A 9/11 Story: 8. The Party

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. Kirsty Walk reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history. I could see the plaza completely covered with debris and bodies. I was just waiting to die. The reunion, the 9-11 attacks. I know that my son is somewhere alive. This is Deborah Tyson. Her son Austin is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world. And for years, I've been searching for him. It's a case like I never imagined, and there are people who don't want the truth to come out. I know that my son is somewhere alive. This is Deborah Tyson. Her son Austin is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world. There are people who don't want the truth to come out. From the BBC, this is I'm not a monster presents. Where is Austin Tyson?

1:01Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I was enjoying myself. I was in San Diego. I was on the beach and enjoying life. It's 2018. Danny Gonzalez is a couple of years into his retirement from the FBI. It took months to decompress from the work from being in the FBI's end. As we heard in episode six, the stress of the 9-11 investigation had put him in hospital. He recovered and stayed with the case, even as colleagues and resources disappeared. Now, for him, it's finally over. Or is it? In 2001, the buzz of his pager began his journey into the 9-11 investigation. Now here on the beach, there's a new buzz. His phone. I didn't know this was coming.

2:02I didn't know the call was coming. It's someone representing the 9-11 families. Could he help the lawyers understand the investigation? Saying yes would mean getting back into the case that nearly cost him his life. It's hard. It was a struggle to get through that decision. Saying no would mean turning his back on the people he spent his career trying to help. Why would I not help the families and the victims? Danny doesn't take long. It's a yes. Yes. From Intrigue on BBC Radio 4, this is a 9-11 story. I'm Jane McMullan, episode 8, The Party. January 2018, a courtroom on the ninth floor of a federal courthouse in Manhattan.

3:03Terry Strada has been waiting years for this day. The lawsuit she joined in 2002 is back for a judge. I do remember the very first words out of the Saudi lawyer's mouth when he went to the podium in the courtroom was, jester does not apply to us. Jester, the justice against sponsors of Terrorism Act. The law Terry spent years forcing through Congress and then passed a presidential veto. The law intended to give the 9-11 families a chance to sue Saudi Arabia. I wanted to take my shoe off and throw it at him and hit him in the back of the head. That's just me. Terry keeps quiet and her shoes on. This is one for her lawyers. One of them is Jody Westbrook Flowers. Jody's been on the case from the beginning.

4:03We did ask for a trillion dollars in the lawsuit. The sum is so large there's even a little joke about it inside her law firm. One of us fell asleep with our finger on the on the Zeeer hose. But that's to justify it. Frankly, we had to come up with a number and it turns out that that probably isn't too far off when you look at all the damages. The aim is also to bankrupt those who helped our Khyda. But 16 years in, Saudi Arabia is still trying to get the case thrown out. To keep the case alive, the families need evidence that Saudi officials helped the high jackas as part of their government work. So they subpoena the FBI for documents. The FBI production has been a long time coming. It's been very, very slow for us to get the access. Eventually thousands of pages arrive. Reports, interviews, summaries and bank and phone records stretching back before 2001.

5:04It became clear that there was a lot of material we were very interested in that perhaps we didn't have full access to. Danny is there to explain the FBI investigation. But the exchange will work both ways. The lawyers will show in evidence he never saw inside the bureau. Much of it concerns a familiar name. Omar Al Bayumi, the suspected Saudi agent who says he met two future high jackas by chance in early 2000, then help them begin their lives in San Diego. That the Cora Ver investigation was Omar Al Bayumi. Danny has always wanted to know how extensive that relationship really was. One event might provide an answer. A party inside the high jackas apartment. In a joint operation, anti-terrorist branch and West Midlands police officers swooped on this house in the high gate area of Birmingham last night.

6:05In September 2001, British police do more than arrest and question Omar Al Bayumi. Police have spent the days searching the house and removing property for examination. In a garage around the corner, officers find cardboard boxes and carrier bags full of letters, notebooks and videotapes. Back in episode 4, we heard British detectives play some of the recordings while questioning him. But as Bayumi scrolls through the tape looking for the high jackas, he says they're not there. The British share the evidence with the FBI liaison in London. Several videos were recovered from the search of Al Bayumi's residents. His internal FBI memo from the time records the same conclusion. One video revealed the party at the high-techers apartment. However, they were not seen in that particular video.

7:06Copies of the video travel to the United States. Later, Danny and San Diego seize an excerpt. It was black and white, grainy. No sound. An FBI report marked secret from the following year says the high jackas stayed in the back room and didn't mingle. Then, a year after that, the final report of the 9-11 commission takes the same line. It says the two high jackas reportedly spent most of the party by themselves, off camera, in a back room. The report was a bestseller and shaped the public narrative. But the commission never saw the full party video. That is what Joji and the lawyers want. So they asked the FBI for it. And when we went in to try to analyze it, we could never access the video of the welcome party. And when we pressed the FBI on it, they told us that they had lost it.

