Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-09-14 Monday

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Headlines for September 14, 2026; Israel Threatens to Revoke Citizenship of Yuval Abraham & Rachel Szor for ”NAZA” Film on Gaza Genocide; “One Betrayal After Another”: 9/11 Widow Blasts U.S. Cover-Up of Saudi Role in Attacks; Trove of Evidence Sheds New Light on How Saudi Intelligence Asset Helped 9/11 Hijackers Before Attack; Is Yemen Heading Back to All-Out War? Saudis Launch Strikes as Houthis Take Control of Red Sea Coast

From New York, this is Democracy Now. And my husband, Tom Strata, you are missed more with each year that passes. But how can it be 25 years? And still, we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder. 25 years after the 9-11 attacks, those who lost loved ones are still accusing the U.S. government of a cover-up. We'll speak to Terry. Strata. She called out Saudi Arabia during a ceremony at Ground Zero on Friday. Her husband, Tom, was killed in the World Trade Center attack. We'll also speak to ProPublica reporter Tim Golden about his new piece. Twenty-five years after 9-11, questions about the FBI's pursuit of

Saudi suspects in the case have only grown, unquote. Then Houthi forces in Yemen are expanding their attacks on Saudi Arabia, launching a ballistic missile and drone attack on a Saudi military base. The Yemeni armed forces, thanks to God Almighty, carried out a qualitative and extensive military operation targeting military facilities and infrastructure, including military aircraft hangars, radars, runways, and ammunition storages and other targets at King Khalid Air Base and Kami's all that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. Anthropic CEO, Dario Amade, called for the development of artificial intelligence to slow down. In a 3,800-word essay published Saturday, he called for increased

oversight and more guardrails for the technology. His calls were echoed by other AI leaders, including Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, and Demis Hasibis, the chair of Google Deep Mind. Amadei's warning comes after a swarm of open AI agents, hack the platform hugging face. In his essay, Amadee wrote in part, quote, given the accelerating rate of AI capability development. It's my worry that in six to 12 months, such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails, he said. This comes as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said,

company will not go public in 2026, citing concerns over AI safety. According to data reviewed by Reuters, OpenAI agents use more than 10 previously undisclosed websites for unauthorized communications earlier this year. This is Jacob Coxson, a former anthropic researcher who resigned over AI safety concerns. I think the concept of building superintelligence is, well, it's been likened to summoning an alien species. So I think thinking about it in terms of an alien mind that we don't fully understand is pretty terrifying, even without any concrete scenario. On CNN, how Speaker Mike Johnson dismiss calls for action by Congress on AI regulation.

The speaker's expected to dismiss Congress this week until after the midterm elections. Some say it's to prevent a push for AI regulation. Tomorrow and Democracy Now, we'll spend the hour with Naomi Klein and Astor Taylor, author of the new book, End Times Fascism. The head of Iran's atomic energy organization was blocked from attending the annual gathering of the United Nations Nuclear Agency in Vienna on Monday. It comes as an Iranian cargo ship was hit near Keshim Island in the Strait of Hormuz, killing one person on Sunday as regional talks in Oman about managing shipping through the strait were pushed back after objections from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. On Saturday, Iran and the United Arab Emirates both signed a joint BRICS declaration, urging restraint

in the war. This is Iran's president, Massoud Pazeskian. speaking at the BRIC summit in New Delhi. If Iran is standing up to the United States in Israel today, it is only because they want to bully us, and we refuse to bow to bullying. They only claim to support human rights. They are the same devils who accuse us of being terrorists. Are we the terrorists, or are you,

who massacre 168 innocent children in an instant because you have advanced technology? Yemen's are. Iranian-backed Houthis claimed a drone and missile strike on a military base in southern Saudi Arabia. Yemen's Saudi-backed government has called the rebels fast advance along the Red Sea coast a painful blow and a new front in the U.S. Israeli War on Iran. The Houthis reached the strategic island of Pettam in the Bab al-Mandab Strait on Friday. It comes as Saudi Arabia announced it had to shut down the East-West pipeline, which was billed as an alternative to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz after a drone attack from Iraq. Meanwhile, the UN reported Sunday almost 86,000 people have been displaced by fighting. Thousands have poured into makeshift displacement camps.

