DAMNING evidence was unveiled on the 9/11 terror attacks, 24 years after the nation was rocked by one of the most devastating mass-casualty events in US history.
Footage has emerged as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by victim families against the Saudi Arabian government in connection with the 2001 attacks.
The video, recorded in 1999, was turned in to the FBI weeks after September 11, 2001, but field agents did not have access to it, according to a report by 60 Minutes.
The forgotten footage zooms in on the doors to the Capitol, security checkpoints, and a small replica of the building, while also recording other monuments in the city.
Saudi Arabian national Omar al-Bayoumi, the person in the video, was filmed in Washington, D.C. at the US Capitol.
“I am transmitting these scenes to you from the heart of the American capital, Washington,” Omar al-Bayoumi says as a passerby films him.
A plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field on September 11 was believed to be headed to the US Capitol, but passengers aboard the flight stopped it.
Bayoumi, dressed up in a suit and tie in the clip, may have provided support to two of the hijackers, according to a federal report.
The FBI also claimed that they had received tips “alleging that al-Bayoumi may be a Saudi intelligence officer,” according to government documents.
The footage had been found in his UK apartment just days after 9/11. About 80 other tapes had been seized, too.
“The airport is not far away,” he says on camera, zooming in on a flight.
“Here is the airplane taking off from there.”
In one part, he talks about a “plan,” although he doesn’t specify what he is referring to.
“I think he’s talking to the al Qaeda planners who tasked him to take the pre-operational surveillance video of the intended target,” Richard Lambert, a consultant on the lawsuit, said to 60 Minutes.
Gina Bennett, a former senior official at the CIA, said that the video was important to the federal investigation – and yet, field officers have claimed not to have seen the unearthed evidence.
“We didn’t expect that this was a ‘one and done.’ We expected al Qaeda to continue to try,” Bennett said on the show.
“Resources were going entirely to trying to undermine any additional plotting.”
Bayoumi was ultimately never charged and moved back to Saudi Arabia.
“My conclusion is that Bayoumi was an al Qaeda facilitator. He had sympathies with al Qaeda–I mean ideologically–and that he provided substantial support to these two individuals, these two hijackers, without which they may very well have been caught,” Bennett said.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/15043547/new-911-video-evidence-unearthed-capitol-saudi-arabia/
