On Wednesday, the FBI released hundreds of recently declassified documents investigating the possible links of the Saudi government to the September 11 attacks, according to the American "CBS" network.
The new documents come about two months after the bureau released a 16-page document revealing the "significant logistical support" two Saudi hijackers received in the United States.
The network said that the publication of the documents comes after a difficult but fruitless investigation, and many question its results.
For years, the investigation focused on whether three Saudi nationals, including an official at the Saudi embassy in Washington, had prior knowledge of the attacks.
The investigation concluded that there was insufficient evidence to accuse the three citizens of directly supporting the kidnappers.
On Wednesday, the bureau published more than 700 pages, indicating that al-Qaeda divided roles in planning the attacks and "did not make the plans for the attack known in advance to others" for fear of their leakage.
According to the office's memo, the kidnappers knew that there was a "jihadist" operation but did not learn of its nature until shortly before the time of the attack.
The release of the documents comes under an executive order from US President Joe Biden.
Over the past two decades, the investigation has examined support provided by Saudi officials to the hijackers, but it has not provided clear evidence that senior Saudi leaders helped plan the attacks, according to the network report.
The memo that closed the investigation notes that the office "has not identified additional groups or individuals responsible for the attack who are not currently accused."
The network reports that the documents reveal new details about the efforts made by the office over the years to investigate the possible involvement of the Saudi government.
According to the new documents, the FBI also investigated relations between Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mehdar, the first hijackers to arrive in the United States, and people connected to the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs, which funds mosques and efforts to promote Islam around the world.
The network says that one of the documents indicates that the Bureau of Investigation investigated whether al-Qaeda elements infiltrated the ministry without the knowledge of the Saudi government, or whether there was cooperation between elements of the organization and some extremist elements within the ministry.
The audit focused in particular on Hazmi and Mehdar. In February 2000, shortly after arriving in Southern California, they encountered in a halal restaurant a Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi who helped them find and rent an apartment in San Diego, had ties to the Saudi government, and had earlier summoned an FBI scrutiny.
The Saudi government has long denied any involvement, and last September the Saudi Embassy in Washington announced its support for the complete declassification of all records as a way to "permanently end the baseless allegations against the kingdom." The embassy said any allegation of Saudi complicity was "categorically false".
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