The Eleventh Day_ The History and Legacy of 9_11 - Anthony Summers [199]
Available information suggests two of the trio were employed by or had links to the Saudi regime—Thumairy through his accreditation to the Ministry of Islamic Affairs and Bayoumi through his employment by a company connected to the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority. Several people characterized Bayoumi as a Saudi government agent or spy. The CIA, former senator Graham has said, thought Basnan was also an agent. The senator cited an Agency memo referring to “incontrovertible evidence” of support for the terrorists within the Saudi government.
IN 2003 and 2004, but only following a high-level request from the White House, 9/11 Commission staff were able to make two visits to Saudi Arabia to interview Thumairy, Bayoumi, and Basnan. All interviews were conducted in the presence of officials from Prince Naif’s internal security service.
The U.S. questioners, a recently released Commission memo notes, believed Thumairy was “deceptive during both interviews.… His answers were either inconsistent or at times in direct conflict with information we have from other sources.” Most significantly, he denied knowing Bayoumi, let alone Mihdhar and Hazmi. Shown a photograph of Bayoumi, he did not budge. He knew no one of that name, he said. Then, prompted by a whispered interjection from one of the Saudi officials present, he said he had heard of Bayoumi—but only from 9/11 news coverage.
At a second interview, told by Commission staff that witnesses had spoken of seeing him with Bayoumi, Thumairy said perhaps he had been mistaken for someone else. Perhaps, too, there were people who might “say bad things about him out of jealousy.” Finally told that telephone records showed numerous calls between his phones and Bayoumi’s phones, just before the arrival of Mihdhar and Hazmi in the United States to boot, Thumairy was stumped.
Perhaps, he ventured, his phone number had been allotted to somebody else after he had it? Perhaps the calls had been made by someone else using Bayoumi’s phone? He flailed around in vain for an explanation. Everything Thumairy came up with, his Commission questioners noted, was “implausible.”
Bayoumi, who was interviewed earlier—though not by staff with firsthand experience of the California episode—had made a more favorable impression. He stuck to his story about having met Mihdhar and Hazmi by chance. He said he had rarely seen Mihdhar and Hazmi after they came to San Diego, that they had been his neighbors for only a few days. Bayoumi said he had then decided he did not want to have much to do with them. Commission executive director Zelikow, who was present during the interview, did not think Bayoumi had been a Saudi agent.
The Commission Report, however, was to note that Bayoumi’s passport contained a distinguishing mark that may be acquired by “especially devout Muslims”—or be associated with “adherence to al Qaeda.” Investigators had also turned up something else, something disquieting. Bayoumi’s salary had been approved by a Saudi official whose son’s photograph was later found on a computer disk in Pakistan—a disk that also contained some of the hijackers’ photographs.
The son, Saud al-Rashid, was also produced for interview in Saudi Arabia. He admitted having been in Afghanistan—and to having “cleansed” his passport of the evidence that he had traveled there. He said, though, that he had known nothing of the 9/11 plot. Commission staff who questioned him thought Rashid had been “deceptive.” They noted that he had had “enough time to develop a coherent story … even may have been coached.”
Finally, there was Basnan. The Commission’s interview with him, senior commission counsel Dietrich Snell wrote afterward, established only