This year’s anniversary of 9/11 passed with little mainstream mention. Almost two-and-a-half decades on, the media appear to have lost interest in that fateful, world-changing day.
This is despite the April 2023 release of a bombshell court filing by the Office of Military Commissions, which concluded at least two of the alleged hijackers were CIA assets, having been recruited “via a liaison relationship” with Saudi intelligence. The same document offers illuminating insight into how the 9/11 Commission buried this, among other inconvenient truths.
Central to the cover-up was Commission chief Philip Zelikow. Commission investigator Dana Lesemann, dubbed “CS-2” in the filing, told representatives of the Office of Military Commissions—the legal body overseeing the prosecutions of 9/11 defendants—that Zelikow consistently sought “to blunt” inquiries “into Saudi involvement with the hijackers.” Lesemann was formally charged with investigating “the possible link” between Riyadh and the 9/11 attacks, but Zelikow was determined they would not succeed.
His destructive efforts included blocking Lesemann’s requests to conduct interviews with certain individuals of interest, and obtain documents that could shed light on Riyadh’s foreknowledge of, if not active participation in, 9/11—and, by extension, the CIA’s. More widely, Zelikow had exclusive control over who the Commission did and did not interview, and on what topics, strictly limiting which witnesses were grilled, and evidence heard.
Lesemann was fired by Zelikow in April 2003, after obtaining a classified index to the House and Senate’s joint inquiry into 9/11, “from a source other than official channels.” The index listed sensitive documents possessed by the FBI and other U.S. government agencies, detailing “suspected Saudi involvement in the 9/11 attacks.” While “a minor security violation,” Zelikow summarily terminated Lesemann and seized the index. News of her defenestration did not leak at the time. No other staffer was permitted to view the document thereafter.
Elsewhere in the filing, Bill Clinton’s counter-terror czar Richard Clarke, who has long charged the CIA had a relationship of some kind with some of the alleged hijackers, told investigators Zelikow was explicitly selected by George W. Bush National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice “to prevent damage to the Bush administration by blocking the Commission’s line of inquiry into the Saudi connection.”
Clarke further asserted his belief that the Saudi-led effort to penetrate al-Qaeda “may have [been] organized by high-level employees at the CIA,” and “most of the records” of the top-secret mission “were destroyed in an effort to cover up the operation.”
Tellingly, Clarke relayed how, after he expressed his opinion that the CIA “was running a ‘false-flag’ operation to recruit the hijackers” publicly, “he received an ‘angry call’ from George Tenet,” CIA Director during 9/11. Despite his wrath, Tenet “did not deny the allegation.”
“Act Preemptively”
Philip Zelikow’s appointment to head the 9/11 Commission was the culmination of the body’s thoroughly troubled gestation.
Initially, the Bush administration vehemently rejected mass public demand for any official investigation into the attacks. It was not until more than a year later, November 2002, that the Commission was begrudgingly established.
Its initial chief, Henry Kissinger, resigned within mere weeks due to conflicts of interest. This included awkward questions over whether he counted any Saudi Arabians—particularly individuals with the surname bin Laden—as clients.
Zelikow had a panoply of conflicts of interest of his own, some of which were well-established at the time. Others, however, emerged only after the Commission was well under way.
For one, he enjoyed a long-running relationship with Condoleezza Rice, and was part of George W. Bush’s transition team, overseeing the new administration’s National Security Council taking office.
This process saw the White House’s Counterterrorism Security Group downgraded, and its chief Richard Clarke demoted, creating layers of bureaucracy between him and senior government officials.
A secret report produced by Clarke’s team in January 2000 concluded U.S. intelligence was ill-equipped to respond to a major, ever-growing domestic terror threat. It outlined 18 recommendations, with 16 accompanying funding proposals, to “seriously weaken” al-Qaeda.
Its findings were ignored by the Bush administration. Numerous memos subsequently authored by Clarke, urgently requesting high-level meetings to discuss al-Qaeda and outline strategies for combating the group at home and abroad, were similarly disregarded.
Meanwhile, in September 2002, the Bush administration submitted a 31-page document, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” to Congress.
It set out a very clear blueprint for the looming War on Terror, calling for a massive build-up in U.S. military spending, and Washington to “act preemptively” against “rogue states,” such as Iraq.
While it bore the president’s signature, the incendiary document was secretly written by none other than Philip Zelikow.
His authorship only became known by the Commission when the investigation was almost over, prompting several key staffers and a commissioner to threaten to quit. The body’s chiefs—Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton—were apparently unaware when Zelikow was appointed.
The pair subsequently charged the Commission was set up to fail. Its investigations got off to a glacial start, in part due to funding issues. The Commission was initially given only $3 million to conduct its work.
By contrast, a concurrent probe of the space shuttle Columbia’s crash, in which just seven people died, was granted $50 million. In March 2003, due to repeated demands from commissioners, the 9/11 Commission was allocated a further $9 million—$2 million less than requested.
Despite these initial problems, that same month—three months into the 16-month-long probe, and before a single hearing had even been convened—Zelikow produced a complete outline of the Commission’s final report.
The finished report, released in July 2004, closely followed Zelikow’s predetermined design. In the intervening time, he personally rewrote several statements submitted by staffers, which informed the report’s findings.