Villages around Molha Port have emptied in a matter of days. This is a displaced man named Abdullah Khaid. We fled the war, moving from place to place. We escaped only with our lives, leaving everything behind. And now, look at us. We are tormented and shaken to our core. We long for a basic livelihood, and we long for safety. A major new report by the Israeli Human Rights Group at Selam,

titled The Elimination Project accuses Israel of systematically dismantling the conditions that allow Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to function as a community. The report says Israel's, quote, dramatically intensifying its attacks on every aspect of Palestinian life in the West Bank, including, quote, the ability to get to work, to take children to school or university, receive medical treatment or municipal services, meet family and friends, cultivate land or go on vacation, routine activities that make up human life, unquote. Since October 7, 2023, at least 1,107 Palestinians have been killed by Israel on the occupied West Bank. Over the weekend, an Israeli soldier shot a Palestinian man in the leg during a

confrontation between Israeli settlers and Palestinian villagers in the West Bank town of Fakwa. In Gaza, an Israeli air strike on a vehicle killed at least two people and wounded 13. Israel's near daily assault on the Gaza Strip continues despite last October's so-called ceasefire. Since the U.S. spoke a true more than 1,300 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks across Gaza. In Lebanon, the Israeli military says it used more than 1,000 tons of explosives triggering seismic activity equivalent to a magnitude 4.1.1.4.1. earthquake, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Israel claimed the explosives were used to destroy two tunnels operated by Hizpola beneath the Alitahar Ridge. This comes despite a U.S. brokered ceasefire earlier this year.

Israeli forces continue to occupy 5% of Lebanon. According to the U.N., about 330,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced by Israeli attacks. In Ukraine, at least five people were wounded in a Russian drone attack in the city of Odessa Sunday. Meanwhile, Russia accused Ukraine of killing two Russian servicemen at the Russian held up a reach a nuclear power plant in Ukraine. It comes as another Russian drone hit a train near the Ukraine-Pol and border shortly after former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and top European security officials had passed through. Former U.S. CIA director, David Petraeus, was at the Ukrainian train station at the very moment a Russian drone struck a passenger train. This is the European Union's foreign policy chief, Kajakadas.

I think about that it is clearly meant to scare Western countries from supporting Ukraine, from going to Ukraine to show support. that first meant it was clearly a message to the Western world. I think the question for us is what do we take from that message? The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo has topped 7,000, according to government data published Friday. There have also been more than 3,300 reported Ebola deaths, as the virus has spread to remote eastern and northern regions already devastated by armed conflict. The World Health Organization warns the outbreak could be on track to exceed the deadliest on

record when a regional outbreak in West Africa that began in 2014 killed 11,000 people. Trump's Environmental Protection Agency is poised to formally repeal planet warming carbon pollution standards for coal and gas power plants. EPA administrator, Zeldins expected to announce the measure today in Houston where he's meeting with energy ministers from G20 nations. President Trump has repeatedly derided climate change as a hoax. During his second term, the EPA has dismantled a slew of policies aimed at regulating greenhouse gas emissions and slowing global warming. The move comes as this summer scorching temperatures where the hottest recorded in the U.S. in at least 132 years. July was the hottest month on record in the United States,

according to NOAA. That's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A federal judge found the Trump administration broke the law in directing FEMA's workforce be cut in half. In her ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Ilston wrote, quote, frankly, the FEMA staffing plan number appears as have pulled from thin air, unquote. The Labor Union, the American Federation of Government employees, argued in a lawsuit that FEMA's proposed cuts would impair the agency's ability to respond to natural disasters. As Nebraska's Republican governor, Jim Pillon, publicly backs Trump's ice raids in the state, more details have emerged of Pillar's multi-millings.

dollar hog business that employs undocumented workers. The New York Times and the Flatwater Free Press report over the span of more than a decade. Pillin's company, Pillin Family Farms, has relied on undocumented workers to grow into one of the largest hog producers in the United States. Despite that, Pellin has often echoed Trump's racist rhetoric about immigrants and a so-called invasion. President Trump is demanding the Smithsonian Institution install a 30-foot colossal statue of George Washington outside the National Museum of American History and to curate a five-year special exhibit about Washington's legacy. The proposed massive statue would replace an abstract sculpture titled Infinity by Jose de Rivera that was installed in 1967. In a truth-social rant,

