Pursuant to Biden’s Sept. 3 executive order, the FBI has declassified a redacted copy of its April 4, 2016 report on Operation Encore, an investigation into support for 9/11 hijackers. While much of the material is redacted, either on the initiative of the FBI or other agencies, fresh details emerge that strengthen the case that Saudi Arabia directed support towards the hijackers.
One significant component is the meeting between Omar al-Bayoumi — a “ghost employee” of Saudi aviation company based in Jeddah, Dallah AVCO, and a person considered by the FBI for years to be an agent of the Saudi government — and future hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in San Diego. Bayoumi was considered a “very high status” person at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles, although he was not officially on the staff there. The meeting occurred at a Los Angeles restaurant, and was, according to Bayoumi’s telling, a “chance encounter” based on Bayoumi’s hearing Midhar and Hazmi’s “Gulf accents” as they spoke in Arabic. But another eyewitness reports that Bayoumi sat in the restaurant looking out the window, and approached the two men as they entered the restaurant, inviting them to join him at his table. Midhar and Hazmi had been brought to the restaurant by an individual who was directed to do so. Bayoumi was at the Saudi consulate just one hour before the restaurant meeting.
(This restaurant meeting is similar to the “chance meeting” at a Virginia 7-11 that led to support from a small network in Falls Church, Virginia.)
Unusual transactions into Bayoumi’s bank accounts coincide with transactions wherein he provided assistance to Hazmi and Midhar. When Bayoumi’s phone was inspected during his post-9/11 detention in the U.K., his contact list was found to include phone numbers associated with Shaykh al-Khudayr, “identified as the spiritual advisor to [a] senior Usama Bin Laden lieutenant.”
