On 3 September 2021, eight days before the 20th anniversary, President Biden signed Executive Order 14040. It set deadlines: the 2016 FBI memo that had been withheld in full from the families’ lawsuit, by 11 September 2021; within 60 days, everything withheld as classified in their lawsuit; within 120 days, the records from the FBI’s original investigation, known as PENTTBOM, that mention the people later investigated; and within 180 days, records from any other FBI inquiry into them. [1]
The releases did not stop at the deadlines. The FBI’s public index now lists more than 30 entries: the 2016 memo, numbered parts, release notes, updates and a run of supplemental releases. [2] The redaction key printed on each release shows why passages are still blacked out: information from foreign governments withheld at their direction, material that needs a judge’s permission, bank secrecy rules, and privacy. [4]
The first document out, on 11 September 2021, was the April 2016 Operation Encore memo. It describes the FBI’s follow-up investigation of Fahad al-Thumairy, Omar al-Bayoumi and others who had contact with the first two hijackers in California. See the Bayoumi file. [3]
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