Evidence has emerged that could change our understanding of the 9/11 terrorist attacks more than two decades ago.
It was turned over to the FBI in the weeks after 9/11, but our reporting has uncovered it was never shared with the bureau’s own field agents or top intelligence officials. Why after all these years is this crucial information just surfacing?
The evidence is coming to light as part of a long-running lawsuit against the Saudi government by the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks, and it includes a chilling video of a Saudi national filming the U.S. Capitol.
A voice on the video says in Arabic, “I am transmitting these scenes to you from the heart of the American capital, Washington.”
This video, recorded in the summer of 1999, was unsealed in federal court last year as part of the 9/11 families lawsuit accusing Saudi Arabia of providing crucial support to the hijackers.
Exhibit A in their case: the man who made the video, Omar al-Bayoumi – who asked a bystander to film him in front of the Capitol.
The FBI says Bayoumi was living in the United States on a student visa and being paid by a Saudi aviation company in California – despite not showing up for classes or work. Investigators say, in fact, Bayoumi was an operative of the Saudi intelligence service and had close ties to two of the hijackers.
The video was filmed over several days.
Bayoumi recorded entrances and exits of the Capitol, security posts, a model of the building, and nearby landmarks.
Bayoumi points out the Washington monument and says, “I will get over there,” and “report to you in detail what is there.”
He also notes the airport is not far away.
Richard Lambert: What I see Bayoumi doing is going out and making a detailed video record of the Capitol from all its sides, and then conducting that 360 degree panoramic view.
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Richard Lambert is a retired FBI supervisor who led the initial 9/11 investigation in San Diego, where Bayoumi and the two hijackers lived prior to the attacks. He’s now a consultant on the case filed by the 9/11 families.
Richard Lambert: If you’ve ever flown into Washington D.C., one of the first things you see on the horizon is the Washington Monument. So, if you know where your other targets are, it helps guide you to your intended target.
Federal investigators believe the hijackers on Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, planned to hit the U.S. Capitol as their likely target. In the video, Bayoumi references a, quote, “plan.”
Richard Lambert: “You said that in the plan.” What plan?
Cecilia Vega: What do you think he’s talking about?
Richard Lambert: I think he’s talking to the al Qaeda planners who tasked him to take the pre-operational surveillance video of the intended target.
Cecilia Vega: So, this video is taken in late June and early July of 1999. What does that timing tell you?
Richard Lambert: Well, that means it was taken within 90 days of the time when senior al Qaeda planners reached the decision that the Capitol would be a target of the 9/11 attacks.
That’s when Osama bin Laden decided to approve the so-called “planes operation” proposed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11.
During a raid on Bayoumi’s U.K. apartment about 10 days after the attacks, British police discovered the Capitol video, along with about 80 other tapes and a trove of documents now being used as evidence in the families’ lawsuit. This internal FBI report, dated Oct. 11, 2001, shows that “copies of all recovered exhibits” were “sent to FBI-New York via Federal Express,” but the Capitol video never made it to the San Diego field office.
Danny Gonzalez: I had not seen that video.
Retired FBI special agent Danny Gonzalez, one of the lead 9/11 investigators in San Diego, says he never knew about the video during the 15 years he worked on the case. He is also a consultant for the 9/11 families’ lawsuit.
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Danny Gonzalez: Not only did I not know, all of the case agents in San Diego didn’t know, and the case agents in New York didn’t know. And we’re talking about the Joint Terrorism Task Forces that not only have F.B.I., but we have other state, local, and federal agencies, they did not know either.
Cecilia Vega: How is that possible?
Danny Gonzalez: I don’t have that answer, and that– that angers me. When I saw that video, I knew exactly what it was.
Cecilia Vega: Did you need this information to do your job?
Danny Gonzalez: Absolutely.
He believes he could’ve used the Capitol video to build a case against Bayoumi.
Danny Gonzalez: I would’ve taken it to the United States Attorney’s Office–who was requesting from us, the F.B.I.–anything that we had they wanted to look at.
Cecilia Vega: Meaning what? That they would have filed charges? That they would have indicted? What were you hoping that would be?
Danny Gonzalez: It was a terror investigation, but it was also a mass murder.
Cecilia Vega: In your view, this video was so significant that it should’ve gone all the way to the top to the White House?
Gina Bennett: I think it should have because it’s the Capitol building.
Gina Bennett was a senior counterterrorism analyst at the CIA for 20 years.
Gina Bennett: In the aftermath of 9/11, we were briefing the President and the National Security Council. We didn’t expect that this was a ‘one and done’. We expected al Qaeda to continue to try. So, resources were going entirely to trying to undermine any additional plotting.
Cecilia Vega: The Saudi government says, “This is a tourist video. That there’s nothing to see here.” You–you don’t buy that?
Gina Bennett: No, I don’t. Who does a tourist video that is reporting back on, “This is where that building is, and here’s where the security guards are.”
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Now retired, she was the first person in the U.S. government to warn of the dangers of a global jihadist movement led by Osama bin Laden.
Bennett has no involvement with the 9/11 families’ lawsuit and says she too was unaware of the video’s existence until we asked her to evaluate it. As we discovered, she was not the only one at the CIA in the dark.
Cecilia Vega: George Tenet, the CIA director at the time, says he wasn’t aware of the video. Same for Michael Morell, the president’s daily intelligence briefer at the time. Does it surprise you that they didn’t know about this?
