FBI Called Saudi Man's 9/11 Role Accidental as Evidence Showed Al-Qaida Ties

For years, FBI leadership maintained that Omar al-Bayoumi, the Saudi student who helped two 9/11 hijackers settle in San Diego, had met them by chance and helped them without knowing their true purpose.

But newly disclosed evidence seized during a British police raid, and later filed in a federal lawsuit against the Saudi government, is challenging that account.

Material seized from Bayoumi's home and office in Birmingham in 2001, including a handwritten diagram that appeared to calculate an aircraft's trajectory and a video of him touring the US Capitol, was flagged as potentially significant at the time but received limited attention from FBI headquarters for years, according to ProPublica's investigation.

The evidence has since resurfaced alongside records detailing Bayoumi's contacts with Saudi religious officials, including clerics who later became associated with al-Qaida, according to ProPublica's investigation.

A Chance Meeting That Unravelled

Bayoumi told the FBI he met hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar by chance at a halal cafe in Los Angeles in February 2000. He said he overheard them speaking Gulf-accented Arabic and offered to help.

Within days, he had arranged their apartment in San Diego, co-signed their lease and lent them money for the deposit. He went on to introduce them to more than two dozen local men who helped them in many ways.

The FBI's public position, repeated by then-director Robert Mueller to Congress in 2002 and by lead agent Jacqueline Maguire before the 9/11 Commission in 2004, was that the meeting had been a 'random encounter'. It was also the FBI's position that Bayoumi helped the pair without knowing their true purpose.

Evidence the FBI Did Not Fully Examine

British police arrested Bayoumi in Birmingham shortly after the attacks and seized boxes of papers, videotapes and computer disks. David Campbell, a Metropolitan Police terrorism investigator involved in questioning Bayoumi, said US officials shared very little of their own findings with British investigators at the time.

'We were really in the dark,' Campbell said. 'They never even mentioned that he had been under investigation by the FBI in San Diego in 1998.'

Despite the volume of material seized, FBI records show the San Diego field office was asked to review only five of the more than 80 videotapes taken from Bayoumi's home. Two were duplicates showing a paintball outing and a family trip to Sea World.

Ties to Men Who Later Led Al-Qaida

Evidence that surfaced years later showed Bayoumi's contacts extended further than the FBI's public account suggested.

Telephone records cited by ProPublica show he made repeated calls around the time of the hijackers' arrival to Fahad al-Thumairy, an imam at the Saudi-built King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles, and to Anwar al-Aulaqi, a San Diego cleric whose mosque had received Saudi funding associated with Bayoumi.

Aulaqi later became an important al-Qaida leader before he was killed in a US drone strike in 2011. FBI witnesses described him as a spiritual adviser to the two hijackers.

Documents made public in 2022 also showed that Bayoumi had received a monthly stipend and that FBI records described him as a 'co-optee', or part-time agent, of the Saudi intelligence service during the period he was assisting the hijackers.

The records raise questions about the nature of Bayoumi's relationship with Saudi intelligence but do not establish that he knew about or participated in the 9/11 plot.

Families Demand Answers Amid Saudi Ties

Representatives for 9/11 families say the unresolved questions matter more, not less, given the current US-Saudi relationship. Kathleen Zapata, whose father died in the World Trade Center, said families are still fighting for greater transparency.

'We still have not been given the full picture of what happened,' Zapata said.

'Why are we having to fight against our own government simply to get answers about the most horrible attack ever on American soil?'

A White House spokesperson said the Trump administration was 'working diligently on identifying records' responsive to the families' requests, while the Justice Department declined to comment.

The Bayoumi case sits at the centre of a long-running lawsuit brought by 9/11 families against the Saudi government.

The evidence and allegations could have significant legal and diplomatic implications if a court were to establish a connection between Saudi officials and the attacks.

They do not, however, by themselves establish Saudi government responsibility for 9/11, but instead raise questions about what US agencies knew about Bayoumi and how thoroughly they pursued those leads in the years immediately after the attacks.