Kansas City, Missouri — Attorney General Todd Blanche vowed that the federal government will continue releasing records related to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, doubling down on U.S. assertions that documents still being withheld are not being kept secret to protect Saudi Arabia or any other government.
“The one thing that we are not doing, we’re not protecting people,” Blanche said in an exclusive interview with CBS News. “The reason that we’re not releasing documents has nothing to do with protecting any government or any entity. It’s just to protect, genuine classified [information].”
Blanche weighed in Monday, following renewed pressure from 9/11 family members, some of whom appealed directly to the Trump administration during Friday’s commemoration marking the 25th year since the Ground Zero attacks. They called for the release of unredacted documents, publicly accusing successive administrations of withholding evidence related to Saudi Arabia. Thousands of 9/11 family members have pursued a long-running lawsuit against Saudi Arabia for possibly providing support to the hijackers.
As a result of their lawsuit, more information has come to light already. Last year, a “60 Minutes” report revealed new evidence about one figure in the investigation, Omar al-Bayoumi, who met two of the hijackers and helped them find housing in San Diego. He claimed he met them by chance, but the 9/11 families believe he has deeper ties to them and to the Saudi government. Years after the attack, the families’ lawsuit resulted in the release of a video of al-Bayoumi filming the entrances of the U.S. Capitol and pointing out its location relative to the Washington Monument, and at some points referencing a “plan.”
In addition to the Capitol video, an airplane sketch and math formula were also seized from Bayoumi’s U.K. apartment and turned over to the FBI in 2001. One FBI field investigator told “60 Minutes” he didn’t know about the sketch until it was about to be archived or destroyed. When he obtained it, he took it to aviation experts, who told him a pilot could use the formula to calculate the rate of descent to hit a target on the horizon. The evidence had never been shared with the FBI field agents who worked on the case or with top intelligence officials.
Investigators have long believed the Capitol may have been the intended target of Flight 93, which crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after passengers overtook the hijackers.
Asked Sunday about the families’ remarks as he prepared to return to Washington from Ireland, President Trump told reporters, “I’m going to look at it when I get back.”
Blanche said Monday that additional records would be made public — though the nation’s top law enforcement official did not provide a timeline.
“Sometimes there’s documents that are classified and they shouldn’t be,” Blanche said. “And so those are the ones that we’re going to release.”
Asked what families still seeking answers should expect, he addressed the families directly.
“There’ll be more records coming out,” Blanche said. “And so, to the families that are still looking for answers, we are, too. And that’s what we’re going to deliver to them.”
Terry Strada, chair of Families United, whose husband, Tom, was killed in the North Tower on 9/11, took a moment during the annual commemorative reading of victims’ names to call out past administrations for failing families seeking information about possible Saudi links to the attackers.
“For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” Strada said.
Strada appealed directly to the Trump administration, asking Vice President JD Vance at the New York ceremony to take the families’ message back to Washington. She urged the vice president to press Saudi Arabia over its denials, describing the government’s handling of the issue over the 25 years as “one betrayal after another.”
The nephew of Lisa Marie Terry, a Marsh McLennan executive killed in the World Trade Center, appealed directly to Mr. Trump during his turn at the microphone.
“President Trump, you’re our last hope,” he said.
For more than two decades, questions have swirled around what assistance two of the hijackers received after arriving in California and whether people connected to the Saudi government played any role in their travel.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudi nationals, though Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied that its government was directly involved.
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded al Qaeda, but also wrote that its findings left open the possibility that charities with meaningful Saudi government sponsorship had diverted funds to al Qaeda.
In August 2025, U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels denied Saudi Arabia’s effort to have the claims thrown out, finding instead that families had presented sufficient evidence for the case to proceed, including evidence concerning Saudi nationals Omar al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, plus aid offered to hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar following their arrival in California in January 2000.
On Friday, the CIA released a new tranche of 9/11-related intelligence, with CIA Director John Ratcliffe declassifying 71 President’s Daily Brief products dating from the years before the attacks through the day afterward. The agency referred to it as the largest single release of declassified CIA presidential briefing material related to 9/11. The documents include varying assessments of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and warnings about possible attacks.
Still, those recently released documents are not the same records at the center of the families’ demands concerning possible Saudi connections.
Blanche said some records remain classified for legitimate national security reasons but rejected the suggestion that the government is withholding material to shield another country.
“It’s not as if we’re keeping records from the American people,” Blanche told CBS News.
