Disturbing video has emerged showing a man, believed to have links to Al Qaeda terrorists, filming prominent locations in Washington DC just over a year before the 9/11 attacks.
In the video, filmed in the summer of 1999, Omar al-Bayoumi walked through the nation’s capital looking at several buildings, including the Washington Monument, before stopping in front of the U.S. Capitol and referring to “a plan.”
The Capitol building, one of the most recognizable symbols of American democracy, was long thought to be one of the possible targets of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2001.
The FBI said in a declassified 2022 document that Bayoumi had “a 50/50 chance” of knowing the 9/11 attacks were going to happen, a claim based on his previous relationship with the men who hijacked the plane that would crash. against the Pentagon, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.
The Bayoumi video has been in the FBI’s possession for decades, but it was just revealed thanks to a court action by the families of 9/11 victims who sued the government of Saudi Arabia for its alleged complicity in the attacks, something that the ruling family denies.
Pictured: Omar al-Bayoumi stands in front of the Capitol building. He goes on to detail his entrances and exits, as well as where the security guards are stationed.
The FBI obtained the video after British authorities raided Bayoumi’s apartment in the days after the devastating 2001 attack, when he was a doctoral student at Aston University in Birmingham, more than 100 miles from London.
They also found a handwritten address book that lawyers for the 9/11 families said had the phone numbers of many Saudi officials working in the government at the time.
London’s Metropolitan Police turned over all of this evidence to the FBI, which has tried to keep it under lock and key ever since.
Now, 25 years later, the world can see inside the mind of someone who may have participated in carrying out the worst terrorist attack on American soil in its history.
In the video obtained by CBS News and broadcast on 60 Minutes, Bayoumi addresses his “dear” and “esteemed brothers” while pointing the camera at the Capitol building on a cloudy day around 6 p.m.
Located in front of the Capitol, it marks the entrances and exits of the building and also films the passage of security guards.
He later approaches an unknown building and films what appear to be government vehicles parked outside.
“Their cars,” he said. “You said that in the plan.”
Khalid al-Mihdhar, left, and Nawaf al-Hazmi hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and crashed it into the Pentagon, killing all 64 people on board and 125 people inside the Pentagon. The two men in the photo had close ties to Bayoumi, according to the FBI.
A rescue helicopter flies over the Pentagon just after the plane hit the building.
FBI agents, firefighters, rescuers and engineers work at the Pentagon crash site on September 14, 2001, three days after the attacks.
Richard Lambert, a retired FBI agent who led the initial 9/11 investigation, said 60 minutes He believes Bayoumi was talking to the Al Qaeda people who planned the 9/11 attacks.
“What I see Bayoumi doing is going out and recording a detailed video of the Capitol, from all sides, and taking that 360-degree panoramic view,” added Lambert, who now serves as a consultant to the families of victims of the 9/11 in his case against Saudi Arabia.
Another reference to his shadowy conspirators came when Bayoumi pointed to the Washington Monument, which is located just steps from the Capitol.
‘I will go there and inform you… in detail what is there.’
The video also lends additional weight to federal investigators’ long-held theory that the hijackers of Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, intended 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, which only deepens the possibility that state actors were involved in the attacks.
Emergency personnel mark the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the day it crashed. The passengers on the flight ran over the Al Qaeda hijackers, causing the plane to plummet into this field.
Saudi Arabia has denied that Bayoumi was ever an agent of its and has also denied any involvement in or support for 9/11.
With oral arguments scheduled for this summer in the lawsuit by the families of 9/11 victims, lawyers for the Saudi Arabian government have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
The Saudis have also claimed that Bayoumi recorded the video as a tourist, something retired FBI agent Ken Williams disagrees with.
The 9/11 Commission’s official report, released in 2004, found that Saudi Arabia was not operationally or financially linked to Al Qaeda, an explosive revelation that was only revealed to the public in 2016, when President Obama declassified 28 key pages of the document 525.
“Saudi Arabia has long been considered the main source of funding for Al Qaeda, but we have found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization,” it said.
The report also said the following about Bayoumi: “We have not seen any credible evidence that he believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups.”
The man credited with masterminding the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, told authorities during questioning that he did not know Bayoumi.
