Sunday, 12 September 2021 (YJC)_Complying with President Biden’s recent executive order, FBI publicly released a previously classified report about Operation Encore, investigation of possible Saudi complicity in the 9/11 terrorist attack.
The FBI has released previously classified details of its own investigation - named Operation Encore - into alleged links between the 9/11 attacks and the Saudi citizens.
The document details the contacts several of the 9/11 hijackers had with Saudi associates in the US. Yet, the information did not appear to provide conclusive proof that senior Saudi officials themselves were complicit in the plot.
Saudi Arabia has always denied that its officials played any role in the attacks, even though 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens.
A week after Joe Biden signed an executive order vowing to make public any information the government had into the Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington DC that killed 3,000 people, the Department of Justice released the first tranche of such information - a heavily-redacted, 16-page summary of the FBI’s own probe into possible links between the hijackers and Saudi officials. The investigation was called “Operation Encore”.
While the document may not be the smoking gun some were hoping for given that so many names were blanked out, lawyers representing survivors and relatives, claimed it was just that.
“With this first release of documents, 20 years of Saudi Arabia counting on the U.S. government to cover up its role in 9/11 comes to an end,” New York attorney James Kreindler said in a statement, first reported by the Florida Bulldog, a watchdog site.
“The findings and conclusions in this FBI investigation validate the arguments we have made in the litigation regarding the Saudi’s responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. This document, together with the public evidence gathered to date, provides a blueprint for how Al-Qaeda operated inside the US with the active, knowing support of the Saudi Arabia.”
Survivors of the attacks, along with relatives of those who died, had long expected the document could relate to Operation Encore, an investigation that the FBI continued, long after the 9/11 Commission issued its report in 2004, and which suggested America’s greatest error in not preventing the attacks had been a “failure of imagination”.
As it was, the previously classified document was slipped out with minimal fanfare by the Department of Justice shortly before midnight on Saturday, and in doing so just meeting Mr Biden’s promise. It was located on a part of the DoJ website called the “The Vault”.
The New York Times said PII was applying for American citizenship, and that he he detailed his work at the country’s consulate in Los Angeles and shared anecdotes about his personal interactions with embassy leadership. The document also summarised his contact with people who investigators said had provided “significant logistic support” to two of the hijackers.
The document also says communications analysis identified a seven-minute phone call in 1999 from Mr Thumairy’s phone to the Saudi Arabian family home phone of two brothers who became future detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison.
Saudi Arabia has also insisted it had no role in either planning or financing the attacks, the 20th anniversary of which was marked in services and ceremonies across the US.
Last week, the Saudi Embassy in Washington DC repeated the kingdom’s previous denial of any complicity.
“Previous declassification of materials relating to the September 11 attacks, such as the “28 Pages”, only have confirmed the 9/11 Commission’s finding that Saudi Arabia had nothing to do with this terrible crime,” it said.
“It is lamentable that such false and malicious claims persist.”
In a statement on behalf of the organization 9/11 Families United, Terry Strada, whose husband Tom was killed on Sept. 11, said the document released by the FBI on Saturday put to bed any doubts about Saudi complicity in the attacks.
“Now the Saudis’ secrets are exposed and it is well past time for the Kingdom to own up to its officials’ roles in murdering thousands on American soil,” the statement said.
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