Via America’s Lawyer: After 20 years, President Biden declassifies “Operation Encore,” a 16-page FBI report on the 9/11 attacks. Although much of the document is redacted, the report outlines close ties between the 9/11 hijackers and several Saudi nationals living in the United States. Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The Biden administration took the extraordinary step of declassifying certain documents related to Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks. I have Farron Cousins from the trial lawyer magazine joining me now to talk about this. Wow. Okay. Operation Encore. Thank goodness there was an Operation Encore because the FBI didn’t want it. The CIA didn’t want it. The government that screwed, completely blew this whole 9/11 thing. They didn’t want it. Now, you know, so, so the setting is this. Here you have these two desert bumpkins. I mean, that’s, there’s no other way to describe it. They come right out of Saudi Arabia. They don’t speak English. They have no contact with Western, with Western countries at all. This is their first trip, literally out of the desert. They show up at LA airport. We know that they’ve been training, we already know they’ve been training to be terrorists over in Asia. The FBI already has a file on them. The CIA has a file on them. The FBI is not talking to the CIA because that’s their territory. You know, the, I’m the FBI guy and he’s the CIA guy and we don’t share any of that. So they show up, land at the airport and we lose them after that. We know that they’re part, I mean, they’ve been trained by the Wahhabi for God’s sakes.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And, and, and we know that one of them has diplomatic status and they’re, they’re meeting at restaurants. There’s all kinds of information that we now know was known. But at the time they said, oh, well, no, we don’t know who these people are. Sure. They’re meeting at the embassy. But the embassy meets with tens of thousands of students, you know, here from Saudi Arabia. So of course, you know, we can’t keep track of all of that. The embassy isn’t supposed to keep track of all of it. But no, there was evidence, there were inklings. And now we know, and this, this was 16 pages, that’s it. 16 pages that were still redacted to a degree.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And we’ve already got this much information from them. That, that’s nuts.
Mike Papantonio: Let me, let me promise what was redacted. What was redacted is that the FBI quietly moved Saudi Arabian nationals out of the country after it took place. No investigation, no serious questioning about, were you involved in this? The contacts are all over the place. And what’s, what really, what really is most upsetting about this story is the CIA and the FBI, they don’t communicate because of their ridiculous childlike territorial thing. I am in charge of this FBI, CIA, you’re in charge of that and we don’t work together because this is our territory. That was the heart of this problem. And because of that, we now know this, that the families that have brought this lawsuit have evidence that the FBI might be destroying, might’ve destroyed documents. Might’ve destroyed film where these two characters come into the country and the reason the film is important is because when they land in LA, there should be somebody from the FBI, maybe somebody from the CIA to follow these guys who end up meeting with two Audis who have diplomatic rights in the United States.
Farron Cousins: Right. Right. And these, again, these are the two people involved in these attacks. Got a diplomat, at least one diplomat meeting with them. I believe, yes, it was two and we knew all of this. We knew these individuals were meeting. We knew they were friendly. And yet in the 2006 9/11 commission report, what do they tell us? They tell us, listen, we can’t link this to really anybody else. This is, this is a bunch of rogue actors inspired by Osama bin Laden. You know, a Saudi dissident is how they described Osama bin Laden. You know, he didn’t like Saudi Arabia. He hated them. They hated him. Saudi Arabia was on our side. They were on our team, they tell us here.
Mike Papantonio: Okay.
Farron Cousins: But now we’re finding out so much more and sure, okay, we don’t have the smoking gun linking the actual government, I guess, of Saudi Arabia here. But again, this is just 16 new pages that have been hidden from the United States for 20 years almost.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. What, what’s bothersome again, this is a report that never would have happened if the FBI and the CIA got their way. They tried to destroy this investigation. They’ve hid it from the families. Do you know up until 2017, they were saying, oh, well, we can’t give you any information families that have lost, you know, lost loved ones and 3000 people killed in 9/11. We can’t give you anything because there’s an ongoing investigation. And when they were really, that’s up to 2017, but when they were really asked, well, what, what are you investigating? Why don’t you show us what you’re investigating? They had not seriously investigated anything for years.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: But they didn’t want this material to come out because it was, it looks like a clown car show. It honestly looks like a bunch of clowns are involved. Look, this, uh, Bayoumi, okay. Bayoumi was one of the Saudi diplomatic immunity in the United States. He’s here. They know that this is a guy who all talks almost daily to the folks who we know masterminded the 1993 World Trade attack. We know that he’s in, he’s in constant contact with the Wahhabi clerics that, you know, Saudi Arabia, they have to have a relationship with Wahhabi clerics because the Royal Family is afraid, man, if we lose our relationship with these guys, people are going to rebel.
Farron Cousins: And we also know that these organizations, you know, CIA, the FBI, they conducted multiple, allegedly, investigations over the years. The FBI at one point had two different investigations going on, trying to figure out all the intel, intelligence failures. And of course, every time they come back and say, listen, uh, we did great. We found no problems with ourselves.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: But all of their documents tell the different story.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: And of course, because they’re allowed to, they redact them. They hide them. They’re classified. We don’t get this information. So we’re supposed to blindly trust these people who got it wrong repeatedly before and after 9/11. We have to just blindly trust them with our safety and that’s nuts.
Mike Papantonio: Three presidents, three presidents, Obama, George Bush, Trump, played into keeping this secret from the families who should have the right to recover. And you know what, we continue to sell weapons to them. We continue to buy their oil. Like nothing’s happened.