Trump said, quote, that strange modernist sculpture tells visitors nothing about America, inspires no one honors none of our great American heroes, unquote. This comes just days after the Smithsonian's head, Lonnie Bunch the Third last week, announced he's stepping down from the position. Bunch and others in the Smithsonian Institution's leadership have faced repeated attacks from President Trump. In July, Trump ordered the installation of signs in front of the National Museum of American History, claiming some of the exhibits are inaccurate. In 2019, Lonnie Bunch became the first African American and historian to be named secretary of the Smithsonian Institution

and has worked for the museum's education and research complex for nearly 40 years. He was also the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African-Apran. American history and culture. To see our interview with Lonnie Bunch, go to Democracy Now.org. And the film Naza, which documents the Israeli military's use of secret AI-powered systems to deliberately and systematically target and massacre civilians in Gaza, won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival Saturday. The film received a record-breaking 25-minute standing ovation when it premiered last week. The film was directed by Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and filmmaker Rachel Zor, both of whom won an Oscar for the documentary No Other Land,

along with Palestinian co-directors Basal Adra and Hamdan Bilal. Naza was shot in secret on rooftops in Tel Aviv over three years and builds on testimony from Israeli military and intelligence sources who spoke on the condition their identities be concealed. The film's title, Naza, refers to an acronym used by the Israeli military as a shorthand for civilian killings in Gaza. This is part of you about Abraham's victory speech in Venice on Saturday. I want to be very clear. This truth has been documented and is known from the very first day, thanks to Palestinian journalists. More than 200 of them were killed by Israel in Gaza.

Their voices were silenced and denied. We believe that the denial of a crime is what helps it persist. And that's why it's really, really especially important for us that Israelis watch this film. it's our country that is doing these crimes, that Europeans watch it, and especially here in Italy, because your government and the German governments are blocking pressure on Israel that can end this,

that Americans watch it, because that country is funding much of the killing. Naz's win at the Venice Film Festival was met with angry backlash from Israel's government, with Israeli culture minister, Mike Zohar, threatening to revoke Yuval Abraham and Rachel Sores, Israeli citizenship. In a post on X Sunday, Zahar called the documentary vile and accused the filmmakers of treason. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now,

Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. Coming up, 25 years after the 9-11 attacks, those who lost loved ones are still accusing the U.S. government. of covering up Saudi Arabia's role in the attacks. Stay with us. Hase, a hakeem, He took a-e-e-do, and the people, He'dead, and he shhhah'd by the

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y'bdjab, napsk, abel, and, and, after the Talk by the Palestinian Oud Musician who to ask for performing in our Democracy Now studio.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. On Friday, memorials were held to mark 25 years since the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93, which crashed in Shanksville. Pennsylvania. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in New York at a ceremony at Ground Zero. Family members of the victims read the names of those killed. During the ceremony, one widow, Terry Strata, accused U.S. officials of concealing the role of Saudi Arabia in the 9-11 attacks.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Terry Strata's husband, Tom Strata, worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the North Tower. In a moment, Terry Strata will join us live, but first, let's turn to her remarks on Friday. And my husband, Tom Strata, you are missed more with each year that passes, but how can it be 25 years? And still, we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder. Yes, we finally made it into a court, and I've proved that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism around the globe and then sent its agents to support the radical Islamist hijackers so they could attack you and all of our loved ones. But for 25 years, administration after administration,

including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9-11 families. They withheld evidence. They vetoed Jasta. They broke promises, both public and private. It has been one betrayal after another. President Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying. Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA,

they cannot continue to deny all of this, all of the pain, all of the destruction that we have all been suffering through. Vice President Vance, thank you for being here today. Please carry that message back. Stand with the families. Stand with the survivors. Stand with Americans.

As my husband, Tom, would have said, that is always the right thing to do. God bless all of us. God bless America. The words of 9-11 widow, Terry Strata, speaking Friday at a ceremony in New York, marking 25 years since the attack on the World Trade Center. During the ceremony, a man who identified himself as the nephew of 9-11-Vist, victim, Lisa Marie Terry also mentioned the Saudi connection. Lisa Marie Terry, for 25 years, the deep state has hidden the truth about what happened

that day 25 years ago. President Trump, you're our last hope. Release the unredacted files that implicate Saudi Arabia, while what's left of the victim's families are still alive to see it. We're joined now by Terry Strata. Her husband, Tom, died in the World Trade Center attack. She's the national chair of 9-11 families united and is also part of a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia. Terry, thanks so much for being with us and even 25 years later, our condolences on the death of your husband and so many others. Thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for having me. Well, why don't we start off by talking about your call on Friday, and it was quite unusual for, while people were naming those who died 25 years ago, demanding that calling out Trump and Vice President Vance and demanding that the Trump administration recognized Saudi Arabia's role in the 9-11 attack. What do you want recognized?

I want the truth to be recognized, and we have already taken an abundance of evidence into a courtroom. A federal judge has ruled in our favor that the evidence is credible and that we can go to trial with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I really wasn't calling out President Trump. I was calling on him to help us. I was calling out the Bush administration, the Obama administration, and the Biden administration for withholding evidence. for breaking promises to us. They are the ones that began the decades-long cover-up of the role that the kingdom played, and they are the ones that have harmed the families all these years.

