U.S.–Saudi relationship is the question that should be pressed, not dropped: who decided the families and investigators wouldn't see this, and why. It belongs in CIA Crimes as a documented case of the security state managing what the public gets to know about its own worst day.
Help us fill these lines.
- OpenHow the SDNY judge rules on the Saudi motion to dismiss — and what further evidence discovery forces out.
- OpenWho inside the FBI/CIA decided to withhold the Bayoumi materials and the 2017 spy finding, and on whose authority.
- OpenThe full extent of Prince Bandar's and the Ministry of Islamic Affairs' knowledge — still largely classified or contested.