Inside the Global Banking Intelligence Complex, BCCI Operations
Inside the Global Banking Intelligence Complex, BCCI Operations
Part II
By David DeGraw
Global Research, October 12, 2010
Amped Status 7 October 2010
Amped Status Editor’s Note: The following is Part II of David DeGraw’s new book, “The Road Through 2012: Revolution or World War III.”
To get a more complete understanding of our current crisis, we need to look at the history of events that led up to it. We need to peer deeply into the inner workings of the Global Banking Intelligence Complex. Without acknowledging and exposing the covert forces that are aligned against us, we will not be able to effectively overcome them.
In the past I have shied away from going too deeply into the details of the intelligence world out of fear of being written off and dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. If I hadn’t spent the majority of the past 20 years investigating global financial intelligence operations, I certainly wouldn’t believe half of this myself. Given the severity of our current crisis and the imminent devastating implications, I now realize that I must go deeper into covert activities than I publicly ever have. The information I am about to report is very well-sourced and documented, and needs to be covered before we can proceed to exposing present operations.
I: All Roads Go Through BCCI
Here is a partial list of the economic and political scandals that I investigated throughout the 1980s and early ’90s:
The Savings & Loan scandal;
Stock market manipulation and money laundering;
Iran-Contra Affair;
The October Surprise and Iran hostage crisis;
Iraqgate-BNL and the rise and funding of Saddam Hussein;
Pakistan’s nuclear program and the selling of bomb-making technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea;
The rise and funding of the Afghan Mujahideen (founding and funding of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network);
Illegal weapon sales to Iran and Saudi Arabia;
The proliferation of Middle Eastern terrorism;
The international drug trade run by people like Manuel Noriega and Pablo Escobar.
All of these scandals had one vital thing in common, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
In December 1992, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations delivered a report on their investigation into the bank, entitled “The BCCI Affair.” The report would disclose the largest political corruption case in the history of the global economy. As the Senate Committee summed it up:
“BCCI’s criminality included fraud by BCCI and BCCI customers involving billions of dollars; money laundering in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas; BCCI’s bribery of officials in most of those locations; support of terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies; management of prostitution; the commission and facilitation of income tax evasion, smuggling, and illegal immigration; illicit purchases of banks and real estate; and a panoply of financial crimes limited only by the imagination of its officers and customers.
Among BCCI’s principal mechanisms for committing crimes were its use of shell corporations and bank confidentiality and secrecy havens; layering of its corporate structure; its use of front-men and nominees, guarantees and buy-back arrangements; back-to-back financial documentation among BCCI controlled entities, kick-backs and bribes, the intimidation of witnesses, and the retention of well-placed insiders to discourage governmental action.”
The BCCI scandal gave citizens of the world a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the covert global banking intelligence power structure, revealing power politics in its purest form. BCCI was modeled after the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies and multinational corporations. It represented the evolution of organized crime into the new world of the global economy, rendering nation-states obsolete. BCCI transcended religions and nationalities; it cut across the entire political spectrum, uniting countries and groups that, on the surface, were considered rivals, yet were unified in their pursuit of power.
BCCI consisted of a complex alliance of intelligence agencies, multinational corporations, weapons dealers, drug traffickers, terrorists, global bankers and high-ranking government officials. It involved leaders from 73 countries and formed what was described as “an elaborate corporate spider web.”
As former US Senate investigator Jack Blum described it:
“The problem that we are all having in dealing with this bank is that… it had 3,000 criminal customers and every one of those 3,000 criminal customers is a page one story. So if you pick up on one of [BCCI's] accounts you could find financing from nuclear weapons, gun running, narcotics dealing, and you will find all manner and means of crime around the world in the records of this bank.”
In a 1991 Time magazine article entitled, “The Dirtiest Bank of All,” investigative journalists Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne summed up BCCI this way:
“Nothing in the history of modern financial scandals rivals the unfolding saga of the Bank of Credit & Commerce International, the $20 billion rogue empire that regulators in 62 countries shut down early this month in a stunning global sweep. Never has a single scandal involved so much money, so many nations or so many prominent people.
Superlatives are quickly exhausted: it is the largest corporate criminal enterprise ever, the biggest Ponzi scheme, the most pervasive money-laundering operation and financial supermarket ever created for the likes of Manuel Noriega, Ferdinand Marcos, Saddam Hussein and the Colombian drug barons.”
In another report Beaty and Gwynne added:
“This is the story of how the wealthy and corrupt in Latin America managed to steal virtually every dollar lent to their countries by Western banks, creating the debt crisis of the 1980s; how heads of state… skimmed billions from their national treasuries and hid them in Swiss and Caymanian accounts forever free from snooping regulators; how Pakistan and Iraq got materials for nuclear weaponry and how Libya built poison-gas plants.”
II: BCCI & US Intelligence
Even though BCCI was a Middle Eastern-based bank, investigations by the US Senate, NY Attorney General Robert Morgenthau and several award-winning journalists revealed that BCCI was run by the CIA and top US officials. CIA covert operations were run through BCCI’s “black network.” Former CIA directors George Bush Sr., William Casey and Richard Helms, former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were all key players and shielded the bank from investigations throughout its reign. BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi and former CIA director William Casey met secretly for years. BCCI’s Mohammed Irvani was partners with former CIA director Richard Helms. BCCI frontmen Kamal Adham and A.R. Khalil were top Saudi intelligence directors and primary CIA liaisons for the entire Middle East. Many high-ranking Republicans and Democrats were vital to the bank’s operations, along with top corporate executives at First American Bank, Bank of America, PR firm Hill & Knowlton, cable company TCI, and auditing firms Price Waterhouse and Ernst & Young – to name just a few US companies that played crucial roles.
The CIA, DIA, and NSC used BCCI as their own private bank, sending billions of dollars in covert funding and weapons to organizations and countries with which we are now in conflict – most notably the Mujahideen in Afghanistan (which evolved into Al Qaeda and the Taliban), Pakistan’s ISI, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the government of Iran.
BCCI investigations gave us the most detailed and well-documented view into the inner workings of the “war racket” that we have ever had. The BCCI Affair blatantly exposed how global intelligence agencies and banking interests covertly fund terrorists and drug cartels all over the world. As investigative reporter Chris Floyd wrote, “Instead of stopping the drug-runners and terrorists, the CIA decided to join them, using BCCI’s secret channels to finance ‘black ops’ all over the world.”
Reporting in Time magazine, Beaty and Gwynne revealed some of the details:
“From interviews with sources close to B.C.C.I., TIME has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the ‘black network,’ which functions as a global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad…. The black network — so named by its own members — stops at almost nothing to further the bank’s aims the world over.
The more conventional departments of B.C.C.I. handled such services as laundering money for the drug trade and helping dictators loot their national treasuries. The black network, which is still functioning, operates a lucrative arms-trade business and transports drugs and gold. According to investigators and participants in those operations, it often works with Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies. The strange and still murky ties between B.C.C.I. and the intelligence agencies of several countries are so pervasive that even the White House has become entangled. As TIME reported earlier this month, the National Security Council used B.C.C.I. to funnel money for the Iran-contra deals, and the CIA maintained accounts in B.C.C.I. for covert operations. Moreover, investigators have told TIME that the Defense Intelligence Agency has maintained a slush-fund account with B.C.C.I., apparently to pay for clandestine activities….
The black network was a natural outgrowth of B.C.C.I.’s dubious and criminal associations…. Its original purpose was to pay bribes, intimidate authorities and quash investigations. But according to a former operative, sometime in the early 1980s the black network began running its own drugs, weapons and currency deals….
Sources have told investigators that B.C.C.I. worked closely with Israel’s spy agencies and other Western intelligence groups as well, especially in arms deals. The bank also maintained cozy relationships with international terrorists, say investigators who discovered suspected terrorist accounts for Libya, Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization in B.C.C.I.’s London offices….
U.S. intelligence agencies were well aware of such activities. ‘B.C.C.I. played an indispensable role in facilitating deals between Israel and some Middle Eastern countries,’ says a former State Department official. ‘And when you look at the Saudi support of the contras, ask yourself who the middleman was: there was no government-to-government connection between the Saudis and Nicaragua.’”
III: Af-Pak Covert Operations
The CIA worked in partnership with BCCI in what was, at the time, the agency’s largest covert operation ever, pumping an estimated $10 billion into funding the Afghan Mujahideen’s anti-Soviet Jihad.
In a 1992 article entitled, “The Riyadh Connection,” Time magazine reported:
“B.C.C.I. was similarly entwined in another key U.S. intelligence operation of the 1980s: the supply of arms and money to the Afghan rebels. While such clandestine support was legally condoned, B.C.C.I. officials have told reporters that CIA Director William Casey… struck a deal that included off-the-books operations never reported to the U.S. Congress.”
Pakistan would play a pivotal role in support of the Afghan Mujahideen. Pakistan was run by a corrupt militant oligarchy and was the operational home of BCCI. In “ Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks,” investigative reporter Loretta Napoleoni revealed details:
“As soon as Abedi’s bank [BCCI] came on board, all [CIA] covert operations were passed to its ‘black network’, virtually a secret banking institution within the bank. Its headquarters were in Karachi and it was from this city that the underground network acted as a full-service bank for the CIA. With about 15,000 employees, it operated in a similar fashion to the Mafia. It was a fully integrated organization; it financed and brokered covert arms deals among different countries, it shipped goods using its own fleet, insured them with its own agency and provided manpower and security en route. In Pakistan, BCCI officials knew whom to bribe and when to do it. They also knew where to channel the funds. Richard Kerr, the former CIA director who admitted that the CIA had secret BCCI accounts in Pakistan, confirmed that those accounts had been opened to distribute the CIA funds to Pakistani officers and members of the Afghan resistance. By the mid-1980s, the black network had gained control of the port of Karachi and handled all customs operations for CIA shipments to Afghanistan, including the necessary bribes for the ISI [Pakistan’s intelligence service]. It was BCCI’s job to make sure that cargoes of arms and equipment were discharged quickly….
As the war progressed, costs soared. There was constant shortage of money along the pipeline to supply the Mujahedin and so the ISI and CIA began looking for additional sources of income. One that proved viable was drug smuggling. Soon the narcotics-based economy took over the traditional agrarian economy of Afghanistan…. Within two years the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland had become the biggest centre for the production of heroin in the world and the single greatest supplier of heroin on American streets, meeting 60 per cent of the US demand for narcotics. Annual profits were estimated between $100 billion and $200 billion. . . . In 1995, the former CIA director of Afghan operations, Charles Cogan, admitted that the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War.”
In “Afghanistan 1979-1992: America’s Jihad,” investigative journalist Tim Weiner reported:
“The CIA’s pipeline leaked. It leaked badly. It spilled huge quantities of weapons all over one of the world’s most anarchic areas. First the Pakistani armed forces took what they wanted from the weapons shipments. Then corrupt Afghan guerrilla leaders stole and sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of anti-aircraft guns, missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47 automatic rifles, ammunition and mines from the CIA’s arsenal. Some of the weapons fell into the hands of criminal gangs, heroin kingpins and the most radical faction of the Iranian military…. While their troops eked out hard lives in Afghanistan’s mountains and deserts, the guerrillas’ political leaders maintained fine villas in Peshawar and fleets of vehicles at their command. The CIA kept silent as the Afghan politicos converted the Agency’s weapons into cash.”
