Tucker Carlson has launched The 9/11 Files with an explosive challenge to the official narrative. For nearly a quarter century, Americans have been told that Al Qaeda operatives repeatedly slipped through cracks in the intelligence system, brushing past U.S. and foreign agencies undetected until it was too late. Carlson’s opening episode argues otherwise: that key parts of the U.S. government—especially the CIA—knew more, concealed more, and blocked the FBI at critical moments, while leaning on Saudi intelligence as a domestic proxy. His stated goal is to build momentum for a new, genuinely independent 9/11 investigation.

The episode is anchored by the testimony of former FBI agent Mark Rossini, who worked at Alec Station, the CIA’s bin Laden unit, from 1999 to 2003. Rossini says the U.S. had no human sources inside Al Qaeda before 9/11 and instead relied on technical collection and a Yemeni communications hub known as the Hada home switchboard. According to Rossini, the FBI only learned of the switchboard in 1998, after a suspect in the East Africa embassy bombings gave the number to FBI Special Agent John Anticev during an interview. Carlson emphasizes that CIA and NSA had been monitoring related traffic since 1996, but the FBI had been left in the dark.

Through this surveillance, U.S. services learned that Khalid al-Mihdhar would travel via Dubai to Kuala Lumpur for an Al Qaeda summit in early 2000. In Dubai, the CIA arranged to search his hotel room and discovered a U.S. visa issued in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Carlson notes that recent court filings suggest the visas were tied to a joint Saudi-CIA operation. At the time, John Brennan was serving as the CIA’s station chief in Riyadh.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian Special Branch monitored the summit and reported that Nawaf al-Hazmi, another future hijacker, was with Mihdhar. Rossini and FBI colleague Doug Miller say they drafted a CIA report to alert the Bureau that Mihdhar held a U.S. visa. According to their account, the warning was blocked at CIA headquarters by analyst Michael Anne Casey, who declared it was “not an FBI matter.” Rossini says he assumed the CIA would notify the Bureau later, something he now calls a lasting mistake.

By March 2000, the CIA had tracked Mihdhar and Hazmi to Los Angeles. Official accounts claim the trail then went cold. But Carlson cites a court filing in which former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke told investigators the CIA was running a false-flag recruitment effort targeting the hijackers. Clarke has said former CIA Director George Tenet angrily called him after those claims went public—but did not deny them during the conversation. Tenet’s spokesperson has categorically rejected the allegations, but the documentary stresses that 9/11 Commission investigators were walled off from key witnesses and that Executive Director Philip Zelikow narrowed the scope of inquiry under a White House agreement to screen records.

The documentary also highlights the Saudi angle. Soon after arriving in California, Mihdhar and Hazmi connected with Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi intelligence asset who held a no-show job with a Saudi aviation contractor. When British police later raided Bayoumi’s home, they found a drawing of an airplane and flight calculations, evidence the 9/11 Commission never saw. According to declassified material cited in the episode, Bayoumi received funds through the Saudi Embassy, funneled from accounts tied to Princess Haifa bint Faisal. Bayoumi is said to have guided the hijackers to San Diego, cosigned their lease, paid their deposits, helped them obtain bank accounts and driver’s licenses, and introduced them to radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Carlson argues that because the CIA was barred from domestic spying, it relied on Saudi intelligence as a workaround.

The FBI, too, comes in for criticism. Rossini notes that the hijackers lived at one point with FBI informant Abdu Sattar, yet the Bureau failed to connect the dots. The Phoenix memo, which warned in July 2001 of Al Qaeda-linked aviation students, never reached senior officials until after the attacks. Zacarias Moussaoui’s arrest in August 2001 similarly went nowhere because agents were denied a timely search of his laptop. Carlson also highlights the Bureau’s technological failings, noting that in 2001 it took 12 keystrokes to save a single document, and photographs of suspects were sent by express mail because offices lacked scanners.

The episode ends by revisiting the 28 pages initially redacted from Congress’s joint inquiry—focused on the hijackers’ time in Southern California—and arguing that Zelikow’s tight control over the 9/11 Commission ensured the CIA-Saudi connection was never fully explored. Carlson concludes that the official 9/11 Commission report sold to the public was not the full story, and that the country deserves a new investigation capable of questioning intelligence officials under oath and declassifying what is necessary.

The most newsworthy charge in Carlson’s opening installment is the direct link he draws between CIA obstruction of FBI warnings, the use of Saudi assets on U.S. soil, and John Brennan’s proximity to the Jeddah visa pipeline. Together, Carlson argues, they suggest 9/11 was not merely the result of incompetence, but of a covert effort that backfired—one that subsequent investigations failed to probe fully.

Michael J. Hout is Editor-in-Chief of Liberty Affair. Based in Warsaw, Poland, he writes about politics, culture, and history. Follow his latest insights on X: @michaeljhout.