BROWARD BULLDOG, INC., a Florida

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

Case No. ______

BROWARD BULLDOG, INC., a Florida ) corporation not for profit, and DAN ) CHRISTENSEN, founder, operator and editor ) of the BrowardBulldog.com website, ) ) Plaintiffs, ) ) v. ) ) U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, ) 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW ) Washington, DC 20530, and ) FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, ) 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW ) Washington, DC 20535, ) ) Defendants. ) )

Complaint to Enforce the Freedom of Information Act

Plaintiffs, Broward Bulldog, Inc. and Dan Christensen (collectively, “plaintiffs”), bring this suit against the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and Federal Bureau of Investigation

(“FBI”), and in support thereof, state as follows:

Preliminary Statement

1. On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, no less than 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda perpetrated four coordinated suicide attacks in the United

States, killing nearly 3000 innocent victims and causing immeasurable damage to the U.S. and global economies (thereafter, the “9/11 attacks”).

2. This is an action under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. §

552, as amended by the OPEN Government Act of 2007, and the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP U.S.C. § 2201, for declaratory and injunctive relief, for attorneys’ fees and expenses, and for

other appropriate relief. It seeks the disclosure and release of agency records concerning persons

who may have provided aid and assistance to the terrorists in the days and years leading to the

attack. The records sought are subject to public disclosure under FOIA, but the defendants have

nevertheless improperly withheld the documents from plaintiffs.

3. The records are sought to determine whether the FBI uncovered evidence that in

September, 2011, Saudi nationals living in Sarasota, Florida had close ties with high-ranking

Saudi government officials, supported al-Qaeda, provided material aid and comfort to the

terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks, and then left the United States abruptly just days

before the 9/11 attacks took place. Furthermore, the records are sought to determine whether the

FBI, in order to protect the Saudi government or for other reasons, concealed or withheld such

evidence from Congress, other U.S. government officials responsible for investigating the 9/11

attacks, the American public and news media.

Jurisdiction and Venue

4. This Court has both subject matter jurisdiction over this action and personal

jurisdiction over the parties pursuant to 5 U.S.C. §§ 552(a)(4)(B) and 552(a)(4)(E), and 28

U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 2201.

5. Venue lies in this district pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B) and 28 U.S.C.

§ 1391(b)(2).

Plaintiffs

6. Plaintiff Broward Bulldog, Inc., is a Florida corporation not for profit with its principal place of business in Broward County, Florida. It was established in 2009 to own and operate an Internet website under the name BrowardBulldog.org. Through the website, the

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP Broward Bulldog reports on news and public affairs in south Florida. Broward Bulldog’s activities include the reporting about persons in south Florida associated with the 9/11 attacks.

Among other things, Broward Bulldog has reported about an FBI investigation of the residents of

4224 Escondito Circle in Sarasota, Florida and their possible involvement in the 9/11 attacks.

7. Plaintiff Dan Christensen is the founder, operator, and editor of the Broward

Bulldog. Plaintiff Christensen is an award-winning investigative reporter formerly affiliated with The Miami Herald and Daily Business Review. His stories about Broward Sheriff Ken

Jenne’s private business dealings sparked a federal corruption investigation that landed Jenne in prison in 2007. His stories about hidden and falsified court records in Florida led to a pair of unanimous Florida Supreme Court decisions in 2007 and 2010 outlawing those practices. In

2000-2001, his reporting about a deadly gun-planting conspiracy and cover-up by Miami police resulted in the indictment of more than a dozen officers and significant governmental reform, including the establishment of Miami’s long sought civilian review panel.

8. Gene Cryer is chairman of Broward Bulldog’s Board of Directors. Cryer was editor and vice president of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for 15 years before retiring. He has worked as a reporter and editor at several Illinois newspapers. He is a former Pulitzer Prize juror who has won awards as a journalist, manager and short story writer.

9. The other members of the Broward Bulldog’s Board of Directors are:

• Ellen Soeteber. Soeteber was metro editor, associate managing editor and deputy editor of the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune. She became managing editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 1994, and editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2001. She and her staffs have won the Pulitzer Prize, the Education Writers Association’s Grand Prize, and the Society of Professional Journalists’ top award for deadline news.

• Kevin Boyd. Boyd was the managing editor of the Hollywood Sun. Boyd enjoyed a 17-year, award-winning career as a newspaper reporter and editor for such major news providers as the Chicago Tribune, Knight-

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP Ridder, Scripps Howard and United Press International.

• Florence Beth Snyder. Snyder was general counsel to Palm Beach Newspapers, Inc. Her media clients have included Miami’s Channel 7, USA Today, the Ft. Myers News-Press, and the Independent Florida Alligator.

• Darcie Lunsford. Lunsford was a senior editor of the South Florida Business Journal and held the office of national president-elect of the Society of Professional Journalists. She is also immediate past-president of the Society of Professional Journalists’ South Florida Pro Chapter. She is a former on-air correspondent for several news channels.

• Jay Alexander. Alexander founded InTownUSA Publishing in 2006. Intown411 is an integrated, interactive and pro-active medium discussing attractions, restaurants, night life and shopping.

• Kitty Barran. Barran was head of the media relations departments at Farmers Insurance Group in Los Angeles and Zurich Financial Services in London.

• Lisa Gibbs. As The Miami Herald’s former executive business editor, Gibbs supervised business coverage in print, radio and online. For two years during her tenure, the Herald’s Business section won a Best in Business award for General Excellence from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Before working for the Miami Herald, Gibbs was an investing writer for Money Magazine.

Defendants

10. Defendant FBI is a component of the Department of Justice, a Department of the

Executive Branch of the United States Government, and an agency within the meaning of 5

U.S.C. § 552(f)(1). The FBI has possession and control of the records requested by plaintiffs.

11. Defendant DOJ is a department of the Executive Branch of the United States

Government, and includes its component entity the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The

Department of Justice is an agency within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. § 552(f)(1).

Background

12. Anthony Summers is co-author of THE ELEVENTH DAY : THE FULL STORY OF 9/11

AND OSAMA BIN LADEN (“T HE ELEVENTH DAY ”), a nonfiction book published in 2011 by

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP Ballantine Books, and he is the author of seven additional critically acclaimed books. In 2012,

THE ELEVENTH DAY was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for History. The book also

won the Golden Dagger Award given by the Crime Writers’ Association for the Best Non-

Fiction Book on Crime of 2011. Summers was also a senior journalist for the BBC’s flagship

current-affairs program “Panorama.”

13. Robbyn Swan is co-author of THE ELEVENTH DAY . Swan is co-author with

Anthony Summers of two other bestselling books, and she has written articles for a wide array of magazines and newspapers, including Vanity Fair, Talk, Marie Claire, the Irish Times, Woman's

Day, the Sunday Independent (Dublin), the Daily Mail, the Gloss, and Easy Living.

14. During the summer of 2011, Summers approached plaintiffs to request their help

researching a particular FBI investigation. Summers advised that he had tracked the movements

of the 9/11 hijackers while preparing to write THE ELEVENTH DAY and knew that many of the hijackers had spent significant time in Florida. For instance, Summers reported in THE

ELEVENTH DAY that Ziad Jarrah, one of the 9/11 hijackers, went to a flight school at Florida

Flight Training Center in Venice, Florida—“a quiet retirement community on the Gulf Coast

near Sarasota.” He also reported that the leader of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, and another of

those training to pilot a hijacked plane, Marwan al-Shehhi, trained in Venice at Huffman

Aviation, just a few yards away from Florida Flight Training. THE ELEVENTH DAY at 294

(2011).

15. Official government reports also had reported a connection between the hijackers and Florida. See THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE

SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE , REPORT OF THE JOINT INQUIRY INTO THE

TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, S. REP . NO. 107-351, at 136 (2002) (hereafter,

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP “JOINT INQUIRY REPORT ”) (“On arriving in the United States, Jarrah proceeded to Venice,

Florida, where he began training at the Florida Flight Training Center.”); id. (reporting that

Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, two more hijackers, learned to fly both “at Jones

Aviation in Sarasota, Florida” and “at Sim Center and Pan Am International in Opa Locka,

Florida”); id. at 140 (reporting that at least twelve of the hijackers spent significant time in

Florida); id. at 141 (reporting that, in July 2000, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi opened a

joint account at Suntrust Bank in Venice, Florida, which served as “the primary funding for the

conspiracy”).

16. Summers advised plaintiffs that his investigation into the hijackers’ Florida ties

brought to his attention certain Saudi persons formerly residing at 4224 Escondito Circle in

Sarasota, Florida, which is less than 15 miles from the Florida Flight Training Center and from

the Suntrust Bank in Venice, Florida.

17. After plaintiffs conducted their own research related to these claims, the Broward

Bulldog published on its website the following 10 articles by Dan Christensen, Anthony

Summers, and/or Robbyn Swan commencing on September 8, 2011:

• FBI Found Direct Ties Between 9/11 Hijackers and Saudis Living in Florida; Congress Kept in Dark;

• Graham Asks Obama for Answers on Saudi 9/11 role; FBI Denies Sarasota Probe Found Ties to Plot;

• U.S. Rep. Castor Calls for Investigation of 9/11 Sarasota Connection; Graham Prods White House;

• FBI Says Again It Found No Ties Between Sarasota Saudis and 9/11 Hijackers; Won’t Release Details;

• Bob Graham Says FBI Has Not Proved that It Disclosed All It Knew About 9/11 to Congress;

• FBI Information Says Sarasota Saudi Praised bin Laden; Knew Broward Qaeda Suspect;

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP • Graham: FBI’s Public Statements Are in Conflict with Still Secret Records of Sarasota 9/11 Probe;

• Classified Documents Contradict FBI on Post 9/11 Probe of Saudis, Graham Says;

• New Questions About FBI Probe of Saudis’ Post-9/11 Exodus.

Copies of these articles are attached as Composite Exhibit 1.

18. The September 8, 2011, article by the Broward Bulldog was the first public disclosure of facts that triggered the FBI investigation and of the FBI investigation itself, and it was simultaneously published by The Miami Herald. Since then, other news agencies have published additional articles reporting on the Saudis who resided at 4224 Escondito Circle. 1

19. The information reported in the articles raise serious and important questions about whether Saudi nationals who resided at—and/or owned the home at—4224 Escondito

Circle provided support and comfort to the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks on the

United States; whether the United States government is aware of such support being provided by those individuals; and whether agencies of the United States Government have concealed information about this from Congress and from the American public in order to prevent

Congressional oversight and public scrutiny of the Government’s handling of these matters or for other reasons.

