September 11 attacks

The September 11 attacks were four coordinated hijackings of United States airliners carried out on September 11, 2001, by members of al-Qaeda. American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46:40, United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower at 9:03:11, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37:46, and United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, at 10:03:11. The 9/11 Commission counted 2,973 deaths, which it described as the largest loss of life from a hostile attack on United States soil.¹

Joint Inquiry

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence conducted a joint inquiry in 2002 under Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter Goss, with Nancy Pelosi as ranking minority member of the House committee. On January 29, 2003, the three wrote to Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet that the final report had been submitted for declassification review, and recommended a Director of National Intelligence who would not simultaneously direct the Central Intelligence Agency.²

Part Four of the report, headed "Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters," remained classified until July 15, 2016, when the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence under Chairman Devin Nunes and Ranking Member Adam Schiff published the 28-page section after the administration of Barack Obama declassified it with redactions. Nunes stated that the section "does not put forward vetted conclusions, but rather unverified leads that were later fully investigated by the Intelligence Community."³

Finding 20 of Part Four stated that some of the hijackers, while in the United States, were in contact with and received support or assistance from individuals who may be connected to the Saudi Government, and that FBI sources alleged that at least two of those individuals were Saudi intelligence officers. The Joint Inquiry wrote that it had not independently assessed the information, that further investigation could reveal "legitimate, and innocent, explanations," and that it was referring the staff compilation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the CIA.⁴

The discussion identified Omar al-Bayoumi, who had assisted Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar in San Diego in 2000, as the subject of reports from individuals in the Muslim community, dating to 1999, that he might be a Saudi intelligence officer. The FBI had conducted a counterterrorism investigation of him in 1998 and 1999 and closed it. According to an FBI document quoted in Part Four, he received money from the Saudi Ministry of Defense through a Saudi company whose official told the FBI after the attacks that Bayoumi appeared at the company once and received a monthly salary; his monthly allowances were approximately $465 before the hijackers arrived, rose to over $3,700 in March 2000, fell to approximately $3,200 after December 2000, and continued until he left the United States in August 2001. A school application listed his employer as Dallah Avco, a subsidiary of a company the FBI had linked to Osama bin Laden. A former case agent testified before the committees that Bayoumi "acted like a Saudi intelligence officer, in my opinion." The same section recorded that the FBI's November 18, 2002 response stated there was "no evidence" to conclude that he was one.⁵

Part Four also described Osama Bassnan, a close associate of Bayoumi. The FBI had found copies of cashier's checks totaling $74,000, dated February 22, 1999 to May 30, 2002, payable to Bassnan's wife and drawn on the Riggs Bank account of the wife of Saudi Ambassador Bandar bin Sultan, and a standing order of $2,000 a month on that account since January 1999. The FBI's Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, Pasquale D'Amuro, testified on October 9, 2002 that what the money was for was not known. Part Four recorded a later FBI correction that only Bassnan's wife received money directly from Prince Bandar's wife, and that Bayoumi's wife attempted to deposit three of the checks into her own accounts.⁶

A telephone number in the contact book of Abu Zubaydah, captured in Pakistan in March 2002, was linked through toll records to a number subscribed by ASPCOL Corporation of Aspen, Colorado, which the FBI's Denver Field Office identified as the umbrella corporation managing the Colorado residence of Prince Bandar. The Denver office made no local inquiries, believing that inquiries about ASPCOL would quickly become known to Prince Bandar's employees, and held its investigation in abeyance pending guidance from FBI Headquarters. The Colorado Secretary of State had no record of the corporation. The FBI's November 18, 2002 response stated that CIA traces had revealed no direct links between numbers in Zubaydah's phone book and numbers in the United States.⁷

Part Four also described a CIA memorandum found in the files of the FBI's San Diego Field Office, which discussed alleged financial connections between the hijackers, Saudi officials and members of the Saudi royal family. The FBI agent who received it placed it in an individual case file and did not forward it to FBI Headquarters, which learned of its contents from the Joint Inquiry.⁸

