Living With The Elusive Closure of 9/11

"Saudi officials have long denied any involvement in the plot, emphasizing that they were at war with al-Qaida well before 2001."

"They have also leaned on earlier U.S. assessments, especially the one-page summary of a joint FBI-CIA report that was publicly released by the Bush administration in 2005. That summary said there was no evidence that “the Saudi Government or members of the Saudi royal family knowingly provided support” for the attacks."

"Pages of the report that were declassified in 2022 are more critical of the Saudi role, describing extensive Saudi funding for Islamic charities linked to al-Qaida and the reluctance of senior Saudi officials to cooperate with U.S. counterterrorism efforts."

"The plaintiffs’ account still leaves significant gaps in the story of how two known al-Qaida operatives, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, avoided CIA surveillance overseas, flew into Los Angeles under their own names and then — despite speaking no English and ostensibly knowing no one — settled in Southern California to start preparing for the attacks."

"Exactly whom in the Saudi government Bayoumi was working for remains unclear. [Omar al-Bayoumi, a middle-aged Saudi graduate student in San Diego who was the central figure in the hijackers’ support network.] FBI reports describe him as a “cooptee,” or part-time agent, of the Saudi intelligence service, but say he reported to the kingdom’s powerful former ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. (Lawyers for the Saudi government have continued to repeat Bayoumi’s earlier denials that he ever had “any assignment” for Saudi intelligence.)"

Pro Publica

 

Evidence gathered on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 mastermind, contained in documents render detailed views of the man's involvement in the massive attacks that took place in New York, Washington and the aborted attack that ended in a plane crash in a field in Pennsylvania. The destruction of the World Trade Towers in twin plane-missile suicide attacks and of the Pentagon exploded a shock wave of disbelief at the scale, audacity and brutality launched against those symbols of American pride and power. 

 

Newly released are details of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's interaction with the hijackers who committed the September 11, 2001 attacks.

 

Mohammed's singular statements over the years, phone records and other documents of coordination between himself and the hijackers were summarized as evidence contained in documents unsealed this week. Videos as part of al-Qaeda's schedule for the attacks and summaries of the attacks contained simulations of the four airliners' flight that fateful day. Other details were withheld from public view. 

 Photographs and death certificates of 2,976 people who died on the attacks of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania field of the fourth airliner which smashed to the ground when passengers rallied to take command of the plane from the suicide hijackers, are to be presented as well. Military prosecutors' case against Mohammed who conceived of and executed much of al-Qaeda's attack are to be included.

 

The framework of the military prosecutors' case against Mohammed is part of a plea agreement the Defence Department is striving to roll back in court. Prosecutors' summaries and videos included in planning for the attacks saw Mohammed and two co-defendants agreeing to a plea deal with military prosecutors to plead guilty in the attack in trade of their life sentences. 

 

Suing for the plea bargain to be unsealed is a consortium of legacy media including the Associated Press, New York Times, National Public Radio, Washington Post, Fox News, NBC and Univision.

 

Additional revelations respecting greater details of the attack are likely yet to be revealed. Prosecutors, defence and a senior Pentagon official overseeing the cases at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have agreed to a hearing to allow them to make public evidence compiled against the three defendants, linked to address complaints from victims' families that a plea bargain would restrain evidence from being fully revealed.

 

The deal had been negotiated for over two years  under government auspices by military prosecutors, defence attorneys and Guantanamo officials. Negotiations represented an effort to finally bring a resolution to the 9/11 case. Pretrial hearings since the attacks have remained static for the over two decades that have since passed.

 

Closer to the time in question, then-Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin took intercessionary steps in an attempt to void the plea agreement. His position was that waiving the potential of the death penalty in an attack of such magnitude and grave consequences represented a decision that should be the province of defence secretaries. 

 

In this photo reviewed by U.S. military officials, flags fly at half-staff at Camp Justice, Aug. 29, 2021, in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

"Almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, FBI agents identified Bayoumi as having helped the two young Saudis rent an apartment, set up a bank account and take care of other needs. Bayoumi, then 42, was arrested on Sept. 21, 2001, in Birmingham, England, where he had moved to continue graduate studies in business. Scotland Yard terrorism investigators questioned him for a week in London as two FBI agents monitored the sessions."

