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Saudi intelligence asset Omar al-Bayoumi (left) greeting Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki
On their side, the Saudis have depended on the US for protection against every external and internal threat, including democratic challenges from their own people. The US has never supported peaceful opposition movements in Saudi Arabia, which has helped to foster internal violence as well as to export this violence to the West in the form of 9/11 and waves of Jihadi terrorism in the UK and other European countries. The US administration has also - aside from routine State Department expressions of concern - turned a blind eye to gross human rights abuses by the Saudis.
Given the paradoxical nature of this alliance between the self-declared enforcer of global freedom on the one hand and on the other one of the most repressive, secretive and corrupt absolute dictatorships in the world, ostensibly observing (until its repudiation by MbS) a puritanical strain of Wahhabi Islam, both governments over the years came to learn that it is best if they conduct their affairs in deep secrecy, as the details of their relationship are politically toxic to both. As a result, dealings between them have long been hushed up: US government files concerning Saudi Arabia are routinely withheld for 50 years, sometimes longer, and when declassified they are often partially redacted.
But last year when President Biden ordered the FBI to declassify a 16 page document on the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attack that unwritten agreement was breached, to the annoyance of the Saudis. The document did not provide ‘smoking gun’ evidence that the Saudi government was involved in the attack but it did mention a Saudi linked to the kingdom’s consulate in Los Angeles who was in contact with two of the hijackers. His name is Omar al-Bayoumi.
Last month another heavy blow struck the US-Saudi bilateral relationship in the form of 14,000 pages of documents and more than 20 hours of video and as many hours of audio confirming links between Saudi intelligence and Al Qaeda prior to 9/11, undermining the long-standing Saudi claim that the kingdom had no official involvement in the plot. The evidence, initially seized by UK counterterrorism police and subsequently turned over to FBI investigators in 2007, includes newly published video of two of the 9/11 hijackers and al-Bayoumi, described as a Saudi spy. Al-Bayoumi who had been living in San Diego left the US before the attack. He went to the UK where he was briefly detained and interrogated by counter-terrorism police before being released. He returned to Saudi Arabia where has has remained ever since.
The video shows him at a party in San Diego in February 2000 together with Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar whom he had assisted in securing accommodations and opening up bank accounts when the two arrived in America. They were part of the terror team that flew American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon. Another video believed to be from before 9/11 shows al-Bayoumi warmly greeting and embracing the Yemeni-American Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, who also supported the hijackers in San Diego and was killed in Yemen in 2011 in a US drone strike.
As reported by CBS News, one newly declassified and heavily redacted FBI memo from 2017 places Omar al-Bayoumi on the Saudi intelligence agency payroll:
"In the late 1990s and up to September 11, 2001, Omar al-Bayoumi was paid a monthly stipend as a co-optee of the Saudi General Intelligence Presidency (GIP) via then Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan….Allegations of al-Bayoumi's involvement with Saudi Intelligence were not confirmed at the time of the 9/11 Commission Report. The above information confirms these allegations."
Another recently declassified 2017 FBI memo citing "source reporting," said:
"There is a 50/50 chance Omar al-Bayoumi had advanced knowledge the 9/11 terrorist attacks were to occur."
As some of the families of the 9/11 victims pursue their court case against the Saudi government and more documents are declassified awkward details may continue to emerge putting even further strain on US-Saudi relations.