Censored pages of 9/11 report cause storm for Saudis

Twenty-eight pages blacked out of the US congressional probe into the September 11 attacks – detailing what help Saudi Arabia may have given the hijackers – has caused more waves than the information made public.

In the introduction to the censored pages, a CIA memo is quoted as saying there was “incontrovertible evidence” of foreign support for the terrorists. Congressional sources told US newspapers the reference was to Saudi Arabia.

At another point, the report notes that “it was clear from about 1996 that the Saudi government would not co-operate with the United States on matters relating to Osama Bin Laden.”

It also gives new details about Omar Bayoumi, a Saudi living in San Diego who provided money and support to the hijackers and who was widely rumoured to be a Saudi agent – a charge denied by the Saudi government.

Bayoumi, “had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia,” the report said.

Bayoumi met two of the men who would later crash a plane into the Pentagon - Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi – when they arrived in the US in 2000. He helped them find an apartment in San Diego and paid their first month’s rent.

The report reveals that Bayoumi had just come from a closed-door meeting at the Saudi Consulate when he met al-Mihdhar and Alhazmi. Reasons why an FBI terrorism probe into Bayoumi ended in 1999 were blacked out in the report.

There is also no mention in the text of the $2,000 (€1,700) cheques that were apparently paid by the wife of Saudi Arabia’s US ambassador, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, into Bayoumi’s bank account.

The Saudi ambassador rejected the claims of complicity in the attacks.

“In a 900 page report, 28 blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country,” Bandar said.

“First we were criticised by ‘unnamed sources’, now we are being criticised with blank pieces of paper.”

Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, said he wanted to know what had been left out of the report.

“There is a lot of information that is not in here that should be,” he said.

Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, was also angry about the omissions.

“There seems to be a systematic strategy of coddling and cover-up when it comes to the Saudis,” he told The New York Daily News.

Senator Bob Graham, another Democrat, who helped write the report, said: “It is my conclusion that officials of a foreign government aided and abetted the terrorists attacks on our country.

“I would like to be able to identify for you the specific sources of that foreign support. But as you can see from these blank pages, the administration has determined to censor this information from the American people.”