Through this operation Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network was formed. Bin Laden had accounts in BCCI and ran a CIA/BCCI-funded camp. [I'll go into further detail on this aspect of the BCCI Affair in the next report.]
BCCI also funded Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program when they set up the Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology. Pakistan then went on to sell the technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea. As a Chicago Sun Timesreport summed it up:
“[Pakistan's] President Pervez Musharraf has pledged that the disgraced founder of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program can keep the vast wealth he accumulated selling bomb-making technology to rogue states around the world. Just days after Musharraf provoked worldwide consternation by pardoning Abdul Qadeer Khan for supplying nuclear expertise to Libya, Iran and North Korea, he told the Sunday Telegraph he would also spare the scientist’s property or assets. ‘He can keep his money,’ Musharraf said, adding there had been good reason not to investigate the origin of Khan’s suspicious wealth before 1998, when Pakistan successfully tested its first nuclear weapon. ‘… you have to ask yourself whether you act against the person who enabled you to get the bomb.’ Khan is thought to have earned millions of dollars from his sale of nuclear know-how, beginning in the late 1980s. Much of the money was funneled through [BCCI] bank accounts in the Middle East.”
IV: Iran-Contra Affair
George Bush Sr. and current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates were key players in the BCCI financed Iran-Contra Affair. As the US Independent Counsel For Iran/Contra Mattersinvestigation stated:
“Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA’s deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities.”
Leslie Alan Aspin, a British CIA agent who was killed in 1989, had classified documents proving Bush Sr.’s involvement in illegal covert weapon sales to Iran. A 1991 report in New York Magazine by Christopher Byron revealed some details and was later summed up in The Reference Shelf:
“In a ten-page statement dated May 1. 1987, Aspin describes how he organized a 1984 BCCI financed TOW missile shipment from Portugal to Iran on behalf of Oliver North. Though North was at that time on the staff of the National Security Council, his recently declassified diaries indicate that he was spending much of his time working for Bush.”
Key Iran-Contra asset Oliver North was involved in the operations and was working directly for Bush Sr., who was Vice President at the time. North maintained several accounts in BCCI which he used to finance his covert operations. As Time magazine reported:
“… the National Security Council used B.C.C.I. to funnel money for the Iran-contra deals…. When American arms destined for Iran and Iraq passed through Israel, for example, B.C.C.I. was frequently the broker and financier…. There was, for example, the highly sensitive question of B.C.C.I.’s direct involvement in the secret arms-for-hostages deals in Iran during the 1980s, in which it acted as a broker and financier of weapons sales. Ollie North maintained three accounts at the B.C.C.I. Paris branch, and B.C.C.I. was used to transfer money to the contras.”
George Bush Sr. would go on to pardon convicted Iran-Contra figures – former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five former CIA employees; Elliott Abrams, Robert McFarlane, Duane Clarridge, Alan Fiers, and Clair George. Robert Gates then went on to serve as Director of the CIA under Bush Sr., and is currently serving as Secretary of Defense under President Obama, having been selected to that position by former President George Bush Jr..
V: Kissinger Associates & Iraqgate-BNL
George Bush Sr. and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were also heavily involved in another illegal covert operation run through an Italian BCCI-linked bank called Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL). BNL was used to covertly funnel billions of dollars to Saddam Hussein. This scandal would become known as Iraqgate.
In April 1992, former Congressmen Henry B. Gonzalez (TX-20) stated the following in the Congressional Record:
“Kissinger Associates, Scowcroft, Eagleburger, Stoga, Iraq, and BNL
Mr. GONZALEZ: ‘Mr. Speaker, today I will talk about Henry Kissinger, his consulting firm Kissinger Associates, two former Kissinger Associates directors, Lawrence Eagleburger and Brent Scowcroft, and the chief economist at Kissinger Associates, Alan Stoga.
I will explore their links to Banca Nazionale del Lavoro [BNL] and Iraq, and the Bush administration’s handling of the BNL scandal. But first, I will provide some background information on the BNL scandal….
The $4 billion plus in BNL loans to Iraq between 1985 and 1990 were crucial to Iraqi efforts to feed its people and to build weapons of mass destruction. In addition, the BNL loans were crucial to Reagan and Bush administration efforts to assist Saddam Hussein….
It is truly amazing that the BNL scandal went on as long as it did. Various agencies within our Government knew of BNL’s role in bankrolling Iraq–yet they supposedly did not know that the loans were unauthorized or not properly reported….
Several of BNL’s high level friends in the United States should have been aware of the BNL loans to Iraq. The high level patrons that I am referring to are Henry Kissinger, and his Kissinger Associates compadres, Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger….
I will reveal that both Mr. Eagleburger and Mr. Scowcroft played a key role in the Bush administration’s handling of the BNL scandal, even though BNL was a paying client of Kissinger Associates just months prior to the BNL scandal becoming public….
Kissinger Deliberately Misleads Public
Until recently, Mr. Kissinger was a member of the BNL’s international advisory board and during the height of the BNL-Atlanta scandal BNL was a paying client of Kissinger Associates.
While Henry Kissinger was a paid member of the BNL’s advisory board for international policy between 1985 and June 1991, he received at least $10,000 for attending each meeting of the BNL advisory board.
Other BNL advisory board members included David Rockefeller, the chairman of the Rockefeller Group and a director of Chase Manhattan Bank, Pierre Trudeau, the former Prime Minister of Canada, Lord Thornycroft, the former British Minister of Defense, and other politically well-connected international notables.
After my April 25, 1991, floor statement on Mr. Kissinger, he told the Financial Times newspaper that he had resigned from the BNL advisory board a week before the BNL indictment in February 1991 because `he did not want to answer questions about such incidents.’
Two weeks ago, the prominent TV show, ‘60 Minutes,’ revealed that Kissinger had not resigned from the BNL advisory board in February 1991, as he had told the Financial Times. In fact, `60 Minutes’ reported that Mr. Kissinger served on BNL’s advisory board until his contract expired in the summer of 1991, more than 4 months after the date he had previously reported.
Mr. Kissinger was not the only Kissinger Associates employee that dealt with BNL. Mr. Brent Scowcroft, the vice chairman and Mr. Lawrence Eagleburger, the president of Kissinger Associates also had relationships with BNL.
Brent Scowcroft, BNL, and Iraq
One of the most prominent of the Kissinger Associates alumni is Brent Scowcroft, President Bush’s current National Security Adviser and head of the NSC staff. . . .
Scowcroft often took charge of the National Security Council while Kissinger was fulfilling his duties as Secretary of State, and in 1975 he succeeded Kissinger as National Security Adviser to President Ford….
In 1982, Scowcroft joined Kissinger in setting up Kissinger Associates. Scowcroft served as vice chairman and head of Kissinger Associate’s Washington, DC, office until becoming the head of the National Security Council under President Bush in January 1989….
Alan Stoga–Kissinger Associates
Another link between Kissinger Associates, BNL and Iraq is Alan Stoga. Alan Stoga is a former economist at First Chicago Bank and is currently a director of Kissinger Associates. Mr. Stoga is said to be an expert in country risk analysis and international finance. He has been interested in the Middle East for many years and has made extensive visits to the area….
Conclusion
BNL was a client of Mr. Scowcroft’s while he was the vice-chairman of Kissinger Associates. Mr. Scowcroft regularly provided advice to BNL’s management and received hefty fees in return.
Mr. Scowcroft and his staff at the National Security Council, along with the State Department, masterminded the Bush administration’s handling of the BNL scandal in order to mitigate the damage it would have caused to United States-Iraq relations. In the process they trampled on United States law enforcement efforts and repeatedly misled the Congress and the American public about the United States policy toward Iraq….
As for Mr. Kissinger, he misled the public about his relationship with BNL and about his firm’s contact with Saddam Hussein. Mr. Stoga misled the Banking Committee about the reasons for his trip to Iraq in the summer of 1989 when he met with Saddam Hussein to discuss Iraq’s debt problems.’”
Kissinger and his firm Kissinger Associates played a key role throughout BCCI’s entire existence. The Senate investigation report had an entire chapter focusing on Kissinger’s role, entitled “BCCI And Kissinger Associates.” After the report was released to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Henry Kissinger got them to redact several sections from the Government Printing Office’s final hardcopy version.
VI: The Ultimate Conspiracy: The BCCI Cover-Up
In Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne’s ground-breaking book on BCCI, entitled “The Outlaw Bank,” they detailed the overwhelming evidence proving the dominant role US intelligence, governmental agencies and global banking interests played in BCCI operations and in covering up the bank’s scandalous and illegal activities. As they reported:
“Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the BCCI affair in the United States was the failure of U.S. government and federal law enforcement to move against the outlaw bank. Instead of swift retribution, what took place over more than a decade was a cover-up of major, alarming proportions, often orchestrated from the very highest levels of government. When the Justice Department finally moved decisively against BCCI in late 1991, it did so reluctantly.”
As the US Senate report revealed:
“The political connections of BCCI’s U.S. lawyers and lobbyists were critical to impeding Congressional and law enforcement investigations from 1988 through 1991, through a variety of techniques that included impugning the motives and integrity of investigators and journalists, withholding subpoenaed documents, and lobbying on Capitol Hill to protect BCCI’s reputation and discourage efforts to close the bank down in the United States.”
As Beaty and Gwynne revealed in detail, government documents exposing BCCI’s criminality went back to 1979. As they wrote, “authentic, unambiguous information” on the bank’s illegal activity was presented to the State Department, Justice Department, Drug Enforcement Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Commerce Department, Customs Department, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Energy, and the White House’s National Security Council.
Perhaps more than anyone, the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve had extensive information on BCCI’s criminal activities. As investigations revealed, “the detail of information was exceptional.” During pivotal BCCI years, James Baker, after serving as President Reagan’s Chief of Staff, was Treasury Secretary from 1985 – ‘88. After Baker left the Treasury Department, he became Bush Sr.’s Secretary of State from 1989 – ‘92. At the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, after serving as a director at the Council on Foreign Relations, became Fed Chairman in 1987 and served in that position throughout BCCI’s reign.
VII: Wall Street & the US Banking Industry
BCCI penetrated deeply into Wall Street and the US banking industry. With the help of former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, BCCI secretly owned Washington’s largest bank, First American, and Bank of America was a vital BCCI lifeline. As Beaty and Gwynne revealed:
“B.C.C.I. even accomplished a Stealth-like invasion of the U.S. banking industry by secretly buying First American Bankshares, a Washington-based holding company with offices stretching from Florida to New York….
Five of Bank of America’s senior officers were either on BCCI’s board of directors or helped to manage Abedi’s bank. For the next decade the two banks would move billions of dollars a week through each other’s international offices, and the Bank of America would be an invaluable, if hidden, ally, since it would continue to accept BCCI’s letter-of-credit business after virtually no other Western bank would touch it. Indeed, it could be argued that Bank of America became the single most important financial institution helping BCCI stay afloat.
In the United States alone, Bank of America transferred more than $1 billion a day for BCCI until the moment of BCCI’s global seizure in July 1991.