"After pressure from Saudi diplomats, Bayoumi was freed by the British authorities without being charged. U.S. officials did not try to have him extradited."

"In 2017, the FBI concluded that Bayoumi was, in fact, a Saudi spy — although it kept that finding secret until 2022, after President Joe Biden ordered agencies to declassify more documents from the 9/11 files."

Pro Publica

 

Perspectives of Compassion, Condemnation

"[The Senate Intelligence Committee study of the CIA program found that waterboarding and other techniques were] brutal and far worse than the CIA represented."
"[Its use induced convulsions, vomiting and left Zubaydah] completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth."
Report of the U.S.Senate Intelligence Committee, 2014

Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn

"They kept pouring water and concentrating on my nose and my mouth until I really felt I was drowning and my chest was just about to explode from the lack of oxygen."
"[Some guards] noticed the colour of my hands, [moved me to a chair] and the interrogation vertigo resumed -- the cold, the hunger, the little sleep and the intense vomiting, which I didn't know whether it was caused by the cold, the 'Ensure' or the noise."
"[Agents used a method of] horizontal sleep deprivation [involving shackling flat on the ground in a painful position making it impossible to sleep]."
"[I was deprived of sleep for] maybe two or three weeks or even more."
"It felt like an eternity. To the point that I found myself falling asleep despite the water being thrown at me by the guard."
Abu Zubaydah [aka Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, Palestinian jihadist imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

The man known as Abu Zubaydah, held for four years in secret prisons overseas by the American Central Intelligence Agency in the years directly following the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania by jihadists on that unforgettable day of 9/11, is the subject of a 61-page report, "How America Tortures", produced by a professor at the Seton Hall University School of Law, Mark P. Denbeaux. Mr. Denbeaux -- who acts as Abu Zubaydah's lawyer -- aided by some of his students used a firsthand narrative of his client, along with Bush internal administrative memos, prisoners' memories and the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report in their analysis of the interrogation method used on his client.

Zubaydah, now 48, had drawn sketches of the torture and interrogation methods used on him and other prisoners at Guantanamo Bay prison and they too were included in the finished report. He had been submitted 83 times to waterboarding, among other forms of torture and he documented them all through his detailed sketches. He had been captured during a gun fight that took place in Faisalabad, Pakistan in 2002. Injured badly, he was given medical treatment, then sent to a network of CIA overseas prisons.

Abu Zubaydah, Courtesy Prof.Mark Denbeaux, Seton Hall University School of Law

There, the agency hired two CIA contract psychologists to come up with a form of inquisition to determine Zubaydah's role in the 9/11 terrorist attack. The formula the CIA psychologists came up with was isolation, sleep deprivation and the violence associated with waterboarding, to elicit data useful to the CIA in their investigation. A hundred prisoners were subjected to these methods in secret sites which some have described as dungeons staffed by secret guards and medical officers.

Zubaydah was the first of the detainees to be subjected to the waterboarding technique and he endured it for no fewer than 82 repeats along with "a constantly rotating barrage" of methods whose purpose was to break his resistance to interrogation. Including being boxed within a small confinement. Zubaydah, it turns out was indeed a  jihadist, but had no knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, and hadn't been a member of al-Qaeda. Subsequently, he has never faced charges related to a specific crime.

Abu Zubaydah, Courtesy Prof.Mark Denbeaux, Seton Hall University School of Law

The man continues to be held at Guantanamo Bay at the secretive Camp 7, his release forbidden. He portrays himself in one drawing, immobilized, water pouring on his hooded head, right foot contorted with pain. Other detainees held in various black sites had their own descriptions, but Zubaydah drew himself nude, shackled at wrists to a bar over his head as he was still recovering from a thigh wound, attempting to balance weight on his uninjured leg.

"Long hours went by while I was standing in that position. My hands were tight to the upper bars", he divulged to his lawyers. Sleep deprivation was justified by the CIA, such that it "focuses the detainee's attention on his current situation rather than ideological goals". His ideological goals, as a jihadist would have been to engage in the slaughter of infidels and Jews, as enjoined by his faith's highest calling for martyrs to dedicate themselves to Islamic conquest. To that end, almost three thousand people were killed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.