A video has come to light showing a man, believed to have ties to Al Qaeda terrorists, filming important landmarks in Washington DC a little over a year before the 9/11 attacks.
In the video, shot in the summer of 1999, Omar al-Bayoumi walked around the nation’s capital remarking on various buildings, including the Washington Monument, before stopping in front of the US Capitol Building and referring to ‘a plan.’
Bayoumi’s video has been in the possession of the FBI for decades – but was just unsealed thanks to a court action by the families of 9/11 victims who sued the Saudi Arabian government for its alleged complicity in the attacks, something the ruling family denies.
The Capitol Building, one of the most recognizable symbols of American democracy, was long thought to be one of the possible targets in the terrorist strikes that killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001.
The FBI said in a declassified document from 2022 that Bayoumi had ‘a 50/50 chance’ of knowing the 9/11 attacks were going to occur, an assertion based on his prior relationship with the men who hijacked the plane that would crash into the Pentagon, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
The FBI got the video after British authorities raided Bayoumi’s apartment in the days after the devastating attack in 2001, when he was a PhD student at Aston University in Birmingham, over 100 miles from London.
They also found a handwritten address book that lawyers for the 9/11 families say had the phone numbers of many Saudi Arabian officials working in the government at that time.
London’s Metropolitan Police handed over all this evidence to the FBI, which has sought to keep it under lock and key ever since.
Now 25 years later, the world gets to see inside the mind of someone who possibly had a hand in executing the worst terrorist strike on US soil in its history.
In the video obtained by CBS News and aired on 60 Minutes, Bayoumi addresses his ‘beloved’ and ‘esteemed brothers’ while pointing the camera at the Capitol Building on a cloudy day around 6pm.
Positioned in front of the Capitol, he points out the entrances and exits to the building and also films passing security guards.
He later gets closer to an unknown building and films what appears to be government vehicles parked outside.
‘Their cars,’ he said. ‘You said that in the plan.’
Richard Lambert, a retired FBI agent who led the initial 9/11 investigation, told 60 Minutes he believes Bayoumi was talking to the people within Al Qaeda who planned the 9/11 attacks.
‘What I see Bayoumi doing is going out and making a detailed video record of the Capitol, of all its sides and conducting that 360 degree panoramic view,’ added Lambert, who now serves as a consultant to the families of 9/11 victims in their case against Saudi Arabia.
Another reference to his shadowy conspirators came when Bayoumi pointed out the Washington Monument, which is a short walk from the Capitol.
‘I will get over there, and I will report…to you in detail what is there.’
The video also gives additional weight to the long held theory by federal investigators that the hijackers of Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, were intending to destroy the Capitol.
The FBI has said that Bayoumi was accompanied by two Saudi Arabian diplomats with ties to Al-Qaeda while filming this video, only deepening the possibility that state actors were involved in the attacks.
Saudi Arabia has denied that Bayoumi was ever an agent of theirs and has also denied any involvement or support of 9/11.
With oral arguments scheduled for this summer in the 9/11 suit from victims’ families, lawyers for the Saudi Arabian government have filed a motion to dismiss.
The Saudis have also claimed that Bayoumi shot the video as a tourist, something retired FBI agent Ken Williams strongly disagrees with.
The official 9/11 Commission report, published in 2004, found that Saudi Arabia wasn’t tied to Al Qaeda operationally or financially, a bombshell revelation only revealed to the public in 2016 when President Obama declassified 28 key pages of the 525-document.
‘Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization,’ it read.
The report also said this about Bayoumi: ‘We have seen no credible evidence that he believed in violent extremism, or knowingly aided extremist groups.’
The man who’s been credited at the mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, told authorities during an interrogation that he didn’t know Bayoumi.
Following his arrest by British authorities at the request of the US, Bayoumi was released back to Saudi Arabia because he couldn’t be held on any charges besides visa fraud.
The 9/11 Commission and the FBI interviewed Bayoumi after the attacks, according to the commission’s report.
As of 2004, Bayoumi, described as a devout Muslim, was living in Saudi Arabia and ‘well aware of his notoriety.’