Thus Bank of America acted as a sort of global vacuum cleaner, sucking up many BCCI branch deposits and thereby providing the fuel Abedi needed to keep his Ponzi scheme alive.”
Stock Market Manipulation & Money Laundering
Long before the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) was covering-up wide-scale manipulation of the stock market during this economic crisis, they were working overtime to conceal BCCI money laundering and market manipulation. As the 1992 US Senate Report stated:
“In the entire BCCI affair, perhaps no entity is more mysterious and yet more central to BCCI’s collapse and criminality than Capcom, a London and Chicago based commodities futures firm which operated between 1984 and 1988. Capcom is vital to understanding BCCI because BCCI’s top management and most important Saudi shareholders were involved with the firm. Moreover, Capcom moved huge amounts of money — billions of dollars — which passed through the future’s markets in a largely anonymous fashion.
Capcom was created by the former head of BCCI’s Treasury Department, Ziauddin Ali Akbar, who capitalized it with funds from BCCI and BCCI customers…. Additionally, the company employed many of the same practices as BCCI, especially the use of nominees and front companies to disguise ownership and the movement of money. Four Americans, Larry Romrell, Robert Magness, Kerry Fox and Robert Powell — none of whom had any experience or expertise in the commodities markets — played important and varied roles as frontmen….
The commodities markets in the U.K. and the U.S. are not restricted, regulated or supervised as stringently as the banking industry or the securities markets.
Moreover, the commodities markets can sustain almost limitless volume, a necessary prerequisite for crime on the scale of that contemplated by BCCI since fraudulent transactions may be hidden in a multitude of legitimate ones. In a letter to the directors, the Chairman of Capcom, Larry Romrell, reported 165 million in trading during the first four months of operation, and profits of 883,393. That trend continued until 1988 leading Akbar to boast to agent Mazur: ‘We have contracted 165,000 contracts totaling $53 billion with Drexel Burnham,’ and later, ‘we have done over $90 billion total in 1988.’
While the number of contracts and dollar volume seems unbelievable, a commodities company can artificially create massive volume by many small or no-risk trading methods. Indeed, the volume generated by Capcom helped it to generate respectability and acceptance with reputable banks and brokers. For example, listed under ‘Auditors and Advisers’ in Capcom’s 1987 Annual Report were the following major international banks: Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, London, National Westminster Bank Plc, Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, New York, Deutsche Westminster Bank, A.G., and National Westminster Bank, plc. Elsewhere, Capcom noted its ties to Dean Witter Reynolds, American Express Bank, Refco, Prudential Bache Trading Corp., and Sumitomo Trust and Banking, Ltd.”
Also, long before the modern techniques of market manipulation and money laundering, likehigh frequency trading, round trip trading and quote stuffing, BCCI mastered a technique called “mirror image trading.”
The Senate report continued:
“Capcom and Money Laundering
There is evidence that Capcom engaged in money laundering for a variety of clients both in the United States and in London. For example, some 50 transactions were identified in the Futures, Inc. accounts with insufficient or no supporting documentation regarding the source or disposition of funds. These transactions totaled more than $125,000,000.
In testimony to the Subcommittee, Customs agent Robert Mazur testified how Akbar used ‘mirror-image’ trading to launder huge sums of money. Mirror image trading involves buying contracts for one account while selling an equal number from another account. Since both accounts are controlled by the same individual any profit or loss is effectively netted. According to Mazur, Akbar explained that because these ‘mirror image’ transactions can be lost among many millions of dollars worth of legitimate transactions ‘it would take forever for anyone to ever find it.’
Using mirror-image trading, Akbar bilked the BCCI Treasury accounts and laundered money for one of Capcom’s most notorious clients, General Manuel Antonio Noriega. Although complex, the series of transactions involving Noriega, BCCI and Capcom provide an illustration of textbook money laundering….
Conclusion….
In terms of the broader lessons of Capcom, regulation of the futures markets need to be greatly strengthened. Even a cursory background check on Akbar would have revealed that he had managed the Treasury accounts at BCCI which lost $400 million in the futures markets in the early eighties. Moreover, regulators who appeared before the Subcommittee testified on the one hand that annual audits of Capcom US turned up nothing irregular, but that Capcom’s books and records were a mess. That such a contradiction was allowed to continue for four years indicates that the CFTC needs to critically review the effectiveness of the various exchange audits. Finally, money laundering should be made a crime under the Commodities Futures Trading Act.”
VIII: The Savings and Loan Scandal
The Savings and Loan scandal was a significant part of the BCCI Affair. Looking back through piles of documents and research I’ve gathered, it is stunning how similar that crisis was to our current crisis. Both operations were put into motion as a result of the deregulation of key sectors of the financial system; in both of these cases the real estate sector was a main component. This is a clear pattern in financial intelligence operations. The first essential mission is to create legislation that allows for the creation of dark spaces, or “dark pools,” within key areas of the financial system where intelligence operations can then be executed without oversight or accountability.
To show you how history repeated itself, here’s an excerpt from the 1993 book, “Banking Scandals: The S&Ls and BCCI,” edited by Robert Emmet Long:
“The Savings and Loan debacle – the greatest scandal in the history of American banking – first came to national attention in the mid-1980’s. At that point, the failure of the thrifts, as S&Ls are sometimes known, appeared to be a controllable and containable situation. Both government officials and representatives of the Savings and Loan industry gave assurances that the S&L industry was still sound, and both worked to head off a full-scale investigation.… The delay in confronting the situation cost taxpayers billions of dollars. The price tag for bailing out the failed banks steadily escalated, from estimates of $50 billion at first to $500 billion and then $750 billion or even a staggering $1 trillion.…
The Savings and Loan scandal was unparalleled in the extent of its chicanery and in its ultimate cost to taxpayers, who will be paying for it for decades to come… In a series of steps beginning in 1980, the S&Ls were deregulated at the same time that the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance protection for depositors rose from $40,000 to $100,000. The combination stimulated get-rich-quick investments of a highly speculative nature on the part of bankers, who looted the treasuries of the institutions they were entrusted to protect.”
It was also George Bush Sr. who, then as Vice President, oversaw the “task force on deregulation and bank supervision” that led directly to the S&L crisis. In fact, his son, Neil Bush became known as the “poster boy” of the S&L crisis. Neil was nicknamed “the Silverado Kid” after he cost US taxpayers $1.3 billion while running Silverado Banking, Savings & Loan. In 1989, after becoming president, George Bush Sr. promptly bailed out the S&L industry, costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
Many of the failed S&L thrifts served as secret intelligence shell companies and were traced back to BCCI and the CIA. In a study entitled, “Organized Crime, The CIA and the Savings and Loan Scandal,” Criminal Justice Professor Gary W. Potter explains:
“It is not our intent to discuss the unethical and even illegal business practices of the failed savings and loans and their governmental collaborators. The outlandish salaries paid by S & L executives to themselves, the subsidies to the thrifts from Congress which rewarded incompetence and fraud, the land ‘flips’ which resulted in real estate being sold back and forth in an endless ‘kiting’ scheme, and the political manipulation designed to delay the scandal until after the 1988 presidential elections are all immensely interesting and important. But they are subjects for others’ inquiries. Our interest is in the savings and loans as living, breathing organisms that fused criminal corporations, organized crime, and the CIA into a single entity that served the interests of the political and economic elite in America. Let us begin by quickly summarizing the most blatant examples of collaboration between financial institutions, the mob, and the intelligence community….
First National Bank of Maryland…
Palmer National Bank…
Indian Springs Bank…
Vision Banc Savings…
Hill Financial Savings…
Sunshine State Bank…
All told at least twenty-two of the failed S & L’s can be tied to joint money laundering ventures by the CIA and organized crime figures. If the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s reveal anything, they demonstrate what has often been stated as a maxim in organized crime research: that corruption linking government, business, and syndicates is the reality of the day-to-day organization of crime. Investigations of organized crime in the United States, Europe, and Asia have all uncovered organized crime networks operating with virtual immunity from law enforcement and prosecution.”
For further details on BCCI and CIA connections to the S&L crisis, let’s return to “Banking Scandals: The S&Ls and BCCI:”
“The banking scandals involving S&Ls and the rogue Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) are linked through David Paul, former CEO of CenTrust Savings Bank, a Miami S&L that was seized in February 1990. Like S&L kingpin Charles Keating, Paul knew that he could ingratiate himself with politicians by helping them raise campaign money. Political intervention by the likes of Keating Five senators Alan Cranston of California and Donald Reigle of Michigan helped keep CenTrust open for two years after it otherwise would have been closed. CenTrust’s involvement with BCCI was even greater than its interaction with S&L scoundrels. By mid 1988, CenTrust owed its survival to BCCI and one of the bank’s alleged front men, Ghaith Pharaon, who helped win approval of a CenTrust bond issue that brought new capital into CenTrust and improved the condition of its books just in time for the thrift to pass a crucial examination by regulators….
Sunbelt Savings, Western Savings, and State Savings have all been named by the Houston Post as members of a daisy chain of failed thrifts with links to organized crime and even, perhaps, to the CIA. All three have collapsed, at a cost to taxpayers of over $3 billion.”
Once again, George Bush Sr.’s role in BCCI and the S&L crisis cannot be understated. To recap, over the course of BCCI’s entire reign, Bush Sr. led the CIA, then served as Vice President before becoming President. He had extraordinarily close relations with Saudi Arabia, the most oil-rich nation in the world. Kahlam Adham was a top BCCI executive and head of Saudi Arabian intelligence, he was known as “the godfather of Middle East Intelligence” and was the CIA’s main liaison to the region. BCCI’s Chief Operations Officer was Khalid bin Mahfouz, who also led Saudi Arabia’s largest national bank and was a major player in the oil industry. Mahfouz was known as “the most powerful banker in the Middle East.” As already mentioned, Saudi Arabian intelligence was mixed in tightly with Wall Street banking interests in BCCI’s Capcom money laundering operations in the futures market. George Bush Sr. also did everything within his power to conceal these operations, as investigative reporter Chris Floydwrote:
“When a few prosecutors finally began targeting BCCI’s operations in the late Eighties, President George Herbert Walker Bush boldly moved in with a federal probe directed by Justice Department investigator Robert Mueller. The U.S. Senate later found that the probe had been unaccountably ‘botched’–witnesses went missing, CIA records got ‘lost,’… Lower-ranking prosecutors told of heavy pressure from on high to ‘lay off.’ Most of the big BCCI players went unpunished or, like [Khalib bin] Mahfouz, got off with wrist-slap fines and sanctions. Mueller, of course, wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to the post in July 2001–by George W. Bush.”
Robert Mueller, who has been running the FBI since September 4, 2001, under Bush Jr. and now Obama, was Bush Sr.’s go-to guy at the Justice Department in covering up BCCI and S&L operations. Back in 1992, Beaty and Gwynne reported the following in Time magazine:
“In the U.S. investigators now say openly that the Justice Department has not only reined in its own probe of the bank but is also part of a concerted campaign to derail any full investigation. Says Robert Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, who first launched his investigations into B.C.C.I. two years ago: ‘We have had no cooperation from the Justice Department since we first asked for records in March 1990. In fact they are impeding our investigation, and Justice Department representatives are asking witnesses not to cooperate with us.’”
