While eating at a halal restaurant in Culver City a few blocks away from the King Fahd mosque, would be 9/11 pilots Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi (who arrived in Los Angeles on January 15) meet Omar Bayoumi, a Saudi government intelligence operative.
His identity as such is obvious, but even in partially “declassifying” the famous missing “28 pages” from the still partially redacted 2002 Congressional Joint Inquiry, the Obama administration in July 2016, kept this supposition secret. On Bayoumi, the pages state: “The FBI has received numerous reports from individuals in the Muslim community, dating back to 1999, alleging that al-Bayoumi may be a Saudi intelligence officer.” It goes on to state that Bayoumi’s “encounter with the hijackers may not have been accidental.” The pages go on to say that a review of “telephone toll records” by the FBI showed that Bayoumi “called Saudi Government establishments in the United States almost 100 times between January and May of 2000.”
This Saudi connection to sponsoring terrorism, and then specifically, why the 9/11 hijackers had contact with these Saudi government officials while they were in the U.S., remains something that the United States government is still elliptical about. But the reality is clear. Bayoumi was sent to Los Angeles to lure (or facilitate) Mihdhar and Hazmi’s move to San Diego and smooth their way in getting settled in the United States.
Day: February 1, 2021