Omar al-Bayoumi

The Commission found that on 1 February 2000 Bayoumi drove to Los Angeles, visited the Saudi consulate and then met Hazmi and Mihdhar at a halal restaurant in Culver City. Soon after, they moved to San Diego, where he found them an apartment in his own building. “We do not know whether the lunch encounter occurred by chance or design,” the Commission wrote. [1]

In 2025, the federal judge in the families’ lawsuit described it as undisputed that Bayoumi brought the two men to the Parkwood apartments where he lived, helped fill out their application forms and signed the lease as guarantor. [2]

The Commission said it found “no credible evidence that he believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups,” and that its investigators who had dealt with him found him “an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement with Islamist extremists.” [1]

The BBC reported in 2026 that Commission staff objected to that wording, which is why the report attributes it to “our investigators who have dealt directly with him.” [2]

A June 2017 FBI memo, made public through the families’ lawsuit, says Bayoumi was paid a monthly stipend as a “cooptee” of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency from the late 1990s up to 9/11, and that his reporting went to Prince Bandar. It says the allegations about his intelligence ties “were not confirmed at the time of the 9/11 Commission Report. The above information confirms these allegations.” [1]

A separate 2016 FBI memo from the Operation Encore review, released in September 2021, says a person whose name is redacted “was tasked by Thumairy to assist Hazmi and Midhar.” [2]

In 2024, 60 Minutes aired footage Bayoumi shot in Washington in 1999, narrating the Capitol’s entrances. Saudi Arabia says it is tourist video. [1] Senators Blumenthal and Cornyn wrote in 2025 that British police seized it in a 21 September 2001 raid, with a notepad sketch of an airplane, and that the FBI apparently never gave either to the Commission. [2]

The BBC’s 2026 Panorama showed more footage, including Bayoumi embracing Anwar al-Awlaki, later a leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and paintballing near San Diego with Awlaki and a Saudi religious-affairs official. It reported that the sketch carried a descent equation, that it was kept from the British interrogators and from the Commission, and that a former Justice Department official said “we’ve convicted people for less.” [3]

The judge in the lawsuit noted that the notepad is undisputed as Bayoumi’s handwriting, but its meaning is disputed. [4] What the FBI did with the evidence seized from him is traced in the files coming out.

The Commission called Anwar al-Awlaki, then an imam at the Rabat mosque in San Diego, “another potentially significant San Diego contact” for Hazmi and Mihdhar. He was a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico. The two men “reportedly respected Aulaqi as a religious figure and developed a close relationship with him.” Interviewed after 9/11, he admitted meeting Hazmi several times but said he could not remember what they discussed. [1]

Awlaki moved to Virginia in January 2001. That April, Hazmi and Hanjour turned up at the Dar al Hijra mosque in Falls Church, where he was now an imam. He has denied any contact with them there. The Commission called the appearance one that “may not have been coincidental,” and admitted: “We have been unable to learn enough about Aulaqi’s relationship with Hazmi and Mihdhar to reach a conclusion.” [1]

He later became, in President Obama’s words, “the leader of external operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” and was killed in Yemen on 30 September 2011. [2] Footage of him with Bayoumi is described above.