In summation, George Bush Sr., Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Robert Mueller, Robert Gates and Alan Greenspan were all heavily involved in BCCI activities. Former President Bill Clinton even played a crucial role in continuing the cover-up by killing follow-up investigations upon taking office. More stunning than the BCCI operations and the cover-up, was that even after the BCCI Affair was finally exposed, all of these major players were not held accountable. The fact that people like this not only got to walk away, but remained in top positions of power for years after the scandal was exposed, with Robert Gates now serving as the Secretary of Defense and Robert Muller still serving as the head of the FBI, tells you all you need to know about the rule of law in the United States.
When you look back at the S&L crisis and understand how that scandal worked, you can clearly see how that operation served as a forerunner to, and evolved into, our current economic crisis. Of course this time it would happen under the presidency of George Bush Jr., and the cover-up would be maintained by a different Democratic President, Barack Obama.
IX: The Lessons of BCCI
While investigating BCCI operations, I began to clearly understand for the first time how the Global Banking Intelligence Complex runs both political parties in the United States. After years of researching and investigating BCCI, I’ve come to understand how power really operates, who the real power players are and how the mainstream media, which is tightly controlled by these forces, keeps the American public in the dark and marginalized by never reporting on the roots of power. The harsh truth is that American democracy and the rule of law are an illusion.
Above all, the BCCI scandal taught me two major lessons. First, when there is blatant criminal activity that goes unpunished, global banking intelligence interests are behind it. Second, you always have to follow the money. At the heart of power is the money supply, the ability to create, issue and manipulate global currencies. This is what the most powerful have always known. As the old House of Rothschild maxim goes, “Let us control the money of a nation, and we care not who makes its laws.”
When you peel back all the layers, the ultimate power in this world lies within the Global Banking Intelligence Complex, or the “money powers” as our Founding Fathers and early presidents called them. If you research our forefathers, you will see that they understood this point very well. The main theme throughout American history has always been the war between democracy and the concentration of power within the banks.
This may seem obvious to some, but this very obvious point has been omitted from mainstream media and public consciousness within the United States. This very viewpoint has been completely removed from the debate surrounding our current economic crisis and the failed financial reform process. And when it comes to the funding of perpetual wars, the banking interests behind the scenes are never even mentioned.
So this long winding road has led me right into the heart of our current crisis. It has been from this viewpoint that I have closely watched this crisis unfold. I’ve been following all these power players for years now and it’s given me an insider’s view and front row seat into our current political environment. Watching old BCCI players and their protégés continue to maintain positions as top US government officials over the years reveals a very different reality when you consider significant issues like 9/11; the Af-Pak and Iraq wars; the private military complex; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Pakistani, Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons programs; global weapons sales; mainstream media propaganda campaigns; campaign finance laws; lobbying efforts; electronic voting machines; the current economic crisis, along with the bailout and stock market manipulation.
When I think about the “War on Terror” and the modern global banking system, the BCCI Affair is child’s play in comparison. The Global Banking Intelligence Complex is on steroids and stronger than ever, with power and wealth concentrated in unprecedented fashion.
Now that we have a fundamental understanding of how financial intelligence operations worked throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, now that we’ve scratched just below the surface, I will now expose operations throughout the late ’90s and past decade.
Sunday 27 January 2013
Charter Meeting of the Dick Cheney Executive Assassination Team Survivors Support Group.
http://www.cce.umn.edu/media/greatconversations/hersh_jacobs_mondale/hersh_jacobs_mondale.mp3
“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.
"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently.
They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.
"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.
"It’s complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It’s a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you’ve heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.
"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.
"I’ve had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: ‘What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don’t get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee?’
"But they’re not gonna get before a committee.”
“Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference.”
"I’ll make it worse. I think he’s put people left. He’s put people back. They call it a stay-behind. It’s sort of an intelligence term of art.
When you leave a country and, you know, you’ve been driven out the, you know, you’ve lost the war.
You leave people behind. It’s a stay-behind that you can continue to have contacts with, to do sabotage, whatever you want to do.
Cheney’s left a stay-behind.
He’s got people in a lot of agencies that still tell him what’s going on.
Particularly in defense, obviously. Also in the NSA, there’s still people that talk to him. He still knows what’s going on.
Can he still control policy up to a point? Probably up to a point, a minor point.
But he’s still there. He’s still a presence."
Now, That's What I Call an October Surprise....
Iran-Contra and Arms-for-Hostages Scandals: Salem bin Laden
Form History Commons:October 1980: Osama’s Oldest Brother Allegedly Involved in ‘October Surprise’
 |
| Salem bin Laden in 1975.[Source: Corbis] |
Salem bin Laden, Osama’s oldest brother, described by a French secret intelligence report as one of two closest friends of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd who often performs important missions for Saudi Arabia, is involved in secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries this month, according to a French report. Frontline, which published the French report, notes that such meetings have never been confirmed. Rumors of these meetings have been called the “October Surprise” and some have speculated that in these meetings, George H. W. Bush negotiated a delay to the release of the US hostages in Iran, thus helping Ronald Reagan and Bush win the 1980 Presidential election. All of this is highly speculative, but if the French report is correct, it points to a long-standing connection of highly improper behavior between the Bush and bin Laden families. [PBS FRONTLINE, 2001]
The Strange Death Of bin
Laden's Brother In Texas
By Bud Kennedy
budk@star-telegram.com
Ft Worth Star-Telegram
9-27-1
SCHERTZ - One chapter in the enigmatic story of Osama bin Laden might lead to a Texas pasture, where his oldest brother died 13 years ago in an accident that is still something of a mystery.
What we do know is that Salem bin Laden, 42, and the oldest of Saudi Arabia's bin Laden brothers, was on one of his frequent visits to Texas when he and friends went out for a Sunday afternoon of fun - flying low-power ultralight aircraft at an air park north of San Antonio.
What we don't know is why Salem bin Laden took off in the tiny aircraft and turned toward a nearby row of high-power electrical towers. He climbed, but not high enough to clear the upper power line. The Sprint ultralight got tangled and crashed into the ground 115 feet below.
"Of everybody who was there, nobody could figure out why he tried to fly over the power lines," said Gerry Auerbach, 77, of New Braunfels, a retired pilot for Saudi Arabian Airlines and for the bin Laden brothers, multimillionaire builders who long ago disowned Osama.
"It was kind of a weird deal," said Schertz police Lt. Stephen Starr, at the time the city's acting police chief. "He just drifted up into the wires."
It has been turned into an even weirder deal by conspiracy theorists - with the unlikely help of the Public Broadcasting Service.
In the 2000 PBS Frontline special report, Hunting bin Laden, PBS reported that Salem bin Laden died in a 1988 Texas plane crash - not in a hobby-kit-type, one-man ultralight, but in a full-size British Aerospace BAC 1-11. The death "revived some speculation that he might have been 'eliminated,' " PBS reported, adding that an accident report was "never divulged."
That's news to Starr. He and officer Lori Flowers, now an officer in nearby Windcrest, wrote a report that remains public record.
On May 29, 1988, they were called to the Kitty Hawk Field of Dreams Ultra-Lite Flying Field on the edge of Schertz, a San Antonio suburb. Bin Laden had already been taken by ambulance to an Army hospital in San Antonio, according to the police report. Officers found the crumpled remains of a crashed ultralight.
No federal investigators came to the scene, Starr said. Federal investigators do not review ultralight or glider crashes.
Salem bin Laden was not wearing a helmet and died of head injuries from the fall, the Bexar County medical examiner concluded. The wind was blowing about 30 mph, usually too strong to fly an ultralight.
The Schertz officers interviewed several witnesses. Their report concludes simply: "Freak accident."
Now armed with the PBS misreport, some conspiracy writers think Osama bin Laden blames the United States for the death of his oldest brother, the family's leader throughout most of the 1970s and '80s after their father's death in 1967.
"I don't think so," Auerbach said. "I flew Salem everywhere, and I never met Osama. I think I saw him once."
That was in the 1970s. Osama bin Laden would have been a teen-ager. "He walked through the room," Auerbach said.
"Salem said: 'Oh, that's my brother. He's probably going to pray.' "
Several of the bin Laden brothers - not Osama - owned a fleet of aircraft and visited Texas often in the 1980s, Auerbach said. He chartered a Texas company named Binladen Aviation to manage part of the family fleet.
On that particular 1988 Sunday - over a drizzly and windy Memorial Day weekend - Salem bin Laden was visiting as a guest at the wedding of Auerbach's son, he said. Bin Laden had also planned to ask about having an older BAC 1-11 refurbished in San Antonio, Auerbach said. But he was simply out for fun with friends at the ultralight park that afternoon.
"He was outgoing, a little bit flamboyant - a nice guy," Auerbach said.
He was expecting bin Laden to come by the house later that day.
Now, Auerbach said he's "like everybody else in America - I'm shocked."
"The fact that one of his brothers might be involved doesn't make any difference," Auerbach said. "What matters is - there's a nut case out there somewhere on the loose."
Things are weird enough.
There's no reason to make a weirder story out of a tragic accident in Texas.
http://web.star-telegram.com/content/fortworth/2001/09/27/state/fw010402-0927-X B001-kennedy.htm
Bin Laden's family link to Bush
by PETER ALLEN, Daily Mail
In summer 1971, Osama and Salem Bin Laden enjoyed a holiday in Sweden with some of their 55 brothers and sisters.
Yet within a few years, the two teenagers' lives had taken stunningly different turns.
As the world knows to its cost, Osama embraced Islamic fundamentalism and 30 years later was named the world's most wanted man. He is prime suspect in the murder of nearly 7,000 in the worst ever terrorist atrocities in the U.S. earlier this month.
Incredibly, Salem went on to become a business partner of the man who is leading the hunt for his brother. In the 1970s, he and George W Bush were founders of the Arbusto Energy oil company in Mr Bush's home state of Texas.
Photos reveal the brothers on family holiday to the Swedish town of Falun, 150 miles north-west of Stockholm, when Osama was 14 and Salem around 19.
The brothers had recently inherited a fortune from their construction magnate father, Mohammed. He left millions to each of his 57 children by 12 wives after dying in a plane crash in 1968.
Osama and Salem first visited Falun in 1970, arriving in a blue Rolls-Royce flown to Copenhagen by private jet. They liked the town so much they returned with other family members a year later.
Learning that the Bin Ladens, originally from Saudi Arabia, were staying at the Astoria Hotel, a local photographer asked the unusual visitors to pose.
Astoria owner Christina Akerblad said last night: 'They were beautiful boys, so elegantly dressed. Everybody loved them.
'Osama played with my two boys, Anders and Gerk.
'What's happened since is absolutely terrible. The first time I realised Osama had turned into a terrorist was when I saw his photograph in a magazine article about the bombing. He and his brother were such nice boys.'
At that time the brothers both delighted in their enormous wealth. Salem - wearing a polo neck and slacks as he crouches three places from Osama, in jeans and a skinny rib jumper - put a large part of his money into business ventures, including Arbusto Energy.
Mr Bush was not long out of Harvard Business School when he started the company in 1978.