1 See, e.g. , Anthony Summers, Neil Tweedie & Dan Christensen, London-Based Oil Executive Linked to 9/11 Hijackers , TELEGRAPH , Feb. 18, 2012, at http://www.telegraph.co. uk/news/worldnews/september-11-attacks/9089896/London-based-oil-executive-linked-to-911- hijackers.html; Jamie Reno, Was the Saudi Government Involved in the 9/11 Terror Attacks? , DAILY BEAST , Mar. 13, 2012, at http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/13/was-the- saudi-government-involved-in-the-9-11-terror-attacks.html; Stephen Nohlgren & Susan Taylor Martin, New Evidence Links Saudi Arabia to 9/11 Hijackers: Graham , TAMPA BAY TIMES , Sept. 10, 2011, at http://www.tampabay.com/news/article1190773.ece; Tom Jackman, Did Arlington Have a More Ominous Link to 9-11? , WASH . POST , Sept. 12, 2011, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-state-of-nova/post/did-arlington-have-a-more- ominous-link-to-9-11/2011/09/12/gIQASuBCNK_blog.html.

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP 20. Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham, D-Fla., has asserted in a sworn declaration in

the federal multi-district litigation arising from allegations that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is

responsible for the 9/11 attacks that evidence linking the Saudi elite to the 9/11 hijackers “has

not been fully explored and pursued, to the considerable detriment of the American public.”

Notice of Filing of Corrected Exhibit to Affirmation of Sean P. Carter Transmitting Evidence in

Support of Plaintiffs' Reply in Support of Their Motion for Relief from the Final Judgments

Entered in Favor of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Saudi High Commission for Relief of

Bosnia & Herzegovina at 5, In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001 , No. 03 MDL 1570

(GBD) (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 24, 2012) (D.E. 2558).

21. Senator Graham also asserted in his declaration that “I am convinced that there

was a direct line between at least some of the terrorists who carried out the September 11th

attacks and the government of Saudi Arabia.” Id. at 3–4.

22. Senator Graham served as a member of the Florida State House of

Representatives, the Florida State Senate, and the United States Senate. He also served as

Governor of Florida. As a U.S. senator, Senator Graham served on the Senate Select Committee

on Intelligence for more than 10 years, and as chairman of that committee between June 6, 2001

and January 3, 2003. He co-chaired the Joint Inquiry into the Terrorist Attacks of September 11,

2001 by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select

Committee on Intelligence (hereafter, the “Joint Inquiry”). Since 2010, he has also served as a

member of the CIA External Advisory Board.

The Sarasota Home’s Connection to the Saudi Royal Family

23. Sarasota County official property records show that Esam A. Ghazzawi and his wife, Deborah G. Ghazzawi were the owners of the home at 4224 Escondito Circle in 2001.

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP SARASOTA CNTY . PROP . APPRAISER , 2012 Detail Information for Parcel 0113-01-0014 , http://www.sc-pa.com/search/parcel_detail.asp?propid=0113-01-014&year=2012.

24. Esam Ghazzawi reportedly is a Saudi citizen and the director of EIRAD

Management Limited. See COMPANIES IN THE UK, EIRAD Management Limited , http://www.companiesintheuk.co.uk/ltd/eirad-management.

25. Esam Ghazzawi also reportedly now lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/09/1015098/-Florida-al-Qaeda-fugitive-Esam-

Ghazzawi-linked-to-BCCI-and-two-dead-Saudi-Princes.

26. The Washington Post reported on September 9, 2011, that “Esam Ghazzawi’s name arose when investigators of the renowned corrupt bank BCCI were trying to recover assets from Saudi Prince Fahd bin Salman, and the prince argued that his assets were being held in another account under Esam Ghazzawi's name.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- state-of-nova/post/did-arlington-have-a-more-ominous-link-to-9-11/2011/09/12/gIQASuBCNK_ blog.html

27. Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, an expert on terrorism and corruption-related topics, testified before Congress that the Bank of Credit and Commerce International served as “the cash till for Hezbollah, the PLO, HAMAS, Abu Nidal, and other terrorist organizations. BCCI’s chief operating officer was Saudi billionaire, Khalid bin Mahfouz, banker to the Saudi royal family . . .

. In 1992, Mahfouz paid $225 million to settle criminal charges against him in New York arising from his control of BCCI.” Testimony of Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, Dir., Am.. Ctr. For

Democracy, House Comm. on the Judiciary: Subcommittee on Commercial & Admin. Law:

Hearing on Libel Tourism (Feb. 12, 2009), at 3, available at judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/

Ehrenfeld090212.pdf.

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP 28. Other Saudi government sources have reported that Prince Fahd bin Salman died suddenly at the age of 46 on July 24, 2001, shortly before the 9/11 attacks. ROYAL EMBASSY OF

SAUDI ARABIA , Prince Fahd bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Dies in Riyadh, July 25, 2001, http://www.saudiembassy.net/ archive/2001/news/page246.aspx.

29. Summers asserted in his book that John Kiriakou, a former CIA counterterrorism officer, told him that Abu Zubaydah, a senior Osama bin Laden aide who the United States had captured and waterboarded at least 83 times, named Prince Ahmed bin Salman as one of several

Saudi princes who was supporting al-Qaeda. THE ELEVENTH DAY at 418–19.

30. After Zubaydah reportedly identified Prince Ahmed bin Salman as supporting al-

Qaeda, the Saudi government reported that the Prince died of an alleged heart attack on July 22,

2002. See ROYAL EMBASSY OF SAUDI ARABIA , Death of Prince Ahmad bin Salman Announced ,

July 22, 2002, http://www.saudiembassy.net/archive/2002/ news/Page246.aspx (reporting the prince’s death).

31. Within days of Prince Ahmed bin Salman’s reported death, the Saudi government

reported that two other Saudi princes whom Zubaydah had named as supporting al-Qaeda also

died: Prince Sultan bin Faisal died in an alleged car accident, ROYAL EMBASSY OF SAUDI

ARABIA , Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki Killed in Car Accident , July 23, 2002, http://www.saudiembassy.net/archive/2002/news/Page245.aspx (reporting the prince’s death); and 25-year-old Prince Fahd bin Turki died of alleged dehydration in the Saudi desert, ROYAL

EMBASSY OF SAUDI ARABIA , Desert Tragedy Kills Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud Al-Kabeer ,

July 29, 2002, http://www.saudiembassy.net/archive/2002/news/ Page236.aspx (reporting the prince’s death).

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP The Sarasota Home

32. The home at 4224 Escondito Circle is a three-bedroom luxury home in the

Prestancia gated community.

33. Sarasota County property records show that on September 20, 1995, the home was deeded to the Ghazzawis. The records show the Ghazzawis paid $350,000 for the home.

SARASOTA CNTY . PROP . APPRAISER , 2012 Detail Information for Parcel 0113-01-0014 , http://www.sc-pa.com/search/parcel_detail.asp?propid= 0113-01-014&year=2012.

34. In 1995, the Ghazzawis’ daughter, Anoud Esam Ghazzawi, married Abdulaziz al-

Hijji in Sarasota, Florida. CLERK OF THE CIRCUIT COURT , SARASOTA CNTY , FLA ., Marriage

Inquiry Detail , http://www.clerk.co.sarasota.fl.us/marrapp/marrdtail.asp?tb_searchby=Bride+

Name&tb_searchfor=950984++++++.

35. After Anoud Esam Ghazzawi married al-Hijji, the couple lived at 4224 Escondito

Circle, according to neighbor, Larry Berberich, and/or other current or former Prestancia

residents.

36. Berberich lived in the same gated community as the al-Hijjis. Berberich lived at

3900 Losillas Drive in Sarasota, Florida from approximately November 1, 1986 to December 1,

2005. In 2005, he sold his home for $3,000,000. SARASOTA CNTY . PROP . APPRAISER , 2012

Detail Information for Parcel 0113-11-0006 , http://www.sc-pa.com/search/parcel_detail.asp?

propid=0113-11-0006& year=2012.

37. Berberich was also the homeowner’s association administrator and the head of

security for the gated community in which he and the al-Hijjis lived.

38. Plaintiffs learned from Berberich that the license plates of vehicles that had

passed through the Prestancia community’s north gate in the months before the 9/11 attacks,

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP coupled with the identification documents shown by incoming drivers on request, showed that cars driven by Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Walid al-Shehri, Ziad Jarrah, and Adnan

Shukrijumah had visited 4224 Escondito Circle.

39. Mohamed Atta has been identified by the U.S. Government as the leader of the

9/11 hijack team. According to government reports, the 9/11 hijack team consisted of nineteen individuals for four airplanes. Atta piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. JOINT INQUIRY REPORT , S. REP . NO. 107-351, at 435.

40. Walid al-Shehri is reportedly one of five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11.

Id.

41. Marwan al-Shehhi is reportedly the hijacker-pilot of United Airlines Flight 175.

Al-Shehhi crashed the plane into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Id.

42. Ziad Jarrah is reportedly the hijacker-pilot of United Airlines Flight 93. Id. After a passenger uprising, Flight 93 crashed into a field in a rural area in Somerset County,

Pennsylvania.

43. In a wanted poster, the FBI stated Adnan G. El Shukrijumah:

was indicted in the Eastern District of New York in July of 2010 for his alleged role in a terrorist plot to attack targets in the United States and the United Kingdom. The charges reveal that the plot against New York City's subway system, uncovered in September of 2009, was directed by senior Al-Qaeda leadership in Pakistan, and was also directly related to a scheme by Al-Qaeda plotters in Pakistan to use Western operatives to attack a target in the United States. El Shukrijumah is thought to have served as one of the leaders of Al- Qaeda's external operations program. http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/adnan-g.-el-shukrijumah. The FBI placed a $5 million bounty on Shukrijumah’s head. FBI, Most Wanted Terrorists: Adnan G. El Shukrijumah , at http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/adnan-g.-el-shukrijumah.

44. Wissam Taysir Hammoud, who pled guilty to plotting to kill a federal agent and

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP an informant, also admitted to having visited Abdulaziz al-Hijji. According to (1) statements

attributed to Wissam Taysir Hammoud in Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE)

reports from 2004 provided to the plaintiffs, and (2) subsequent interviews of Hammoud from

prison, Abdulaziz al-Hijji considered Osama bin Laden to be a hero.

45. Hammoud asserted, according to the FDLE reports and interviews, that Al-Hijji

encouraged him to fight with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

The Events Leading up to 9/11/2001

46. In mid-August 2001, automobile records show the al-Hijjis purchased a new car.

47. Berberich and other neighbors assert that the al-Hijjis, despite their purchase of this new car, departed their home—and this country—abruptly on approximately August 30,

2011, abandoning this new car. 2

48. Approximately twelve days after the al-Hijjis’ reported abrupt departure, al-Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks, killing approximately 3,000 innocent people. Official 9/11 Death

Toll Climbs by One , CBS NEWS , Sept. 10, 2009, http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-

4250100.html.

49. Government reports show that on August 25, 2001 or August 26, 2001—between the day that the al-Hijjis purchased their new car and the day that they abruptly left the country— the first of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers purchased a plane ticket for one of the 9/11 planes. See

THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT : FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST

2 Abdulaziz al-Hijji admits that his family left the United States shortly before the 9/11 attacks. See Anthony Summers, Neil Tweedie & Dan Christensen, London-based Oil Executive Linked to 9/11 Hijackers , Telegraph, Feb. 18, 2012, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ september-11-attacks/9089896/London-based-oil- executive-linked-to-911-hijackers.html (“[Abdulaziz al-Hijji] said his wife and children followed him out to Saudi Arabia a few weeks after he left.”).

