Third 9/11 Hijacker May Have Been CIA Recruit

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Over two decades since the 9/11 attacks, a great many mysteries about that fateful day and the months leading up to it are not only unsolved, but have been largely if not wholly forgotten. A key riddle on both counts is how purported hijackers Nawaf Hazmi and Khalid Mihdhar came to be residing with an FBI informant, after their arrival in the US in 2000.

Almost as soon as the pair touched down in Los Angeles International Airport in January that year, they met Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence operative, at an on-site restaurant. After a brief conversation, Bayoumi helped them find an apartment near his own in San Diego, co-signed their lease, set them up bank accounts, and gave them $1,500 towards their rent. The three repeatedly crossed paths over the next 18 months.

A bombshell 2021 court filing unearthed earlier this year by SpyTalk summarises the findings of an investigation by the Office of Military Commissions, the legal body prosecuting the 9/11 defendants, into Riyadh’s connections to the attacks. The probe concluded this meeting, and subsequent contacts between the future hijackers and Bayoumi, were directed by the CIA.

CIA and FBI veterans consulted during the Office’s probe affirmed that the Agency had used Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Directorate as a liaison to not only make contact with Hazmi and Mihdhar, but recruit them as assets. These aspects of the filing received significant attention in independent media. An incendiary passage universally overlooked, however, strongly suggested Bayoumi was not the only CIA and Saudi asset in close proximity with the 9/11 hijackers, and vice versa.

‘Quiet Tenants’

In February 2000, with Bayoumi’s financial and logistical support, Hazmi and Mihdhar moved into an apartment complex in San Diego, California. While there, they aroused significant suspicion among their neighbors. They couldn’t speak English, didn’t purchase any furniture, slept on mattresses on the floor, and reportedly spent much of their days playing flight simulator games. Yet, they also carried briefcases everywhere, frequently used mobile phones, and were occasionally picked up by limousines at night.

Despite this, no concerns were raised about Hazmi and Mihdhar by local residents with law enforcement. In May that year, they moved elsewhere in San Diego, lodging at the home of long-time FBI informant Abdussattar Shaikh. He likewise expressed no anxieties about his tenants to his Bureau handler - although what information on them he did relay is uncertain. 

A November 2004 FBI inspector general report assessed the Bureau’s “handling of intelligence information” relating to the hijackers prior to 9/11, and contained a dedicated, lengthy section on Hazmi and Mihdhar’s stay with Shaikh. In interviews with the FBI following the attacks, he “described them as quiet tenants who paid their rent…good Muslims who regularly prayed at the mosque…[and] insisted he noted no indicators of nefarious activity…that should have resulted in his reporting their identities to the FBI.”

However, Shaikh purportedly “provided conflicting accounts regarding the information on Hazmi and Mihdhar that he had disclosed.” Muddying matters further, his original FBI handler retired in early 2002, and declined to be interviewed by the inspector general. Accounts vary on what Shaikh told him. It seems at most he revealed Hazmi and Mihdhar’s first names, that they were in the US “on valid visitors’ visas, and planned to visit and to study while they were in the country.”

The inspector general records Shaikh was asked for his tenants’ surnames by his FBI handler, but these were not provided, and this was not followed up. The Office of Military Commissions filing offers a sinister potential explanation for the lack of clarity on all sides surrounding Hazmi and Mihdhar’s stay with Shaikh. It records how a nameless Bureau “special agent with extensive experience in terrorism and counterintelligence matters” told Office investigators that post-9/11 investigations showed:

“[Shaikh] was receiving funds from the Saudi Arabian government while he was serving as an informant for the FBI.”

Under the terms of this relationship, Shaikh regularly hosted “prominent” Saudi citizens who visited California, surreptitiously passing information on them back to Riyadh. It was a highly effective method by which Saudi Arabia could “monitor the activities of its citizens while they were abroad.” More gravely, given the CIA was using the Saudis to recruit and manage 9/11 hijackers as assets, it was also another potential means by which the Agency could shield their presence in the US from the FBI, and direct their agents’ activities.

‘Great Talent’

The CIA’s tireless efforts to prevent the Bureau from learning numerous confirmed Al Qaeda operatives were at liberty in the US during the 18 months prior to 9/11 were extraordinary. This extended to repeatedly forbidding FBI officials seconded to the Agency’s Al Qaeda unit, Alec Station, from apprising their superiors of Hazmi and Mihdhar’s arrival to the country.

Moreover, in a June 2001 meeting with senior FBI officials, including representatives of the agency’s Al Qaeda unit, the CIA shared photos of Hazmi and Mihdhar, but refused to answer questions about them, while providing false information about their identities. The bizarre, duplicitous exercise appears to have been concerned with ascertaining whether the FBI knew who Hazmi and Mihdhar were, and if they were under active investigation. 

Elements of the CIA seem to have been well-aware at this point the pair, along with a number of other confirmed Al Qaeda operatives present on US soil, were imminently planning something major. This amply suggests 9/11 was at the very least allowed to happen by elements of Washington’s intelligence community.

Abdussattar Shaikh would’ve been an extremely valuable source of information on the activities and future plans of not only Hazmi and Mihdhar, but also hijacker Hani Hanjour, who purportedly piloted Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon. He moved in with Hazmi at Shaikh’s residence in late 2000, Mihdhar having left the US six months earlier. They subsequently relocated to Phoenix, Arizona. This raises the prospect Hanjour had also been recruited as a CIA asset, whether wittingly or unwittingly, and was monitored and handled by Shaikh.

Undated CCTV image of alleged hijackers Hani Hanjour and Majed Moqed

Hanjour and his role in 9/11 were from day one described as “enigmatic” by FBI investigators, US government officials, and mainstream journalists. A slight figure barely five foot tall, he was described by all who knew him as meek, self-effacing, goodhearted, not possessed of extremist views, and a highly unlikely candidate for participating in, let alone carrying out, a major terror attack. Hanjour’s family, who spoke to him hours before the attacks and reported nothing unusual about the conversation, have never accepted his guilt.

Even more puzzlingly, immediately following its hijacking, Flight 77 executed a remarkable 330-degree descending corkscrew turn from around 7,000 feet in the air, while travelling at over 500 miles per hour, to come perfectly level with a pedestrian road leading up to the Pentagon. Flying just over a meter above the ground and knocking over lampposts en route, the plane duly crashed into Department of Defense HQ.

Graphic from an NTSB Flight Path Study of Flight 77

Recordings show air traffic controllers spectating were convinced Flight 77 was a military jet, as they believed a commercial 757 would be incapable of such manoeuvres. Aviation experts subsequently characterised its flight as the work of “a great talent…virtually a textbook turn and landing.” Yet, Hanjour was such an abysmal flyer, his instructors at US pilot school reported him to the Federal Aviation Administration, believing his pilot’s licence was fraudulent.

A May 2002 Washington Post article explains that his tutors did not suspect Hanjour was a terrorist, “but feared that his skills were so weak he could pose a safety hazard if he flew a commercial airliner.” In a written exam, he took three hours to answer a question that students typically completed within just 20 minutes. Meanwhile, he was unable to control a single engine cessna during practical tests. An instructor stated:

“There was no suspicion as far as evildoing. It was more of a very typical instructional concern that ‘you really shouldn't be in the air.’ I’m still to this day amazed that he could have flown into the Pentagon. He could not fly at all.”

How Hanjour executed the Pentagon attack despite proven aviation incompetence is today another memory-holed curiosity of 9/11. As is how, despite 20,000 people being in the building at the time, only 125 - none of them in senior positions - died as a result.