“They’re really lovely human beings,” he told CNN. “ [Osama] is the only one . . . I met him only once. The rest of them are well-educated, successful businessmen, involved in a lot of charities. It is —it is tragic. I feel pain for them, because he’s caused them a lot of pain." Prince Bandar Told CNN, Vanity fair (CNN page gone)
Jane Mayer, “The House of Bin Laden,” New Yorker, November 12, 2001.
Bin Laden Family Could Profit From a Jump In Defense Spending Due to Ties to U.S. Bank, The Wall Street Journal Sept. 27, 2001
"His father Mohammed Awad bin Laden came to the kingdom from Hadramout (South Yemen) sometime around 1930. The father started his life as a very poor laborer (porter in Jeddah port), to end up as owner of the biggest construction company in the kingdom. During the reign of King Saud, bin Laden the father became very close to the royal family when he took the risk of building King Saud's palaces much cheaper than the cheapest bid. He impressed King Saud with his performance but he also built good relations with other members of the royal family, especially Faisal. During the Saud-Faisal conflict in the early sixties, bin Laden the father had a big role in convincing King Saud to step down in favor of Faisal. After Saud's departure the treasury was empty and bin Laden was so supportive to King Faisal that he literally paid the civil servants' wages of the whole kingdom for six months. King Faisal then issued a decree that all construction projects should go to bin Laden" Who Is Bin Laden? - A Biography Of Osama Bin Laden - Hunting for bin Laden PBS (Quote taken from the source given in book, as author does not use exact quote)
Adnan Khashoggi - Middle man between the west and middle East in arms, construction etc
"BCCIs involvement in prostitution arose out of its creation of its special protocol department in Pakistan to service the personal re quirements of the Al-Nahyan family of Abu Dhabi, and on an as- needed basis, other BCCI VIPs, including the families of other Mid dle Eastern rulers. Several BCCI officers described the protocol department's han dling of prostitution to Senate investigators in private, and two—
Abdur Sakhia and Nazir Chinoy—confirmed their general knowl edge of the practice in testimony." The BCCI Affair, A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown (December 1992) Page 71
"Among BCCI bank officials in Pakistan, Begum Rahim was re puted to have in United Bank first won the favors or attention of the ruling family by arranging to get virgin women from the villages from the ages of 16 to 20. Rahim would make payments to their families, take the teenaged girls into the cities, and there taught them how to dress and how to act, including the correct mannerisms appropriate to their intended roles as short-term sex
ual companions for sheikhs. The women would be then brought to the Abu Dhabi princes. For years, Rahim would take 50-60 of these girls at a time to large department stores in Lahore and Ka rachi to get them outfitted for clothes. Given the size of Rahim's retinue and her spending habits—$100,000 at a time was not un usual when she was engaged in outfitting her charges—her activities ties became notorious in the Pakistani community generally, and there was substantial competition among clothiers and jewelers for her business." The BCCI Affair, A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown (December 1992) Page 71
"According to one U.S. investigator with substantial knowledge of BCCI's activities, some BCCI officials have acknowledged that some of the females provided some members of the Al-Nahyan fam ily were young girls who had not yet reached puberty. The official said that former BCCI officials had told him that BCCI also provided males to homosexual VIPs" The BCCI Affair, A Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Senator John Kerry and Senator Hank Brown (December 1992) Page 72
James Baker III - Powerful friend of the Bushes, in Bush SR administration and advisor to George W Bush
Ron Rosenbaum, New York Observer, April 23, 2001,
Zapata Petroleum - Oil company founded by George H W Bush in 1953
Dan Balz, “The Saudi Connection: The Next Best Thing to Mecca Is Houston; Houston as the Mecca for the Saudis,” Washington Post, April 19, 1981
"Later, as ambassador, Bandar conveyed the kingdom's thanks by secretly placing $10 million in a Vatican City bank, as reported last year in The Washington Post; the money, deposited at the request of William Casey, then the director of the CIA, was to be used by Italy's Christian Democratic Party in a campaign against Italian Communists" Robert Baer (ex CIA), “The Fall of the House of Saud,” Atlantic Monthly, May 2003
Richard Sale, “Saddam Key in Early C IA Plot,” UPI, April 10, 2003
“confirming Iraqi use of chemical weapons. We also know that Iraq has acquired CW production primarily from Western firms, including possibly a U.S. foreign subsidiary” “Iraq Use of Chemical Weapons,” unclassified memo from Jonathan Howe to the secretary of state, November 1, 1983, National Security Archives, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq24.pdf.