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES , at 249 (authorized ed., 2004) (saying August 25); JOINT

INQUIRY REPORT , S. REP . NO. 107-351, at 140 (saying August 26).

50. On August 26, 2001, Walid al-Shehri reportedly purchased a plane ticket for

American Airlines Flight 11. Stipulation at 72, United States v. Moussaoui (No. 01-455-A)

(E.D. Va. Mar. 1, 2006), available at http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov/notablecases/moussaoui/

exhibits/ prosecution/ST00001A.pdf.

51. On August 28, 2001, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi reportedly purchased

their tickets for American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, respectively. Id. at

73.

52. On August 30, 2001, Ziad Jarrah reportedly purchased a ticket for United Airlines

Flight 93. Id. at 74. Ziad Jarrah was the second-to-last hijacker to purchase a ticket. Id.

53. Thus, on or about the day that Ziad Jarrah reportedly purchased his ticket for

Flight 93, the al-Hijjis reportedly left their luxury home, leaving their newly purchased car in the

driveway, along with one or two other cars, a house full of furniture, a refrigerator full of food,

clothes in the closet, and an open, empty safe in the master bedroom.

54. A website that allows professionals to publish their contact information shows

that Abdulaziz al-Hijji is currently a “Career Counselor at Saudi Aramco” and that he received a

“BS, MIS at the University of South Florida.” LINKED IN, Abdulaziz Alhijji , http://sa.linkedin.com/pub/abdulaziz-alhijji/12/687/6b3. Saudi Aramco is the state-owned oil company of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The FBI Investigation

55. Upon information and belief, one month after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI conducted a raid of the abandoned luxury home at 4224 Escondito Circle.

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP 56. Upon further information and belief, the FBI discovered during its October 2001 raid that the al-Hijjis had abandoned their home, leaving behind cars, furniture, food, clothes, and a safe and the FBI concluded that this warranted further investigation of a possible connection between the al-Hijjis and the Ghazzawis and the 9/11 attacks.

The 9/11 Commission and the Joint Inquiry

57. While the FBI investigation of the al-Hijjis and the Ghazzawis continued, the

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on

Intelligence conducted a Joint Inquiry into the activities of the U.S. intelligence community in connection with the 9/11 attacks.

58. According to Senator Graham, the three principal goals of the Joint Inquiry were:

(1) to conduct a factual review of what the intelligence community knew or should have known prior to September 11, 2001, regarding the international terrorist threat to the United States, including the scope and nature of any possible terrorist attacks against the United States and its interests; (2) to identify and examine any systemic problems that may have impeded the intelligence community from learning of or preventing these attacks; and (3) to make recommendations to improve the intelligence community's ability to identify and prevent future international terrorist attacks. Notice of Filing of Corrected Exhibit to Affirmation of Sean P.

Carter Transmitting Evidence in Support of Plaintiffs' Reply in Support of Their Motion for

Relief from the Final Judgments Entered in Favor of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Saudi

High Commission for Relief of Bosnia & Herzegovina at 3, In re Terrorist Attacks on September

11, 2001 , No. 03 MDL 1570 (GBD) (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 24, 2012).

59. During the course of the Joint Inquiry, Senator Graham asserted that the

Committees held nine public hearings and thirteen closed sessions in which classified

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP information was considered. The Joint Inquiry staff reviewed almost 500,000 pages of relevant

documents from the intelligence community agencies and other sources, conducted

approximately 300 interviews, and participated in numerous briefings and panel discussions that

involved almost 600 individuals from the intelligence agencies, other U.S. government

organizations, state and local entities, and representatives from the private sector and foreign

governments. Id.

60. The Joint Inquiry Committees completed their work and issued an 858-page

report in December 2002. S. REP . NO. 107-351 (2002). The report reflected that the DOJ and

FBI provided extensive information to the Committees, but the report contained no information

concerning the FBI’s investigation of the persons residing at 4224 Escondito Circle. The

declassified portions of the report noted that FBI Director Louis Freeh testified that the FBI

“‘was able to forge an effective working relationship with the Saudi police and Interior

Ministry,’” id. at 115, but that some U.S. Government officials “complained to the Joint Inquiry about a lack of Saudi cooperation in terrorism investigations both before and after the September

11 attacks.” Id. at 117.

61. In late 2002, House and Senate members involved in the Joint Inquiry reportedly agreed on the inadequacy of the congressional investigation, expressing concern about the time and resources spent on preliminary hearings, press leaks about intelligence failures, and the investigation’s narrow focus on intelligence failures. Victoria S. Shabo, Note, “We Are Pleased

To Report that the Commission Has Reached Agreement with the White House”: The 9/11

Commission and Implications for Legislative-Executive Information Sharing , 83 N.C. L. REV .

1037, 1042 (2005). The Congress and the White House then designated a ten-member bipartisan commission—the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (hereafter,

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP the “9/11 Commission”). Id. at 1043.

62. The 9/11 Commission was directed by law to investigate “facts and circumstances

relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, including those relating to intelligence and

law enforcement agencies. Pub. L. 107-306 (Nov. 27, 2002). The Commission reviewed more

than 2.5 million pages of documents and interviewed more than 1,200 individuals in 10

countries. 9/11 Commission Report at xv. (available at www.9-11commission.gov/

report/911Report.pdf).

63. While the 9/11 Commission was doing its work, the FBI continued its investigation of the persons at 4224 Escondito Circle.

64. Upon information and belief, in 2003, Anoud al-Hijji and Deborah Ghazzawi returned to Sarasota and were interrogated by FBI.

65. Upon further information and belief, the FBI asked Sarasota lawyer Scott McKay in 2003 to attempt to convince Esam Ghazzawi to return to the United States to sign documents as a ploy so that the FBI could interrogate Ghazzawi. The ploy failed when Ghazzawi refused and instead signed the documents at the American consulate in Beirut.

66. The 9/11 Commission issued its report on July 22, 2004. A page and a half of the report was devoted to “Flights of Saudi Nationals Leaving the United States.” Id. at 329-30. It stated the Commission found no evidence that any flights of a Saudi national took place after the

9/11 attacks and before the reopening of national airspace on September 13, 2001, or political intervention to facilitate Saudi departures. Id. at 329. The report also stated that the

Commission believed that “the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals who left the United States on charter flights.” Id.

67. The 9/11 Commission Report contained no mention of the FBI investigation of

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP the persons residing at 4224 Escondito Circle.

The Broward Bulldog Reports on the FBI Investigation

68. During the decade-long period that elapsed from the date the FBI initiated its investigation of the persons residing at 4224 Escondito Circle to the date the Broward Bulldog first reported about the investigation, the FBI maintained its silence about its investigation.

69. On September 9, 2011, the day after the Broward Bulldog and The Miami Herald first reported the story, the FBI publicly admitted having conducted an investigation into the persons residing at 4224 Escondito Circle. See Dan Christensen, U.S. Rep. Castor Calls for

Investigation of 9/11 Sarasota Connection; Graham Prods White House , BROWARD BULLDOG ,

Sept. 13, 2011, at http://www.browardbulldog.org/2011/09/u-s-rep-castor-calls-for-investigation- of-sarasota-911-connection-graham-talks-to-white-house/. In a short press release, the FBI’s

Miami office confirmed that there had been an investigation and claimed that it found no relation to the events of 9/11.

70. The FBI press release provided no details, but added that the FBI had disclosed to

Congress everything it knew about 9/11. Senator Graham called the FBI’s contention that it

disclosed everything it knew to Congress “total B.S.” See Robbyn Swan, New Questions About

FBI Probe of Saudis’ Post-9/11 Exodus, BROWARD BULLDOG , Mar. 14, 2012 at

http://www.browardbulldog.org/tag/fbi/. He said the FBI never disclosed that probe to

Congress, but should have. Senator Graham said the news about Sarasota “opens the door to a

new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11.” Id .

71. Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor, whose district includes Sarasota, reacted to the disclosure of the FBI investigation by calling on the U.S. House of Representatives

Intelligence Committee to investigate why the FBI did not disclose to Congress information it

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP learned about the Saudi couple at 4224 Escondito Circle. Dan Christensen, U.S. Rep. Castor

Calls for Investigation of 9/11 Sarasota Connection; Graham Prods White House, BROWARD

BULLDOG , Sept. 13, 2012 at http://www.browardbulldog.org/2011/09/u-s-rep-castor-calls-for- investigation-of-sarasota-911-connection-graham-talks-to-white-house/. “One of the great criticisms of the pre-9/11 intelligence operations,” Congresswoman Castor wrote in her letter to the Committee, “was the lack of cooperation and information sharing among agencies.” Id. She encouraged the Committee “to investigate the matter and determine exactly what was investigated and reported to Congress in 2001 and during the years of inquiry thereafter regarding these individuals.” Id.

72. Hamilton, co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, and Senator Graham, co-chair of the

Joint Inquiry, said they were not aware of the FBI’s Sarasota investigation. Senator Graham stated that he spoke with numerous other people involved with the joint inquiry and the 9/11

Commission who told him they had no heard of the FBI investigation, either. Dan Christensen &

Anthony Summers, Graham: FBI’s public statements are in conflict with still secret records of

Sarasota 9/11 probe, BROWARD BULLDOG , Feb. 20, 2012 at http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/02/graham-fbis-public-statements-are-in-conflict-with- still-secret-records-of-sarasota-911-probe/.

73. Senator Graham made efforts to verify FBI claims that it had disclosed the

Sarasota investigation to Congress. Specifically, he requested assistance from the FBI in

locating the Sarasota-related files from the National Archives, but after a few months it became

apparent that the FBI was “unwilling or unable” to help find the records. Id.

74. Nevertheless, Steven Ibison, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Tampa office,

publicly announced that al-Hijji “family members were located and interviewed” during the

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP agency's investigation into the 9/11 attacks, but that “there was no connection to the 9/11 plot.''

Susan Taylor Martin & Stephen Nohlgren, Questions over Saudis' Abrupt Exit from Sarasota

Still Lingering , TAMPA BAY TIMES , Sept. 25, 2011, at http://www.tampabay.com/news/ questions-over-saudis-abrupt-exit-from-sarasota-still-lingering/1193346.

