Spring 2000: 9/11 Hijackers Alhazmi and Almihdhar Likely Use Al-Bayoumi’s Phone to Call Imam Al-Awlaki and Others

An unnamed FBI agent who investigates suspected Saudi spy Omar al-Bayoumi after 9/11 will later tell the 9/11 Commission that he is 98 percent sure that future 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar use al-Bayoumi’s cell phone during the first couple of months of 2000. For instance, a San Diego associate of al-Bayoumi’s will later state in an interview that when he received a page on February 15, 2000 for al-Bayoumi’s cell phone, he called the number and found he was speaking to Nawaf Alhazmi instead of al-Bayoumi. There are four calls from al-Bayoumi’s cell phone to radical imam Anwar al-Awlaki on February 4, 2000 (see February 4, 2000). There are calls to al-Awlaki on February 10, 16, and 18 as well. The agent will also note that there are numerous other calls on this phone from this time period that have never been investigated, and this should be an issue of grave concern. [9/11 Commission, 11/17/2003 ]