Saudi Arabia and an army of K Street lobbyists are now claiming that several Saudi government suspects named in the newly released “28 pages” have all been “exonerated” from 9/11 involvement. The gullible mainstream media are parroting the latest spin, but it’s total bull.
Saudi lobbyists are circulating a 38-page “refutation” of the 28 pages on Capitol Hill. This tissue of lies claims investigators for both the FBI and 9/11 Commission chased down all the leads in the 28-page section of the earlier congressional inquiry into 9/11 and came up empty.
It maintains that three key Saudi officials implicated in the report— Omar al-Bayoumi, Fahad al-Thumairy and Osama Basnan — were all cleared of any role in the conspiracy.
“Each of these names was investigated in detail by the 9/11 Commission, by the recent review commission and by the FBI, and none of them found any real evidence to indicate that they were agents of Saudi Arabia, that they acted to assist the hijackers or that they knew of the plans to hijack the planes,” the Saudi white paper states. “The time is long overdue to set aside these speculations and conspiracy theories,” it adds.
Aside from the fact that several 9/11 Commission members recently denied exonerating the Saudis, summaries of interviews between commission investigators and these Saudi suspects concluded they were “deceptive” and asked them to take lie-detector tests because bank and phone records, along with the testimony of material witnesses, so wildly contradicted their testimonies. In other words, they lied through their teeth.
Let’s start with Thumairy, the Saudi consular official who was at the center of the US support network for Saudi hijackers who attacked the Pentagon.
Internal commission notes of the 2004 interview with Thumairy in Saudi Arabia — which was conducted on his terms and with Saudi handlers present — reveal the witness repeatedly dissembled under questioning, something frustrated investigators clearly acknowledged in their unpublished report.
Investigators wrote that Thumairy was “deceptive” when asked about his contacts with Saudi intelligence officer Bayoumi, who aided two of the Saudi hijackers. Thumairy denied knowing Bayoumi despite phone records showing nearly two dozens calls between them.
Implausibly, Thumairy claimed he only knew Bayoumi from photos broadcast on TV, despite FBI records showing a flurry of phone calls between Thumairy and Bayoumi on both Thumairy’s cellphone and landline over a short period in December 1999 — just weeks before the hijackers entered the US.
He also insisted he’d never met Bayoumi, despite eyewitnesses who said they saw the two meet on several occasions at an LA mosque controlled by the Saudi consulate.
In fact, there is evidence that Thumairy even met Bayoumi at the Saudi consulate in February 2000 — just before Bayoumi met with the hijackers at a nearby restaurant.
Thumairy also denied having any ties to the hijackers, even though a 2012 FBI document reveals that Thumairy “immediately assigned an individual to take care of” them, and even though both FBI and CIA documents indicate Thumairy escorted major al Qaeda terrorist Khallad bin Attash through customs at LAX so he could meet with al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar.
For his part, Bayoumi told commission investigators, who interviewed him at a Riyadh palace in 2003, that he was “surprised” to learn Thumairy worked at the Saudi consulate, even though he was calling him at the consulate.
Witnesses also told the FBI they saw Bayoumi meet with Thumairy at the consulate, which he visited frequently, before going to the restaurant to meet the hijackers.
Bayoumi claimed he and Thumairy merely discussed “religious matters” in their numerous phone chats. Why did he provide the hijackers financing and find them housing (even co-signing their lease) and flight schools?
The Saudi white paper offered that it’s “common practice in the Muslim community to assist individuals new to the area.”
But Bayoumi also “denied having any relationship at all with Basnan,” the other Saudi intelligence agent who assisted the hijackers — even though the 28 pages reveal that he was in phone contact with Basnan “several times a day” and that his wife deposited checks payable to Basnan from then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar.
Basnan made similar denials to the 9/11 Commission, prompting a lead investigator to conclude that this other prime Saudi suspect had an “utter lack of credibility on virtually every material subject.”
In their rebuttal, the Saudis also insist that the 28 (actually 29) pages don’t implicate senior Saudi government officials or members of the royal family. In fact, they tie Prince Bandar to the 9/11 conspiracy in almost 20 instances. They say he directly subsidized Basnan in the run-up to the attacks. And an unlisted security number for his Aspen chalet was found in the phone book of captured senior al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida in Pakistan.
So don’t be misled. Neither the FBI nor the 9/11 Commission ever exonerated the Saudis, in spite of what Riyadh and the eight different lobbying, legal and consulting firms it employs in Washington say. The multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign they’re waging to discredit the 28 pages can’t whitewash the facts about Saudi complicity in the 9/11 attacks, which are growing clearer and clearer.
Sperry is author of “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington,” which exposes the Saudi terror support network inside America.