75. Published reports regarding the FBI investigation, the FBI’s acknowledgment of

the investigation, and the FBI’s failure to disclose its investigation to the 9/11 Commission and

the Joint Inquiry, links between the al-Hijji and Ghazzawi families and the Saudi royal family,

and deaths of Saudi family members shortly before and after the 9/11 attacks have created the

appearance that the FBI may have concealed from Congress important information regarding

possible participants in the 9/11 attacks in order to avoid implicating high-ranking leaders of

Saudi Arabia, a critical ally of the United States in the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

Plaintiffs’ FOIA Request and Defendants’ Denial

76. By letter to the FBI dated September 26, 2011, plaintiffs submitted a Freedom of

Information Act (“FOIA”) request, through plaintiff Dan Christensen, for “copies of all FBI 302 reports about the matter, as well as all related investigative reports or FBI memos or correspondence. Likewise, [plaintiffs] request[ed] copies of reports or information the FBI obtained about the Al-Hij[j]is and/or the Ghazzawis from any foreign law enforcement organization or intelligence service, to include Saudi intelligence.” The letter is attached as

Exhibit 2.

77. By letter to plaintiff Christensen dated October 6, 2011, the FBI requested more information. The letter is attached as Exhibit 3.

78. By letter to the FBI dated October 27, 2011, Plaintiffs, through Plaintiff

Christensen, provided the additional information requested. Plaintiffs explained that “[r]elease is

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP justified because the attacks are a matter of intense public interest and this material ‘is likely to

contribute significantly to public understanding.’” Plaintiffs requested expedited processing.

The letter is attached as Exhibit 4.

79. By letter to Plaintiff Christensen dated November 7, 2011, the FBI denied

Plaintiffs’ request for expedited processing. The letter is attached as Exhibit 5.

80. By letter to the Office of Information Policy dated November 20, 2011, Plaintiffs,

through Plaintiff Christensen, appealed the FBI’s denial of expedited processing. The letter is

attached as Exhibit 6.

81. By letter to Plaintiff Christensen dated December 22, 2011, the FBI granted

Plaintiffs’ request for expedited processing. The letter is attached as Exhibit 7. The FBI cited

28 C.F.R. § 16.5(d)(1)(ii) and (iv). Section 16.5(d)(1)(ii) permits expedition when there is “[a]n

urgency to inform the public about an actual or alleged federal government activity, if made by a

person primarily engaged in disseminating information,” and § 16.5(d)(1)(iv) permits expedition

when there is “[a] matter of widespread and exceptional media interest in which there exist

possible questions about the government’s integrity which affect public confidence.”

82. By letter to Plaintiff Christensen dated February 7, 2012, the FBI denied

Plaintiffs’ request for information, citing only FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7C, 5 USC §§552(b)(6)

& (b)(7)(C). The letter is attached as Exhibit 8.

83. Plaintiffs, through Plaintiff Christensen, thereafter appealed the FBI’s denial of their request. The appeal letter is attached as Exhibit 9.

84. By letter to Plaintiff Christensen dated May 23, 2012, the Office of Information

Policy denied Plaintiffs’ appeal, citing only FOIA Exemptions 7C, 5 USC §§552(b)(7)(C), and not Exemption 6. The letter is attached as Exhibit 10.

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP 85. To date, the FBI has not provided the records requested by Plaintiffs in their

FOIA request, notwithstanding FOIA’s requirement of an agency response within twenty (20) working days.

86. Plaintiffs have exhausted the applicable administrative remedies with respect to their FOIA request.

87. Plaintiffs have retained undersigned counsel to bring this action and have incurred attorneys’ fees and expenses in bringing this action.

Count I

88. Plaintiffs reallege and incorporate by reference the allegations of paragraphs 1

through 87.

89. Plaintiffs reasonably described to defendants the records requested and did so in

accordance with published rules stating the time, place, fees (if any), and procedures to be

followed.

90. Defendants have wrongfully withheld the requested records from Plaintiffs. 5

U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(A).

91. Disclosure of some or all of the records requested would not constitute an

unwarranted invasion of personal privacy because the persons identified in the records do not

have a cognizable personal privacy interest in the contents of some or all the records or,

alternatively, if they do, a legitimate public interest in the contents of some or all of the records

outweighs any infringement of such personal privacy interest that might result from disclosure of

the records. See, e.g. , Karantsalis v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice , 635 F.3d 497, 502 (11th Cir. 2011)

(“The Supreme Court has explained that an invasion [of privacy] is unwarranted where (1) the information sought implicates someone's personal privacy, (2) no legitimate public interest

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP outweighs infringing the individual's personal privacy interest , and (3) disclosing the

information ‘could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal

privacy.’”) (emphasis added (quoting U.S. Dep't of Justice v. Reporters’ Comm. for Freedom of

Press , 489 U.S. 749, 762 (1989))); see also Bennett v. Drug Enforcement Admin. , 55 F. Supp. 2d

36 , 42-43 (D.D.C. 1999) (rejecting the agency’s Exemption 7(C) argument because “there is a

substantial public interest in exposing any wrongdoing in which [the DEA and its informant]

may have engaged”).

92. The public has a legitimate interest in knowing (1) whether the Saudi nationals who resided at and/or owned the home at 4224 Escondito Circle provided support to the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks on the United States; (2) whether the United States government is aware of such support being provided by those individuals; and (3) whether the

DOJ and the FBI have concealed information about this investigation from Congress and from the American public.

Requested Relief

WHEREFORE, plaintiffs demand the following relief:

A. An order requiring the defendants to produce the requested records for in camera inspection by the Court;

B. An order requiring the defendants to acknowledge that the records requested exist and to provide the Court and the plaintiffs with an index of the documents showing the date, source, recipient, subject matter and nature of each document in sufficient detail to permit the plaintiffs to argue effectively against the claimed exemption and for the court to assess the applicability of the claimed exemptions;

C. An order requiring defendants to disclose the requested records in their entirety

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP and to make copies available to Plaintiffs;

D. An order providing expeditious proceedings in this action;

E. An order awarding plaintiffs pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(E) their costs, expenses, and reasonable attorneys fees incurred in this action;

F. An order pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(F) determining whether the circumstances surrounding the withholding of the records at issue raise questions whether agency personnel acted arbitrarily or capriciously with respect to the withholding.

G. Such other relief as the Court may deem just and proper.

Hunton & Williams LLP Attorneys for Broward Bulldog, Inc. and Dan Christensen

By Thomas R. Julin & Patricia Acosta Florida Bar No. 325376 & 614599 1111 Brickell Avenue - Suite 2500 Miami, FL 33131 305.810.2516 Fax 2516 [email protected]

HUNTON & WILLIAMS LLP

EXHIBIT 1

browardbulldog.org http://www.browardbulldog.org/2011/09/fbi-found-direct-ties-between-911-hijackers- and-saudis-living-in-florida-congress-kept-in-dark/

FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in Florida; Congress kept in dark

By Anthony Summers and Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org

Just two weeks before the 9/11 hijackers slammed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, members of a Saudi family abruptly left their luxury home near Sarasota, leaving a brand new car in the driveway, a refrigerator full of food, fruit on the counter — and an open safe in the master bedroom.

In the weeks to follow, law enforcement agents not only discovered the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, but phone calls were linked between the home and those who carried out the death flights — including leader Mohamed Atta — in discoveries never before revealed to the public.

Ten years after the deadliest attack of terrorism on United Airlines Flight 175 hits the World Trade U.S. soil, new information has emerged that shows the Center's south tower FBI found troubling ties between the hijackers and residents in the upscale community in southwest Florida, but the investigation wasn’t reported to Congress or mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who cochaired the bipartisan congressional Joint Inquiry into the attacks, said he should have been told about the findings, saying it “opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11. … No information relative to the named people in Sarasota was disclosed.”

The U.S. Justice Department, the lead agency that investigated the attacks, refused to comment, saying it will discuss only information already released.

The Saudi residents then living at the stylish home, Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii and his wife Anoud, could not be reached, nor could the then owner of the house, Esam Ghazzawi, who is Anoud’s father. The house was sold in 2003, records show.

GRAHAM HAS QUESTIONS

For Graham, who served as Florida’s governor from 1979 to 1987, the connections between the hijackers and residents raise questions about whether other Saudi nationals in Florida knew of the impending attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

The FBI investigation began the month after 9/11 when Larry Berberich, senior administrator and security officer of the gated community known as Prestancia, reported a bizarre event that took place two weeks before the hijackings of four passenger jets that originated in Boston, Newark and Washington. The couple, living with their small children at the three-bedroom home at 4224 Escondito Circle, had left in a hurry in a white van, probably on Aug. 30.

They abandoned three recently registered vehicles, including a brand-new Chrysler PT Cruiser, in the garage and driveway.

After 9/11, Berberich said he had “a gut feeling” the people at the home may have had something to do with the attacks, prompting the FBI’s probe that would eventually link the hijackers to the house.

As an advisor to the Sarasota County sheriff — Berberich was with the group that received President Bush during his aborted visit to a Sarasota school on the morning of 9/11. He alerted sheriff’s deputies.

Patrick Gallagher, one of the Saudis’ neighbors, had become suspicious even earlier, and had fired off an email to the FBI on the day of the attacks. Gallagher said law enforcement officers arrived and began an investigation, with agents swarming “all over the place, in their blue jackets,” he recalled.

Jone Weist, president of the group that managed Prestancia, confirmed the arrival of the FBI, which requested copies of the Saudis’ financial transactions involving the house.

SIGNS OF A FAST EXIT

Berberich and a senior counterterrorism agent said they were able to get into the abandoned house, ultimately finding “there was mail on the table, dirty diapers in one of the bathrooms … all the toiletries still in place … all their clothes hanging in the closet … TVs … opulent furniture, equal or greater in value than the house … the pool running, with toys in it.”

“The beds were made … fruit on the counter … the refrigerator full of food. … It was like they went grocery shopping. Like they went out to a movie … [But] the safe was open in the master bedroom, with nothing in it, not a paper clip. … A computer was still there. A computer plug in another room, and the line still there. Looked like they’d taken [another] computer and left the cord.”

The counterterrorism officer, who requested his name not be disclosed, said agents went on to make troubling discoveries: Phone records and the Prestancia gate records linked the house on Escondito Circle to the hijackers.

In addition, three of the four future hijackers had lived in Inside the home at 4224 Escondito Circle Venice — just 10 miles from the house — for much of the year before 9/11.

Atta, the leader, and his companion Marwan al-Shehhi, had been learning to fly small airplanes at Huffman Aviation, a flight school on the edge of the runway at Venice Municipal Airport.

A block away, at Florida Flight Training, accomplice Ziad Jarrah was also taking flying lessons. All three obtained their pilot licenses and afterwards, in the months that led to 9/11, spent much of their time traveling the state, including stints in Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale and Delray Beach, among other areas. The counterterrorism agent said records of incoming and outgoing calls made at the Escondito house were obtained from the phone company under subpoena.

Agents were able to conduct a link analysis, a system of tracking calls based on dates, times and length of conversations — finding the Escondito calls dating back more than a year, “lined up with the known suspects.”

The links were not only to Atta and his hijack pilots, the agent said, but to 11 other terrorist suspects, including Walid al-Shehhri, one of the men who flew with Atta on the first plane to strike the World Trade Center.

Another was Adnan Shukrijumah, a former Miramar resident identified as having been with Atta in the spring of 2001. Shukrijumah is still at large and is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

But it was the gate records at the Prestancia development that produced the most telltale information.

