Chilling never-before-seen 9/11 footage shows Saudi spy filming Capitol Hill ‘to plan attacks’

A disturbing video has come to light showing a man believed to be linked to Al Qaeda terrorists filming key landmarks in Washington DC just over a year before the September 11 attacks.

In the video, recorded in the summer of 1999, Omar al-Bayoumi walked through the nation’s capital and made comments about several buildings, including the Washington Monument, before stopping in front of the U.S. Capitol and referring to “a plan.”

The Capitol, one of the most recognizable symbols of American democracy, was long considered one of the possible targets in 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 September 11 attacks would happen, a claim based on his past relationship with the men who hijacked the plane that would fly crash. Pentagon, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi.

Bayoumi’s video has been in the FBI’s possession for decades, but was just released thanks to a lawsuit by the families of 9/11 victims who sued the Saudi Arabian government for its alleged complicity in the attacks, something that the ruling family denies.

The FBI obtained the video after British authorities raided Bayoumi’s apartment in the days after the devastating attack in 2001, when he was a PhD student at Aston University in Birmingham, more than 100 miles from London.

They also found a handwritten address book that lawyers for the September 11 families say contained the phone numbers of many Saudi Arabian officials who worked in the government at the time.

London’s Metropolitan Police turned all this evidence over to the FBI, who have since tried to keep it under lock and key.

Now, 25 years later, the world is getting a glimpse into the mind of someone who may have had a hand 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 “beloved” and “esteemed brothers” as he points the camera at the Capitol on a cloudy day around 6 p.m.

Positioned in front of the Capitol, he points out the entrances and exits of the building and also films passing guards.

Later, he moves closer to an unknown building and films what appears to be government vehicles parked outside.

“Their cars,” he said. “That’s what you said 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. According to the FBI, both men pictured had close ties to Bayoumi

A rescue helicopter flies over the Pentagon moments 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 investigation into September 11, said 60 minutes he believes Bayoumi spoke to the people within Al Qaeda who planned the September 11 attacks.

“What I see Bayoumi doing is going out and taking a detailed video of the Capitol, from all its sides, and getting that 360-degree panoramic view,” added Lambert, who now serves as an advisor to the families of the victims of September 11. their case against Saudi Arabia.

Another reference to his shadowy conspirators came when Bayoumi pointed out the Washington Monument, which is a short walk from the Capitol.

“I’ll go there and I’ll tell you in detail what’s there.”

The video also adds weight to federal investigators’ long-held theory that the hijackers of Flight 93, which crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, planned to destroy the Capitol.

The FBI has said that Bayoumi was accompanied by two Saudi Arabian diplomats with ties to al-Qaeda during the filming of this video, which only raises the possibility that state actors were involved in the attacks.

Emergency crews mark the crash site of United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the day it crashed. Passengers on the flight overwhelmed Al Qaeda hijackers, causing the plane to nosedive into this field

Saudi Arabia has denied that Bayoumi was ever an agent of theirs and has also denied any involvement in or support of September 11.

With the victims’ families set to make oral arguments in the September 11 case this summer, lawyers for the Saudi Arabian government have filed a motion to dismiss.

The Saudis have also claimed that Bayoumi shot the video as a tourist, something retired FBI agent Ken Williams strongly disagrees with.

The official 9/11 Commission report, published in 2004, found that Saudi Arabia was not connected to Al Qaeda either operationally or financially, a revelation that was not revealed to the public until 2016 when President Obama removed 28 key pages of the 525 document released.

“Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al-Qaeda funding, but we found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials have individually funded the organization,” it said.

The report also said this about Bayoumi: “We saw no credible evidence that he believed in violent extremism, or knowingly assisted extremist groups.”

The man believed to be the mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, told authorities during an interrogation that he did not know Bayoumi.