Photograph Source: TSGT CEDRIC H. RUDISILL, USAF – Public Domain
“How can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role Saudi Arabia played in your murder?” asked Terry Strada, wife of Tom Strada who worked at the World Trade Center and died during the 9/11 attacks.
Speaking at the podium at a ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fateful attack, Strada addressed the four presidents in attendance — Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton – and the others gathered before her. “For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” she added.
Strada then went on question why these and other elected officials were part of “one betrayal after another” and then demanded: “President [Donald] Trump can still change that: tell the Saudis to stop lying.” While Trump did not attend the ceremony, Vice Pres. JD Vance was present and Strada asked him to remind Trump: “Stand with the families, stand with survivors, stand with Americans.”
Strada serves as National Chair for the 9/11 Families United and, on August 28, 2025, U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruled “that the families have presented credible evidence of Saudi government involvement in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.” In particular the judge noted,
“Most tellingly, the drawing of an airplane with equations related to the height and distance of a plane’s flight path, for which [Omar al-Bayoumi] could not come up with any reasonable explanation, facially connects Bayoumi with knowledge of the 9/11 Attacks.”
Daniels was referring to al-Bayoumi, who has been described as “a forty-two-year-old Saudi national, was an employee of the Saudi aviation-services company Dallah Avco.” He helped two young Saudi future hijackers — Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar – first get established in Los Angeles in January, 2000, and then relocate to San Diego.
Not unlike the lies covering up the scope of the damage inflicted on New Yorkers due to the 9/11 attack, the role the Saudis, including the government and charities, has long been denied or kept an “official” secret.
On September 6th, New York City released 170,000 pages of previously secret records about the 9/11 attacks. A Times headline reads, “After 9/11, Documents Suggest, New Yorkers Were Misled About Air Quality,” and it reports: “A review of news articles and interview transcripts in the days and weeks after Sept. 11 shows that [former mayor Rudolph] Mr. Giuliani continued to vouch for the safety of the air quality.”
Now, the role of the Saudis in 9/11 is finally coming clearer. Fifteen of the 19 September 11th hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia. And shortly after the attack, eight planes stopping in 12 U.S. cities to “evacuate” 140 Saudi citizens; two dozen passengers were related to Bin Laden. The evacuation was approved by George W. Bush’s White House.
Then there are the long-suppressed 28 pages of the 838-page report by the joint 2002 Senate-House intelligence committee on the 9/11 attacks — suppressed for “national security reasons.” One of the suppressed reports key findings was that
while in the U.S., “some of the September 11 hijackers were in contact with, and received support and assistance from, individuals who may be connected to the Saudi government…at least two of those individuals were alleged by some to be Saudi intelligence officers.”
Pres. Barack Obama declassified the heavily redacted 28-page report in July 2016 and, in September 2021, Pres. Joe Biden finally released a 16-page partially redacted version of the report.
The 9/11 Commission Report on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States of 2004 infamously stated that it found, “Saudi Arabia has long been considered the primary source of al Qaeda funding, no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization.” [p.171] By restricting the inquiry to the “government” or “officials” who “individually” backed the attackers, the Commission was artfully able to ignore the vast web of Saudi facilitators who helped orchestrate the attack.
By 2021, the Saudi story was changing. Jim Kreindler, who represents many of the families suing Saudi Arabia, noted, “This [28-page] document, together with the public evidence gathered to date, provides a blueprint for how al-Qaida operated inside the U.S.,” he said, “with the active, knowing support of the Saudi government.”
In response, the Saudi Embassy issued a statement, claiming: “No evidence has ever emerged to indicate that the Saudi government or its officials had previous knowledge of the terrorist attack or were in any way involved in its planning or execution.” It added, “Any allegation that Saudi Arabia is complicit in the September 11 attacks is categorically false.”
The Saudi role in 9/11 has two dimensions – (i) the network of Saudi operatives who helped facilitate the attack and a government that denies all responsibility; and (ii) U.S. government entities (e.g., presidents, intelligence agencies, Congress members) who covered up, ignored or denied the Saudi’s role for “national security” purposes.
The counterforce fighting against this denial has been threefold: (i) citizens — e.g., family members of those killed as well as firefighters and rescue workers — who pushed long-fought legal cases to get access to restricted documents and suites against the Saudi government; (ii) U.S. courts that have ever-so-slowly opened up the hidden truth; and (iii) the role of dogged journalists, most notably Tim Golden and his associates at ProPublica (e.g., Sebastian Rotella).
In a dozen or so in-depth articles over the last decade as well as a very coherent discussion on Democracy Now, Golden has laid out the Saudi’s – and its agents – roles in the 9/11 attacks.
Perhaps most revealing, Golden quotes from former FBI director Robert Mueller, “We have not detected any kind of support network in the United States for these hijackers.” To which Golden insisted:
“I think it’s clear that successive U.S. governments have had these relationships with the Saudi government. They have been concerned enormously about securing Saudi support for counterterrorism efforts after 9/11 to protect the American people. “
And he added, “You know, those reasons are all there, the fact that they may be trying to cover up their own missteps.”