In one instance, he amended a statement to strongly insinuate, without making the direct accusation, that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda had a relationship of some kind, horrifying its authors. This false claim was frequently peddled by White House officials to justify the criminal 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.
In October that year, the Commission determined that North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)—which coincidentally ran a training exercise on 9/11 almost exactly simulating the real-life attacks—was withholding information.
Investigators sought to subpoena the Department of Defense, but Zelikow intervened to prevent one being issued. The next spring, commissioners had become so frustrated with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Pentagon officials lying to them that they considered pursuing criminal charges for obstruction of justice. Zelikow again connived to ensure this did not happen.
“Saudi Individuals”
Despite Zelikow’s obstruction, 9/11 Commission investigators uncovered several leads tying Saudi Arabia—and thus the CIA—to the attacks. The Office of Military Commissions filing reveals how one investigator—“CS-1”—twice interviewed radical cleric and Saudi diplomat Fahad Thumairy, at Saudi government buildings in Riyadh.
He was interrogated about his relationship with Nawaf Hazmi and Khalid Mihdhar, hijackers confirmed to have been recruited by the CIA, and Omar Bayoumi, widely suspected to have been their handler.
Saudi security service operatives were present at both interviews, and CS-1 felt Thumairy was “less than 100% forthcoming” under examination.
While he spoke English fluently, he asked for “controversial” questions to be translated into Arabic. CS-1 believed this indicated Thumairy “was being deceptive.”
He also “seemed to react” when quizzed about his relationship with Omar Bayoumi.
Bayoumi met Hazmi and Mihdhar at a restaurant at Los Angeles International Airport immediately upon arrival in the U.S., then struck up a close bond with them.
Dana Lesemann asserts in the filing that the FBI had Bayoumi “under investigation prior to the 9/11 attacks,” and he “was receiving substantial sums of money from the Saudi Embassy in Washington DC.”
Funds were surreptitiously “funneled from accounts” belonging to Haifa bint Faisal, wife of Bandar bin Sultan, Riyadh’s ambassador to the U.S.
Before her firing, Lesemann’s investigation showed Bayoumi had several “no show” jobs while residing stateside—“where an employee is paid by a given employer but not required to actually show up for work.”
One “no show” job was with Saudi company Ercan, the offices of which he visited “rarely.” The filing notes that, two months after Bayoumi’s meeting with Hazmi and Mihdhar, his monthly salary from Ercan rose from $465 to $3,700.
Lesemann was convinced Fahad Thumairy “was an intelligence officer working for the Saudi government.”
In May 2003, Thumairy was denied entry to the U.S. on suspicion of links to terrorism, although he was neither arrested nor questioned over the matter.
It was not until 13 years later that former 9/11 commissioner John Lehman, Jr., broke cover, admitting the investigation uncovered “an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals”—some of them government employees—“in supporting the hijackers.”
In ensuring Riyadh’s wide-ranging involvement in 9/11 remained hidden from public view, Zelikow was effectively insulating Alec Station—the CIA’s Osama bin Laden tracking unit—which ultimately ran the operation to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar if not other hijackers via the Saudis, from scrutiny or consequence.
Concurrently, members of that unit were assisting in Zelikow’s cover-up, having been promoted since the attacks to oversee the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program.
“Draconian Measures”
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation into the torture program found CIA “enhanced interrogation” yielded no worthwhile intelligence whatsoever.
In many cases, detainees “fabricated” information, telling their interrogators what they thought they wanted to hear to limit their abuse.
The use of techniques honed under the Agency’s MK-ULTRA mind-control program suggests eliciting false testimony may have been a deliberate objective of the CIA.
These bogus disclosures could potentially be used to justify the War on Terror, while obscuring Alec Station’s recruitment of alleged hijackers.
Zelikow was also in a position to influence what CIA detainees were asked—and, in turn, the answers they gave. In 2008, an anonymous U.S. intelligence official revealed the Commission was permitted to give the Agency questions to pose to prisoners.
Its final report relied heavily on CIA interrogations, with Zelikow admitting “quite a bit, if not most,” of the official narrative of the 9/11 attacks was based on information acquired via torture.
In other words, politically convenient fabrications and falsehoods.
This fraudulent narrative endures today, unquestioned by news outlets and much of the public.
Universal mainstream omertà on the court filing’s explosive contents amply indicates the 9/11 cover-up remains in place, with the media functioning as active conspirators.
Since the Commission report’s release, Zelikow has largely faded into obscurity, the many public controversies around his role as executive director forgotten.
Yet, there are grounds to believe he may know even more than he suppressed while heading the Commission.
In November 1998, Zelikow co-authored an article for the Council on Foreign Relations’ journal Foreign Affairs.
In it, he predicted a devastating terror attack in the U.S. in the near future—such as the World Trade Center’s destruction. “Such an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history,” Zelikow forecast. “Like Pearl Harbor, this event would divide our past and future into a before and after.”
He went on to precisely outline all that followed 9/11:
“The United States might respond with draconian measures, scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects, and use of deadly force. More violence could follow, either further terrorist attacks or U.S. counterattacks. Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently…The greatest danger may arise if the threat falls into one of the crevasses in the government’s overlapping jurisdictions, such as the divide between ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ terrorism or ‘law enforcement versus ‘national security.’”
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About the Author
Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
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