8:10The lawyers need to cast their net wider beyond the United States, back to where the evidence was found in the first place. The evidence that the UK police were able to share with us was absolutely game-changing. In December 2023, more than two decades after police first seized it, the lawyers received this from the UK. It was colour. It was clear. It was audio. It was video. It was everything. More than 28 minutes filmed inside the hijackers' parkward apartment. There's almost no furniture. Men crowd in. Most sit on the floor speaking Arabic. By Yumi instructs a guest to film with clear instructions who not to film, too.

9:10The camera never settles. It's one face, then another. People shift in and out of view. By Yumi in a cricket jumper moves among them smiling. At first glance, it's hard to know who anyone is or where they are. So the lawyers and their experts go through it, frame by frame. The Arabic is translated and time coded. Combining the video, photographs from parkward and a floor plan, a specialist digitally rebuilds the room. He locates the camera, compares faces, clothing and voices, and tracks people as they move. Frame by frame, the party begins to take shape. The guests introduce themselves. At one point, a voice gives the name Nawaf Muhammad.

10:15By Yumi responds, Nawaf may God greet you Nawaf. Nawaf al-Hazmi, a hijacker. Later, the camera twice catches another man in a white shirt who raises his hand to cover his face. Khalid Al-Midda, the second hijacker. The reconstruction places both men in the room. The conclusion that the nylon hijackers were somehow sequestered in the back room is simply not supported by the facts. And once we were able to put the video, the full video together, we could actually show them in the room in a place of honor. They were the hosts, she says. Saudi Arabia disputes the family's interpretation. By Yumi subsequently says, the party had nothing to do with the hijackers. It was meant to be at his place, but when a guest arrived there with his wife,

11:19they moved apartments to be away from women. In our culture, he told the met, men should be separate from women. The 9-11 families say no one brought their wives and there was no second venue. And, Holly Ratchford, who managed the park with apartment complex, told us that she'd attended other parties at Bayumi's home. If they had parties, usually everything wasn't closed up. It wasn't private. It was nice. I mean, I enjoyed going over and having, you know, they never made me feel like it was a woman man thing, you know, ever. Those gatherings, Holly says, included men and women. This party was different. The lawyers also identified guests who would go on to help the hijackers, including a dentist. The welcome party video was the glimpse into the actual support and planning, the fact that

12:22they had a dentist there to take care of one of the guys who had a sore tooth. I mean, they thought of everything. This is not somebody you just met. I had some coffee shop. For Danny, the video offers a room full of potential leads, 20 years too late. That's something that I should have seen and I was supposed to see and I was a case agent. You should have come to me, but it didn't. And I had no answers to that. And that's not a good feeling. What explains why Danny never saw the full video? Why the FBI told the lawsuit they'd lost it? We asked the FBI. They declined to comment. While Danny sees misleads in the party video, Terry sees the fruits of her labor, the network she longs suspected and fought so hard to bring into view. When the welcome party begins, and I see Medar, and I see he has me, and they're smiling,

13:28and they're walking around all of these other people that I know now are members of this support network. And I just, yeah, I couldn't help it. I just started to cry because I am seeing for the first time this support network in detail that I knew existed and I'd fought to get it in the open. The party video is just one item British police shared with the family's lawyers. There are dozens more. The family's lawyers alleged that together the pieces reveal Omar Alba Yumi for who he really was, a Saudi agent operating under deep cover, helping Al Qaeda hijackers prepare to attack the United States. Omar Alba Yumi and Saudi Arabia have always denied this. Next time, a federal judge must decide whether the case is strong enough to continue.

14:37I'm Jamie Bartlett, and for BBC Radio 4, I'll be looking at how fakery took over the world. No, no, hang on, hang on, sorry. You're not Jamie Bartlett, I'm Jamie Bartlett. Oh, really? Well, who am I then? I'm afraid you're not real pal. You're just an imitation chat book I created to help me make this series on modern fakery and why it's everywhere. Sounds good. What's going to be in it? Well, there's a lot. 1980s professional wrestling, dogiac academics, AIS psychosis, COVID vaccine, skeptics. What's it called? Everything is fake and nobody cares with me, Jamie Bartlett, and me, Jimmy Botlet. Listen first on BBC Sounds. Available now on the documentary from the BBC World Service. Kirsty Walk reunites a group of people

15:37intimately involved in a moment of modern history. I could see the plaza completely covered with debris and bodies. I was just waiting to die. The reunion, the 9-11 attacks. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get to your BBC podcasts. I know that my son is somewhere alive. This is Deborah Tyson. Her son Austin is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world. And for years, I've been searching for him. It's a case like I never imagined and there are people who don't want the truth to come out. From the BBC, this is I'm not a monster presents. Where is Austin Tyson? Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.