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations minority staff report on Riggs Bank, dated July 14, 2004 and prepared at the request of Senator Carl Levin, records that the bank held more than 150 accounts associated with Saudi Arabia, and that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency first learned of concerns about them from press stories beginning November 22, 2002 reporting that an account associated with the Saudi embassy had sent funds that benefited two of the hijackers. The OCC met bank management in December 2002 and began a targeted examination in January 2003, planned to last one month, which continued for more than five months. The report states that it presents no information about the Saudi accounts because the full Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, under Chairman Susan Collins, was conducting its own investigation of them.⁹

The commission

Congress and President George W. Bush created the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States by Public Law 107-306 on November 27, 2002. The Commission's preface records that it reviewed more than 2.5 million pages of documents, interviewed more than 1,200 individuals in ten countries, held 19 days of hearings and took public testimony from 160 witnesses.¹⁰

President Bush named Henry Kissinger chairman after dropping his longstanding opposition to an independent inquiry. Former Senator George Mitchell, named vice chairman, announced on December 11, 2002 that he would not serve, citing his unwillingness to sever ties with his law firm and the time the work would take. Kissinger resigned on December 13, 2002. His letter to the President stated that specific conflicts could be resolved by disclosure but that "the controversy would quickly move to the consulting firm I have built and own," and that liquidating Kissinger Associates could not be accomplished without significantly delaying the Commission's work.¹¹

Lee Hamilton replaced Mitchell. The final report lists Thomas Kean as chair and Hamilton as vice chair, five Republican and five Democratic commissioners, and Philip Zelikow as executive director.¹² Zelikow had advised Condoleezza Rice on the transition of the National Security Council from the Clinton to the Bush administration, and the report's notes state that Rice and Zelikow had been colleagues on the National Security Council staff and coauthors of a 1995 book on German unification, and that as executive director Zelikow recused himself from the Commission's work on that transition.¹³ Commissioner Jamie Gorelick had been the Deputy Attorney General who oversaw the working group that produced the Justice Department's July 1995 procedures governing information sharing between intelligence and criminal investigators; the notes state that she recused herself from the Commission's work on that subject, and that she, Richard Ben-Veniste and Commissioner James R. Thompson recused themselves from the work on aviation security.¹⁴ The report states that Robert Mueller became FBI director "just before 9/11."¹⁵

The Commission recommended replacing the dual role of the Director of Central Intelligence with a National Intelligence Director and creating a National Counterterrorism Center.¹⁶

The Mihdhar and Hazmi trail

The Commission's account of Mihdhar and Hazmi begins at a gathering of Arabs in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. The CIA located Mihdhar leaving Yemen and tracked him to Kuala Lumpur, where he arrived on January 5, 2000. On January 8, surveillance teams reported that three of the Arabs had left for Bangkok, where CIA officers received the information too late to track them. The Counterterrorist Center had briefed CIA leadership, and the information had been passed to the National Security Council staff of National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and to FBI Director Louis Freeh, although the FBI noted that the CIA had the lead. In early March 2000 Bangkok reported that Hazmi had left on January 15 on a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles, and that Mihdhar had accompanied him. No one outside the Counterterrorist Center was told, and the CIA did not try to register either man with the State Department's TIPOFF watchlist, although it had learned that Mihdhar held a United States visa.¹⁷

The National Security Agency had the technical capability to report on communications with suspected terrorist facilities in the Middle East. The Commission wrote that it did not seek warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for communications between persons in the United States and abroad because it regarded that as an FBI role, and because it did not want to be viewed as targeting persons in the United States.¹⁸

In January 2001, a joint FBI and CIA source shown surveillance photographs from Kuala Lumpur said he was 90 percent certain that an unidentified man in one was Khallad, the man believed to have directed the 2000 USS Cole bombing, which linked Khallad to Mihdhar. The Commission found no effort by the CIA to renew the search for Mihdhar, and found that the CIA did not tell the FBI. It wrote that Tenet and Cofer Black had testified before the Joint Inquiry that the FBI had access to this identification from the beginning, and concluded, on a record that included documents unavailable to the officials who drafted that testimony, that this was not the case.¹⁹

