Alleged Saudi role in the September 11 attacks

The 9/11 Commission's final report, the 9/11 Commission Report, published in July 2004 at the request of Bush administration and the U.S Congress, concluded that there was "no evidence" linking Saudi Arabian government or its senior officials to the September 11 attacks.[5][6]

The Commission noted the presence of numerous private donors and sources of fundraising in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States for Al-Qaeda before 9/11, stating:

as part of a Saudi government crackdown early in the 1990s, the Bin Ladin family was forced to find a buyer for Usama's share of the family company in 1994.The Saudi government subsequently froze the proceeds of the sale.This action had the effect of divesting Bin Ladin of what otherwise might indeed have been a large fortune. When Bin Ladin arrived in Afghanistan, he relied on the Taliban until he was able to reinvigorate his fund-raising efforts by drawing on ties to wealthy Saudi individuals that he had established during the Afghan war in the 1980s. Al Qaeda appears to have relied on a core group of financial facilitators who raised money from a variety of donors and other fund-raisers, primarily in the Gulf countries and particularly in Saudi Arabia... entire charities, such as the al Wafa organization, may have wittingly participated in funneling money to al Qaeda.

— 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 5: Al Qaeda aims at the American Homeland, p. 170, [7]

The alleged Saudi role in the September 11 attacks gained new attention after Bob Graham and Porter Goss, former U.S. congressmen and co-chairmen of the congressional inquiry into the attacks, told CBS in April 2016 that the redacted 28 pages of the congressional inquiry's report refer to evidence of Saudi Arabia's substantial involvement in the execution of the attacks,[8][9][10] and calls renewed to have the redacted pages released.

The panel's findings 'did not discover' any role by 'senior, high-level' Saudi government officials, but the "commission's narrow wording", according to critics, suggests the possibility that "less senior officials or parts of the Saudi government could have played a role".[11] Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham, who chaired the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the time of the report said in his sworn statements that "there was evidence of support from the Saudi government for the terrorists."[12]

In 2017 a New York lawyer, Jim Kreindler, said that he had found "a link between Saudi officials and the hijackers."[13][14] In January 2020, it was revealed that the FBI had an investigation named Operation Encore into Saudi government links to the attacks.[15][16][17][18]

In July 2016, the U.S. government released a document, compiled by Dana Lesemann and Michael Jacobson,[19] known as "File 17", which contains a list naming three dozen people, including Fahad al-Thumairy, Omar al-Bayoumi, Osama Bassnan, and Mohdhar Abdullah, which connects Saudi Arabia to the hijackers. According to the former Democratic US Senator Bob Graham, "Much of the information upon which File 17 was written was based on what's in the 28 pages."[20]

According to the New York Post in 2017, the Saudi government was accused of performing a "dry run" by paying two Saudi nationals, al-Qudhaeein and Hamdan al-Shalawi, "living undercover in the US as students, to fly from Phoenix to Washington," two years before the attacks.[21] Evidence submitted in a lawsuit against the Saudi government revealed that it had funded flights in 1999 to research the flight security weaknesses. Specifically, the suit, citing the FBI documents, alleges the Saudi government funded two individuals who asked flight attendants technical questions and tried to enter the cockpit of a domestic flight in the US, which caused the flight to make an emergency landing in Ohio and the individuals to be interrogated by the FBI. The two individuals were later released after initial interrogation by the FBI.[22] The complaint alleged based on the FBI documents that the Saudi students were actually Saudi Arabia's agents in the US, and "participated in the terrorist conspiracy". The documents stated that Qudhaeein and Shalawi were trained in Afghanistan at the same time with some other al-Qaeda operatives that participated in the 9/11 attacks and that "both worked for and received money from the Saudi government, with Qudhaeein employed at the Ministry of Islamic Affairs."[21]

In April 2020, the FBI neglected to redact one of the several instances of the Saudi diplomat name, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah (MAJ), in a court filing in the lawsuit brought by 9/11 families. Over the course of 1999–2000 MAJ was a mid-level Saudi Foreign Ministry official who was working in the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC. Former embassy officials said MAJ reported to the Saudi ambassador to the U.S, Prince Bandar, and managed employees of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs at Saudi-funded mosques and Islamic centers.[23][24]