People who arrived by car had to give their names and the home’s address they were visiting. Gate staff would sometimes ask to see a driver’s license and note the name, said Berberich.

LICENSE PLATES PHOTOGRAPHED

More importantly, he added, the license plates of cars pulling through the gate were photographed.

Atta is known to have used variations of his name, but the license plate of the car he owned was on record.

The vehicle and name information on Atta and Jarrah fit that of drivers entering Prestancia on their way to visit the home at 4224 Escondito Circle, said Berberich and the counterterrorism officer.

Sarasota County property records identify the owners of the house at the time as Ghazzawi and his American- born wife Deborah, both with a post office box in al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, and another address in the capital, Riyadh.

Ghazzawi was described as a middle-aged financier and interior designer, the owner of many properties, including several in the United States, said the counterterrorism agent.

While Ghazzawi visited the house, the people living there were his daughter Anoud and her husband al- Hiijjii, who appeared to be in his 30s and once identified himself as a college student, said Berberich, who met the son-in-law.

The couple’s sudden departure two weeks before 9/11 was tracked in detail by the FBI after the attacks, the counterterrorism agent said.

First, they traveled to a Ghazzawi property in Arlington, Va., then — with Esam Ghazzawi — via Dulles airport and London’s Heathrow, to Riyadh.

The counterterrorism agent said Ghazzawi and al-Hiijjii had been on a watch list at the FBI and that a U.S. agency involved in tracking terrorist funds was interested in both men even before 9/11.

“464 was Ghazzawi’s number,” the officer said. “I don’t remember the other man’s number.”

About a year after the family abandoned the home, the FBI made an attempt to lure the owner back. Scott McKay, a Sarasota lawyer for the Prestancia homeowners’ association in its claim for unpaid dues on the property, said the FBI tried to get him to bring the Saudis back for the transaction.

“They didn’t say you must do this. It was more like, ‘But we’d really, really like you to make this happen,’” said McKay said.

McKay said he tried to get the Ghazzawis to sign the necessary documents in person, but the ploy failed because the documents could legally be signed elsewhere using a notary. Records show Ghazzawi’s signature was notarized by the vice consul of the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in September 2003. Deborah Ghazzawi’s signature was notarized in Riverside County, Calif.

CONGRESSIONAL INQUIRY KEPT IN DARK

During an interview on Sunday, Graham said he was surprised he wasn’t told about the probe when he was co-chair of Congress’ Joint Inquiry into 9/11 — even though he was especially alert to terrorist information relating to Florida.

“At the beginning of the investigation,” he said, “each of the intelligence agencies, including the FBI, was asked to provide all information that agency possessed in relation to 9/11.”

The fact that the FBI did not tell the Inquiry about the Florida discoveries, Graham says, is similar to the agency’s failure to provide information linking members of the 9/11 terrorist team to other Saudis in California until congressional investigators discovered it themselves.

The Inquiry did nevertheless accumulate a “very large” file on the hijackers in the United States, and later turned it over to the 9/11 Commission. “They did very little with it,” Graham said, Former Florida U.S. Senator Bob “and their reference to Saudi Arabia is almost cryptic Graham sometimes. … I never got a good answer as to why they did not pursue that.”

The final 28-page section of the Inquiry’s report, which deals with “sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers,” was entirely blanked out. It was kept secret from the public on the orders of former President George W. Bush and is still withheld to this day, Graham said.

This in spite of the fact that Graham and his Republican counterpart, U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, both concluded the release of the pages would not endanger national security.

The grounds for suppressing the material, Graham believes, were “protection of the Saudis from embarrassment, protection of the administration from political embarrassment … some of the unknowns, some of the secrets of 9/11.”

Anthony Summers is co-author of The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden, published last month by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House. Dan Christensen is the editor of the Broward Bulldog.

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browardbulldog.org http://www.browardbulldog.org/2011/09/graham-asks-obama-for-answers-on-saudi- role-in-911-fbi-denies-sarasota-probe-found-ties-to-plot/

Graham asks Obama for answers on Saudi 9/11 role; FBI denies Sarasota probe found ties to plot

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers, BrowardBulldog.org

Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham has called on President Obama to use his authority to get answers to long-lingering questions about possible Saudi involvement in 9/11.

“If we are truly going to be respectful of the victims of 9/11 one of the things the president and this administration must do is get to the bottom of these questions,” said Graham, who co- chaired Congress’s bi-partisan Joint Inquiry into the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Graham’s remarks followed a Thursday story in Broward Bulldog about a 2001 investigation by the FBI that reportedly found direct ties between the hijackers and a Saudi family Former U.S. Senator Bob Graham who abruptly abandoned their luxury home near Sarasota two weeks before the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. Sources on and off the record said agents found the home was visited by vehicles used by the hijackers, including leader Mohamed Atta.

Phone calls were also linked between the home and the hijackers, the sources said.

That “significant” information was not reported to Congress as it should have been, Graham said.

Friday night, the FBI in Miami issued its first public statement on the matter. It confirmed the existence of the investigation, but said it was “resolved and determined not to be related to any threat nor connected to the 9/11 plot.” No details were provided.

The statement released by Special Agent Michael D. Leverock added, “All of the documentation pertaining to the 9/11 investigation was made available to the 9/11 commission and the (Joint Inquiry).”

Reached Saturday afternoon, Graham said the FBI’s assertion that it had made all of its 9/11 information available to Congress was not credible.

“Nobody I’ve spoken to with the Joint Inquiry says we got any information on this,” Graham said. “It’s total B.S. It’s the same thing we’ve been getting from the FBI for the past 10 years.”

SIMILARITIES IN SAN DIEGO

The former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said what is now known to have happened in Sarasota “shares a common outline” with contemporaneous events involving a pair of 9/11 Saudi- born hijackers – Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi – across the country in San Diego, Ca.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Atta was born in Egypt. The remaining hijackers were from Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates. They were all affiliated with al-Qaeda and died along with the passengers and crew of the four hijacked commercial airliners.

The Joint Inquiry report and the 9/11 Commission report describe how another Saudi living in San Diego, Omar al-Bayoumi, provided extensive assistance to the hijackers, including housing. The report says al-Bayoumi had access to “seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia” and that “one of the FBI’s best sources in San Diego” reported that he thought al-Bayoumi was an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power. The report said the FBI also learned that al-Bayoumi “has connections to terrorist elements.”

“There is no evidence that Bayoumi knew what was going on; just that he’d been told to take care of these men,” Graham said in an interview.

The home at 4224 Escondito Drive in a gated community near Sarasota now linked to the hijackers was owned by a Saudi couple, Esam Ghazzawi and his American born wife, Deborah. The residents were their daughter, Anoud, and her husband Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii.

NAMES ON A WATCH LIST

A counterterrorism agent said Ghazzawi, a middle-aged financier and interior designer, and al-Hiijii were both on a watch list at the FBI and that a U.S. agency involved in tracking terrorist funds was interested in both men prior to 9/11.

Graham said there is also a lack of evidence “as to whether Saudi leadership knew why these people were here. What we do know, however, is that without being very curious or inquisitive the Saudi monarchy made these services available to persons who ultimately exposed themselves in death as being hijackers.”

The Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to telephone messages and emailed questions seeking comment.

Bayoumi left the U.S. two months before the Sept. 11 attacks. In June 2010, Graham sought to meet with Bayoumi while traveling in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. “I asked and I was told he’d moved to Jeddah,” Graham said.

Graham has long believed that Bayoumi was not the only Saudi in the U.S. to provide support for the hijackers.

“What Sarasota adds to me is that, yes, there was a network… that it may have involved other people who were known to be Omar al-Bayoumi very loyal to the crown and were willing to undertake this responsibility for protecting and facilitating the hijackers in different areas.”

Graham has long contended the U.S. has engaged in a cover up of information about possible Saudi involvement in 9/11 to protect America’s relationship with the oil-rich kingdom. That includes a decision by President George W. Bush to redact the final 28-page section of the Joint Inquiry’s report dealing with “sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.”

This week’s news of what happened in Sarasota is further evidence of a cover up, he said.

“It’s fairly easy to get why George Bush kept this information from the public. It’s much harder to understand why the Obama Administration keeps this information from the public. I think they need to be pushed,” Graham said.

WHITE HOUSE IS MUM

The White House did not respond to phone calls or detailed requests for comment emailed over two days.

What’s needed now, Graham said, is an effort by federal investigators to determine whether the hijackers had Saudi “overseers” in other locations that they are known to have frequented during the run up to the attacks, including New Jersey and South Florida.

“We need to be looking in the places in Southeast Florida where they actually lived and used as a base of operations – Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties. For instance, one or more of the hijackers used that big Air Bus simulator on Northwest 36th Street across the street from Miami International Airport,” he said.

Graham, a former Florida governor, said “there needs to be a sense of urgency” in any renewed investigation into possible Saudi complicity.

“If they provided this kind of support for an operation in 2001, do they have the same capability to do it in 2011?” he said.

1. FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in Florida; Congress kept in dark browardbulldog.org http://www.browardbulldog.org/2011/09/u-s-rep-castor-calls-for-investigation-of- sarasota-911-connection-graham-talks-to-white-house/

U.S. Rep. Castor calls for investigation of 9/11 Sarasota connection; Graham prods White House

September 13, 2011 at 12:05 am Filed under 9/11 {2 comments}

By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org

Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor Monday called on the House Intelligence Committee to investigate why the FBI did not disclose to Congress information it learned about a Saudi couple living in southwest Florida with ties to the 9/11 hijackers.

The Saudis came to the FBI’s attention after neighbors reported they’d suddenly fled their home near Sarasota two weeks before the 2001 terrorist attacks.

“One of the great criticisms of the pre-9/11 intelligence operations,” Castor wrote in her letter to the committee’s two senior members, “was the lack of cooperation and information sharing among U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor agencies.”

Castor’s district includes Sarasota.

“I encourage you to investigate the matter and determine exactly what was investigated and reported to Congress in 2001 and during the years of inquiry thereafter regarding these individuals,” she wrote.

The letter was sent to Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Michigan and ranking Democrat Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland.

The existence of the FBI’s investigation into what went on at the three-bedroom luxury home at 4224 Escondito Circle in a gated-community near Sarasota was disclosed in simultaneous reports in Broward Bulldog and The Miami Herald on Thursday.

Former Florida Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who co-chaired a bipartisan Joint Inquiry into the attacks, said the FBI never disclosed that probe to Congress, but should have. He said the news about Sarasota “opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11.”

The FBI’s Miami office released a brief statement Friday confirming the investigation, and stating that no relation to the events of 9/11 was found. The statement provided no details, but added that the bureau had disclosed to Congress everything it knew about 9/11. Graham later called that assertion “total B.S.”

On Monday afternoon, in an appearance on the Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC Graham announced that he spoke with President Obama’s counterterrorism advisor. “I laid out what we now know about what occurred in Sarasota and urged him to pursue an investigation in this matter, both in Sarasota and elsewhere,” Graham said.

