A federal lawsuit moving forward in Manhattan could open the floodgates to tightly held government secrets about foreign connections to the 9/11 attacks.
While the Obama administration refuses to make public the censored 28 pages of the congressional intelligence report implicating the Saudi government in the terror strike — defying bipartisan requests from lawmakers — the two investigators who authored the long-secret section will more than likely be called to testify in the lawsuit brought against the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Former FBI investigator Michael Jacobson and former Justice Department attorney Dana Lesemann ran down FBI leads tying Saudi officials to some of the Saudi hijackers and documented their findings in the report.
Jacobson and Lesemann went on to work for the independent 9/11 Commission, where they uncovered more evidence and connected new dots to the Saudi Embassy in Washington and the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles.
During a July 30 court hearing, lawyers for 9/11 victims’ families and insurers revealed that the staffers’ most serious allegations against the Saudis were stricken from the final draft of the 9/11 Commission report as well.
“They were removed at the 11th hour by the senior staff,” plaintiffs’ attorney Sean Carter of Cozen O’Connor said, explaining that the decision was a “political matter.”
Carter said that the staff investigators “felt they had documented a direct link between the Saudi government and the Sept. 11 plot based on the explosive material they had uncovered concerning the activities of Fahad al-Thumairy and Omar al-Bayoumi.”
Thumairy was employed at the time as a Saudi religious cleric and diplomat in Los Angeles, while Bayoumi was employed by the Saudi Arabian civil aviation authority in San Diego.
The suit charges that two of the Saudi hijackers, who first entered the United States in Los Angeles before traveling to Washington to attack the Pentagon, were funded through the Saudi embassy and consulate — and that they were handled primarily by Saudi “agent” Bayoumi while staying in San Diego.
The judge now has a 60-to-90-day window to decide whether to dismiss the case based on the Saudi pleading or let 9/11 families proceed to discovery, which could expose the role of other, more senior Saudi officials.
Plaintiffs’ attorney Jerry Goldman says he is optimistic the judge will decide in their favor.
“He wasn’t buying their spin,” he said in a phone interview. “The burden is on the kingdom to prove we are wrong, and they didn’t do that.”
