U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche stated on Monday that the federal government will continue to release records related to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In an interview with CBS News, Blanche said the documents currently being withheld are restricted due to genuine classification and not to protect Saudi Arabia or any other government entity. The announcement follows public appeals from the families of victims during the 25th anniversary commemoration of the attacks.
The request for transparency involves a long-running lawsuit by thousands of 9/11 family members against Saudi Arabia, alleging the country provided support to the hijackers. While 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, the Saudi government has repeatedly denied any direct involvement. A 2004 commission found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior officials individually funded al Qaeda, though it noted the possibility that government-sponsored charities may have diverted funds to the group.
Recent developments in the legal proceedings have brought new evidence to light, including a video of Omar al-Bayoumi, a figure linked to two hijackers, filming the U.S. Capitol. Other evidence includes an airplane sketch and a mathematical formula found in al-Bayoumi's United Kingdom apartment in 2001, which an FBI investigator told "60 Minutes" could be used to calculate a flight's rate of descent. On Friday, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) released 71 declassified President's Daily Brief products from the period surrounding the attacks, though these were not the specific records requested by the families regarding Saudi connections.
This commitment to further declassification affects thousands of 9/11 family members who have spent over two decades seeking access to government records for their civil litigation against Saudi Arabia. The underlying lawsuit represents the interests of the families of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the attacks. The release of these documents could determine whether families can substantiate claims of foreign government support for the hijackers, which is a requirement for their ongoing legal efforts to seek damages.
The scale of this declassification effort involves documents that have remained secret for 25 years. Recent releases by the CIA have already reached the scale of the "largest single release" of presidential briefing material related to the attacks, consisting of 71 distinct intelligence products. For the families, the change would be the removal of redactions on specific files concerning Saudi nationals such as Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy. Access to these files would allow their legal teams to present a more complete narrative in federal court, potentially impacting the trajectory of a case that a U.S. District Judge ruled in August 2025 has sufficient evidence to proceed.
The next steps in this process involve the Department of Justice reviewing classified materials to identify documents that no longer meet the threshold for secrecy. While Blanche confirmed that more records would be made public, he did not provide a specific timeline for these releases. The litigation itself continues following a ruling by U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels, which denied Saudi Arabia's motion to dismiss the claims. President Trump also indicated he would review the families' requests upon his return to Washington, though no deadline for declassification has been set.