FBI Hiding Thousands of 9/11 Documents in Tampa Office

August 22, 2013 • 9:57AM

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by the Broward Bulldog, the FBI has disclosed that its Tampa office alone has more than 15,352 documents, which probably contain "hundreds of thousands of pages of records related to the 9/11 investigation."

The lawsuit was brought in an effort to obtain FBI documents concerning its investigation into some wealthy Saudis living in Sarasota, namely Abdulaziz al-Hijji and his family, who were known to have extensive links to the 9/11 hijackers, and who fled from Sarasota shortly before the 9/11 attacks.

According to court documents, the FBI had previously provided no indication that the Tampa area had any significant connection with the 9/11 investigation, other than that hijacker Mohamed Atta had been there in January 2001, and had trained, along with another hijacker, at a nearby flight school. But, according to an analysis done by the plaintiffs in the suit, it appears that the FBI had over 2,500 documents pertaining to its 9/11 investigation filed in just one week's time — between Sept. 19 and Sept. 25, 2001. While the FBI admits to the more than 15,000 documents just in the Tampa office, it is stonewalling the Bulldog's demands for a more thorough search of these documents for relevant information.

The Bulldog clearly knows what it is looking for. "For example," their lawyers write, in arguing for a more specific document search, "if any one of the documents reflected that Abdulaszziz al-Hijji, a resident of the [Sarasota] home, was paid as an agent of the Saudi royal family to provide comfort and aid to Mohamed Atta while he learned to operate the Boeing 757 that he would fly into the Twin Towers," such a document would not be found under the search methods used by the FBI.

After the Bulldog published its story about the Sarasota Saudis in 2010, the FBI said publicly that it had found no evidence connecting the al-Hijji family to the hijackers or the 9/11 plot. But after Bulldog sued last year under the FOIA, the FBI released a handful of records, including one April 2002 report that said agents had found "many connections" to persons associated with the 9/11 terrorists. Those connections include a family member who was a flight student at Huffman Aviation — the Venice Municipal Airport flight school where 9/11 hijacker pilots Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi trained.

The Broward Bulldog, and the 9/11 Families group, are also seeking declassification of the 28 pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry report — as EIR has been doing for the past two years.