A recently released video and other documents are reviving questions about whether a Saudi national who FBI officials believe worked for Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service played a role in the 9/11 attacks.
Saudi national, Omar Al-Bayoumi, was the focus of years of investigation by the FBI’s San Diego field office because of his association with two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, before of the attack. .
The video, which was unsealed in federal court last week, was a self-narrated video that shows Al-Bayoumi touring Washington, D.C. landmarks. The video was filmed over several days in 1999 and included footage of entrances, exits and security checkpoints at the US Capitol.
Federal authorities believe the 9/11 hijackers planned to crash one of the planes, United 93, into the U.S. Capitol before passengers stormed the cabin and forced it to crash in rural Pennsylvania.
Bayomi’s video about Washington was first aired on CBS News last week. NBC News and a San Diego-area publication reported the existence of the video shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
The video was one of the items investigators found in Al-Bayoumi’s UK apartment after the 9/11 attack. They also found a notebook with mathematical calculations related to flying a plane and a video of a party in San Diego where the two hijackers and Al-Bayoumi were present.
The revelations have prompted some former law enforcement officials and the families of some 9/11 victims to call for further investigation.
“As a former FBI special agent who participated in the investigation of the 9/11 (Flight 93) attacks, of which most of the terrorists were Saudis, I have a lot of questions here,” said William Evanina, who was head of the National Counterattack Center. -espionage and Security during the Trump administration, posted on X this weekend “Evidence is evidence and was a civil lawsuit necessary for disclosure?”
Evanina was referring to a lawsuit filed by the families of 9/11 victims after hundreds of pages of FBI documents were declassified and released in 2022. Lawyers representing the families filed suits requesting that some of the underlying evidence used to create these FBI reports were released as well.
Two FBI reports that were among the recently released documents say Al Bayoumi was believed to work for Saudi intelligence. “Reliable resources and other members of the San Diego Muslim community believe that Al-Bayoumi works for the Saudi intelligence service,” one of the documents says.
A separate FBI report describes Al-Bayoumi as a paid informant for the Saudi Presidency of General Intelligence, known by the acronym GIP, and received a monthly stipend from the late 1990s until September 11, 2001. Al-Bayoumi is believed to have Bayoumi is living in Saudi Arabia.
A spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy in Washington said it was reviewing NBC News’ questions about Al-Bayoumi and his ties to Saudi intelligence.
In late September 2001, the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police Service searched Al-Bayoumi’s north London apartment and discovered the handwritten document which contained mathematical calculations relating to piloting planes. Calligraphy refers specifically to planes and height.
In a report, FBI agents claim they have a theory that the document and associated equations could be used to “calculate the decency rating when flying an airplane.”
A pilot consulted by FBI agents in 2012 told them the equations could be used to help fly a plane. “Given the distance to a target, the altitude at that location, and the current speed,” the pilot said, “one can calculate the rate of descent and plug it into the plane’s computer to initiate a descent toward that target.”
The pilot said he had doubts that someone with limited training could calculate latitude and longitude and then use those calculations to fly a plane to a target at 35,000 feet. Given the good weather on September 11th and at an altitude of 8,000 to 10,000 feet, it was possible to see about 100 miles and use reference points on aviation maps and the plane’s autopilot to calculate the distance to certain points, says the report.
The pilot apparently told the FBI that “by manually measuring the distance between landmarks on these maps, one can be accurate” to within half a nautical mile or better.
The FBI report ends with: “REDACTED could think of no other reason for the equation, given the parameters set forth in the document, other than to calculate the decent rate from a given altitude.”
Questions about whether al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi were helped in San Diego have persisted for years. Both spoke little English and had no ties to the United States. Al-Bayoumi was seen with them on several occasions, according to the 9/11 Commission report and FBI follow-up reports.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
