US releases newly declassified report on 9/11 and Saudi links

WASHINGTON • The administration of United States President Joe Biden has released a newly declassified document describing connections the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) examined between the 9/11 hijackers and the government of Saudi Arabia in the years since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks.

The 16-page report, which was issued hours after Mr Biden arrived at the World Trade Center memorial in Lower Manhattan for a 9/11 anniversary event, is the first document to be released since the President earlier this month moved to declassify materials that for years have remained secret.

Families of the Sept 11 victims have long pushed for a deeper investigation into any possible role that the Saudi government had in the attacks.

Mr Biden instructed the Justice Department and federal agencies in recent days to release declassified documents over the next six months after a group of hundreds of affected people - including survivors, emergency medical workers and victims' relatives - told him to skip the memorial event at Ground Zero this year if he did not move to disclose some of those documents.

The document, which was heavily redacted, describes an interview conducted in November 2015 with a Saudi man, identified only as PII, who was applying for US citizenship.

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 summarises his contact with people who investigators said had provided "significant logistic support" to two of the hijackers.

Some members of the commission that investigated the 2001 attacks believed that if the Saudi government had any role in the plot, it was likely to have involved consular officials. But the document released last Saturday provided no new conclusive evidence about the Saudi government's role.

Speculation around the possible Saudi role increased over the years because of the US government's refusal to declassify 28 pages of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the Sept 11 attacks that specifically addressed possible connections between the kingdom and the terrorist plot.

The document was finally released in 2016, and it detailed numerous suspicious meetings between Saudi officials and the Sept 11 hijackers, and cheques from Saudi royals to operatives in contact with the hijackers.

It was also an unflattering picture of the kingdom's efforts to thwart American operations against Al-Qaeda in the years before the attacks.

The question of whether any Saudi officials played a role in the Sept 11 plot has festered for two decades despite numerous investigations into the attacks.

The Saudi government has long denied any involvement.

Its embassy in Washington issued a statement last week saying that "any allegation that Saudi Arabia is complicit in the Sept 11 attacks is categorically false".

In its 2004 final report, the Sept 11 Commission said it had found no evidence that the "Saudi government as an institution, or senior Saudi officials, individually funded" Al-Qaeda.

But some former commission staff members have pointed out that the careful wording of the report did not rule out the possibility that lower-ranking Saudi officials had helped the hijackers.

They also said that the commission, operating under extreme time pressure, could not run every lead to ground.

NYTIMES