On May 15, 2001, a CIA officer detailed to the FBI (called "John" in the report) reviewed the old cables and began an exchange with a CIA analyst ("Dave"), but made no effort to learn whether the men were in the United States. On June 11, 2001, an FBI analyst ("Jane") showed Kuala Lumpur photographs to FBI agents in New York investigating the Cole bombing. National Security Agency reports she had found carried caveats barring their sharing with criminal investigators without permission from the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, and she did not pass them on. The CIA analyst at the meeting, who knew that Mihdhar held a visa and that Hazmi had flown to Los Angeles, was not asked and did not volunteer. Mihdhar received a new visa two days later and entered New York on July 4, 2001.²⁰

On July 24, 2001, an FBI analyst detailed to the CIA ("Mary") began reviewing the cables. Hazmi and Mihdhar were added to the TIPOFF watchlist on August 24. The lead for the FBI's New York Field Office was sent on August 28 labeled "Routine." One of the Cole case agents was told by the FBI analyst that the wall between intelligence and criminal investigations barred him from the search, and wrote that "someday someone will die." The Commission concluded that everyone involved was confused about the rules and that the criminal agents could have conducted the search.²¹

The CIA Inspector General's accountability review, completed in June 2005, found that agency officers did not on a timely basis recommend watchlisting of Hazmi and Mihdhar and did not pass the travel information to the FBI in proper channels, and that "there was no coherent, functioning watchlisting program." It recommended that an Accountability Board of persons who were not agency employees review the performance of, among others, the chiefs of the Counterterrorist Center from 1998 to 2001. It stated that the team found no instance in which an employee violated the law and that none of the errors involved misconduct. The Inspector General recused himself from deliberations on one subject because of a conflict of interest.²² Porter Goss, who as House Intelligence Committee chairman had co-led the Joint Inquiry and by 2005 directed the CIA, declined the recommendation in October 2005. On releasing the executive summary on August 21, 2007, Director Michael Hayden wrote to employees that the declassification "was neither my choice nor my preference," that two Directors of National Intelligence had supported the agency's position against release, and that he had found no reason to revisit Goss's decision.²³

The Commission also described a July 2001 memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix about flight schools, which did not reach headquarters managers before the attacks, and the August 2001 detention of Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota. It concluded that the Phoenix memo, had it been acted on, would not by itself have uncovered the plot.²⁴

Los Angeles and San Diego

Hazmi and Mihdhar arrived in Los Angeles on January 15, 2000. The Commission examined whether Fahad al-Thumairy, an imam at the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City and an accredited diplomat at the Saudi consulate from 1996 to 2003, had helped them. It recorded that he was reputed to be a strict adherent of Wahhabi doctrine, that the State Department refused him entry on May 6, 2003 on a determination that he might be connected with terrorist activity, and that he denied knowing the hijackers or Bayoumi although witnesses and telephone records showed contact with Bayoumi. It concluded that it had found no evidence that Thumairy provided assistance to the two operatives.²⁵

On February 1, 2000, Bayoumi and a companion met Hazmi and Mihdhar at a halal restaurant on Venice Boulevard in Culver City. The Commission wrote that it did not know whether the encounter occurred by chance or design, that it had seen no credible evidence that Bayoumi believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups, and that its investigators found him an unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement. Bayoumi helped the two men find an apartment in San Diego, co-signed the lease and issued a certified check for the deposit, for which they reimbursed him.²⁶

The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General's special report on the FBI's handling of intelligence before the attacks, issued in classified form in July 2004 and released publicly in June 2005, records that the FBI's preliminary inquiry on Bayoumi was closed in June 1999 without conversion to a full investigation, so that the FBI was not investigating him in February 2000. It states that in May 2000 Hazmi and Mihdhar moved as boarders into the home of an asset of the San Diego Field Office whom the report does not name, that Mihdhar stayed until June 10, 2000 and Hazmi until December 10, 2000, that the asset had been opened on May 14, 1994 and had 14 boarders before the attacks, and that the handling agent retired in February 2002 and declined to be interviewed. The asset gave conflicting accounts to the FBI after the attacks of what he had told the agent; the handling agent said the asset gave only the first names Nawaf and Khalid, and the report concludes that the FBI obtained no information on the pair's time in San Diego from the Bayoumi inquiry or from the asset. The report also records the January 2001 identification of Khallad as made with "ninety percent" certainty, in a CIA cable that does not state it was repeated to the FBI legal attache.²⁷