Seymour Hersh, “King’s Ransom,” New Yorker, October 22, 2001
David Douglas, 12th Marquess of Queensberry - Step father to Catherine Casey Half brother of an intelligence Head and wife of Salem Bin Laden
Vinnell Corporation - Private International military company based in America
“We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." The Brzezinski Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur (1998), University Of Arizona
"I had set a personal record with a thirty-seven-hour day that took me from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to Bogotá, Columbia, to Los Angeles, then home to Houston.. . . I met personally with all my Security Council counterparts in an intricate process of cajoling, extracting, threatening, and occasionally buying votes." James Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy Page 305
“They ( Saudia Arabia) didn’t just want [Saddam] ejected from Kuwait; they wanted him destroyed. For them, the only solution was an American-led war that would annihilate Saddam’s military machine once and for all" James Baker III, The Politics of Diplomacy Page 289
“Such a pertinent fact might have led to impertinent demands for proof of Nayirah’s whereabouts in August and September of 1990, when she said she witnessed the atrocities, as well as corroboration of her charges" Witness for Kuwait John R. MacArthur THE BALTIMORE EVENING SUN, January 7th 1992
"For weeks, Prince al-Waleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia pondered the notion of spending a spare half-billion dollars. Then last month, on the recommendation of American advisers, he used the money to buy up a sizable piece of America's largest banking company, Citicorp...The advisers were the Carlyle Group"
Kenneth Gilpin, “Little-Known Carlyle Scores Big,” New York Times, March 26, 1991
Bin Laden Family Liquidates Holdings With Carlyle Group By Kurt Eichenwald Oct. 26, 2001 NYT, BDM INTERNATIONAL EXPECTED TO BUY VINNELL CORP, SAUDI MILITARY TRAINER By Steven Pearlstein March 13, 1992
The Project For A New American Century - Neocon Think Tank Founded in 1997
Letter to Bill Clinton - January 26, 1998
The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC
We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.
The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.
Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.
We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.
We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.
Sincerely,
Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett
Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick
Rebuilding America's Defences - September 2000
"Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein" PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defences Page 14
"Further, the process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is
likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a
new Pearl Harbor" PNAC, Rebuilding America's Defences Page 51
Lesley Stahl, “Bush Sought Way to Invade Iraq,” CBS News.com, January 11,
Patrick E. Tyler, “Fearing Harm, Bin Laden Kin Fled From U.S.,” New York Times, September 30, 2001
Interviews By The Author (take with a pinch of salt)
Dan Grossi and Manuel Perez
Grossi and Perez say they waited until three young Saudi men, all apparently in their early twenties, arrived. Then the pilot took Grossi, Perez, and the Saudis to a well-appointed ten-passenger Learjet. They departed tor Lexington at about four-thirty.
“They got the approval somewhere,” said Perez. “It must have come from the highest levels of government.”
“Flight restrictions had not been lifted yet,” Grossi said. “I was told it would take White House approval. I thought [the flight] was not going to happen.
Grossi said he did not get the names of the Saudi students he was escorting. “It happened so fast,” Grossi says. “I just knew they were Saudis. They were well connected. One of them told me his father or his uncle was good friends with George Bush senior.”'
