9/11 families take on Washington
The son of a victim describes how political pressure created a breakthrough in the families' case against Saudi Arabia, 24 years after the attacks.
All Rise News spotlights how political mobilization shapes our world and understanding of the events that shape it.
A conversation with 9/11 victim family member Brett Eagleson transforms the meaning of the phrase “never forget” from passive recall to mobilizing for the public’s collective memory.
The president of 9/11 Justice, Eagleson has been fighting for answers about the terrorist attacks that killed his father 24 years ago today. His father, Bruce Eagleson, had been working on the 17th floor of the World Trade Center when the planes hit, but he helped distribute portable two-way radios to firefighters before the towers fell.
“My dad died a hero that day,” Brett Eagleson said. “He gave his life so that potentially another father, a young father, could live to raise his family.”
In the intervening decades, the younger Eagleson has been one of the most prominent representatives of a group of 9/11 family members pressing Democratic and Republican administrations for information about Saudi Arabia’s ties to the attacks.
“It sickens me. It is horrific,” Eagleson said. “My brother joined the military after these attacks. My father gave his life, and it's not just about our family. … It's not even about the 3,000 Americans that we had to watch being murdered on live TV. This is about all of America. Our lives changed that day. There's a pre-9/11 world and a post-9/11 world, and we owe it to ourselves as a nation, as a country, to be honest with ourselves.”
The full interview can be seen below.
“High probability”
Nearly a quarter of a century later, Eagleson’s advocacy has brought tangible breakthroughs through litigation and political pressure.
In August, a federal judge allowed the 9/11 families’ lawsuit against Saudi Arabia to go to trial, finding that evidence recently obtained by his lawyers creates a “high probability" that two of the Saudi government’s employees had “roles in the hijacker’s plans.”
In the 45-page ruling, U.S. District Judge George Daniels reached that conclusion after rattling off the disturbing evidence gathered against two of Saudi Arabia’s employees: Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad Al-Thumairy. In 2000, Bayoumi helped two of the hijackers find a home in San Diego the year before the attacks, and he received what the judge described as a suspiciously timed pay raise in that time frame. The hijackers — Nawaf al Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar — appeared in a video of a gathering at Bayoumi’s apartment.
In another video obtained by the families, Bayoumi could be seen touring Washington, D.C., describing lawmakers inside the U.S. Capitol as “demons of the White House” and referring cryptically to an unspecified “plan.”
“The timing of when [Bayoumi] did this is very significant because he did it in the summer of 1999, which is when the intel officials say that that's when al-Qaida was finalizing where their targets would be,” Eagleson said. “Now, we all now know that the plane that crashed where the heroes took over in that Pennsylvania field, the intended target was the U.S. Capitol.”
The families obtained one of the most alarming pieces of evidence from the U.K. government: A notepad seized from Bayoumi’s apartment in September 2001, which had a handwritten drawing of a plane and a mathematical formula related to its descent, which a federal judge found “facially connects” Bayoumi with knowledge about the attacks.
“Why did we have to obtain information from the British authorities and not our own government?” Eagleson asked.
Hijackers Hazmi and Mihdhar “immediately” visited Thumairy’s King Fahad Mosque upon their arrival in Los Angeles, the ruling says.
“Stand with the families”
The 9/11 families would never have obtained the evidence to advance their case without political pressure to strip Saudi Arabia of immunity.
Filed in 2004, the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia stagnated and was initially dismissed under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The families only managed to revive the case by pushing to amend that law through the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), despite opposition by then-President Barack Obama.
“Congress delivered to President Obama his one and only veto override of his entire eight years,” Eagleson recalled.
Eagleson said he has encountered the same response from every administration that he’s encountered.
“President Trump met with me and other family members,” Eagleson said. “We brought the former FBI agents with us, and we pleaded and begged him for help. Within 24 hours of that meeting, he invoked what's known as the state secrets privilege on the 9/11 families, shielding the most damning evidence against Saudi Arabia from the public light.”
For Eagleson, the snub was especially ironic for the man who ran on “America First” and “Make America Great Again,” imposing tariffs and turning the United States into an “isolationist country.”
In 2022, 9/11 family members protested a Saudi-backed LIV Golf Tournament that Trump hosted, and Eagleson was quick to note that Jared Kushner received $2 billion from a Saudi public investgment fund.
Meanwhile, Eagleson said, the political fallout from the 9/11 families’ watershed ruling has been “muted” on Capitol Hill.
Eagleson described his message to Trump and Capitol Hill this way: “Stand with the families. Stand with Americans.”
Just weeks ago, New York City medical investigators identified a 9/11 victim after 24 years. The elder Eagleson is among those whose remains were never recovered. His family still holds out hope that he will be identified, and more information will emerge about the attacks that killed him.