In the past year, thanks to two major journalistic investigations, documentary evidence has emerged regarding Omar al-Bayoumi's role in the planning of the attacks, revealing that the former Saudi agent did not merely provide logistical support to the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, but played a much broader role.
Last April 27, the program 60 Minutes aired a thirteen-minute report (a preview of which was released in 2024) showing a video shot by al-Bayoumi himself in the summer of 1999 in Washington, in which he films several of the most famous monuments. The material was filed in court as part of the lawsuit brought by the victims' families against Saudi Arabia. The video (available in full and without voiceovers at this link) shows al-Bayoumi filming the US Capitol, questioning the security of the building, and the Washington Monument, the obelisk in front of the Lincoln Memorial visible from above due to its shape and height. Speaking with the camera operator, and clearly also addressing the recipients of the video, al-Bayoumi also refers to a "plan". All this reveals a previously unknown aspect, namely that al-Bayoumi also collaborated in planning the hijacking of United 93, which the terrorists intended to crash into the US Capitol. In the 60 Minutes report, former FBI Supervisor Richard Lambert confirms that al-Qaeda made the decision to target the Capitol within 90 days of al-Bayoumi recording this video.
The 60 Minutes segment also includes an excerpt from al-Bayoumi’s deposition in the same lawsuit, in which he is asked about the meaning of the aeronautical calculations found at his home in Birmingham. His explanation is as ridiculous as it is implausible. Al-Bayoumi claims they are school memories and his attempt to recall a formula studied back then. Considering that, as recently explained on this blog, that formula likely served to calculate the descent speed needed to hit a ground target based on the horizontal distance from a known reference point, it becomes clear why al-Bayoumi was also interested in the Washington Monument even though it was not among the terrorists' targets.
In addition to what was broadcast by 60 Minutes, the online newspaper Florida Bulldog also reported that Scotland Yard made a second batch of documents on al-Bayoumi available to the New York court (in addition to what was already disclosed in 2022). On al-Bayoumi’s computer, British police found an image file saved as helicopters.psp in which a message was hidden using steganography:
For your information, I have taken a knief [sic] and bag on board and there were no security checks whatsoever. Also, the perimeter fence that goes around the tarmac was not electricuted [sic]
Al-Bayoumi therefore conducted a dry run of bringing a knife on board a plane to see if it would be detected. The link between the airport's metal fence and the actual attacks is not immediately clear, but it is still a detail related to airport security.
Al-Bayoumi is therefore not a well-meaning person who simply wanted to help his fellow countrymen, as also reported in the 60 Minutes video by former FBI Special Agent Danny Gonzalez. He helped no one except two hijackers. And it is equally obvious that he did not merely assist al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi in California, but that al-Qaeda assigned him multiple tasks in organizing the attacks.
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