Can you talk about the lawsuit, who brought it, and what it is calling for? The families brought the lawsuit on in 2002. That is when we filed a lawsuit against Saudi officials, Saudi-state-run banks, state-run charities, and over time, through discovery, the evidence, all pointed back to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the kingdom for the role that they played, that their agents were directly involved with providing the support network that was needed here in the United States for al-Qaeda to carry out the treacherous attacks of September 11th. So we are holding the kingdom accountable for attacking America.

And because that evidence has now been in a courtroom, it is the current president, Trump's responsibility to tell the kingdom that the evidence points directly at them and that they can no longer hide and that they need to confront the evidence and work things out with the families. Enough is enough. I want to go to an interview we did 15 years ago. In 2011, former U.S. Senator Bob Graham appeared on Democracy Now. He served as chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and headed the congressional joint inquiry into the deadly hijackings.

At the time of the 2011 interview, Senator Graham was calling on President Obama to reopen the investigation into the September 11 attacks. The FBI, although they were asked to provide the congressional inquiry, all the information they had about 9-11, did not. tell us about these extensive contacts in San Diego. It was because we had a very curious and effective investigative team, which went to San Diego and was able to uncover the relationship between particularly a key Saudi agent living in San Diego and the first two hijackers to have entered the United States.

Can you talk, Senator Graham, about the 9-11 commission and the suppressed pages of that commission what you believe is in them and if it links to the Saudi royal family? The suppressed pages were in the congressional joint inquiry. We worked diligently throughout 2002 to gather as much of the information as we could and to make recommendations. We had an 800-plus page report. one chapter of which, which related primarily to the role of the Saudis in 9-11, was totally censured. Every word of that chapter has been denied to the American people. One of the reasons that I wrote a novel, Keys to the Kingdom, was because I felt that that was a means of beginning

to tell the American people some of the things which they have not been able to be told because of the degree of cover-up that has surrounded the Saudi activities in the United States prior to 9-11. So that's Florida Senator Bob Graham, speaking on democracy now. Fifteen years ago, he died in 2024. Ten years ago, in 2016, the Obama administration declassified the 28 pages of the 9-11 report examining the Saudi role. He was the Florida. Senator, you're in Jupiter, Florida. Can you talk about what you have learned since and more about what was in those documents?

Right. So I worked alongside former Senator Bob Graham to ensure that those 28 pages were declassified. But when President Obama declassified them, he still withheld about three pages worth of the most critical information that we needed. So while it was a good thing, it wasn't everything. and what he held back was to protect the Saudis. This has been the pattern of every administration. But before we get to what the 28 pages revealed, under the Bush administration, Director Mueller's FBI, withheld the most damning evidence that the agents of the kingdom

were directly involved in the September 11th attacks. He withheld it from the San Diego field office that was investigating Omar al-Bayumi and the connection to the Saudis. And they also withheld it from the 9-11 commission. So the 9-11 commission had a report from the joint inquiry with an entire chapter excised. And then they had the 9-11 commission and the FBI did not give them the evidence. That evidence now has been uncovered.

We had to go to the Metropolitan Police Services in London because that is where all of this evidence was confiscated, 10 days after September 11th. And sadly, and unfortunately, and really cruelly, they withheld it for 20 years. And it wasn't until our lawsuit pried it open through discovery. So that's the problem that we had with the Bush administration. The Obama administration gave us the 16 pages or gave us the 28 pages, still redacted. But the most egregious thing under that administration was when Secretary Clinton, Hillary Clinton, she worked with the Supreme, I'm sorry, she worked and denied our lawsuit being heard by the Supreme Court. She made every effort she could to block that, and she was successful. Now, it's another harmful thing to the community. And then President Obama vetoed

the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. We worked on that bill for seven years, and the purpose of that bill was so that the victims could walk into a courtroom and show our evidence. We've always wanted to be heard on the merits. And President Obama didn't think that was a good thing. However, Congress came back and overwhelmingly overrode his veto. So we have just had these blocks, these hurdles, these damaging decisions made by those administrations. And that's why I said what I said on Friday morning, because they were all there. It was the perfect opportunity to look at all of them and say, what you did was wrong, but we've managed to get it into a courtroom anyway, and now we need President Trump to act on it.