Gina Bennett: It does surprise me, again, because we’re talking about the U.S. Capitol. And in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 Bayoumi was a suspect.
Cecilia Vega: A lotta people will see this video for the first time and think, “How is it remotely possible that it’s just coming to light now?” Could it really have been sitting in an evidence locker room all of these years? Seems like a pretty epic failure–
Gina Bennett: Well, I think it’s a matter of did they lose the evidence or had they filed it away in a way that it would not have seemed relevant? That I can see.
As it turns out, there was more evidence: specifically, this airplane sketch and math formula that was also seized from Bayoumi’s U.K. apartment and turned over to the FBI in 2001. It was stashed away for more than a decade until Danny Gonzalez in 2012 got a phone call out of the blue from an FBI evidence technician in Washington.
Cecilia Vega: What did they tell you?
Danny Gonzalez: They told me that they had these boxes with the name of Omar al-Bayoumi written on it. And they were sitting in a warehouse in Washington, D.C., and they were gonna relocate these boxes or destroy these boxes, and they wanted to know if I– if I wanted ’em. And I said, “Absolutely.”
Cecilia Vega: But as one of the lead investigators into these attacks, did you have any idea that this sketch had even existed before you got that phone call?
Danny Gonzalez: No, I didn’t.
He had aviation and aerospace experts analyze the equation for the FBI. Their conclusion: a pilot could use it to calculate the rate of descent to hit a target on the horizon.
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission produced what was at the time considered the definitive account of the attacks. Its executive director, Philip Zelikow, told us he was also unaware of it during his investigation. So were former senior U.S. intelligence officials we spoke to.
As for Bayoumi – who was never charged with a crime and moved back to Saudi Arabia after 9/11 – he was asked about the sketch as part of the lawsuit in a 2021 deposition.
He confirmed the sketch was his, but said he remembered little else about it, including his handwritten notes that say, “hight (sic) [of] the plane from the earth in mile” and “distance from the plane to hurrizen (sic).” When pressed about it, he came up with a far-fetched explanation.
Omar al-Bayoumi (translator speaking English during deposition): Perhaps this was an equation that we studied before in high school and I was trying to remember whether I’m going to be able to figure out and solve it or not.
Attorney (during deposition): And what is it an equation for?
Omar al-Bayoumi (during deposition): I don’t know. Just– just doesn’t matter. Just equation.
There’s no proof that Bayoumi shared the equation with any of the hijackers. What we do know is that he met the first two to arrive in the U.S. nearly two years before 9/11.
Bayoumi claims he met them in a chance encounter at a restaurant here on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. He then helped them move to San Diego, finding them a place to live in his own apartment complex, co-signing the lease, and helping them open a bank account.
He even threw a party, which he also videotaped, capturing one of the hijackers on camera. He then introduced them to others who helped them obtain government IDs and enroll in English classes and flight schools. Bayoumi and the Saudi government say his actions were innocent, the result of a remarkable series of coincidences.
Cecilia Vega: Is it at all possible in your mind that Bayoumi wasn’t actually involved in all of this, it’s pure coincidence, as the Saudis claim?
Danny Gonzalez: No, no. I don’t believe that for a second.
Cecilia Vega: Why not? Could’ve been a guy who just wanted to help his–
Danny Gonzalez: No.
Cecilia Vega: –brothers adjust to a life in a new country.
Danny Gonzalez: Who else did he help besides those two hijackers? I don’t know of any, and I couldn’t find any.
Cecilia Vega: Omar al-Bayoumi is living as a free man in Saudi Arabia. What do you think about that?
Danny Gonzalez: Awful, awful. He should be here under the court system.
Cecilia Vega: The 9/11 Commission concluded that Bayoumi was, quote, “An unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamic extremists.” Does that still hold?
Gina Bennett: I think the 9/11 Commission is just not fully informed. It’s not their fault, but it’s not fully informed.
Cecilia Vega: So, all the evidence you’ve seen: the material support, the Capitol video, the sketch– your conclusion is what?
Gina Bennett: My conclusion is that Bayoumi was an al Qaeda facilitator. He had sympathies with al Qaeda–I mean ideologically–and that he provided substantial support to these two individuals, these two hijackers, without which they may very well have been caught.
Bennett says Bayoumi was indispensable to the success of the hijackers’ plot– because they spoke no English, had little formal education, and no prior exposure to life in the West.
Gina Bennett: I don’t see al Qaeda, as meticulous as it was with its planning, just throwing two operatives that are so instrumental to the success of this operation into a massive city without a soft landing, without a network there to catch them.
She says the new evidence raises a lot of important questions.
Cecilia Vega: Like what?
Gina Bennett: Who else? Were there other networks? Are any of those individuals still active here or elsewhere in the world? Is there any other evidence that’s sitting in a– in a box somewhere or, you know, locked up? And work from that new information to learn. To learn what you got wrong. To learn how not to get it wrong again.
The government of Saudi Arabia has filed a motion in federal court to dismiss the 9/11 families’ lawsuit, saying neither the kingdom nor Omar al-Bayoumi had anything to do with the attacks. The judge overseeing the case is expected to rule on the motion soon. As for the FBI, it told us it would not comment on ongoing litigation.
Produced by Richard Bonin and Mirella Brussani. Broadcast associate, Katie Jahns. Edited by April Wilson.