In an earlier in interview with Broward Bulldog, Graham said he intended to specifically alert Obama’s top counter terrorism advisor, John Brennan.

The home the agents raided in October 2001 when it was owned by a Saudi couple, Esam Ghazzawi and his American born wife, Deborah. The residents were their daughter, Anoud, and her husband Abdulazzi al-Hiijjii. The house was sold in 2003, records show.

Two weeks before the 9/11 hijackers slammed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center, the al- Hiijjii’s hurriedly left their luxury home – leaving behind a brand new car in the driveway, a house full of furniture, a refrigerator full of food, clothes in the closet — and an open, empty safe in the master bedroom.

A security administrator for the Prestancia development, Larry Berberich, and a counterterrorism agent said that checks of license plates and phone records linked 9/11 hijackers, including leader Mohamed Atta.

On Monday, Graham told a nationwide audience that the FBI also did not disclose to the Joint Inquiry information about another pre-9/11 incident involving local Saudi support for a pair of Saudi-born hijackers – Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi – in San Diego, Ca.

“It was not because the FBI gave us the information. We had a very curious and effective investigator who found out,” Graham said.

The Joint Inquiry report and the 9/11 Commission report describe how Omar al-Bayoumi, who Graham said the FBI had labeled a Saudi “agent,” provided extensive assistance to the hijackers, including flight training. The Joint Inquiry report says al-Bayoumi had access to “seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia” and that “one of the FBI’s best sources in San Diego” reported that he thought al- Bayoumi was an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power. The report said the FBI also had determined that al-Bayoumi “has connections to terrorist elements.”

Graham said President Obama must find out what the FBI know about possible support contacts between Saudis and the 19 hijackers in other places they operated, including Phoenix, Az; Arlington, Va., Paterson, N.J. and South Florida. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia.

“What was happening in those places?” Graham said. “I believe these are questions for which there are definitive answers, and that we have been denied that information.”

1. Graham asks Obama for answers on Saudi 9/11 role; FBI denies Sarasota probe found ties to plot 2. FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in Florida; Congress kept in dark 3. Fort Lauderdale’s historic Shippey House receives a two-week reprieve from demolition

Dan Christensen tagged this post with: 9/11, al-Hijji, Castor, FBI, Graham, reporters, Sarasota Read 233 articles by Dan Christensen Post a Comment browardbulldog.org http://www.browardbulldog.org/2011/09/fbi-says-again-it-found-no-ties-between- sarasota-saudis-and-911-hijackers-but-wont-release-details/

FBI says again it found no ties between Sarasota Saudis and 9/11 hijackers; won’t release details

By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org

A top Florida FBI agent said Thursday that members of a Saudi family living quietly near Sarasota were questioned after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but no evidence was found that linked them to the hijackers.

A week after Broward Bulldog and The Miami Herald published a story showing ties between the family and some of the terrorists, Tampa’s head FBI agent, Steven Ibison, released a statement Thursday saying the FBI investigated “suspicions surrounding” the Sarasota home, but never found evidence tying the family members to the suspects.

“There was no connection found to the 9/11 plot,” said the statement, released to the St. Petersburg Times. The prepared statement provided no details. Tampa FBI Agent- in-Charge Steven E. Ibisen The agency’s statement “to correct the public record” comes just days after Democratic Congresswoman Kathy Castor asked for a House investigation into the events surrounding the Sarasota family, which abruptly left the home days before the 9/11 attacks, leaving behind three vehicles, food in the refrigerator and toys in the pool.

The FBI’s official version, the second in a week, conflicts sharply with reports from people who worked at the homeowners’ association and a counter-terrorism officer who joined the investigation.

A senior administrator at the luxury community told reporters that cars used by the 9/11 hijackers — the tag numbers noted by security at the gate — drove to the entrance requesting to visit the family at various times before the terrorist attacks. One of the cars was linked to terrorist leader Mohamed Atta, said administrator Larry Berberich.

In addition, a counterterrorism officer who requested anonymity said agents also linked phone calls between the home and known hijacking suspects in the year before the attacks.

The FBI’s response to the discovery has drawn criticism from U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, who said he was never told of the Sarasota investigation when he was co-chair of the congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks. Thursday’s FBI statement said the agency provided all the information to the congressional inquiry.

“Nobody I’ve spoken with from the Joint Inquiry says we got any information on this,” Graham said. “It’s total B.S. It’s the same thing we’ve been getting from the FBI for the past 10 years.”

Graham, who appeared on national television this week, added that the FBI failed to provide information in the years after 9/11 linking members of the terrorist team to other Saudis in California until congressional investigators discovered it themselves.

“It was not because the FBI gave us the information. We had a very curious and effective investigator who found out,” Graham told MSNBC.

In an appearance Monday on MSNBC, Graham said he spoke with President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism advisor. He said he has gone to the White House’s chief of counterterrorism to ask that the administration look into the Sarasota case.

The FBI, which has not released any results of its investigation, said family members who lived in the home owned by Saudi financier Esam Ghazzawi were tracked down and interviewed about the case after the terrorist attacks.

It wasn’t clear from Thursday’s statement whether the FBI or Saudi intelligence conducted the interrogations. The family was believed to have flown to Saudi Arabia after briefly stopping in Virginia days before 9/11.

The Joint Inquiry shut down at the end of 2002, apparently without ever hearing about this from the FBI. But Sarasota attorney Scott McKay, who represented the Prestancia homeowners’ association in a claim for unpaid dues when the property was sold in 2003, said the FBI asked him to try and get the Saudis to return to Sarasota so they could be questioned.

McKay said he tried on behalf of the agency, but Ghazzawi was able to sign his name under a notary at the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in September 2003.

1. FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in Florida; Congress kept in dark 2. Graham asks Obama for answers on Saudi 9/11 role; FBI denies Sarasota probe found ties to plot 3. U.S. Rep. Castor calls for investigation of 9/11 Sarasota connection; Graham prods White House browardbulldog.org http://www.browardbulldog.org/2011/11/bob-graham-says-fbi-has-not- substantiated-claims-that-it-disclosed-all-it-knew-about-911-to-congress/

Bob Graham says FBI has not proved that it disclosed all it knew about 9/11 to Congress

November 8, 2011 at 6:16 am Filed under 9/11 {2 comments}

By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org

In September, news about a previously unknown FBI investigation that found ties between 9/11 hijackers and a Saudi family living near Sarasota led the FBI to deny there was any connection and assert that it made all of its files available to congressional investigators a decade ago.

But two months on, the FBI has been unable or unwilling to substantiate that it disclosed any information regarding its Sarasota investigation to Congress, says former Florida Senator Bob Graham, who co-chaired Congress’s bipartisan Joint Inquiry into the terrorist attacks.

“My suspicion is that either, one, the documents don’t exist; two, that if they do exist they can’t find them; or three, they did find them and they did not substantiate the statements that they’ve made and that they are withholding them,” said Graham. He has long contended the FBI stonewalled Congress about what it knows about possible Saudi support for the 9/11 hijackers.

The FBI investigation began shortly after 9/11 when residents of the gated community of Prestancia, south of Sarasota, called to report the abrupt departure from their luxury home of a Saudi family about two weeks before four passenger jets originating in Boston, Newark and Washington were hijacked. The family left behind a Chevy Blazer in the driveway, a Chrysler PT Cruiser in the garage, clothes in the closet and a refrigerator full of food.

Neighbors said agents searched the house and hauled away bags of belongings. But the most important information came when the FBI examined gatehouse security logs and photographs of license plates, according to then-homeowner’s association administrator Larry Berberich and a counterterrorism agent involved in the investigation.

They said the security records revealed that the home was visited by vehicles used by 9/11 terrorist leader Mohamed Atta and fellow hijacker-pilot Ziad Jarrah. Atta piloted the first plane to strike the World Trade Center. Jarrah was at the controls when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pa.

The counterterrorism agent, who asked that his name not be disclosed, said an analysis of phone records found additional links between the residence and other hijackers and terrorist suspects, including Adnan Shukrijumah, a former Miramar resident who is on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

FBI DENIES TIES BETWEEN FAMILY AND HIJACKERS Stories about the Sarasota investigation were published jointly by Broward Bulldog and The Miami Herald in September. The Justice Department initially declined to comment. Later, FBI agents in Tampa and Miami issued separate statements denying that any connection existed between the family and the terrorists.

“There was no connection found to the plot,” Tampa FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge Steven E. Ibisen said in a statement released to the St. Petersburg Times on Sept. 15. No details were provided.

Graham, a Democrat who also served as Florida’s governor from 1979 to 1987, has said that he and other members and staff of the Joint Inquiry were not made aware of the Sarasota investigation by the FBI. He said in September that news of it “opens the door to a new chapter of investigation as to the depth of the Saudi role in 9/11.”

With the assistance of the Senate Intelligence Committee he once chaired, Graham asked the FBI in September to provide him with file numbers about the Sarasota inquiry and the dates that those records were provided to congressional investigators. With that information, the committee’s records custodian could locate them in the National Archives.

At one point, Graham said, FBI agents produced 10 file numbers. But when intelligence committee personnel reviewed those files “it was their determination that there was no information in any of the 10 files that was relevant” to the Sarasota investigation, he said.

After failing to meet several subsequent self-imposed deadlines, Graham said, “The FBI asked (that) instead of finding the documents could they brief us instead. I said, ‘No, that would not be acceptable.’”

FBI agent David Couvertier, a spokesman for the Tampa office, did not respond when asked Monday to explain why the agency has yet to provide Graham with the information that’s needed to locate the Sarasota records in the Joint Inquiry’s old files.

The FBI also denied a recent Freedom of Information request by Broward Bulldog and The Miami Herald that sought agency records about agents’ findings in Sarasota.

“The release of records…would result in an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” of the Saudi nationals who owned or lived at the home, said the Oct. 6 denial letter signed by David M. Hardy, an official in the FBI’s Records Bob Graham Management Division.

The Saudis who lived in the Prestancia home at 4224 Escondito Circle were Abdulaziz A. Al-Hijji, his wife, Anoud, and their small children. The home was owned by Anoud’s parents, Esam and Deborah Ghazzawi. Ghazzawi was described as a middle-aged financier and interior designer. Deborah Ghazzawi was born in the United States.

Sarasota County records show the Al-Hijjis were married in May 1995 and that the Ghazzawi’s purchased the home the following September.

Al-Hijji attended a local junior college and, at age 26, enrolled at the University of South Florida in January 2000. University records show he attended continuously until April 27, 2001 and was awarded a bachelor of science degree with a major in management information systems on August 10, 2001.

The counterterrorism agent said the Al-Hijji’s later traveled from South Florida to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia via the Washington, D.C. area and London. The agent said Ghazzawi and Al-Hijji had been on a watch list at the FBI.