Salem watched it grow into a hugely successful business until his death in a microlight plane crash in Texas in 1983.
As he built his own business empire, Salem Bin Laden had an intriguing relationship with the president-to-be.
In 1978, he appointed James Bath, a close friend of Mr Bush who served with him in the Air National Guard, as his representative in Houston, Texas.
It was in that year that Mr Bath invested $50,000 (about �34,000) in Mr Bush's company, Arbusto. It was never revealed whether he was investing his own money or somebody else's.
There was even speculation that the money might have been from Salem. In the same year, Mr Bath bought Houston Gulf Airport on behalf of the Saudi Arabian multimillionaire. Three years ago, Mr Bush said the $50,000 investment in Arbusto was the only financial dealing he had with Mr Bath.
Last night a White House spokesman was unavailable for comment.
Before his death, Salem was married to Briton Caroline Carey, now 35.
She has never spoken about her brother-in-law Osama, who was disowned by the rest of his family in 1991 when he was expelled from Saudi Arabia for his anti-government activities.
Now living in luxury in a Cairo villa, she has married twice into the Bin Laden family - first to Salem, and now to a younger brother, Khaled. She has a daughter by each brother.
Three years ago a family friend said: 'She first met Salem when she was just a child - no more than five years old.
'He was a friend of the family but at that stage no one would have dreamed that they would end up marrying.
'When they met again as adults, Caroline was 20 and Salem twice her age.
'Salem was the head of the Bin Laden family as the oldest of all the brothers and sisters.
'He was a man with a powerful presence.'
They married and, after his death, Caroline decided to bring up her daughter in Saudi Arabia.
'Caroline was a widow for nearly ten years before deciding to marry Khaled,' said the friend. 'He is one of the younger brothers and very quiet and loving.
'She can never speak publicly about her marriage, or anything else for that matter, or she would be cut off from the family.'
Caroline's father, a retired psychology lecturer from Hampstead, said: 'My daughter is very happy with Khaled. She decided to stay on in Saudi Arabia because she found her family there to be so loving and supportive.'
Yesterday FBI agents swooped on a Boston suburb where around 20 of the wealthy relatives of Bin Laden live. They questioned them at a condominium complex in Charlestown. Agents even began visiting nightclubs to collect credit cards of younger members of the family.
Bin Laden's younger brother Mohammed, who is said to have moved back to Saudi Arabia with his wife and children several years ago, owns a ten-bedroom mansion in nearby Wayland.
Another younger brother, Abdullah, is a 1994 graduate of Harvard Law School. The family has given it �2million in endowments to research Islamic law.
Most of Bin Laden's family have in the past strongly denounced the 44-year-old fugitive, now living in Afghanistan.
The FBI in Boston has long been aware of his extended family and began monitoring their activities after the 1998 terrorist bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa.
The Bin Ladens still run one of the biggest construction companies in the world.
Reportedly, from 1991 to 1996, Omar was with Osama in Sudan, and then in 1996 Omar traveled with Osama to Afghanistan.
Reportedly, Omar left Osama and his group in 2000.
Omar now lives in Qatar.
Omar married Zaina, a British grandmother nearly twice his age.
In July 2010, it was reported that Omar had mental problems.
Zaina split with Omar and Omar entered a mental hospital.
In Syria, Lawson and Omar visit a nightclub called Les Caves de Boys where Moslems drink whiskey and watch Russian strippers.
According to Lawson, Omar, as a child in Afghanistan, befriended the teenage sons of men who plotted bombings.
According to Omar's memoir, one of Omar's closest friends was raped by a group of men.
"The rapists added insult to the attack and injury by snapping photographs of the young man during and after the rape," Omar writes in his memoir.
Excerpted from a report dealing with prominent Saudi families of Yemeni origin. Although FRONTLINE cannot vouch for the accuracy of this report, it does come from French intelligence sources.
Today one of the biggest construction groups in the kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] and the Middle East, the "bin Laden empire" traces its origins to Sheik Mohammed bin Laden, a native of the Chafeite (Sunni) Hadramout who emigrated [from South Yemen] to Saudi Arabia at the beginning of the century.
The beginnings of his activity are shrouded in mystery. It is said that, having satisfied King Abdul Aziz with construction work on the royal palace, Mohammed bin Laden was awarded a much more prestigious contract: the renovation of Mecca. Whatever the actual circumstances, it is a fact that the Saudi royal family gave the bin Laden family--and group--exclusive rights to all construction of a religious nature, whether in Mecca, Medina or--until 1967--the Holy Places in Jerusalem. This enabled the bin Ladens to establish an industrial and financial empire which now extends far beyond religious construction projects.
The relationship between the bin Ladens and the Saudi royal family is quite exceptional in that it not simply one of business ties: it is also a relationship of trust, of friendship and of shared secrets. This is particularly the case with regard to the group's present-day leaders and the Soudairi clan.
Thanks to the renovation of Mecca, Sheik Mohammed bin Laden did not become merely Kin Abdul Aziz' official contractor, but his friend and confidant as well. This friendship has been handed down to their children. The bin Laden sons went to the same schools as the numerous offspring of King Abdul Aziz and they all followed the same path.
One of the connections which still explains many of the personal ties existing throughout the Middle East is the Victoria College in Alexandria, where the bin Laden boys attended classes along with schoolmates such as King Hussein of Jordan, Zaid Al Rifai, the Kashoggi brothers (whose father was one of the king's physicians), Kamal Adham (who ran the Saudi [security] services under King Faisal), present-day contractors Mohammed Al Attas, Fahd Shobokshi and Ghassan Sakr and actor Omar Sharif.
The relationship of trust between the royal family and the bin Laden group has never been repudiated, although it is known to have undergone some serious crises. The most important was doubtless the 1979 Mecca affair. Because the bin Laden company had the exclusive contract for repairs in the Holy Places, its trucks entered and left Mecca at all hours without being inspected. And the rebels used "bin Laden" trucks to get weapons into the city. One of the bin Laden sons, Mahrous, was actually arrested on account of his ties with the Islamists, but was later freed. He is currently manager of the group's Medina branch.
The reason is as follows: after studies in England, where he had kept company with Fadli (son of the ex-sultan of the Abdin region in South Yemen, now leader of a Yemeni fundamentalist group and arrested in Aden last January), Mahrous struck up friendships with a group of Syrian Moslem Brothers in exile in Saudi Arabia. Subsequent Saudi intelligence investigations showed that these Moslem Brothers had taken advantage of Mahrous to use bin Laden trucks without his knowledge.
There was a touch of irony to the episode: when the insurrection broke out, the Saudi security services had to go for help to the bin Ladens, the sole parties in possession of maps of Mecca enabling the Saudi (and Western) police to find their way through the city's underground passageways.
In any case, the episode also demonstrated the strength of the ties between the royal family and the bin Laden Group. Had it been some other group, there is no doubt that Mahrous--whether accomplice or patsy--would have been thrown into prison and the group barred from further economic activity in the kingdom, the sentence serving as a warning to others. This was not the case.
Likewise, the Saudi authorities' decision to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden on 16 May 1993 does not threaten to affect the relationship between the bin Ladens and the royal family. Osama, one of Mohammed's youngest son, has been known for years for his fundamentalist activities. ...The arrest warrant was issued both because of his support for fundamentalist groups involved in terrorist operations in Algeria and Egypt and his ties with upstart religious circles that tried to establish an independent human rights organization in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of May.
Contrary to appearances, both the Osama and the Mahrous incidents testify to the bin Laden's influence within the kingdom.
The ties of friendship binding bin Laden family members to King Fahd and his brothers make them prime confidantes and advisors. They play an obvious advisory role in Saudi-Yemeni relations. Still, they hold very few economic or financial interests in their ancestral homeland and certainly do not flaunt their family origins.
King Fahd's two closest friends were: Prince Mohammed Ben Abdullah (son of Abdul Aziz' youngest brother), who died in the early '80s and whose brother, Khaled Ben Abdullah (an associate of Suleiman Olayan), still has free access to the king; and Salem bin Laden, who died in 1988.
Like his father in 1968, Salem died in a 1988 air crash...in Texas. He was flying a BAC 1-11 which had been bought in July 1977 by Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd. The plane's flight plans had long been at the center of a number of investigations. According to one of the plane's American pilots, it had been used in October 1980 during secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries. Nothing was ever proven, but Salem bin Laden's accidental death revived some speculation that he might have been "eliminated" as an embarrassing witness. In fact, an inquiry was held to determine the exact circumstances of the accident. The conclusions were never divulged.
FRONTLINE Editors' Note:
The above paragraph is inaccurate. Salem bin Laden was piloting a light aircraft, not a BAC 1-11, when he crashed. As for "secret Paris meetings between US and Iranian emissaries" in October 1980, such meetings have never been confirmed.
In spite of Salem's death, the bin Ladens are still part of the small group of friends surrounding the king which includes, in particular, Prince Khaled Turki Al Soudairi (married to one of Fahd's sisters), Prince Faisal Ben Turki Al Abdullah (married to another sister and father of Prince Abdullah Ben Faisal, head of the Royal Jubail Commission) and the family of Moona (Fahd's wife), the Ibrahims.
As trusted servants of the royal family, the bin Ladens have also often acted as chaperones to the king's sons, helping them get their start in business. This was the case with both Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd and Prince Daud Ben Nayef, two of the most active second-generation princes and both at the head of financial empires during the '80s. Both princes were often encountered along with one or another of the bin Laden sons at the head of international companies.
Appointed governor of the Eastern Province in the mid-'80s, Prince Mohammed Ben Fahd resigned from the chairmanships of his companies, putting Prince Saud in his place. The latter, named vice-governor of the Eastern Province last June, has also since withdrawn from a number of business activities.
There was also a political aspect to Salem bin Laden's financial activities. Like Ali Ben Moussalem, Salem bin Laden played a role in the US operations in the Middle East and Central America during the '80s.
Laden's Brother In Texas
By Bud Kennedy
Omar bin Laden claims to be one of the sons of Osama bin Laden.
Omar has written a memoir, with the help of an American called Jean Sasson.
The memoir has the appearance of CIA propaganda.
John R. MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's magazine, has called Jean Sasson "a propagandist for hire."
 |
| Osama bin Laden, at Oxford, far right. |
Meet The Bin Ladens: Osama's Road to Riches and Terror
By Georg Mascolo and Erich Follath
In early spring 2002, American intelligence agents tipped off authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina that something wasn't quite right with the "Benevolence International Foundation." Their reaction was swift; special forces stormed eight offices of the Islamic foundation in Sarajevo and in Zenica. They found weapons and explosives, videos and flyers calling for holy war. More importantly, however, they discovered a computer with a mysterious file entitled "Tarich Osama" -- Arabic for "Osama's Story."
After printing out the file -- close to 10,000 pages worth -- the intelligence experts quickly realized they had stumbled upon a true goldmine. They were looking at nothing less than the carefully documented story of al-Qaida, complete with scanned letters, minutes of secret meetings, photos and notes -- some even written in Osama Bin Laden's handwriting. CIA experts secured the highly sensitive material, dubbed "Golden Chain," and took everything back to the United States. To this day, only fragments of the material have been published. Now, however, SPIEGEL magazine has been given complete access to the entire series of explosive documents dating from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.
