After over a decade of suppression, the US government finally released the infamous 28 pages withheld from publication from the 2002 9/11 Commission report.

The documents [PDF] reveal solid evidence of Saudi government involvement with the group of men who perpetrated the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C. on September 11th, 2001. This information had already been referenced by officials who had investigated 9/11, such as former US Senator Bob Graham and 9/11 Commission member Tim Roemer who revealed to 60 Minutes that agents of the Saudi Arabian government helped some of the 9/11 hijackers find housing and transportation.

Two well-established Saudis, Fahad al-Thumairy and Omar al-Bayoumi, helped two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi, settle in Los Angeles. Al-Thumairy was an official at the Saudi Arabian consulate and al-Bayoumi is believed to have been working as an agent of influence for the Saudi government.

As Richard Clark, former national coordinator for counterterrorism pointed out, the 28 pages contradict key narratives of the official 9/11 Commission report. In the official report al-Bayoumi is a charitable man who met the al-Midhar and al-Hazmi at a restaurant by chance after picking up the men’s accents. But the 28 pages tell a different story entirely, that al-Bayoumi was a Saudi spy whose encounter with the two would-be hijackers was anything but coincidental:

According to the 28 pages, FBI agents involved in the case had received several reports that led them to believe al-Bayoumi was a Saudi intelligence officer, living and working secretly in the U.S. His cover story was that he worked for an aviation logistics company owned by the Saudi government, but investigators found he never did any work for the company.

Even al-Hamzi suspected al-Bayoumi was a Saudi spy, according to the 9/11 Commission report.

Clark offers his own interpretation that al-Bayoumi was a Saudi spy investigating the men on behalf of the CIA. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi were already under CIA surveillance as mid-level members of Al Qaeda. The CIA had contacted intelligence services in the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, and Thailand to help gather information on them. It was the Thai government that told the CIA the men had flown from Thailand to Los Angeles.

Clark further states the CIA deliberately left him and the FBI out of the loop because they assumed, correctly, that if Clark or the FBI had been informed, arrests would be made of al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi. Apparently, arresting the men was not something the CIA wanted.

According to the 28 pages, al-Bayoumi let al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi stay at his apartment before finding them their own place. After they found an apartment, al-Bayoum signed the lease, paid the first month’s rent, and covered the security deposit.

Then al-Baymoui hooked al-Mihdhar and al-Hamzi up with Modhar Abdullah. According to the 28 pages, Abduallah served as the men’s translator, helped them get driver’s licenses, and helped them get into flight schools. Those flight schools, of course, were where the men learned how to fly planes into buildings.

But who was paying for all this? Where was al-Baymoui getting the money to support himself and his new friends, given he was not actually working in aviation?

According to the 28 pages, al-Baymoui received money directly from the Saudi Royal family, from Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Prince Bandar was given the nickname “Bandar Bush” by President George W. Bush and was Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005, after which he became head of the Saudi national security council and later head of Saudi intelligence.

The Bush family’s extensive connections to the Saudi royal family are well documented. The general trend is the Saudi royal family gives the Bushs lots of money and the Bushs give them special favors in exchange. It was the Bush Administration that ordered the 28 pages be classified in the first place. So, did President Bush cover up the Saudis’ role in 9/11 to keep the money train going? And, more to the point, what were the Saudis goals in helping the 9/11 hijackers?

Maybe one day we’ll know.