AN FBI PLOY

After property fees went unpaid, the homeowner’s association filed a lien on the home to try and collect. Association attorney Scott McKay said that during the subsequent litigation and sale of the property in 2003 the FBI asked him to try and convince the Saudis to return to the U.S. The ploy didn’t work.

The discovery a decade after the fact of the FBI’s Sarasota investigation has reinforced Graham’s belief that the U.S. has engaged in a coverup of information to protect America’s relationship with the oil-rich kingdom.

“The thing that has made me leery of what the FBI now says is the way they handled the San Diego events,” he said, referring to the fact that the FBI failed to share with the Joint Inquiry’s investigators information it had learned about connections between local Saudis and two Saudi-born 9/11 hijackers – Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Congressional investigators chanced to find that “treasure trove of information” on their own, he said.

Events in Sarasota share a “common outline” with contemporaneous events in Southern California involving al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi, Graham said.

The Joint Inquiry report and the 9/11 Commission report both describe how another Saudi living in San Diego, Omar al-Bayoumi, provided extensive assistance to the hijackers, including housing. The report says al-Bayoumi had access to “seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia” and that “one of the FBI’s best sources in San Diego” reported that he thought al-Bayoumi was an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power. The report said the FBI also learned that al-Bayoumi “has connections to terrorist elements.” Bayoumi left the U.S. two months before the attacks.

Graham said congressional investigators also established that Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric and alleged al-Qaeda commander who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen on September 30, was an Imam to some of the hijackers.

After news about the Sarasota investigation broke, Graham contacted the White House in hopes of getting some answers. What he got instead was an email from David Turk, a special assistant to the president, informing him that chief counterterrorism advisor John Brennan “had asked the FBI about his inquiry and was told that the 9/11 Commission was well aware of the Sarasota house/occupants and chose not to include it in the final 9/11 Commission’s report because it ‘didn’t stick to the wall.’

Graham said, “I was disappointed and somewhat surprised, given the FBI’s reputation (for) not being as transparent as it should be in areas where’s there’s no national security concerns, that the White House would have accepted what the FBI said with apparently no questions.”

Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission’s executive director, said Monday that he does not recall anything about the Sarasota investigation.

1. Graham asks Obama for answers on Saudi 9/11 role; FBI denies Sarasota probe found ties to plot 2. U.S. Rep. Castor calls for investigation of 9/11 Sarasota connection; Graham prods White House 3. FBI says again it found no ties between Sarasota Saudis and 9/11 hijackers; won’t release details 4. FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in Florida; Congress kept in dark

Dan Christensen tagged this post with: 9/11, al-Hijji, FBI, Graham, Sarasota, Saudi Read 233 articles by Dan Christensen

Post a Comment browardbulldog.org http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/02/fbi-informant-says-sarasota-saudi-praised- bin-laden-knew-ex-broward-qaeda-suspect/

FBI informant says Sarasota Saudi praised bin Laden; knew Broward Qaeda suspect

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers

A Saudi man who triggered an FBI investigation after he and his family abruptly exited their Sarasota area home and left the country two weeks before 9/11 considered Osama bin Laden a “hero” and may have known some of the hijackers, an informant told the FBI in 2004.

The informant also told authorities that Abdulazziz al-Hijji once introduced him to Adnan El Shukrijumah — the former Miramar resident and suspected al Qaeda leader who today has a $5 million bounty on his head.

The FBI and the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office interviewed Wissam Taysir Hammoud at the Hillsborough County Jail on April 7, 2004. Broward Bulldog obtained Florida Department of Law Enforcement reports about the interview and the investigation using the state’s public records law.

Hammoud, 46, who once owned a cell phone business in Sarasota, is serving 21 years in prison after pleading guilty in 2005 in federal court in Tampa to weapons violations and attempting to kill a federal agent and a witness in an earlier case against him. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons classifies him as an “International Terrorist Associate,” court records show.

Hammoud reaffirmed his previous statements about al-Hijji to the FBI in recent interviews.

Al-Hijj’s name made headlines in September when Broward Bulldog and The Miami Herald reported on a counterterrorism source’s disclosure of a previously unknown FBI-led probe that followed the attacks on New York and Washington — one that pointed to a possible Saudi support operation for the hijackers in Florida.

A decade after the nation’s worst terrorist attack, which claimed the lives of 3,000 people, al-Hijji has now been found to be living in London where he works for Aramco Overseas, the European subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. His job title is career counselor.

Al-HIJJI RESPONDS

In an email to London’s Daily Telegraph, which worked the story with Broward Bulldog, al-Hijji acknowledged Hammoud had been his friend, but strongly denied any involvement in the 9/11 plot.

“I have neither relation nor association with any of those bad people/criminals and the awful crime they did. 9/11 is a crime against the USA and all humankind and I’m very saddened and oppressed by these false allegations,” al-Hijji said. “I love the USA, my kids were born there, I went to college and university there, I spent a good time of my life there and I love it.”

Al-Hijji’s account is supported by the FBI, which has stated: “At no time did the FBI develop evidence that connected the family members to any of the 9/11 hijackers…and there was no connection to the 9/11 plot.”

In a brief interview outside his office, Al-Hijji also said he did not know Shukrijumah. “The name doesn’t ring a bell,” he said.

While living in Florida, al-Hijji attended Manatee Community College (now the State College of Florida Manatee-Sarasota) and, from January 2000 until April 2001, the University of South Florida. He earned a bachelor’s degree with a major in management information systems awarded in August 2001.

In the weeks before 9/11, al-Hijji — then 27 — and his wife Anoud, daughter of an adviser to a member of the Saudi royal family, departed their home at 4224 Escondito Circle in the upscale gated community of Prestancia and returned to Saudi Arabia They left behind three cars and “numerous personal belongings including food, medicine, bills, baby clothing, etc,” according to the FDLE documents which state the family departed on Aug. 27, 2001.

Al-Hijji denied having abandoned his home in haste, explaining: “No, no, no. Absolutely not true. We were trying to secure the [Aramco] job. It was a good opportunity.” He said his wife and children followed him out to Saudi Arabia a few weeks after he left Sarasota.

An alarmed neighbor contacted the FBI. When several weeks passed without action, Prestanica resident and administrator Larry Berberich alerted local law enforcement. Authorities, including the FBI, moved in.

The investigation led to a stunning development, according to Berberich and a counterterrorism officer who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The car registration numbers of vehicles that had passed through the Prestancia community’s North Gate in the months before 9/11, coupled with the identification documents shown by incoming drivers on request, showed that Mohamed Atta and several of his fellow hijackers – and another Saudi terror suspect still at large – had visited 4224 Escondito Abdulazziz al-Hijji in a Circle on multiple occasions,” the source said. photo taken when he lived in Sarasota The others included Marwan al-Shehhi, who plowed a United Airlines jet into the World Trade Center’s South Tower, Ziad Jarrah, who crashed another United jet into a Pennsylvania field and Walid al-Shehri, who flew with Atta on the first plane to strike the World Trade Center. Also identified as having visited: Saudi-born fugitive Adnan Shukrijumah.

The source said law enforcement “also conducted a link analysis that tracked phone calls – based on dates, times, and length of phone conversations to and from the Escondito house – dating back more than a year before 9/11. And the phone traffic also connected with the 9/11 terrorists – though less directly than the gate logs did.”

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who co-chaired Congress’s bipartisan Joint Inquiry into the 2001 terrorist attacks, called news of the Sarasota investigation the “most important” development on the background to the 9/11 plot in years. He added that Congress should have been told about it.

Soon after the story broke, however, the FBI poured cold water on it. It acknowledged that there had been an investigation, but said it found no connection to the 9/11 plot. It declined to explain. The FBI reiterated that position in a letter this month denying a Freedom of Information Act request for records of its investigation.

The FDLE records suggest such a finding may have been wrong. For example, one report that recounts what Hammoud said during the 2004 interview states, “The following information, in particular the information by Wissam Hammoud, is being followed up on internationally.”

DETAILS FROM FDLE REPORT

The FDLE reports buttress key elements of the story, while providing new details:

Hammoud, who said he met al-Hijji through relatives, said the two men worked out together at Shapes Fitness in Sarasota and played soccer at the local Islamic Society. He told the FBI Al-Hijji was “very well schooled in Islam” and that “Osama bin Laden was a hero of al-Hijji.” He added that Al-Hijji showed him a “website containing information about bin Laden,” and spoke of “going to Afghanistan and becoming a freedom fighter.” Al-Hijji also tried to recruit him, Hammoud said.

According to Hammoud, al-Hijji also talked of “taking flight training in Venice.” He said he believed “al- Hijji had known some of the terrorists from the September 11, 2001 attacks” who were students at an airport there.

Hammoud said al-Hijji “entertained Saudis at his residence” at “parties” that he himself did not stay for because – unlike al-Hijji as he remembered him – he “did not drink or smoke cannabis.” One Saudi Hammoud identified as an al-Hijji “friend” he brought to a soccer game at the Sarasota mosque in 2000 or 2001 was Shukrijumah.

Hammoud’s wife and sister-in-law confirmed during recent interviews that they too knew the al-Hijjis and are familiar with elements of Hammoud’s account. Mrs. Hammoud, who asked that her full name not be used, got the impression from comments al-Hijji made that he was “anti-American.” Hammoud himself, speaking from prison in recent days, said al-Hijji “had a lot of hatred towards everyone in America.” He said he had thought al-Hijji “nuts” when he asked him to go fight in Afghanistan.

Al-Hijji, while confirming he used to work out with Hammoud, described his life in Sarasota as quiet, centered on his wife and children.

“My friends were very limited,” he explained. “Normally, I don’t hold parties in the house because I have little kids. I was not a frequent to any bars.”

HAMMOUD SEEN AS TERRORIST ASSOCIATE

Prison officials have put Hammoud under heightened security measures due to his classification as a terrorist associate. Court records state the classification is based on what authorities said was Hammoud’s “support and membership” in a “Palestinian-related terrorist organization.”

Hammoud denies involvement with the group and has sought – so far unsuccessfully – a court order to overturn that classification. While representing himself, he filed documents that reveal a history of mental problems caused by a serious brain injury he suffered in a car accident in 1990.

After Hammoud’s first conviction in 2002 for selling illegal weapons to an undercover federal agent, an FBI agent wrote: “Hammoud is now claiming diminished capacity because of an auto accident in an effort to be sentenced to less time…There is speculation on the part of law enforcement that this was merely an attempt to gain sympathy from the sentencing judge…”

Hammoud was found to be competent by a judge before he was allowed to plead guilty to more serious charges arising from his 2004 arrest. The guilty plea and sentence were later upheld on appeal.

Hammoud’s lawyer, Matthew Farmer, would not comment. But his appellate attorney, Tampa’s Bruce Howie, remembers his former client as “not delusional or wacky…I think he has his share of paranoia. But he’s not a liar. He didn’t make it up as he went along.”

For his part, Hammoud has named several FBI agents that he claims to have dealt with while attempting to assist the government in its fight against terrorism. One was Miami Special Agent Kevin Griffin, best known locally for undercover work that put former Broward School Board member Beverly Gallagher in prison in 2010.