You're talking about the four surviving, the four living presidents all before you, as you made that comment. So this is clearly a bipartisan affair. I want you to stay on with us as we talk to the ProPublica reporter Tim Golden, but I wanted to finally ask you, why do you think, think the U.S. has protected Saudi Arabia all these years? They have just chosen the Saudi U.S. relationship over the 9-11 community and over the American public. They have just chosen over and over again to protect it. And rather than let the

truth be told, rather than deal with it, they've all, I don't know the reasons. They don't, they've never, ever given an opportunity to sit down and talk to any of us. I mean, we tried so hard with President Obama when he was going to veto the bill. He would not even speak to a member of Congress. He wouldn't speak to a senator. He wouldn't speak to someone in the House of Representatives. He ignored everyone and just went ahead and vetoed the bill. So why they do it?

That's a good question that the media really should be asking them now and really should be asking hard questions of President Trump. And now that the evidence is in a courtroom and if federal judge has ruled in our favor, what does he plan to do? That's the question. What is the U.S. government? What is our policymakers going to do now that the truth is exposed? Terry Strata lost her husband, Tom Strata, on 9-11.

He worked at Cantor Fitzgerald. My high school classmate, Chris Quackenbush, also worked at Cantor Fitzgerald and died on that day, along with so many others. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman. To look more at the Saudi role in the 9-11 attacks, we're joined by Tim Golden, a reporter at ProPublica. His latest piece is headline 25 years after 9-11.

Questions about the FBI's pursuit of Saudi suspects in the case have only grown. Tim Golden has reported for years on the Saudi connection. Tim, this is very difficult to tease out and for people to understand. But if you can lay out your findings in this story, report about the questions of the FBI's pursuit of the Saudi suspects and how they, the questions have only grown. Go back to the beginning. Go back to San Diego, California. Talk about the hijackers and who handled them. Sure. Good morning. The first two hijackers who came to the United States, Noaf al-Hazmi and Haled al-Midhar, got on flight 77 in Dulles Airport and left behind an old

Toyota Corolla sedan in the parking lot. That led the FBI almost immediately to San Diego, where they had settled in February of 2000, more than a year before the attacks. And they were really interesting from the beginning because they, unlike some of the other European-educated hijackers, they really were fish out of water in sunny Southern California, where they came in January of 2000 from Malaysia and Thailand. But they were jihadis. They were Saudis who had really only been outside their country to go to Afghanistan and Bosnia and fight in the wars there. They spoke no English. They knew no one. And somehow they connected a immediately with a middle-aged Saudi man named Omar Al-Bayumi to whom Terry Strata referred.

Al-Bayumi said he met them by chance in a halal cafe in Culver City, California, just down the street from Sony Picture Studios, but also very close to a big Saudi mosque that the Saudi kingdom had built there a couple of years before as part of its big global outreach and its push to spread Wahhabi Islam around the world. And Omar al-Bayumi helped these hijackers to move to San Diego a couple days after he met them to settle in, get a rent an apartment in the building where he lived with his family, to set up a bank account. And he introduced them to a couple of dozen men who went on to help them with everything that they needed and helped them survive in Southern California. So they have, O'Maryl Bayoumi was on the radar of the FBI from the very beginning. And when he was arrested, he'd moved on to Birmingham, England, and was arrested there 10 days after the attacks.

There was a big search of his property, his home and his office that yielded some extraordinary evidence, more than 80 videotapes that included one of him showing an audience, the capital building of the United States. where he refers to the plan that they were talking about and kind of presents various details of the Capitol. There's another piece of evidence that was a flight diagram that showed the calculations of an airplane to reach a point on a horizon from that could have been and perhaps, you know, something connected to the attacks. And it showed him with a couple of men who were later identified as really quite notable Islamist militants within the Saudi religious bureaucracy, who sort of went around San Diego more than a year before the hijackers got there and were in many of the same places, including the same rooming house where they lived. So Alba Yumi was incredibly important, but this evidence that was taken from his home and his office and given to the FBI immediately sort of went missing for more than 20 years. Important pieces of it were never presented to the 9-11 commission, to the joint inquiry.

