None of the issues still lingering 20 years after the 9/11 attacks have been as persistent or as emotionally wrenching for the families of the victims " as the question of whether Saudi Arabia provided funding and other assistance for the worst terrorist attack in American history. Of the 19 Al Qaeda terrorists who hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners ... 15 were citizens of Saudi Arabia " and of course, Osama bin Laden was a member of one of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families. Immediately after the attacks, the Bush administration downplayed the Saudi connection and suppressed evidence that might link powerful Saudis to the funding of Islamic extremism and terrorism. Much of what the FBI discovered about possible Saudi links to the attacks remains secret even today. Glimpses of material that have become public provide mounting evidence that senior Saudi officials, including one diplomat in the Saudi Embassy in Washington, may in fact have indirectly provided assistance for two of the Al Qaeda hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who were the first of the hijackers to arrive in the United States in 2000 and lived for about a year and a half in San Diego beforehand. Other possible connections also led back to Prince Bandar, according to a 28-page section of a joint congressional inquiry in 2002, which was kept secret until its partial release in 2016. The 28 pages ... laid out a panoply of other connections between the hijackers and people inside or connected to the Saudi government.