Free Republic

FBI declassified a 1999 video of Saudi intelligence agent Omar al-Bayoumi casing the Capitol and other Washington D.C. sites for the 9/11 attack. How, then, did the CIA-FBI 9/11 report conclude in 2005 that Saudi Arabia was not involved in the attack? And why did the FBI maintain — for 20 years, before its recent retraction — that al-Bayoumi wasn’t a Saudi agent? Such willful deception, practiced increasingly by American intelligence, is the subject of former CIA agent J. Michael Waller’s new book Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains ......

Long before last month’s release of a 2016 FBI report about Operation Encore, the bureau’s probe into possible Saudi complicity in 9/11, top Trump administration officials swore under “penalty of perjury” that information in the report was a “state secret” whose public release was likely to cause “significant harm to the national security.”But when the 16-page report was finally made public on Sept. 11 following a declassification review ordered by President Biden the week before, no state secrets were apparent. A “redaction key” provided by the FBI to explain some deletions shows that only a few short bits and pieces...

The FBI, complying with President Biden’s recent executive order, made public late Saturday night a previously classified April 4, 2016 “review and analysis” report about Operation Encore, the bureau’s highly sensitive investigation of possible Saudi complicity in the 9/11 terrorist attack.The 16-page report is nevertheless heavily redacted in ways that will likely disappoint members of the 9/11 Families who have pushed to learn more about Encore since its existence was first disclosed in December 2016 in documents released to Florida Bulldog amid Freedom of Information Act litigation.For example, the names of many persons who were interviewed by FBI agents during...

At least two of the 9-11 hijackers probably had a U.S.-based support network, according to a former FBI agent. Danny Gonzalez worked on “Operation Encore,” the still-secret investigation into the two Saudi hijackers who were based in San Diego. Gonzalez told CBS News he’s confident the records of that operation will show the hijackers had help. “19 hijackers cannot commit 3,000 mass murders by themselves,” Gonzalez told the network.

The U.S. government’s recent reset of its position to consider declassifying many FBI secrets about 9/11 is being strongly resisted in court by Saudi Arabia.Lawyers for thousands of 9/11 family members who are suing Saudi Arabia in federal court in New York, citing the “extraordinary circumstances” arising from the government’s about-face, asked the court late last month for an extension of a Sept. 15 deadline to submit reports from experts who have reviewed the evidence.“It is imperative that plaintiffs’ experts be afforded an opportunity to review this additional evidence before serving their reports,” wrote members of the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committees...