TITLE: Saudi prince’s cell phone linked to 9/11 hijackers
https://www.floridabulldog.org/2024/06/saudi-princes-cell-phone-linked-to-9-11-hijackers/
EXCERPT: Fifteen months before 9/11, multiple phone calls were exchanged between a Saudi prince’s cell phone and the San Diego home of two al Qaeda operatives who helped hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon, declassified FBI documents say.
The prince, Nawaf bin Saud bin Mohammed bin al Saud, had made no previous calls to the house, and would never do so again.
Within days, the hijackers, along with a friend, would drive two hours north to Los Angeles where they would reportedly meet with a Saudi consular official the FBI has called a “close contact of the 9/11 hijackers’ support network,” Fahad al Thumairy. The next day future hijacker Khalid al Mihdhar would board a flight to the Middle East.
Surveillance film from a security camera at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), unearthed years later by FBI agents reviewing the case, captured the hijackers and their friend – a Yemeni immigrant named Mohdar Abdullah – as they walked through the airport. An unidentified man, who appeared to be accompanying them, is seen surreptitiously filming airport security arrangements.
The FBI came to think the prince, or a brother who was with him in Los Angeles – Prince Meteb bin Saud bin Mohammed bin al Saud – held the key to unlock this troubling episode. And as Florida Bulldog first reported in February 2022 FBI records about Operation Encore ordered declassified by President Biden in 2021 show that starting in 2007 agents sought repeatedly to obtain then-director Robert Mueller’s approval to question the two princes who they believed might help them identify the unknown man in the LAX video.
They never received that permission. Nor has the suspicious LAX video ever been released to the public despite agents’ pleas to higher ups that it be widely shown to help identify the video’s UNSUB, FBI jargon for unknown subject.
Florida Bulldog learned Friday, however, that the LAX video was recently provided to attorneys for the 9/11 plaintiffs who are suing Saudi Arabia in federal court in New York. It remains under seal subject to an FBI protective order that continues to veil much evidence in the case, even as the plaintiffs are moving to have all evidence unsealed.
News of Prince Nawaf’s phone link to the two 9/11 hijackers comes as CBS News on Thursday broadcast segments of a 1999 video of The Capitol and nearby Washington, D.C. landmarks made by Saudi spy Omar al Bayoumi. The video was obtained two decades ago by London police who searched Bayoumi’s home. It was recently obtained by 9/11 plaintiffs. 60 Minutes will air more new 9/11 video in the fall.
Court papers say that Bayoumi, who had extensive contacts with the same two 9/11 hijackers, narrated the video for an audience he addressed as his “esteemed brothers.” He “surveys the U.S. Capitol at length” and “repeatedly orients the Capitol to other surrounding landmarks (and especially the Washington Monument, the highest landmark in Washington) and carefully films and notes the Capitol’s structural features, entrances, and security posts.” Lawyers for the Saudis contend it was simply a “tourist” video. Lawyers for the 9/11 families say Bayoumi was “casing” The Capitol as an intended target on 9/11.
TITLE: Is Saudi scoping out the Capitol before 9/11 enough evidence yet?
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/911-hijackers-video-saudi-arabia/
EXCERPT: A video has been released that purportedly shows Omar al-Bayoumi, a man with ties to Saudi Arabia’s intelligence apparatus who has been alleged to have assisted 9/11 hijackers in California, engaging in what appears to be a reconnaissance mission a year before the attacks.
Families of 9/11 victims are now in civil litigation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and have been alleging there are reams of documents including this video that prove Saudi Arabia’s official backing of the 2001 terror attacks. A federal judge in New York City is now deliberating a Saudi motion to dismiss the case.
This video, recently unsealed in court, shows Bayoumi taking shots of Washington monuments and buildings and talking about “a plan” back home, while zeroing in on entrances and exits to the U.S. Capitol, the Washington monument, and other places.
At one point he says to his intended audience that he will go to the monument and "report to you in detail what is there."
The video was shown on “60 Minutes” last weekend. The plaintiffs in the civil case say the U.S. government has been in possession of the video, along with tons of other evidence, collected at Bayoumi’s apartment in England, since days after the 9/11 attacks, but all of it is still classified.
