Report Links Saudi Government to 9/11 Hijackers, Sources Say

Many U.S. officials involved in the war on terrorism stressed that they were still actively investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, and that they had recently redoubled their efforts to trace terrorist financing in and out of Saudi Arabia, in part because of the cooperation of Saudi officials themselves. A delegation of senior authorities from the FBI, Treasury Department and National Security Council is set to travel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday. U.S. officials said the group will pursue new leads, even if they go to the top tiers of the royal family.

"We're going to track money in both directions, back to the operators and to the source of the donors and those who support terrorism, wherever that takes us," said one senior law enforcement official. "But completing the linkage between the Saudi [officials] and where the money ends up, that's what we're doing but it's going to be really difficult."

The officials will be bringing with them a list of suspected Saudi financiers of terrorism and will ask the Saudis to interrogate them and shut down certain businesses that they believe are being used as conduits.

They will also pressure Saudi leaders on why they haven't cracked down on many of the charities whose ties to terrorism -- and to top Saudi officials -- are detailed in the classified pages, according to several U.S. officials familiar with the trip.

Of particular concern, the U.S. officials said, were recent indications that the largest Saudi-based charity, the Al Haramain Charitable Foundation, continued to operate even though they had repeatedly pressed Saudi leaders to shut it down.

Saudi officials, who have extensive ties to Al Haramain, did order the closure of the massive charity's many overseas operations late last year as part of a series of promised reforms aimed at cracking down on terrorist financing. One senior U.S. official said the Saudis only did so after a U.S. delegation to Riyadh presented them with reams of "jaw-dropping" information about how Al Haramain's offices worldwide had been corrupted by Al Qaeda operatives.

Since that visit, the official said, Saudi leaders have reneged on virtually all of the promised reforms. Al-Jubeir, the Saudi spokesman, said such reforms were underway but that "they take time to implement fully."

Meanwhile, U.S. authorities said they would continue to investigate the other main charities cited in the congressional report as being conduits for terrorism, including the Muslim World League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth and the International Islamic Relief Organization.