The October 2012 FBI update to the FBI's own investigation of possible Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks stated that FBI agents had uncovered evidence that Saudi diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy, a Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs official and radical cleric who served as the imam of the King Fahd Mosque in Los Angeles, and Omar al-Bayoumi (OAB) a suspected Saudi government agent, had been tasked to support the 9/11 hijackers by another individual; referred to as MAJ, whose name was redacted in the October 2012 update document in all but one instance.[24] FBI agents suspected that MAJ had directed crucial support towards two of 9/11 hijackers; Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who participated on 9/11 in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 77.[25][24] After Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmiand arrived in Los Angeles on January 15, 2000 they were allegedly assisted by Saudi diplomat Fahad al-Thumairy and by OAB, with OAB finding them an apartment, lending them money and setting them up with bank accounts. Al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were on the FBI's terrorist-alert list at the time. According to a sworn statement from former LA-based FBI agent Catherine Hunt; during the investigation by the 9/11 Commission the FBI believed that MAJ was engaged in supporting and maintaining al-Thumairy.[26][24][23]

On September 11, 2020, US Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn ordered two members of the Saudi royal family, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to answer questions raised by the 9/11 lawsuit. The victims have called it a turning point in a long-running lawsuit. Relatives of the September 11 attack victims claim that the agents of Saudi Arabia knowingly supported al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden, before hijacking and crashing the planes into New York's World Trade Center Twin Towers.[27]

On September 11, 2021, following an executive order by Joe Biden, the FBI started releasing a series of redacted documents related to Saudi Arabia's links to 9/11 and the role of Saudi nationals in the attacks. For security purposes, not all the information was released, and the documents were abridged.[28]

The first of these documents, dated to 2016, is heavily redacted. While no direct link between the Saudi government and the terrorists were found, the document did state that Omar al-Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence agent that had links to known terrorists, provided significant support to 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar upon their arrival in the US, and communicated with a key logistics facilitator for Osama bin Laden, each time immediately following significant logistics support to Hazmi and Mihdhar.[28]

Following the documents' release, the Saudi Embassy for the United States issued a statement assuring American officials that the Saudi government held no role in the attacks, asserting that "No evidence has ever emerged to indicate that the Saudi government or its officials had previous knowledge of the terrorist attack or were in any way involved in its planning or execution".[29]

The United States Justice Department admitted on March 10 that it would miss a deadline specified by President Joe Biden's executive order to examine and reveal records from the FBI's investigation into the attack.[30]

In March 2022, the FBI declassified a 510-page report about 9/11 that it produced in 2017. The report found that "there is a 50/50 chance al-Bayoumi had advanced knowledge the 9/11 attacks were to occur," from the two Islamists he befriended that were involved in plotting 9/11. Al-Bayoumi also helped the Islamists find housing in San Diego.[31] In response, 9/11 Commission chairman and former New Jersey governor Tom Kean said that "If that's true I'd be upset by it", adding, "The FBI said it wasn't withholding anything and we believed them."[31]

Al-Bayoumi stated that he didn't know anything about the hijackers' plans and just befriended them after randomly meeting them. Saudi Arabia stated that al-Bayoumi was not an agent of theirs.[32]

In March 2016, Saudi Arabia threatened the Obama administration to sell US$750 billion worth of American assets owned by Saudi Arabia if the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) designed to create an exception to the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act was enacted, which caused fears of destabilizing the US dollar.[11] U.S. president Barack Obama also warned against "unintended consequences", while other economic analysts believed that this action would damage the Saudi government.[35]

In March 2018, a US judge allowed a suit to move forward against Saudi Arabia brought by 9/11 survivors and victims' families, that the government should pay billions of dollars in damages to victims. The lawsuit is still ongoing as of 2023.[4]

Operation Encore was an FBI investigation into Saudi links to the September 11 attacks.[15][16][17] Circumstantial evidence was uncovered but no direct links were established.[18] Potential leads were not initially pursued and some FBI agents believe that the CIA interfered with its attempt to place two Saudis under surveillance.[18]