Answers begin to emerge about secret FBI probe of Saudi gov complicity in 9/11
Piece by piece, the puzzle of the heavily censored FBI 2012
Summary Report about Operation Encore, the bureau’s once-hush-hush probe of
Saudi government involvement in 9/11, appears to be giving up its secrets.
On the vast, often-underground docket of the enormous New
York civil case that pits 9/11 victims against Saudi Arabia, court records
recently have appeared like answers floating to the surface of an upended Magic
8-Ball.
For the first time, witnesses cited in the 2012 report as
having had contact with the suicide hijackers during their early days in the
U.S. have been publicly identified. Named, too, is an apparent target of a
federal grand jury the report says was then investigating a suspected U.S.
support network for the hijackers.
The records also reveal the grand jury was shut down
abruptly in 2016 while actively hearing testimony from witnesses.
The four-page report, released to Florida Bulldog in late
2016 amid Freedom of Information litigation, was the first confirmation of an
active FBI investigation into questions of Saudi government involvement in the
attacks since the 9/11 Commission closed down in 2004. The report was so
thickly redacted that even the investigation’s code name, Operation Encore, was
blanked out.
The U.S. government has taken extraordinary steps to keep a
lid on what else is in that FBI report and related records. In 2019 and again
last year, Attorney General William Barr blocked release of additional
“classified national security information” in the report by personally
asserting the state secrets privilege in the case. The Biden Administration has
been asked to reconsider that assertion.
Focus on Saudi hijackers in Southern California
Many of the new details are contained in two similar sworn
declarations made by former FBI Special Agent Catherine M. Hunt in 2018 and
again last year. Hunt, of Lakeland, is a veteran foreign counterintelligence
and anti-terrorism agent who retired in 2006 after a 20-year FBI career and now
works as a consultant for a New York law firm that’s helping to spearhead the
9/11 lawsuit.
Previously, the presiding judge in the case sharply
curtailed the plaintiffs’ efforts to investigate what happened in advance of
the Sept. 11, 2001 al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. So while
significant events occurred in more than a half-dozen states, including
Florida, the court has only authorized discovery on the limited question of
whether two Saudi men, Fahad al-Thumairy and Omar al Bayoumi, knowingly
assisted 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar in Southern
California after their arrival in January 2000.
Hazmi and Mihdhar were among five Saudis who seized control
of American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the west wall of the
Pentagon. A total of 184 people were killed, not counting the hijackers,
including 59 passengers and crew aboard the jetliner and 125 men and women on
the ground.
Thumairy was a Saudi diplomat and religious leader at a Los
Angeles-area mosque. Bayoumi was an apparent Saudi intelligence agent who has
acknowledged innocently befriending the two hijackers after chancing to meet
them at a Mediterranean restaurant.
According to Hunt’s declarations, she focused her
investigation on events in Southern California and relied heavily on the
limited declassified information disclosed in the FBI 2012 Summary Report.
She notes that the report states that Thumairy was a Saudi
diplomat and the Imam at the King Fahd Mosque near Los Angeles when the two
hijackers first arrived in the U.S. and that “Thumairy immediately assigned an
individual to take care of them.” That person’s name was blanked out, but Hunt
wrote that in August 2018 she identified a Cincinnati, Ohio man, Mohamed Johar,
as possibly that person.
‘I’m not hiding’
In a meeting at which Johar’s attorney was present, Johar
“told me that he had been interviewed by the FBI on multiple occasions in 2007,
2010 and 2016. He told me that in 2007, the FBI flew him to Los Angeles to
point out specific locations of interest, such as the restaurant where al-Hazmi
and al-Mihdhar met with al-Bayoumi. During the interview Mr. Johar’s attorney
stated, ‘surely you have access to the interviews’ and ‘you can get this
information from the FBI.’ Mr. Johar stated, ‘I’m not hiding … I told the FBI.’
”
Johar told Hunt that he frequently attended the King Fahd
Mosque and “confirmed that in January 2000, he met al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar and
personally witnessed al-Thumairy have contact” and conversations with them at
the mosque.
“Johar assisted the hijackers with regard to their lodging
during the first two weeks they were in Los Angeles. Johar admitted that he
took the hijackers to the Mediterranean restaurant which was located down the
street and around the corner from his home, where the hijackers had their
‘chance meeting’ with al-Bayoumi,” Hunt wrote in her April 2020 declaration
filed in court earlier this year.
Johar told Hunt he was subpoenaed by a New York grand jury
and was scheduled “to appear in February 2016. But at a meeting one month
before, an assistant U.S. Attorney told Johar’s attorney “that Johar did not
need to appear before the grand jury…The meeting ended and neither Johar nor
his attorney heard anything further from the government regarding Johar’s
contact with the hijackers.”
A source has told Florida Bulldog that the grand jury
assisting Operation Encore was dissolved in early 2016. The New York Times and
Pro Publica jointly have reported that Operation Encore, which caused an
internal schism at the FBI, was shut down about the same time.