TITLE: FBI argues against release of 9/11 evidence
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/fbi-against-release-9-11-evidence/
EXCERPT: A new letter shows the U.S. government siding with Saudi Arabia and objecting to the unsealing of evidence related to the 9/11 attacks.
Families of those who died on 9/11 have filed a lawsuit seeking to release evidence they say shows the Saudi government was complicit in the attacks. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in 9/11 were Saudi, and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden also had ties to the Saudi royal family.
However, the country has denied any involvement in the attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.
The Department of Justice and FBI sent a letter to the judge overseeing the lawsuit between 9/11 victims and Saudi Arabia, asking him not to unseal the material the families are pushing to make public.
The letter, obtained from court filings, states that never-before-seen evidence should not be released when the agency has not had a chance to review it.
“In the FBI’s view, it is not appropriate to seek a blanket Privacy Act order unsealing a large collection of documents before the FBI has had the opportunity to review them. The materials cited in the PECs’ filings, including their 564-page averment, and the documents marked at depositions are voluminous, and they implicate a wide range of privacy interests and information of varying levels of potential relevance to the matters at issue in the pending motions,” the letter states.
“Moreover, while the majority of the redactions identified through the FBI’s review to date have been subject to the Privacy Act, the FBI has a broader law enforcement interest in avoiding wholesale public disclosure of the personally identifying information of U.S. persons who were witnesses or of investigative interest in FBI investigations.”
Attorneys representing the families of 9/11 victims and those representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been going back and forth over what evidence should remain under seal and what should be made public.
The families recently released a video they say shows a Saudi intelligence official casing the U.S. Capitol around the same time al-Qaida was determining targets for the 9/11 attacks.
They told NewsNation they were surprised to see the FBI weighing in on the Saudi government’s side of the issue.
TITLE: Biden-Saudi Alliance Puts America in Danger
https://prospect.org/world/2024-06-25-biden-saudi-alliance-puts-america-in-danger/
EXCERPT: In Iraq, I led a team of a dozen Marines training Iraqi police and running missions in the Sunni Triangle. Just a few years later, most of the Iraqi officers we trained were either killed by or fled from the Islamic State—a barbaric terrorist organization that relied on the Saudis for funding and theological inspiration as a part of Saudi Arabia’s growing list of proxy wars.
In Afghanistan, where two Marines in my battalion were lost, I spoke with a Taliban prisoner in the Herat city penitentiary who was adamant that he’d kill me as soon as he had the chance. His organization was bankrolled by our supposed Saudi friends; that didn’t appear to blunt his resolve.
On my first assignment with the Joint Staff, I worked with the National Security Council, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and CIA to combat the proliferation of nuclear technology and weapons of mass destruction. I know the danger of adding the world’s most effective exporter of extremism to that marketplace of death.
As an international negotiations officer at the Pentagon, I watched as the Saudi-led cartel, OPEC+, used its energy monopoly to suck us and our allies dry, and dragged us into a new era of overseas conflicts that have brought us the closest we’ve been to nuclear confrontation since the Cold War.
Over the decades, our politicians’ Saudi-centered foreign policy left us trillions of dollars in the red while we protect them, fight wars for them, and risk our lives for them. It’s left the Saudis fat and rich—so much so that they’re using the profits from our one-sided relationship to move ahead in AI development, launch huge mega-construction projects, and even transition to the next generation of energy.
The same “experts” in Washington who always assure us our relationship with this despotic regime is a “strategic” necessity are going to argue the same thing about this Biden-Saudi deal. They’ll say it will make us “safer” and bring “stability” to the region—even though it would be strengthening the nuclear program of a brutal regime known for mass executions, deep ties to terrorism, almost medieval battles for succession, and an openness to developing nuclear weapons.
Helping Saudi Arabia become a nuclear power would grant them even more leverage in their dealings with us. The security guarantee would mean that at any moment, they could force us to defend their nuclear program with our lives and tax dollars. And if we’ve learned anything about doing things for the Saudis in the last 30 years, we know we won’t even get cheaper gas prices out of it.