Operation Encore, an FBI New York investigation, grew out of the PENTTBOM investigation of the attacks. FBI records give three start points: a subfile under PENTTBOM opened June 28, 2007, an Encore investigation opened August 28, 2007, and a full investigation initiated October 26, 2007. The stated purpose was to understand how Mihdhar and Hazmi had been able to connect to the Southern California Muslim community.²⁸ The full investigation of Thumairy was opened on February 12, 2009. A February 19, 2009 communication states that an earlier Los Angeles full investigation of Thumairy, predicated on his calls with Bayoumi and his possible association with the hijackers, had been closed because he relocated to Saudi Arabia and because "all reasonable and practical intelligence collection methods" were exhausted. A communication of October 27, 2009 restates the closing and adds a third reason, the conclusion of the United States Attorney's Office that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him. Both communications state that review of the file did not appear to reveal any investigation of Thumairy as a possible "tazkia" contact for the hijackers.²⁹ The October 2009 communication opened a full investigation of Musaed al-Jarrah, identified as a former director of the Islamic Affairs Department of the Saudi embassy.³⁰

An FBI electronic communication dated April 4, 2016 summarizes interviews conducted on November 12 and 13, 2015 with a man whose name is redacted and who had a pending citizenship application. The communication states that a person whose name is redacted "was tasked by THUMAIRY to assist HAZMI and MIDHAR while they were in Los Angeles," and that a person whose name is redacted "described the hijackers as 'two very significant people.'" It records that the interviewee, in interviews, admitted showing the hijackers the location of the restaurant but denied being tasked to do so. The same document states that Bayoumi's 2003 statements about meeting the hijackers "are directly contradicted by eyewitness statements," that a companion told the FBI that Bayoumi positioned himself to look out the restaurant's front window and approached the hijackers from a distance at which he could not have heard them speaking, that employees of Dallah Avco described Bayoumi as a "ghost employee," one of about fifty such individuals, and that numbers in Bayoumi's telephone book for a Saudi physician were found on a contact card retrieved in a late May 2003 raid in Medina, Saudi Arabia.³¹

A communication of July 23, 2021 compiled the FBI's records on the Saudi government, the Saudi embassy and affiliated offices in connection with the attacks, for the use of future case agents. It states that it "should not be considered an intelligence assessment," that it copies original serials with their language retained, and that its writer was not re-investigating, citing a lack of resources and analytical assistance.³²

A joint FBI and CIA assessment sent to the Senate intelligence committee by FBI Director Mueller and CIA Director Goss on September 1, 2005 stated that there was "no evidence that either the Saudi Government or members of the Saudi royal family knowingly provided support for the attacks" and "no information to indicate that either Omar al-Bayoumi or Osama Basnan materially supported the hijackers wittingly, were intelligence officers of the Saudi Government or provided material support for the 11 September attacks, contrary to media speculation." The same summary stated that official Saudi entities and associated organizations provided financial and logistical support to individuals in the United States, some associated with terrorism-related activity.³³

The Commission wrote that it had found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded al-Qaeda, a conclusion it said did not exclude diversion of funds by charities with significant Saudi government sponsorship. A note states that it found no evidence that Princess Haifa al Faisal provided funds to the conspiracy directly or indirectly.³⁴

Departure of Saudi nationals

The Commission addressed three questions about Saudi nationals who left the United States after the attacks. It found no evidence of any flight before national airspace reopened on the morning of September 13, 2001, and no evidence of political intervention, and reported that Richard Clarke had asked the FBI's Dale Watson to check whether the FBI had objections. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card recalled being told of the Saudi request but said he did not ask anyone to act. The Commission believed that the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals who left on charter flights.³⁵