Hunt’s 2018 declaration contains additional information that
is not mentioned in her 2020 declaration. She wrote then that “the grand jury
subpoena involved the 9/11 related investigation of an employee of Saudi Arabia
working at its Los Angeles Consulate named Smail Mana aka Ismail Mana,” who
“regularly spoke at the mosque.”
“You can get the information from the prosecution of Smail
Mana – those documents are public information – surely you must have them,”
Johar’s unidentified attorney told Hunt.
A grand jury subpoena
Hunt located and met with Mana in September 2018. “He
immediately referred me to his lawyer. I had a telephone conversation with Mr.
Mana’s lawyer…who confirmed that Mr. Mana had been served with a Grand Jury
subpoena.”
The October 2012 FBI report states that two months earlier,
a lead was sent to the Los Angeles Joint Terrorism Task Force seeking
confirmation of two possible addresses for “REDACTED individual who was known
to have extremist views and was identified as having met with Omar al Bayoumi
in private on the same day as Bayoumi’s alleged ‘chance’ first meeting with
9/11 hijackers Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar.”
The paragraph further says the FBI planned to interview
REDACTED regarding his role “aiding Bayoumi in facilitating the hijacker’s
arrival and settlement in California, for which REDACTED has never provided an
adequate explanation.”
Hunt concluded, “I believe Smail Mana is the individual
referenced in the paragraph and that the FBI has evidence that he met with
al-Bayoumi at Saudi Arabia’s Los Angeles Consulate on February 1, 2000, just
prior to the meeting of al-Bayoumi with the hijackers.”
Hunt’s declarations say Johar identified two other men as
having had contact with the hijackers. The name of one, Mohdar Abdullah, was
not redacted from the 2012 FBI report. The second is new: Yemeni native Akram
Alzamari. “Johar stated that Akram Alzamari had a closer relationship with the
hijackers than he did,” Hunt said.
Alzamari, a California resident, told Hunt he had previously
spoken to the FBI and other government officials. “You must have seen the
write-ups of my interviews,” Hunt wrote.
“Alzamari confirmed that Johar introduced him to al-Hazmi
and al-Mihdhar but took issue with Johar’s statements that he provided ‘assistance’
to the hijackers, saying this was not true,” Hunt’s declaration says. Alzamari
declined to elaborate, saying “he was very uncomfortable discussing the topic
of Johar and the hijackers because it made him sad.”
‘Squeeze him for all he’s got’
However, Alzamari did acknowledge that he was a friend of
Thumairy and that Thumairy “trusted Alzamari and felt comfortable sharing
frustrations with his job. While Alzamari was working at Circuit City,
al-Thumairy would send him mosque visitors who were hosted by the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia’s Los Angeles Consulate. Alzamari would provide these individuals
with Toshiba computers and other electronics that were then paid for by the
mosque,” says Hunt’s 2020 declaration.
“Alzamari said he did not understand why the U.S. government
deported al-Thumairy [in 2003 for suspected terrorist links] and that the U.S.
should have held onto al-Thumairy after 9/11 to ‘squeeze him for all he’s got’
and then deport him. He said he thought it was stupid of the U.S. to deport him,”
the declaration says.
“Alzamari said he had more information but would not share
it unless compelled by some authority,” the declaration says. He “said he
supports the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia and that he dislikes the Saudis
because they are ‘responsible for a lot of problems for Muslims and
non-Muslims’ ” and that “the entire Islamic community carries the burden for
what the hijackers did.”
Hunt’s 2018 declaration states, “There are at least six
other individuals employed by the Saudi government who the FBI investigated in
relation to the 9/11 attacks,” and that each worked with Thumairy and/or
Bayoumi. The name of one of those is Musaed Ahmed al-Jarrah. Jarrah’s name
declassified by the FBI after an order by former President Trump and later
released in court papers as a person the 2012 FBI says “tasked” Thumairy and
Bayoumi with assisting the hijackers.
Jarrah is a former Saudi Foreign Ministry official who
worked at the Saudi embassy in Washington in 1999-2000.
Jarrah, Thumairy, Bayoumi and the others were all recently deposed
in the New York litigation. What they had to say is subject to an FBI
protective order that has thrown a blanket of secrecy over much of what’s
unfolding in the case.
Oddly, Alzamari, despite his statement of support for the
lawsuit, retained a high-powered New York law firm and fought a subpoena to
testify in the case. Ultimately, the court ordered him to provide an unusual
written deposition in answer to questions submitted in advance. That was done
on March 11, 2020.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers later asked the court to allow them to
conduct an additional oral deposition and cross-examine Alzamari “in the
interests of justice” after they said he “recanted specific factual statements
he made previously to federal investigators under penalty of imprisonment.”
“He implausibly claimed that several FBI agents from
multiple offices, while investigating the worst terrorist attack ever committed
on U.S. soil, included detailed, false statements in their interview reports in
violation of federal law. His answers also contradicted statements he made to
SA [ex-special agent] Hunt,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers said in a motion that was
filed under seal in January.
U.S. District Judge George Daniels rejected the plaintiffs’
request in a May order. The motion was then made public.
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