They weren't even given to the FBI agents in San Diego who were investigating the case. and finally, the families, as part of their litigation and part of the investigation of their lawsuit, went to the British police and got that information directly. And, you know, it was extraordinary that this material came out almost 23 years later, having never been seen by all these other people. 9-11 attacks happened under the Bush administration, the George W. Bush administration. George W. Bush extremely close to the Saudi ambassador to the United States, referred to as Prince Bondar bin Sultan Assad, but he was referred to as Bondar Bush. And famously, a few days later,

he and President Bush, Vice President Cheney, I think it was Condoleezza Rice, sat on the Truman balcony, Bush and Bondar Bush, as he was referred to, having cigars together. This was at a time when the U.S. airspace, the FAA, had closed it for the first time in U.S. history after the hijackings. I want to turn to a famous clip from Michael Moore's film, Fahrenheit 9-11, about how the Bush administration allowed 140 Saudis to fly out of the United States in the days after the 11 attacks at a time again when U.S. airspace was closed. The clip begins with former North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan. We had some airplanes authorized at the highest levels of our government

to fly to pick up Osama bin Laden's family members and others from Saudi Arabia transport them out of this country. It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick up the bin Laden's and numerous other Saudis. At least six private jets and your nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country. So that was a clip from Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11. Tim Golden, if you can talk about that close relationship, then of course we see this has been a bipartisan

sort of affair for the 25 years since. Talk about that moment and how you feel it led to a cover-up of the Saudi U.S. relationship and what happened on that day. Well, I think first you have to say that the Saudi royal family, the kingdom, considered Osama bin Laden, an enemy. And the CIA and FBI and other U.S. agencies have pointed that out. emphasize that. And I don't know that you're necessarily talking about a top-down effort by the Saudi government at all here. But the Saudi government, the royal family, also empowered

and funded a large religious bureaucracy to spread Wahhabi Islam around the world. And they had a huge amount of autonomy. Omar al-Bayumi, although he was supposedly a graduate student, was also a part-time intelligence asset, supposedly, according to the FBI or an FBI memo, reporting to Prince Bandar in Washington. But he was clearly in extensive touch with figures in the Saudi religious structure that were in Washington and in Los Angeles and in Saudi Arabia. I do think it's a bipartisan effort. The Bush family had close ties. President Obama, who was trying to secure Saudi support for the Iran nuclear deal, turned to his back on the families and vetoed Jasta. It was actually President Biden under threat of being boycotted by the families at the 20th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, who finally declassified a lot of material. President Trump in his first administration asserted that this material was state secrets

in order to withhold it from the families. But I think what you can see now emerging is the possibility that al-Bai Yumi, who provided a lot of this help and who provided, who had a lot of relationships with Islamists in the Saudi religious bureaucracy, and around Southern California may have been part of a cell that was helpful to al-Qaeda. It was also true that the Saudi religious bureaucracy and wealthy Saudis gave a lot of money to charities that then gave money to militant groups like al-Qaeda. So you sort of have to separate these two things.

There was a relationship between the United States and the Saudi royal family that may be the reason why the FBI and others have been jealous in safeguarding this information in keeping a lot of the facts from the American public and from the 9-11 families. that doesn't necessarily mean that you had a plot driven by the Saudi government. So I think there are those two things happening at the same time. Can you talk more about the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history? And that was the FBI, what is it, Pentbaum inquiry? Penbomb was the acronym for Pentagon Twin Towers bombings. And it was, in fact, the biggest investigation the FBI has ever undertaken involved thousands of agents and hours of time.

And the FBI, Robert Mueller from the beginning, said, we will leave no stone unturned. It was a huge effort that was documented quite extensively in the 9-11 Commission report. But the group of agents, that were involved in the San Diego piece that were looking at Omar al-Bayumi were not really listened to very carefully or very well in terms of what they were finding. And the FBI said from the beginning and insisted to the 9-11 commission that they believed that Omar al-Buymi's meeting with the hijackers had been accidental, that his help for them had been unwitting, and that he was just a genial, happy-go-lucky, pro-American Saudi man, you know, an exchange student who had no idea what the hijackers were up to. That portrayal has really come apart. It has been proved now from an FBI, a couple of FBI memos, that he was, in fact, a Saudi intelligence agent. He didn't study. He was being paid by the

Saudi government in San Diego. And that the main work he did was really for the Saudi religious bureaucracy in the Saudi religious network in the United States. And he also was giving out a lot of money to further that effort in Southern California. So you had a lot of suspicion around this from the beginning. Those agents continued after the pent bomb investigation was done. A group of, small group of those agents formed what was called Operation Encore to continue. continue looking at the Saudi investigation. And that effort went on for 10 years between about 2007 and 2016. It met with enormous resistance and skepticism from the FBI. And it was basically discounted not only to the 9-11 commission, but to a review commission that was done 10 years