Securities trading

On September 19, 2001, Acting Director of Enforcement Stephen Cutler of the Securities and Exchange Commission stated that the Commission had received reports that those associated with the terrorist activities "may have sought to exploit our securities markets to profit from those activities," that it had "drawn no conclusions," and that speculation about what it had concluded "has absolutely no foundation in fact."³⁶

The Division of Enforcement began its review on September 12, 2001, for the period from August 20 to September 11. Its information memorandum ENF 02-13 of May 15, 2002, addressed to the Commission, states that staff examined over 9.5 million securities transactions, reviewed trading in securities and derivatives of 103 companies in six industry groups across seven markets and in 32 exchange-traded funds and broad indices, that more than 40 staff worked on it, that the information was made available to the Justice Department and the Treasury, and that the staff briefed members of the Senate Banking Committee staff and the National Security Council staff. The memorandum states that the staff did not develop any evidence that those with advance knowledge traded on it and that every unusual trade noticed was consistent with a legitimate strategy. The National Security Archive obtained the memorandum, in redacted form, in 2010 after six years of requests; the SEC's general counsel wrote to it on April 6, 2010 agreeing to disclose it.³⁷

The 9/11 Commission's report reached the same conclusion and in a note described the surge in put options on the parent of United Airlines on September 6 and of American Airlines on September 10: a single United States institutional investor with no ties to al-Qaeda bought 95 percent of the United put options on September 6 as part of a strategy that included buying 115,000 American shares on September 10, and the American trading was traced to an options newsletter faxed to subscribers on September 9.³⁸

Able Danger

On September 21, 2005 the Senate Judiciary Committee under Chairman Arlen Specter held a hearing on Able Danger, a Defense Department counterterrorism data-analysis program. Representative Curt Weldon testified that Captain Philpott "identified absolutely Mohammed Atta as a part of the Brooklyn cell" in January and February 2000, that an official had been ordered to destroy up to 2.5 terabytes of Able Danger data, and that an FBI employee had arranged three meetings with the FBI Washington Field Office in September 2000 that Defense Department officials cancelled at the last minute.³⁹ Attorney Mark Zaid testified that Able Danger never identified Atta in the United States and that a chart listing Atta under "Brooklyn, New York" prompted concern among Army lawyers about compiling data on United States persons.⁴⁰

A letter from former Commissioner Slade Gorton entered in the hearing record stated that the notes of Commission staff of a meeting with Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer made no mention of Atta, that the White House lawyer present agreed, and that the Department of Defense had provided all relevant Able Danger documents to the Commission. The letter stated that the Department of Defense said Shaffer worked on the program for a total of 27 days and lost his security clearance in March 2004.⁴¹

The Department of Defense Inspector General report of September 18, 2006 concluded that Able Danger team members did not identify Atta or any other hijacker before the attacks. It found that the chart witnesses remembered was a May 1999 Orion Scientific chart of 53 terrorists, including a Brooklyn cell, which did not include Atta, that four witnesses who recalled seeing Atta on a chart gave recollections that were not accurate, and that witnesses in a position to know denied that Able Danger members were barred from meeting the FBI.⁴²

Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act

Families of victims and others sued Saudi Arabia and other defendants in the multidistrict litigation In re Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001, 03-md-1570, in the Southern District of New York before Judge George B. Daniels. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia first moved to dismiss in 2004 on grounds of sovereign immunity. On September 29, 2015, Daniels granted a motion to dismiss on that ground.⁴³