During that time, Osama bin Laden, known as "OBL" in CIA parlance, was primarily interested in "preserving the spirit of jihad" that had developed during the successful Afghanistan campaign -- a fight which saw an international group of Muslim fighters stand up to the mighty Soviet army. Bin Laden wanted to expand the group's activities to battle "the infidels" in the West. A full decade before the attacks on the Twin Towers, the documents make horrifyingly clear, bin Laden was already dreaming of "staging a major event for the mass media, to generate donations."
Finances are the focal point in these early al-Qaida documents. OBL, as one of the heirs of a large construction company, had a substantial fortune at his disposal, but it was still not enough to finance global jihad. The Saudi elite -- and his own family -- came to his assistance.
"Be generous when doing God's work"
The evidence lies in the most valuable document investigators managed to acquire: a list of al-Qaida's key financial backers. The list, titled with a verse from the Koran, "Let us be generous when doing God's work," is a veritable who's who of the Middle Eastern monarchy, including the signatures of two former cabinet ministers, six bankers and twelve prominent businessmen. The list also mentions "the bin Laden brothers." Were these generous backers aware, at the time, that were not just donating money to support the aggressive expansion of the teaching of the Islamic faith, but were also financing acts of terror against non-believers? Did "the bin Laden brothers," who first pledged money to Al-Qaida and then, in 1994, issued a joint press statement declaring that they were ejecting Osama from the family as a "black sheep," truly break ties with their blood relatives -- or were they simply pulling the wool over the eyes of the world?
Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism for the CIA, says, "I tracked the bin Ladens for years. Many family members claimed that Osama was no longer one of them. It's an easy thing to say, but blood is usually thicker than water."
Carmen bin Laden, a sister-in-law of the terrorist, who lived with the extended family in Jeddah for years, says, "I absolutely do not believe that the bin Ladens disowned Osama. In this family, a brother is always a brother, no matter what he has done. I am convinced that the complex and tightly woven network between the bin Laden clan and the Saudi royal family is still in operation."
French documentary filmmaker Joël Soler even goes so far as to refer to the family as "A Dynasty of Terror," in his somewhat speculative made-for-TV piece.
But could this really be possible? Are the bin Ladens (or "Binladins," as they more commonly spell it), with their 25 brothers, 29 sisters, in-laws, aunts and, by now, at least 15 children of Osama, nothing but a clan of terrorists? Or are relatives being taken to task for the crimes of one family member, all on the strength of legends and conspiracy theories?
American celebrity attorney Ron Motley plans to file a lawsuit against alleged Saudi backers of al-Qaida on behalf of hundreds of families who lost relatives in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Listed among the defendants summoned by federal judge Richard Casey at Motley's request in January 2005 were Osama and one of his brothers, as well as the family's billion-dollar business in Jeddah, the "Saudi Binladin Group."
Tracking the bin Ladens across the globe
To form an impression of this rather unique extended family, one would have to travel to the desert kingdom, where it has its roots, as well as to Washington, Geneva, London and the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan -- in other words, to all those places where the bin Ladens have left their tracks or where they live today. And the best way to get to the bottom of this clan is to piece together its many parts. Only then will it become more apparent whether the bin Ladens are a clan of terrorists or (with one well-known exception) a terribly affable family.
The bin Laden story, with its dramatic twists and turns, almost comes across as an Arab version of Thomas Mann's novel "Buddenbrooks." In both cases, it's the story of an imposing patriarch, who has managed to hold the clan together, and of his sons, who cannot or do not wish to stop the family's moral decline.
JEDDAH, ON THE RED SEA, IS A MAJOR CITY AND AN IMPORTANT TRANSIT PORT FOR SAUDI ARABIA. It's also one of the main ports of entry for pilgrimages to the Muslim holy city of Mecca -- and to the headquarters of the family dynasty, the Saudi Binladin Group (SBG).
"We have a mayor and all kinds of political heavyweights. But the truly ruler of Jeddah is Bakr bin Laden," says an informer who agreed to speak only under condition of anonymity. "But Bakr is never seen in public, and when he does occasionally go to the Intercontinental Hotel for dinner -- usually with Osama's son Abdullah -- he has the entire restaurant closed. During a tour of the city, the source points out a glass and steel palace not far from the city's downtown area, with its twisting alleyways and smattering of restored old houses. It's the headquarters of SBG, the secretive realm of Bakr Bin Laden, 58, the son of the family's patriarch and chairman of the company's board of directors.
Jeddah is the place where the clan's founding father began his astonishing career. And it's also the place where the first family member became connected with Islamic terrorism -- not Osama, but his older brother, Mahrus bin Laden. US authorities have also clearly linked another member of the clan, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, who is married to one of Osama's sisters, to terrorist attacks abroad.
Although Bin Laden senior -- Mohammed bin Laden -- was practically illiterate, he was blessed with tremendous energy and keen sense of business. In 1930, he left his village, Ribat, in the desperately poor Yemeni region of Hadramaut, and headed north. In Jeddah, then a small city, he eked out a living as a porter for pilgrims, steadfastly saving his earnings to start his own company.
A year later, when the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia gained its independence, the immigrant from the south was still struggling to make ends meet. But he quickly recognized the two factors that were becoming increasingly important in his adopted country: oil, which had been flowing from Saudi wells since 1938, and, with its enormous profits, was revolutionizing the country's traditional society and causing nomadic tribes to take up roots; and the country's authoritarian king, whose patronage sometimes determined survival, but always determined social advancement.
A third factor that was critical to the success of the state, and was symbiotically linked with the monarchy from the very beginning, was the religious establishment in its uniquely Saudi form. The principles of Wahhabism-- as Saudi Islam is known -- have their roots with the 18th century radical zealot Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the Sauds' most powerful ally in their efforts to take control of the peninsula. After the founding of the Saudi state, fundamentalism became the official religion.
The royal court builder
Mohammed bin Laden had no quarrels with either the preachers or the princes; his only goal was to make it to the top, and the construction business was the ideal launching pad. The kingdom needed roads, railroads and airports. Bin Laden senior built ramps in the palace for the handicapped King Abd al-Aziz's wheelchair and highways into the mountains for his luxury cars. Bin Laden was later named Minister of Public Spending, and the royal family even awarded him the contract to renovate the country's holy sites. The family business, SBG, quickly developed into the court builder for the entire Saudi infrastructure.
Following an old Islamic tradition, the bin Laden senior kept numerous wives. In 1956, he sired child number 17 with a Syrian woman from Latakia, and the boy was named Osama. It must have been difficult for the patriarch to keep track of his family; ten years later, child number 54 was born -- Mohammed bin Laden's last offspring. In 1968, the patriarch was killed when his Cessna, piloted by an American, crashed -- a foreshadowing of things to come.
The king placed the family business, SBG, under the management of a trustee, making the bin Laden sons the de facto wards of the monarch. Osama was ten years old at the time and he was occasionally allowed to ride along on the company's bulldozers. But he had hardly known his father -- a deficit he recognized only later in life when he elevated the family's patriarch to the status of Spiritus Rector in matters of Islamic fundamentalism.
Even as a boy, Osama was always considered the "holy one" in the family. He drew attention to himself when he denounced school soccer tournaments as a godless waste of time and assiduously monitored the houses of neighbors, taking it upon himself to enforce the state's prohibition of music. He enrolled in the economics program at Jeddah's King Abd al-Aziz University, where the curriculum was determined by anti-Western agitators from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
The family became divided, into a more stationary branch, and an "international" branch that settled across the globe. One member of the latter camp was Salem bin Laden. He attended a British university, married a woman from an upper-class British family, and vacationed in Disneyland. In 1972, when the Saudi government relinquished control over SBG, Salem, as the family's eldest son, was named head of the company and quickly made it clear that he had no compunctions about doing business with the United States.
Salem bin Laden established the company's ties to the American political elite when, according to French intelligence sources, he helped the Reagan administration circumvent the US Senate and funnel $34 million to the right-wing Contra rebels operating in Nicaragua. He also developed close ties with the Bush family in Texas. But Salem's successors, not Salem, were the ones who were able to fully capitalize on these connections. In 1988, Salem died in a plane crash near San Antonio, Texas, when the aircraft he was piloted became entangled in a power line. After Salem's death, Bakr took control of SBG.
Brother terrorist
In the meantime, trouble was brewing at home in Saudi Arabia -- in Mecca, of all places, and with the presumed involvement of a family member. In November 1979, insurgents occupied and barricaded themselves into Islam's holiest site, demanding an end to corruption and wastefulness in Saudi Arabia and charging the royal family with having lost its legitimacy by currying favor with the West. It was an act of terror that foreshadowed every major plank of the al-Qaida platform of radical fundamentalism -- and it was no coincidence that this radical group was lead by members of the Muslim Brotherhood with ties to Osama's professors.
At the time, Osama was still entrenched in Saudi society, but his older brother, Mahrus, maintained ties to the fanatics. It's even speculated that he may have used his access to SBG's offices to obtain the renovation plans for the Great Mosque, together with all its secret passageways, and handed them over to the radicals. In any event, the fanatics forced their way onto the mosque's grounds in a truck that was later identified as a Binladin company vehicle.
Mahrus bin Laden was arrested, but was then released for lack of evidence. The terrorist attack turned into a nightmare for the authorities. With the help of French special forces, the Saudis managed to overcome the attackers, but only after a two-week siege and a bloody battle claiming more than a hundred lives. For Mahrus's career, however, the affair proved to be nothing more than a minor speed bump and he later resurfaced as head of SBG's office in Medina.
In late 1979, Osama, with the royal family's blessing, set off for Afghanistan to participate in the jihad against the Soviet Union, which had invaded its neighbor to the south. Both the CIA and Saudi Arabia helped fund the Mujahedeen's armed struggle against the communist "infidels." Prince Turki, head of the Saudi secret service, visited Osama several times in Afghanistan and heavy equipment provided by the SBG family business was used to excavate secret tunnels. For Osama, the support of the Saud family and the bin Ladens became a reliable source of funding.
In 1990, after his triumph in Afghanistan, OBL offered the Saudi royal family the use of his troops to battle Saddam Hussein, whose forces had invaded Kuwait. But King Fahd decided instead to bring in American forces. The decision proved to be a financial coup for the family business, which helped build military bases for the outsiders, but it was turning point in Osama's life. Embittered, he went to Sudan in 1992, where he built training camps and organized attacks with his al-Qaida group, especially against "infidels" from the United States. He also made sure that the planning of terrorist activities remained in the family. His brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, was involved in the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. On his visa application for the United States, he had listed his occupation as an "employee of the Saudi Binladin Group." Khalifa was briefly detained in the United States, but was then deported to Jordan, where he was released because of formal legal errors. In the past, he had also been implicated as a financial backer of the Philippine Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization.
After printing out the file -- close to 10,000 pages worth -- the intelligence experts quickly realized they had stumbled upon a true goldmine. They were looking at nothing less than the carefully documented story of al-Qaida, complete with scanned letters, minutes of secret meetings, photos and notes -- some even written in Osama Bin Laden's handwriting. CIA experts secured the highly sensitive material, dubbed "Golden Chain," and took everything back to the United States. To this day, only fragments of the material have been published. Now, however, SPIEGEL magazine has been given complete access to the entire series of explosive documents dating from the late 1980s to the early 1990s.