later to look back at the sort of threads that remained of questions that remained from the original investigation of the plot. And to this day, the FBI has not accounted for what happened to all this evidence that was gathered in the UK for why the Justice Department did not try to extradite Omar al-Buyumi on material support charges. And for why this evidence basically disappeared from the FBI files in this largest, supposedly most exhaustive investigation that it had ever conducted. And at the same time, you have the high-profile defendants accused of organizing the 9-11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, spending over two decades at Guantanamo without completing a trial. Why? Well, the military commandant,

missions in Guantanamo have been a unique disaster that you can trace back to the whole effort to try to impose military justice, tough justice, led obviously by Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld in the aftermath of 9-11. That was a flawed project that has brought, you know, enormous disrepute to the United States over time that is a, that is wallpaper for Islamist militants around the world. You know, these people are still being held without trial and very much against, you know, the values of the U.S. justice system. But I think you had an opportunity here to to proceed with a case in the U.S. criminal justice system where we've obviously been able to try terrorists many times. And that opportunity was dreadfully missed. And I think, you know,

there's answers that are waiting, that we're still waiting to hear. And I think, you know, it was quite brave of Terry Strata to call out, she didn't want to use this term, but to call out all those former presidents and the Trump administration, which has also blocked the families repeatedly from getting a lot of this information. Howard Lutnik, sorry, I was going to say, Howard Lutnik, the Secretary, powerful Secretary of Commerce, was the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the company that her husband worked for, and that lost hundreds of its employees on 9-11. And let me ask you the same question I asked Terry Strata, and then I'd like to.

Terry to weigh in at the end of this conversation. And that is, I mean, Tim Golden, you have been reporting on this for years, a comprehensive reporting. You did a piece in New York Times Magazine. You've got the ProPublica pieces. Why do you believe the U.S. is covering up for Saudi Arabia? What does it gain? I mean, we see this right through to Muhammad bin Salman, the Crown Prince. It's his close relationship with Jared Kushner, with President Trump, and the U.S. intelligence agencies across the board believing that he was responsible for the dismemberment and murder of Khashoggi, the Washington Post reporter, columnist. Well, I think it's hard to, I don't want to get into conspiracy theories about why they're doing this. But we know that there's a close relationship. and we know that the FBI has stuck to its story,

has stuck to the story that Robert Mueller from within months after 9-11 came out and said publicly to the joint inquiry, we have not detected any kind of support network in the United States for these hijackers. The FBI continued to repeat that line. And the weak link in that story was Omar al-Bayumi and the people around Omar al-Bayumi, also a Saudi Imam at that mosque in Los Angeles, Fahad al-Thumeri, with whom by Yumi worked closely to help the hijackers.

And I think, you know, it's clear that successive U.S. governments have had these relationships with the Saudi government. They have been concerned enormously about securing Saudi support for counterterrorism efforts after 9-11 to protect the American people. You know, those reasons are all there, the fact that they may be trying to cover up their own missteps, but whatever the reasons, you know, I think it's incumbent upon the American government to give this information to people who have suffered enormous loss and tragedy and to make clear what happened.

and if the Saudi government is indirectly responsible, or even if this was some rogue cell of Saudis within the religious bureaucracy, you know, we would hope that that should come out. Terry Strato, we just have 30 seconds. Your national chair of 9-11 families United lost your husband, Tom, the World Trade Center, worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, which Lutnik was ahead of. your final comments. And he was thrilled with what I did. Can you repeat what you said, Terry? Yes, I met with Secretary Lutnik after my comments were made Friday morning,

and he is thrilled with the comments that I made. And he congratulated me on doing that. But I'd like to really quickly, since I only have 30 seconds, is to let everyone know that that evidence was ready to be burned and destroyed because one of the agents that was doing the reporting for Operation Encore got a phone call from somebody in the warehouse that said, aren't you investigating somebody by the name of Omar al-Bayumi? And he said, yes, I am. And he said, well, we have a lot here that's getting ready to be destroyed.

And he said, send it to me, please. And they did. He took that. It was all in Arabic to his supervisor's desk. He put it on her desk. And he said, she, I'm saying she now. Maybe everybody can figure out who it was. she said, no, we don't. And she put it aside. So that evidence was buried. It was going to be destroyed.

It was found. And it was buried again. All of this is intentional. Yes, it will be very embarrassing for the kingdom. But that is not a reason to keep everything a secret. Terry Strata, National Chair of 9-11 Families United. I want to thank you for being with us. And Tim Golden, reporter at ProPublica will link to your latest piece, 25 years after 9-11, questions about the FBI's pursuit of Saudi suspects and the case have only grown, as well as your previous pieces. Coming up, we look at Yemen, close to all-out war again as fighting escalates between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia back in 20 seconds. Abufu Saffu Ye, Dianna, Bofu Safu, Amadu and Mariam in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org.