On September 21, 2016, the Senate voted 71 to 27 to table a motion to discharge S.J.Res. 39, a resolution disapproving a proposed sale of M1A1/A2 Abrams tank structures and other defense equipment to Saudi Arabia.⁴⁴ On September 20, 2016, the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck had written to Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir accepting an engagement as "policy counsel for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in connection with the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA)," at $100,000 a month "until JASTA becomes law or until March 31, 2017, whichever is later." The firm registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act on September 22, 2016, describing its activity as communicating "with Members of Congress and members of the executive branch regarding" JASTA and its passage into law.⁴⁵ Squire Patton Boggs registered on September 20, 2016 for the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, to provide "legal and strategic policy advice and advocacy on foreign policy and related issues," and reported receiving $400,000 from that principal on April 1, 2017.⁴⁶ The FARA bulk registry lists foreign principal registrations for Saudi Arabian principals in September 2016 by Squire Patton Boggs, S.G.R. LLC Government Relations and Lobbying and FGS Global on September 20, Brownstein on September 22, King & Spalding on September 26, and the Podesta Group on September 30.⁴⁷

On September 28, 2016, the Senate voted 97 to 1 to override the President's veto of S. 2040, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. Harry Reid voted no; Tim Kaine and Bernie Sanders did not vote.⁴⁸ The act, Public Law 114-222, created an exception to foreign sovereign immunity for physical injury or death in the United States caused by an act of international terrorism and a tortious act of a foreign state or its officials, employees or agents acting within the scope of their office, employment or agency.⁴⁹

The Second Circuit vacated the 2015 decision on request of the parties. In 2018 Daniels held that plaintiffs' allegations of direct liability were insufficient but that vicarious liability was reasonably articulated, and ordered limited jurisdictional discovery on whether Thumairy, Bayoumi and their agents acted at the direction of more senior Saudi officials in assisting Hazmi and Mihdhar. Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn supervised the discovery. Saudi Arabia filed its renewed motion on October 6, 2023, and Daniels heard argument on July 31, 2024.⁵⁰

On August 28, 2025, Daniels denied the motion. His decision records that Bayoumi worked for Saudi Arabia's civil aviation agency from 1977 and was sent to San Diego in 1994, paid through Dallah Avco, with the title of senior data processing technician and without performing that work; that plaintiffs contend he was a cooptee of Saudi intelligence and that he testified he never was a Saudi intelligence officer; that Thumairy held diplomatic status from 1996 to 2003 and that from 1999 to 2001 a bank account he had opened received significant funds from Prince Abdulaziz, a senior Saudi cabinet member, which Thumairy said were used for charitable donations and mosque expenses; that Thumairy testified he did not recall meeting Hazmi or Mihdhar and never gave instructions to assist them; and that a mosque congregant testified that no one, including Thumairy, told him to help the hijackers. It records that Akram Alzamari told the FBI that the congregant had said Thumairy asked him to look after two "significant" people, and that Alzamari testified in 2020 that the FBI's notes of that statement were erroneous.⁵¹

The decision records that Bayoumi made at least 93 calls to the Saudi Embassy between January 19 and March 24, 2000, 30 of them to its Islamic Affairs Department; that from March to April 2000 his monthly compensation from Dallah Avco more than doubled, with the personnel form giving "promotion" as the reason; that he filmed a one-hour video of Washington, D.C. in June 1999 including the Capitol; and that a notepad seized from his home in the United Kingdom in September 2001 contained a sketch of an airplane with notes on height and distance, which he testified was an equation he had memorized. It records that the hijackers rented a room in Lemon Grove from Abdussattar Shaikh, an FBI informant since 1994 whom the Justice Department Inspector General's report described as given a $100,000 payment in July 2003, and that Shaikh told the FBI he believed Bayoumi was an agent of the Saudi government. It records that after the attacks Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry told Thumairy not to return to the United States, that Jarrah wrote on November 9, 2001 that Thumairy was not a suspect and asked that he return to work, that the King and the Foreign Ministry approved his return on November 28, 2001, and that the State Department revoked his visa on March 21, 2003.⁵²

The decision states that plaintiffs had provided "reasonable evidence as to the roles played by Bayoumi, Thumairy, and KSA," that Saudi Arabia's explanations were "either self-contradictory or not strong enough" to overcome the inference that it had employed them to assist the hijackers, and that many facts, including whether the February 2000 meetings were planned, were disputed and would be resolved at trial. It concludes: "Plaintiffs' claims will proceed to decision on their merits."⁵³