During that time, Osama bin Laden, known as "OBL" in CIA parlance, was primarily interested in "preserving the spirit of jihad" that had developed during the successful Afghanistan campaign -- a fight which saw an international group of Muslim fighters stand up to the mighty Soviet army. Bin Laden wanted to expand the group's activities to battle "the infidels" in the West. A full decade before the attacks on the Twin Towers, the documents make horrifyingly clear, bin Laden was already dreaming of "staging a major event for the mass media, to generate donations."
Finances are the focal point in these early al-Qaida documents. OBL, as one of the heirs of a large construction company, had a substantial fortune at his disposal, but it was still not enough to finance global jihad. The Saudi elite -- and his own family -- came to his assistance.
"Be generous when doing God's work"
The evidence lies in the most valuable document investigators managed to acquire: a list of al-Qaida's key financial backers. The list, titled with a verse from the Koran, "Let us be generous when doing God's work," is a veritable who's who of the Middle Eastern monarchy, including the signatures of two former cabinet ministers, six bankers and twelve prominent businessmen. The list also mentions "the bin Laden brothers." Were these generous backers aware, at the time, that were not just donating money to support the aggressive expansion of the teaching of the Islamic faith, but were also financing acts of terror against non-believers? Did "the bin Laden brothers," who first pledged money to Al-Qaida and then, in 1994, issued a joint press statement declaring that they were ejecting Osama from the family as a "black sheep," truly break ties with their blood relatives -- or were they simply pulling the wool over the eyes of the world?
Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism for the CIA, says, "I tracked the bin Ladens for years. Many family members claimed that Osama was no longer one of them. It's an easy thing to say, but blood is usually thicker than water."
Carmen bin Laden, a sister-in-law of the terrorist, who lived with the extended family in Jeddah for years, says, "I absolutely do not believe that the bin Ladens disowned Osama. In this family, a brother is always a brother, no matter what he has done. I am convinced that the complex and tightly woven network between the bin Laden clan and the Saudi royal family is still in operation."
French documentary filmmaker Joël Soler even goes so far as to refer to the family as "A Dynasty of Terror," in his somewhat speculative made-for-TV piece.
But could this really be possible? Are the bin Ladens (or "Binladins," as they more commonly spell it), with their 25 brothers, 29 sisters, in-laws, aunts and, by now, at least 15 children of Osama, nothing but a clan of terrorists? Or are relatives being taken to task for the crimes of one family member, all on the strength of legends and conspiracy theories?
American celebrity attorney Ron Motley plans to file a lawsuit against alleged Saudi backers of al-Qaida on behalf of hundreds of families who lost relatives in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Listed among the defendants summoned by federal judge Richard Casey at Motley's request in January 2005 were Osama and one of his brothers, as well as the family's billion-dollar business in Jeddah, the "Saudi Binladin Group."
Tracking the bin Ladens across the globe
To form an impression of this rather unique extended family, one would have to travel to the desert kingdom, where it has its roots, as well as to Washington, Geneva, London and the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan -- in other words, to all those places where the bin Ladens have left their tracks or where they live today. And the best way to get to the bottom of this clan is to piece together its many parts. Only then will it become more apparent whether the bin Ladens are a clan of terrorists or (with one well-known exception) a terribly affable family.
The bin Laden story, with its dramatic twists and turns, almost comes across as an Arab version of Thomas Mann's novel "Buddenbrooks." In both cases, it's the story of an imposing patriarch, who has managed to hold the clan together, and of his sons, who cannot or do not wish to stop the family's moral decline.
JEDDAH, ON THE RED SEA, IS A MAJOR CITY AND AN IMPORTANT TRANSIT PORT FOR SAUDI ARABIA. It's also one of the main ports of entry for pilgrimages to the Muslim holy city of Mecca -- and to the headquarters of the family dynasty, the Saudi Binladin Group (SBG).
"We have a mayor and all kinds of political heavyweights. But the truly ruler of Jeddah is Bakr bin Laden," says an informer who agreed to speak only under condition of anonymity. "But Bakr is never seen in public, and when he does occasionally go to the Intercontinental Hotel for dinner -- usually with Osama's son Abdullah -- he has the entire restaurant closed. During a tour of the city, the source points out a glass and steel palace not far from the city's downtown area, with its twisting alleyways and smattering of restored old houses. It's the headquarters of SBG, the secretive realm of Bakr Bin Laden, 58, the son of the family's patriarch and chairman of the company's board of directors.
Jeddah is the place where the clan's founding father began his astonishing career. And it's also the place where the first family member became connected with Islamic terrorism -- not Osama, but his older brother, Mahrus bin Laden. US authorities have also clearly linked another member of the clan, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, who is married to one of Osama's sisters, to terrorist attacks abroad.
Although Bin Laden senior -- Mohammed bin Laden -- was practically illiterate, he was blessed with tremendous energy and keen sense of business. In 1930, he left his village, Ribat, in the desperately poor Yemeni region of Hadramaut, and headed north. In Jeddah, then a small city, he eked out a living as a porter for pilgrims, steadfastly saving his earnings to start his own company.
A year later, when the desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia gained its independence, the immigrant from the south was still struggling to make ends meet. But he quickly recognized the two factors that were becoming increasingly important in his adopted country: oil, which had been flowing from Saudi wells since 1938, and, with its enormous profits, was revolutionizing the country's traditional society and causing nomadic tribes to take up roots; and the country's authoritarian king, whose patronage sometimes determined survival, but always determined social advancement.
A third factor that was critical to the success of the state, and was symbiotically linked with the monarchy from the very beginning, was the religious establishment in its uniquely Saudi form. The principles of Wahhabism-- as Saudi Islam is known -- have their roots with the 18th century radical zealot Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, the Sauds' most powerful ally in their efforts to take control of the peninsula. After the founding of the Saudi state, fundamentalism became the official religion.
The royal court builder
Mohammed bin Laden had no quarrels with either the preachers or the princes; his only goal was to make it to the top, and the construction business was the ideal launching pad. The kingdom needed roads, railroads and airports. Bin Laden senior built ramps in the palace for the handicapped King Abd al-Aziz's wheelchair and highways into the mountains for his luxury cars. Bin Laden was later named Minister of Public Spending, and the royal family even awarded him the contract to renovate the country's holy sites. The family business, SBG, quickly developed into the court builder for the entire Saudi infrastructure.
Following an old Islamic tradition, the bin Laden senior kept numerous wives. In 1956, he sired child number 17 with a Syrian woman from Latakia, and the boy was named Osama. It must have been difficult for the patriarch to keep track of his family; ten years later, child number 54 was born -- Mohammed bin Laden's last offspring. In 1968, the patriarch was killed when his Cessna, piloted by an American, crashed -- a foreshadowing of things to come.
The king placed the family business, SBG, under the management of a trustee, making the bin Laden sons the de facto wards of the monarch. Osama was ten years old at the time and he was occasionally allowed to ride along on the company's bulldozers. But he had hardly known his father -- a deficit he recognized only later in life when he elevated the family's patriarch to the status of Spiritus Rector in matters of Islamic fundamentalism.
Even as a boy, Osama was always considered the "holy one" in the family. He drew attention to himself when he denounced school soccer tournaments as a godless waste of time and assiduously monitored the houses of neighbors, taking it upon himself to enforce the state's prohibition of music. He enrolled in the economics program at Jeddah's King Abd al-Aziz University, where the curriculum was determined by anti-Western agitators from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
The family became divided, into a more stationary branch, and an "international" branch that settled across the globe. One member of the latter camp was Salem bin Laden. He attended a British university, married a woman from an upper-class British family, and vacationed in Disneyland. In 1972, when the Saudi government relinquished control over SBG, Salem, as the family's eldest son, was named head of the company and quickly made it clear that he had no compunctions about doing business with the United States.
Salem bin Laden established the company's ties to the American political elite when, according to French intelligence sources, he helped the Reagan administration circumvent the US Senate and funnel $34 million to the right-wing Contra rebels operating in Nicaragua. He also developed close ties with the Bush family in Texas. But Salem's successors, not Salem, were the ones who were able to fully capitalize on these connections. In 1988, Salem died in a plane crash near San Antonio, Texas, when the aircraft he was piloted became entangled in a power line. After Salem's death, Bakr took control of SBG.
Brother terrorist
In the meantime, trouble was brewing at home in Saudi Arabia -- in Mecca, of all places, and with the presumed involvement of a family member. In November 1979, insurgents occupied and barricaded themselves into Islam's holiest site, demanding an end to corruption and wastefulness in Saudi Arabia and charging the royal family with having lost its legitimacy by currying favor with the West. It was an act of terror that foreshadowed every major plank of the al-Qaida platform of radical fundamentalism -- and it was no coincidence that this radical group was lead by members of the Muslim Brotherhood with ties to Osama's professors.
At the time, Osama was still entrenched in Saudi society, but his older brother, Mahrus, maintained ties to the fanatics. It's even speculated that he may have used his access to SBG's offices to obtain the renovation plans for the Great Mosque, together with all its secret passageways, and handed them over to the radicals. In any event, the fanatics forced their way onto the mosque's grounds in a truck that was later identified as a Binladin company vehicle.
Mahrus bin Laden was arrested, but was then released for lack of evidence. The terrorist attack turned into a nightmare for the authorities. With the help of French special forces, the Saudis managed to overcome the attackers, but only after a two-week siege and a bloody battle claiming more than a hundred lives. For Mahrus's career, however, the affair proved to be nothing more than a minor speed bump and he later resurfaced as head of SBG's office in Medina.
In late 1979, Osama, with the royal family's blessing, set off for Afghanistan to participate in the jihad against the Soviet Union, which had invaded its neighbor to the south. Both the CIA and Saudi Arabia helped fund the Mujahedeen's armed struggle against the communist "infidels." Prince Turki, head of the Saudi secret service, visited Osama several times in Afghanistan and heavy equipment provided by the SBG family business was used to excavate secret tunnels. For Osama, the support of the Saud family and the bin Ladens became a reliable source of funding.
In 1990, after his triumph in Afghanistan, OBL offered the Saudi royal family the use of his troops to battle Saddam Hussein, whose forces had invaded Kuwait. But King Fahd decided instead to bring in American forces. The decision proved to be a financial coup for the family business, which helped build military bases for the outsiders, but it was turning point in Osama's life. Embittered, he went to Sudan in 1992, where he built training camps and organized attacks with his al-Qaida group, especially against "infidels" from the United States. He also made sure that the planning of terrorist activities remained in the family. His brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, was involved in the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. On his visa application for the United States, he had listed his occupation as an "employee of the Saudi Binladin Group." Khalifa was briefly detained in the United States, but was then deported to Jordan, where he was released because of formal legal errors. In the past, he had also been implicated as a financial backer of the Philippine Abu Sayyaf terrorist organization.
