MANHATTAN (CN) — Five Saudi officials, including two intelligence officers, were among those believed by FBI and CIA sources to have helped the 9/11 hijackers, a secret chapter of the 9/11 Commission's report, declassified on Friday, reveals.
The FBI said that one of the men, Abdullah bin Laden, was the half-brother of Osama bin Laden who claimed to work at the Saudi embassy in Washington, and U.S. intelligence sources said that three potentially Saudi-tied officials were in contact with two hijackers believed to have been handpicked by bin Laden for pilot training, according to the 28-page report.
U.S. and Saudi officials have been quick to downplay today's release of the long-anticipated report.
Before its contents were known, the chapter had been known simply as the "28 pages," a length that became a rallying cry against government secrecy and for those who suspected Saudi involvement on attacks that killed nearly 3,000 in New York and Washington.
Saudi Arabia insists that the report's inconclusive contents — filled with raw, often-secondhand claims by intelligence sources — vindicate the kingdom.
But the release is sure to fuel continuing questions, with new information purporting to link one Saudi official to a relative of Osama bin Laden, and one of the most notable detainees at Guantanamo Bay to the kingdom's former ambassador to the United States.
The commission details multiple contacts with Saudi officials that the FBI found in the phone book of Abu Zubaydah, the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be subjected to CIA torture. One of those contacts included the Colorado company associated with Prince Bandar, the kingdom's then-Ambassador to the United States, the commission said.
"While in the United States some of the 9/11 highkackers were in contact with, and received support or assistance from, individuals who may be connected with the Saudi government," the once-Top Secret chapter begins. "There is information, primarily from FBI sources, that at least two of those individuals were alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers."
House and Senate intelligence investigators participating in the 9/11 Commission, as it became known, did not investigate or attempt to assess the accuracy of the information, the declassified report states.
In the report's original public version, the commission noted that Saudi Arabia produced 15 out of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks, and that the kingdom generally is a "problematic ally in combating Islamic extremism."
Though the commission uncovered "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization," dozens of redacted pages detail alleged ties that have been censored for more than a decade.
"According to various FBI documents and at least one CIA memorandum, some of the September 11 hijackers, while in the United States, apparently had contacts with individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government," the report states. "While the Joint Inquiry uncovered this material during the course of its review of FBI and CIA documents, it did not attempt to investigate and assess the accuracy and significance of this information independently, recognizing that such a task would be beyond the scope at this Joint Inquiry."
Instead, the commission compiled the information from the FBI and CIA documents to return to these intelligence agencies for further investigation.
