On Friday, September 3, a week before the 20-year anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers, US President Joe Biden ordered the Department of Justice and other government agencies to remove the secrecy on documents related to the investigation within six months. of the FBI on the attack. Biden thus consented to the request of the families of the victims, who believe that the documents to be declassified may show a connection between the 19 attackers and the Saudi authorities (the subject of a lawsuit by the relatives of the nearly 3,000 dead and 6,000 wounded in New York , at the Pentagon and on the four hijacked scheduled flights).
“When I ran as president, I made a commitment to ensure transparency on the declassification of documents relating to the 9/11 terrorist attacks against America,” Biden said. “And now I honor that promise.”
The government of Saudi Arabia has always denied any involvement with terrorists, 15 of whom were of Saudi nationality.
Biden continues on the path taken in 2016 by then President Barack Obamawhich decreed in July 2016 the final chapter of 28 pages of the report of the US parliamentary committees for intelligence on the investigations conducted by the American secret services before and after the attacks of 11 September 2001 (2003) which remained secret for 13 years. Even then, as happens today with Biden, after repeated requests from relatives of the victims, many associations and various American politicians. Those pages contained part 4 of the parliamentary report.
The chapter deals with what has been discovered on “some sensitive security matters”. So sensitive as to remain hidden from public opinion for such a long time. In essence, this is the support network and the foreign financiers of the suicide bombers of the Twin Towers.
Despite this, the document had very little echo in the mass media, also because unfortunately, at the time, they were busy accounting for the repeated attacks in Europe by ISIS adepts in what can be said to have been a real July of blood ( Dhaka, Nice, Monaco, Rouen).
Yet there is a long red thread that links the September 11 attacks 20 years ago in the United States and the civil war in Syria which since 2011 has caused nearly half a million deaths, 4 million refugees, and the diaspora of terror. all over the world, but mainly in Europe of jihadist groups, starting with Isis.
And if it is true that as stated by the then CIA director John Brennanin an interview with Saudi state television Al Arabiya “after the investigations of recent years there is no evidence to affirm that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi leaders individually supported the 9/11 attacks”, Brennan however claimed the opportunity for the report to be published, also to show what emerged at the lower levels.
A multitude of clues about the contacts and relationships between the 19 suicide hijackers, not with the government, but with Saudi personnel, and evidence of funding for suicides and their families. Reading the document is impressive in itself.
For example, the relationship between a Saudi secret service agent, Omar al Bayoumi , is described in detail, returned to his country a month before the attacks, with two hijackers; funding sent by a Saudi company working for the Ministry of Defense is said to have spiked since April 2000, two months after the two Twin Towers bombers arrived in San Diego, California and the funding continued until ‘August 2001. The company had relations with Osama Bin Laden , Bayoumi also had relations with the Holy Land Foundation, suspected of raising funds for Hamas. Another character in contact with the attackers and with Bayoumi was Osama Bassnan, described as an intelligence officer by Muslims in San Diego, and he and his wife received financial help from the then Saudi ambassador to the United States and his wife. Then there is talk of a Saudi diplomat who at the time worked at the consulate in Los Angeles, Al Thurnairy , and one of the imams of the Fahad Mosque in Culver City in California. Saleh al Hussayen , an employee of the Saudi Interior Ministry, stayed in the same hotel in Virginia in September 2001 where one of the bombers took up residence.
The Parliamentary Committee then voices its concerns over a memorandum on the funding and reports of the bombers, found during its investigation in the files of the FBI office in San Diego. It is on this file that the families of the victims recently presented a complaint to the Minister of Justice of Biden, the Attorney general. And these are just a few examples of what you can read there.
The most interesting thing, however, is the topicality of what we learn from the report (online with omitted on the names of the sources involved).
It is interesting to note that the declassification took place after the trip, in April 2016, in which Obama asked the government in Saudi Arabia for greater commitment against Isis, and the visit was organized in the proximity of the fifth anniversary of the attack of Abbottabad, in which the leader of Al Qaeda was killed. In short, it seems that the United States carefully “managed” the Saudi dossier, trying to use the past in view of the near future.
And something similar could happen in the coming months with the decree ordered by Biden, which will greatly influence American relations in the area after the American withdrawal and the takeover of power in Afghanistan by the Taliban and the new role that Qatar is playing in ‘ area.