Interview with Dan Watson
“I recall getting into a big flap with Bandar’s office about whether they would leave without us knowing who was on the plane,” a former FBI agent who participated in the repatriation of the Saudis
Interview with Tom Kinton
“We were in the midst of the worst terrorist act in history,” Kinton said. “And here we were seeing an evacuation of the bin Ladens!” Like Kinton, Virginia Buckingham was stunned that the bin Laden family was being spirited out of the country. “My staff was told that a private jet was arriving at Logan from Saudi Arabia to pick up fourteen members of Osama bin Laden’s family living in the Boston area,”
Interview with James Bath
"The voice on the other end belonged to Salem bin Laden, heir to the great Saudi Binladin Group fortune. Then only about twenty-five, Salem was the eldest of fifty-four children of Mohammed Awad bin Laden, a brilliant engineer who had built the multibillion-dollar construction empire in Saudi Arabia.
Bath not only had a buyer for a plane no one else seemed to want, he had also stumbled upon a source of wealth and power that was certain to pique the interest of even the brashest Texas oil baron. Bath flew the plane to Saudi Arabia himself—no easy task since the aircraft could only do about 240 knots an hour —and ended up spending three weeks in Jeddah, where he befriended two key figures in the new generation of young Saudi billionaires."
"Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz sought to have similar relationships in the United States. With Bath tutoring them in the ways of the West, they started coming to Houston regularly in the mid-seventies. Salem came first, buying planes and construction equipment for his family’s company"
"They loved the ranch and the country life.. There was a real affinity between Texas and the Kingdom"
"While he served in the Texas Air National Guard, Bath had also befriended the young George W. Bush"
“I was enraged and I went there at once,” Bin Laden On the Afghan Soviet war www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB55/ciaubl.pdf.
MAK - also known as the Afghan Services Bureau, was founded in 1984 by Abdullah Azzam, Wa'el Hamza Julaidan, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to raise funds and recruit foreign mujahidin for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. MAK became the forerunner to al-Qaeda
"Bin Laden used to come to us when America -- underline, America -- through the CIA and Saudi Arabia were helping our brother mujahedeen in Afghanistan to get rid of the communist, secularist Soviet Union forces, to liberate them. ... Osama bin Laden came and said, Thank you. Thank you for bringing the Americans to help us to get rid of the secularist, atheist Soviets" PBS interview Prince Bandar.
Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high level State Dept officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. These were, essentially, people who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained bitterly at the time there I returned to the US, I complained to the State Dept here, to the General Accounting Office, to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and to the Inspector General's office. I was met with silence… What I was protesting was, in reality, an effort to bring recruits, rounded up by Osama Bin Laden, to the US for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets
"Newsnight - Has someone been sitting on the FBI?". BBC News. November 8, 2001, Michael Springman
Arbusto Energy - George W Bush first Oil company
Harken Energy bought out Arbusto and spectrum 7
"Their annual reports and press releases get me totally befuddled. There's been so much promotion, manipulation and inside dealmaking. It's been a fast-numbers game" Harken founder Phil Kendrick, still a small shareholder said to Time Global Intrigue: The Wackiest Rig in Texas Oct. 28, 1991
"From 1984 to 1987, the Defense Secretary, Caspar W. Weinberger, and the Saudi Ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, met or talked at least 64 times, according to Mr. Weinberger's diaries" Stephen Engelberg, “U.S.-Saudi Deals in 90’s Shifting Away from Cash Toward Credit,” New York Times, August 23, 1993 A1
Interview With Tony Bennett
“Salem was a crazy bastard —and a delightful
guy,” says Terry Bennett, a doctor who attended the family in Saudi Arabia
Prince Turki
“America dollar for dollar supporting the
mujahideen" longtime head of Saudi Intelligence
Chris Ulman and Cherif Sedky
"On several occasions, Bush, Baker, and Major flew to Saudi Arabia on behalf of Carlyle to meet with and speak before members of the royal family and wealthy merchants such as the bin Ladens and the bin Mahfouzes" VP of Carlyle and attorney if bin Mahfouzes family
Richard Clarke
“Somebody brought to us for approval the decision to let an airplane filled with Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, leave the country,” Clarke says. “My role was to say that it can’t happen until the FBI approves it. And so the FBI was asked —we had a live connection to the FBI —and we asked the FBI to make sure that they were satisfied that everybody getting on that plane was someone that it was O.K. to leave. And they came back and said yes, it was fine with them. So we said, ‘Fine, let it happen