Secret Saudi-9/11 files shed little light on terrorist ties to Sarasota family

Secret Saudi-9/11 files shed little light on terrorist ties to Sarasota family

 

4224 Escondito Circle in Prestancia, a south Sarasota gated community where a Saudi family living there had possible connections to pilots involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

By &
Staff Writers
Published: Friday, July 15, 2016 at 7:56 p.m.
Newly declassified pages from a congressional report into 9/11 released Friday have reignited speculation that some of the hijackers had links to Saudis, including government officials — allegations that government officials say were never substantiated by later U.S. investigations into the terrorist attacks.

Congress released the last chapter of the inquiry that has been kept under wraps for more than 13 years, stored in a secure room in the basement of the Capitol. Lawmakers and relatives of victims of the attacks, who believe that Saudi links to the attackers were not thoroughly investigated, campaigned for years to get the pages released.

The document — with redactions still on every page — names individuals who helped the hijackers get apartments, open bank accounts and connect with local mosques. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, and several were not fluent in English and had little experience living in the West.

Former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, the co-chairman of the congressional inquiry who pushed hard for the last chapter of the inquiry’s report to be released, says he believes the hijackers had an extensive Saudi support system while they were in the United States.

The document says Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who helped two of the hijackers in California, was suspected of being a Saudi intelligence officer. The 9/11 Commission report found him to be an “unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement” with Islamic extremists. But the new document says that according to FBI files, al-Bayoumi had “extensive contact with Saudi government establishments in the United States and received financial support from a Saudi company affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Defense. … That company reportedly had ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida,” which orchestrated the attacks.

The document also points to Osama Bassnan, who lived across the street from two of the hijackers in California. According to an FBI document, Bassnan told another individual that he met the hijackers through al-Bayoumi. Bassnan told an FBI asset that “he did more than al-Bayoumi did for the hijackers.”

Sarasota connections

The document does little to shed any light on the hijackers’ ties to Saudis who were living in Sarasota County shortly before the 9/11 attacks, but does lay out a potential network in California that mirrors what some investigators outside of government believe existed in Southwest Florida, where several of the hijackers trained to fly.

Al-Qaeda ringleader Mohamed Atta, who flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center’s north tower, and Marwan al-Shehhi, who took down the south with United Airlines Flight 175, learned to fly at Huffman Aviation at Venice Municipal Airport. Ziad Jarrah completed his first solo there as well, as a student with Florida Flight Training Center. He crashed United Flight 93 into the Pennsylvania countryside as passengers attempted to storm the cockpit.

Working off interviews with an unnamed counterterrorism agent and the security officer of a gated Sarasota neighborhood, and writing for the Florida Bulldog, journalists Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen revealed Atta and Jarrah had multiple contacts with a Saudi Arabian family that abruptly left their luxury three-bedroom residence in the Prestancia enclave of Sarasota County on or about Aug. 30, 2001.

Alerted by neighbors’ suspicions about a lack of activity and three vehicles apparently abandoned in the driveway and garage, FBI agents converged on 4224 Escondito Circle within weeks of the 9/11 attacks. According to the counterterrorism operator and then-Prestancia Homeowner’s Association director Larry Berberich, the family left mail on the table, dirty diapers in the bedroom, made beds, a refrigerator full of food, and closets with entire wardrobes intact.

The 3,300 square-foot home was owned by Saudi businessman and Royal family confidant Esam Ghazzawi, but its primary residents were his daughter Anoud, son-in-law Abdulaziz al-Hijji, then a recent University of South Florida graduate, and two small children. The Bulldog reported that gate records and security-camera photos of visitors’ license plates, along with phone records, indicated Jarrah and Atta knew the al-Hijjis well.

Phone records connected the Ghazzawis with 11 other suspected al-Qaeda members. One, Walid al-Shehheri, died with Atta during the World Trade Center attack. Another — Adnan Shukrijumah, on the FBI’s Most Wanted List — was killed by the Pakistani army in 2014.

Contacted by the Herald-Tribune on Friday after the release of the 28 pages, Christensen said he was struck by the number of redactions.

“It seems the controversy will continue,” the journalist said. “There have been a lot of family members and members of Congress who say the document should be declassified in its entirety. Time will tell, but I suspect the administration may have miscalculated.”

Miami attorney Tom Julin, who represents Christensen and Florida Bulldog in a freedom of information suit, said the document demonstrates the Saudis’ broad activities in the U.S. before 9/11: “As Bob Graham told us, the FBI did not call to Congress’ attention the connection they found in Sarasota to the Saudis. What is in the documents, is a good amount of information about what the FBI did discover in other places.”

One of the most startling revelations, Julin said, was that two of the people alleged to have provided assistance and support to the hijackers were Saudi intelligence officers. Still, Julin says, he did not realize the allegations contained in the 28 pages would be so strong.

“Bob Graham has been telling everyone to read this, and now I see why,” he said. “It’s a pretty strong indictment of Saudi Arabia and the FBI. We all need to read this carefully.”

When the Bulldog story broke in 2011, Graham said the revelations were news to him because the FBI failed to supply the Commission with the Ghazzawi information. The FBI field office in Tampa immediately repudiated the story, asserting that it had thoroughly investigated the Sarasota family and could find no links with the hijackers.

The Bulldog filed its suit against the FBI and the Department of Justice in 2012. The following year, the online newspaper received 31 heavily censored FBI documents, including one written in 2002 that stated: “Further investigation of the (name deleted) family revealed many connections between the (name deleted) and individuals associated with the terror attacks on 9/11/2001.” But the Prestancia address was not redacted, so it was clear the reference was to Ghazzawi/al-Hijji.

Government says no connections

On Friday, the intelligence community continued to deny any connections between the Saudi government and the 9/11 attacks.

The office of the Director of National Intelligence released part of a 2005 FBI-CIA memo that said “there is no information to indicate that either (Bayoumi) or (Bassnan) materially supported the hijackers wittingly, were intelligence officers of the Saudi government or provided material support for the 11 September attacks, contrary to media speculation.”

Included in the document was a comment from former FBI Director Robert Mueller. “If I have one preliminary note of caution, it is that at this point there are more questions than answers, and I would caution against jumping to conclusions before we know a lot more,” Mueller said in an Oct. 9, 2002, closed hearing.

Later investigations, the government says, found no evidence that the Saudi government or senior Saudi officials knowingly supported those who orchestrated the attacks.

Saudi Arabia has urged the release of the chapter since 2002, saying the kingdom could respond to any allegations and punish any Saudis who may have been involved in the attacks.

“Since 2002, the 9/11 Commission and several government agencies, including the CIA and the FBI, have investigated the contents of the ’28 Pages’ and have confirmed that neither the Saudi government, nor senior Saudi officials, nor any person acting on behalf of the Saudi government provided any support or encouragement for these attacks,” Abdullah Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, said in a statement Friday. “We hope the release of these pages will clear up, once and for all, any lingering questions or suspicions about Saudi Arabia’s actions, intentions, or long-term friendship with the United States.”

House intelligence committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said that while he supported the release, “it’s important to note that this section does not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the intelligence community.”

Former President George W. Bush classified the chapter to protect intelligence sources and methods, although he also probably did not want to upset U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. ally. Two years ago, under pressure from the families of those killed or injured on Sept. 11, and others, President Barack Obama ordered a declassification review of the chapter.

— Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.