Hammoud’s current attorney, Detroit’s Sanford Schulman, said FBI agents have met with Hammoud on multiple occasions.

“There have been about 10 different agents, and that’s just the ones that I’ve been involved with. They were not two minute meetings either,” said Schulman, who did not attend but was notified of the meetings.

Hammoud may have known more than is revealed in the new FDLE documents. A Sarasota Herald- Tribune story about him based on an FBI agent’s affidavit filed at the time of Hammoud’s arrest in January 2004 has this ominous reference:

“In September 2001, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement interviewed Hammoud because someone had anonymously called saying Hammoud had made a comment that the Oklahoma bombing was going to be small compared with what was coming.”

In a recent email, Hammoud denied having made such a remark.

Dan Christensen is the editor of Broward Bulldog. Anthony Summers is the co-author of “The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden” published by Ballantine Books.

1. Graham asks Obama for answers on Saudi 9/11 role; FBI denies Sarasota probe found ties to plot 2. Bob Graham says FBI has not proved that it disclosed all it knew about 9/11 to Congress 3. FBI says again it found no ties between Sarasota Saudis and 9/11 hijackers; won’t release details 4. U.S. Rep. Castor calls for investigation of 9/11 Sarasota connection; Graham prods White House 5. FBI found direct ties between 9/11 hijackers and Saudis living in Florida; Congress kept in dark browardbulldog.org http://www.browardbulldog.org/2012/02/graham-fbis-public-statements-are-in- conflict-with-still-secret-records-of-sarasota-911-probe/

Graham: FBI’s public statements are in conflict with still secret records of Sarasota 9/11 probe

February 20, 2012 at 6:00 am Filed under 9/11, A1 Top Story {10 comments}

By Dan Christensen and Anthony Summers

Former Florida Senator Bob Graham has seen two classified FBI documents that he says raise new questions about the Bureau’s once secret investigation of a possible Saudi support operation for the 9/11 hijackers in Sarasota.

Graham would not disclose the content of the documents, which are marked “Secret,” but said the information they contain is at odds with the FBI’s public statements that there was no connection between the hijackers and Saudis then living in Sarasota.

“There are significant inconsistencies between the Former Senator Bob Graham public statements of the FBI in September and what I read in the classified documents,” Graham said.

“One document adds to the evidence that the investigation was not the robust inquiry claimed by the FBI,” Graham said. “An important investigative lead was not pursued and unsubstantiated statements were accepted as truth.”

Whether the 9/11 hijackers acted alone, or whether they had support within the U.S., remains an unanswered question – one that began to be asked as soon as it became known that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. It was underlined when Congress’s bipartisan Joint Inquiry, which Democrat Graham co-chaired, released its public report in July 2003. The final 28 pages, regarding possible foreign support for the terrorists, were censored in their entirety—on President George W. Bush’s instructions.

Graham said the two classified FBI documents that he saw, dated 2002 and 2003, were prepared by an agent who had participated in the Sarasota investigation. He said the agent suggested that another federal agency be asked to join the investigation, but that the idea was “rejected.”

Graham attempted in recent weeks to contact the agent, only to find the man had been instructed by FBI headquarters not to talk.

LICENSE PLATES TIED TO HIJACKERS

The FBI-led investigation a decade ago focused on Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his wife, Anoud, who moved out of their home in the upscale, gated community of Prestancia and left the country in the weeks before 9/11. The couple, who had lived there since about 1995, left behind three cars and numerous personal belongings such as furnishings, clothes, medicine and food, according to law enforcement records. A concerned neighbor contacted the FBI. Analysis of Prestancia gatehouse visitor logs and photographs of license tags showed that vehicles driven by several of the future hijackers had visited the al-Hijji home at 4224 Escondito Circle, according to a counterterrorism officer – speaking on condition of anonymity – and former Prestancia administrator Larry Berberich.

The home was owned by Mrs. Al-Hijji’s father, Esam Ghazzawi, an adviser to Prince Fahd bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, nephew of King Fahd and a noted racehorse owner. Prince Fahd died in July 2001.

Al-Hijji, who now lives and works in London, this month called 9/11 “a crime against the USA and all humankind” and said he was “saddened and oppressed by these false allegations.” He also said it was “not true” that Mohamed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers visited him at his Sarasota home.

The FBI backs up al-Hijji. After initially declining to comment, the Bureau confirmed that it did investigate but said it found nothing sinister. Agents, however, have refused to answer reporters’ specific questions about its investigation or its findings about the Prestancia gate records.

The FBI reiterated its position in a February 7 letter that denied a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records from its Sarasota probe. The denial said their release “could constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

“At no time during the course of its investigation of the attacks, known as the PENTTBOM investigation, did the FBI develop credible evidence that connected the address at 4224 Escondito Circle, Sarasota, Florida to any of the 9/11 hijackers,” wrote records section chief David M. Hardy.

Newly released Florida Department of Law Enforcement documents, however, state that an informant told the FBI in 2004 that al-Hijji had considered Osama bin Laden a “hero” and may have known some of the hijackers. The informant, Wissam Hammoud, also said al-Hijji once introduced him to Adnan El Shukrijumah, the ex-Broward resident and suspected al Qaeda operative on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

In 2003, the FBI asked Sarasota lawyer Scott McKay, who was involved in the sale of the property, to convince al-Hijji’s father-in-law, Ghazzawi, to return to the U.S. to sign documents. The ploy, intended to get Ghazzawi back for questioning, failed when Ghazzawi instead signed the sale documents at the American consulate in Beirut.

The counterterrorism agent said Ghazzawi and al-Hijji had been on a watch list at the FBI. The agent believed that a U.S. agency involved in tracking terrorist funds had been interested in both men even before Wissam Hammoud 9/11.

The FBI interviewed Al-Hijji’s wife, Anoud, and her American-born mother, Deborah Ghazzawi, when they returned to Sarasota briefly in 2003. The women denied involvement with the 9/11 terrorists, and said the couple’s 2001 return flights to Saudi Arabia had been booked well in advance.

Al-Hijji told London’s Daily Telegraph, which worked the story with Broward Bulldog, that he returned to the U.S. for two months in 2005 to study in Houston, but was not questioned by the FBI. Asked why federal agents had questioned his wife and mother-in-law, he said he had “no idea.”

GRAHAM ASKS FOR HELP Last September, FBI spokesmen also disputed Graham’s assertion that Congress was never told about the Sarasota investigation.

That prompted Graham to ask the FBI for assistance in locating in the National Archives the Sarasota- related files that were allegedly turned over to Congress. Instead, after what Graham said were two months in which the FBI was “either unwilling or unable” to help find the records, the Bureau suddenly turned over two documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Graham once headed and where he still has access. It is those documents that Graham has said are inconsistent with the FBI denials.

Graham shared this development with the Obama White House, which responded by setting up a meeting between Graham and FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce. Joyce told Graham he “didn’t want to talk” about the Sarasota episode. Graham was assured, however, that he would shortly be shown material that supported the FBI’s denials, and a further meeting was arranged with an FBI aide.

In December, Graham said, the scheduled meeting was abruptly canceled and he was told he would be allowed no further access to FBI information about Sarasota.

Graham said the Joint Inquiry was not the only national investigative body kept in the dark about Sarasota. He said the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton, have told him they also were unaware of it.

Kean, a former New Jersey governor, told Graham the Commission would have “worked it hard,” because the hypothesis that the hijackers completed the planning alone was “implausible.”

Kean did not return several phone messages seeking comment. But Hamilton, a former Indiana congressman, confirmed this month that he learned nothing about the Sarasota matter while serving as 9/11 Commission co-chairs Lee Hamilton vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission. (left)and Thomas Kean Graham sees the information now emerging about Sarasota as ominously similar to discoveries his Inquiry made in California. Leads there indicated that the first two hijackers to reach the U.S., Saudis Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, received help first from a diplomat at the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and then from another Saudi, one of whom helped Mihdhar and Hazmi find an apartment. Multiple sources told investigators they believed the latter helpful Saudi had been a Saudi government agent.

Later, when 9/11 Commission staff gained limited access to these individuals in Saudi Arabia, the aides’ reaction was caustic. One memo described the testimony of one of them as “deceptive… inconsistent…implausible.” The testimony of another displayed an “utter lack of credibility.”

TWO HIJACKERS LIVED WITH FBI INFORMANT

Graham is troubled by what he sees as FBI headquarters’ persistent apparent effort to conceal information, including the fact that Mihdhar and Hazmi lived for months in California in the home of a paid FBI informant. Even when that emerged, the FBI denied his Inquiry access to the informant. Graham wonders if that was merely because of the Bureau’s embarrassment, or because the informant knew something that “would be even more damaging were it revealed.” The newly surfaced FDLE documents containing Hammoud’s troubling 2004 information about al-Hijji have reinforced Graham’s concerns because they conflict with the FBI’s public statements.

Hammoud’s statement that al-Hijji introduced him to Broward’s own Saudi terror suspect, Shukrijumah, is consistent with the report that Prestancia gate logs showed Shukrijumah had visited the al-Hijji house – and buttresses longstanding official suspicion that he was linked to the hijackers. When Mohamed Atta visited a federal immigration office in Miami to discuss a visa problem in May 2001, a 9/11 Commission footnote reports, a man who closely resembled Shukrijumah accompanied him.

Graham sees what he believes to be the suppression of evidence pointing to Saudi support for the 9/11 hijackers as arising from the perceived advantages to the West, at the time and now, of keeping Saudi Arabia happy.

In late December, the U.S. announced a new $30 billion defense deal with the Saudis.

“This agreement serves to reinforce the strong enduring relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia,” said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro. “It demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a strong Saudi defense capability as a key component to regional security.”

Graham said he was taken aback by that announcement.

“I think that in the period immediately after 9/11 the FBI was under instructions from the Bush White House not to discuss anything that could be embarrassing to the Saudis,” he said. “It is more inexplicable why the Obama administration has been reticent to pursue the question of Saudi involvement. For both administrations, there was and continues to be an obligation to inform the American people through truthful information.”

Dan Christensen is the editor of Broward Bulldog. Anthony Summers is the co-author of “The Eleventh Day: The Full Story of 9/11 and Osama bin Laden” published by Ballantine Books.

1. Graham asks Obama for answers on Saudi 9/11 role; FBI denies Sarasota probe found ties to plot 2. U.S. Rep. Castor calls for investigation of 9/11 Sarasota connection; Graham prods White House 3. FBI says again it found no ties between Sarasota Saudis and 9/11 hijackers; won’t release details 4. Bob Graham says FBI has not proved that it disclosed all it knew about 9/11 to Congress 5. FBI informant says Sarasota Saudi praised bin Laden; knew Broward Qaeda suspect

Dan Christensen tagged this post with: 9/11, al-Hijji, FBI, Graham, Sarasota, Saudi Read 233 articles by Dan Christensen