I'm Amy Goodman. Fears growing, Yemen, spiraling back into all-out war. as Houthi forces in Saudi Arabia exchange new strikes. Earlier today, the Houthis claimed to have launched a drone and missile strike on a military base in southern Saudi Arabia. This comes after the Houthis, who are aligned with Iran, seized Yemen's entire Red Sea coastline, including the strategic Bava Mandeb Strait. The area had been controlled by the Saudi-backed Yemeni government. In recent days, Saudi Arabia has repeatedly launched air strikes in Yemen in an effort to stall the Houthi advance.

the U.N. says the latest escalation has displaced 86,000 people in Yemen. This all comes as Saudi Arabia shut down its major east-west pipeline after a drone strike launched from inside Iraq. It moves about 4 to 5 percent of the world's global supply, oil supply. To look at the escalating tensions between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, we go now to Shireen al-Ademi an associate professor at Michigan State University. Professor, thanks so much for being with us. Can you explain what's happening right now in Yemen

and the relationship between Yemen and Saudi Arabia as it relates to the U.S. Israeli attack on Iran? Thanks so much for having me. So what's happening right now is essentially a break in the ceasefire between Ansadullah, who are known as Zahoutis, and Saudi Arabia. The ceasefire has been in place since 2022, But it has not ended the war in Yemen.

As you know, Yemen has been under blockade by the Saudi forces, of course, fully backed by the United States, the fourth administration now in the United States that's been supporting the Saudis and has devastated Yemen. They had a bombing campaign that lasted for eight years, and the blockade has not been fully lifted. So even though flights were operating in and out of Sana'a airport, it was limited by Saudi Arabia to one flight. a week and everything coming in and out of the country still went through Saudi Arabia. Essentially, the blockade was still in place. In recent months, there's been an escalation. Saudi Arabia was threatening Yemen to not break the blockade by operating a flight to Tehran.

And as a response, they bombed Sanaai Airport. And so since then, fighting has essentially escalated. And Anslau'llah have now, as you said, taken over the entire west coast of Yemen. They had been controlling Bab el-Mandab, as you know, and there's an active ceasefire between the United States and Ansarullah since May of 2015 when they were blocking international shipping as a response to the genocide in Gaza. But now they fully control the coast, and it's very easy for them to disrupt shipping. But the key point here is that they're not disrupting international shipping.

They say that they're disrupting Saudi ships. so that Saudi can finally lift the blockade on Yemen and not continue using Babin Mendeb Strait as they wish. And can you explain the difference between the Yemeni government and the Houthis? So what's called the Yemeni government is the Saudi appointed council. This is referred to as internationally recognized Yemeni government, and that's a misnomer because they were not democratically elected. They were appointed.

They're a group of warlords in Yemen who are allied to Saudi Arabia and some of them are allied to the UAE. And when I say allied here, I mean fully funded, completely funded based in either Saudi Arabia or the UAE, although most of them are now based in Saudi Arabia. So that is called the internationally recognized government. They are hodgepodge of groups. They are, some of them are funded by the UAE, as I said, and they want to secede South Yemen from the north. so they're not interested in capturing, let's say, areas of northern Yemen that Anslaahullah control. And then there are groups that are allied to the former government that was in Yemen before the Arab Spring and before the war with Saudi Arabia in 2015.

And they want to recapture areas that were captured and have remained in control of Ansarullah. And then there are extremist groups and terrorist groups who are also part of that coalition. So that is what's called the Yemeni government. If you ask 80% of the Yemeni population, that's over 30,000. people who live in Ansalaah-controlled areas, they will refer to Insadul-Lah as the Yemeni government because even though they started as rebels back in 2014-2015, they have essentially built a state in northern Yemen's over the last decade and have been running all of the ministries. And they represent, it seems like, the will of the majority of the Yemeni people, since the

security situation, as an example in the northern Yemen, where they control is very much stable compared to the South. And they have worked with tribal communities and groups in northern Yemen's to secure kind of on-the-ground buy-in. And that's one of the key reasons they were also able to take over the West Coast. Shereen Alidemi, I want to thank you for being with us, Yemeni American Associate Professor at Michigan State University speaking to us from East Lansing in Michigan. That does it for our show. I'll be at the IFC Theater. on September 22nd for the screening of Steal the Story, please, about Democracy Now with Tia Lesson and Carl Deal, the directors. Check it out at Democracy Now.org.

I'm Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.