Meet The Bin Ladens, Part II: Tracking Osama's Kin Around the World
By Erich Follath and Georg Mascolo
Osama also stayed in touch with his friends from the Saudi intelligence agency, even after Libya issued a warrant for his arrest, charging bin Laden with alleged involvement in the murder of two Germans -- an official working for Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and his wife. Prince Turki sent Osama's mother, Hamida, and his brother Bakr to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, several times to convince Osama to abandon his terrorist activities. The visits were so frequent that Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, believed at the time that Osama was a Saudi spy. Washington increasingly came under pressure to do something about OBL, especially after his involvement in attacks in Somalia and Yemen. The US government met with Saudi officials behind the scenes, confronting them with satellite images of al-Qaida training camps in northern Sudan. In April 1994, King Fahd finally revoked Osama bin Laden's Saudi Arabian citizenship. The bin Laden family followed suit, issuing a sparse, two-sentence statement, signed by Bakr, disowning Osama.
Despite these actions, OBL was still far from being a "black sheep" with no ties to his native country. Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki visited bin Laden several times after he had moved from Sudan to Afghanistan to join forces with the radical Taliban. Turki allegedly brought along expensive gifts to Kandahar, in the form of dozens of pickup trucks. According to a former member of the Taliban intelligence service, Prince Turki and OBL made a deal: The Saudis would support al-Qaida financially, but only under the condition that there would be no attacks on Saudi soil. (Prince Turki, now Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Great Britain, has denied these claims, telling SPIEGEL that they are "nothing but fantasy.")
On Jan. 9, 2001, OBL attended his son Mohammed's wedding in Kandahar, accompanied, according to CIA sources, by his mother and two of his brothers. The CIA also claims that "two of Osama's sisters traveled to Abu Dhabi" a month later, where they met with an al-Qaida agent at the Gulf emirate's airport to deliver large sums of cash.
In mid-January 2005, New York federal judge Richard Casey wrote, in his grounds for allowing the civil suit against SBG filed by the families of 9/11 victims, that "the Saudi Binladin Group maintained close relationships with Osama bin Laden at certain times," and that it remains "unclear" whether these ties continued when OBL became involved in terrorism.
Can this global company, with its close ties to the Saudi royal family, truly be brought to trial, or will the US government, officially allied with Riyadh in its "war on terror," work behind the scenes to have the case dismissed? SBG has already demonstrated its willingness to work with the West by entering into joint ventures with Motorola and a deal with Disney, and has also been Porsche's official agent in the kingdom. Moreover, SBG is developing new airport security equipment in Saudi Arabia, as well as building housing for US managers working in the oil industry.
In Kazakhstan, the Saudi Binladin Group is helping build the country's new capital, Astana. In Syria, SBG and a Spanish company jointly operate the country's biggest olive oil processing plant. And in Dubai, the family company has just submitted a bid for a portion of the construction of what will be the world's tallest building. Next to aircraft, it seems, the bin Ladens see towers as a special challenge.
PARIS, AVENUE MONTAIGNE, NEAR THE CHAMPS-ELYSÉES AND THE LUXURY HOTEL "PLAZA ATHÉNÉE". A dinner appointment with Yeslam bin Laden at one the French capital's most expensive and exclusive restaurants.
He did not reserve a table. Was it because he doesn't like to identify himself as a bin Laden on the phone? "No no," says Osama's brother, "despite everything, I am proud of our family's name. But they know me here, so I don't need a reservation." Indeed, the staff, apparently accustomed to princely gratuities, practically bends over backward for bin Laden, a regular here, and seats us at the best table in the restaurant. Yeslam bin Laden, 55, orders a steak, medium rare. "Osama and I grew up very differently, and I never shared his system of beliefs," says Yeslam bin Laden.
When Yeslam was six, his mother sent him to a school in Beirut, because it was far more liberal there than in Saudi Arabia. He later attended schools and universities in Sweden and England. Although he spent his vacations at home, he saw his father "rarely," and his "half-brother Osama no more than three or four times, the last time in 1987 or thereabouts." He says that his only clear memory of Osama is of his strict condemnation of music, and his religious fanaticism, which struck Yeslam as odd. Yeslam himself believes religion is a personal matter, and he refuses to take responsibility for others. "Am I my brother's keeper?" he asks, calling himself an "enlightened Muslim," clearly alluding to the biblical story of Cain and Abel.
As a young man, Yeslam went to night clubs, drove a Porsche and earned his pilot's license. He studied business administration in Los Angeles. Photos from his college days show him with his Persian fiancée, a long-haired, happy hippy couple ensconced in the California lifestyle. He rarely received visitors from Saudi Arabia. One of these visitors was his devout brother Mahfus, who brought news of the bin Laden family, the Saudi royals and the Wahhabite clerics. But despite his worldly influences, Yeslam bin Laden retained his Saudi roots and insisted on a wedding in Jeddah. Against his wife Carmen's will, the women were fully veiled at the ceremony.
After living in the United States, Yeslam spent more than a decade and a half in Saudi Arabia -- from 1977 to 1984 -- where he was one of the leading executives in the family company in Jeddah. After a dispute with his brothers over SBG's finances, Yeslam went to Geneva, where he founded an investment company that specialized in managing large fortunes. There were soon rumors that Yeslam had reconciled with Bakr and was involved once again in business dealings with the bin Laden family. He dreamed of the birth of a son, and probably of rising to the top of SBG management in Jeddah.
When Yeslam's third daughter was born in April 1987 and he began spending long periods away from home, his marriage failed. According to his wife Yeslam, worried about his business, he became increasingly tense. Members of the Saudi royal family were now traveling to Geneva regularly and demanding his attention, especially the influential Prince Mishal. Yeslam bin Laden's divorce developed, as he himself says, into a bitter "War of the Roses." But in 2001, after years of troubles, he was finally successful on another front when he was granted Swiss citizenship. What is Yeslam's relationship with his brother Osama, who, as he claims, he last saw 18 years ago?
"9/11 was a tremendous shock for me," says Yeslam, now an upstanding citizen of Geneva who has also donated many thousands of dollars to the local film festival. "Osama had long since become a stranger to me, nothing but a name one reads in the newspaper," he says. "I felt that I was being held responsible for the crimes of a relative." The offices of his Geneva-based Saudi Investment Company (Sico) and his properties near Cannes were searched by the authorities, "just like that, on the strength of suspicion," he says. In early 2001, he registered the name "Bin Laden" as a trademark. He planned to establish a fashion house that would sell Bin Laden jeans but then, heeding the advice of friends, he abandoned the idea after 9/11: "After the incidents in New York, it would have been seen as a label in poor taste."
He developed a new business idea in the fall of 2004, a line of perfume. It's named "Yeslam," after its inventor and, according to its advertising, marries the scents of jasmine and lilies of the valley with an underlying note of sandalwood. In ads for the perfume, this combination of scents produces "a penetrating but gentle message for those who yearn for inner peace." The company plans to sell 60,000 bottles to its peace-loving customers.
Everything could work out for the best in Yeslam's world -- if only these new, hateful accusations would go away. A shadow lies over the man who tries to be pro-American and anti-Osama with every fiber of his being. In late December 2004, the French paper Le Monde reported that examining magistrate Renaud von Ruymbeke plans to investigate the bin Laden family's allegedly dubious financial dealings.
At the center of the investigation is an account that brothers Omar and Heidar bin Laden opened in 1990 with Swiss bank UBS with an initial deposit of $450,000. According to documents presented to the court, this account was still in existence in 1997, and only two people were authorized to conduct transactions: Yeslam and Osama bin Laden. The French court also intends to investigate information suggesting that €241 million were funneled from Switzerland to shadowy bank accounts in Pakistan through Akberali Moawalla, a former business partner of Sico and an acquaintance of Yeslam. Could all this have occurred with Yeslam's involvement or knowledge?
"I am not involved in money-laundering, and especially not with al-Qaida," says Yeslam bin Laden, his voice becoming slightly hoarse and edgy. He says that he never used the alleged UBS account and, probably for this reason, forgot about it. He takes pains to point out that he has not been charged with anything, neither by the New York court nor the French judge. He says that he is "innocent until proven guilty" -- another Western concept that this man living between cultures values, knowing full well that it carries no particular weight in his native country.
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, HOME OF THE AMERICAN CEMETERY FOR WAR HEROES AND "HARRY'S TAP ROOM". It's a relatively inconspicuous burger-and-seafood restaurant conveniently located halfway between the White House and CIA headquarters in nearby Langley, Virginia. We are here for a meeting with the CIA agent who hunted down Osama, tried to shed light on the bin Laden family's business dealings, and probably knows a great deal about the mysterious departure of more than a dozen bin Laden family members from the United States after 9/11. This is the man who published the bestseller "Imperial Hubris" last year under the nom de plume "Anonymous."
Anonymous now has a name and a face. His name is Mike Scheuer, and a gray beard partially covers his finely-chiseled academic face. He resigned from the CIA after 22 years of service, because he was no longer able to remain anonymous. Journalists were on the verge of uncovering his identity, and his book was facing harsh criticism from the White House. "That was when I did what had to be done," says Scheuer, 52, before taking a bite of his hamburger. He leaves his French fries untouched, glancing at his stomach. Being overweight isn't exactly part of the image someone wants to convey who, as a CIA field agent, helped arm the mujahedeen to fight the Russians in Afghanistan and who, in 1996, was placed in charge of "Alec," the top-secret unit authorized by former President Bill Clinton to hunt down bin Laden.
It was the first time an entire CIA station focused on a single man. Scheuer headed the special unit for three years until his superiors, angered by his complaints that the hunt for the world's top terrorist was being conducted half-heartedly, reassigned him for the first time. But he was brought back after Sept. 11, 2001, when it became clear that his bleak predictions had come true. But Scheuer's criticism of the Iraq war ultimately destroyed his good standing with the White House. "Bush strengthened the terrorists with his invasion, but it was a truth that they didn't want to hear."
Scheuer's axis of evil differs markedly from the president's. He believes that Pakistan and, even more so, Saudi Arabia are the epicenters of global violence. "Many Saudis support the terrorists in Iraq to this day - but we're the ones who are putting up the money -- by paying $50 for a barrel of oil and making ourselves dependent on oil imports."
Scheuer, an experienced intelligence expert, doubts that the entire bin Laden family has severed ties with Osama: "I haven't seen anything in the last 10 years that's convinced me that would be the case." In his view, SBG still derives some of its profits from business dealings in the Islamic world that can be linked to the family's supposed "black sheep." "He's treated as a hero almost everywhere over there," says Scheuer.
The CIA came close to capturing OBL several times. On one occasion, during the al-Qaida leadership's hasty retreat from the Afghan city of Kandahar in the fall of 2001, family passports were inadvertently left behind. Saad, a son of Osama bin Laden, was supposedly sent back to al-Qaida headquarters to make sure the documents wouldn't fall into the hands of the Americans. When he realized he had forgotten the combination for the safe, he used a cell phone to get the information, directly violating his father's strict instructions. Several different intelligence agencies picked up the call, but by then it was too late to act.
According to Scheuer, members of the bin Ladin family who were doing business in the United States or studying at US universities were almost completely inaccessible. "My counterparts at the FBI questioned one of the bin Ladens," the former CIA agent recalls. "But then the State Department received a complaint from a law firm, and there was a huge uproar. We were shocked to find out that the bin Ladens in the United States had diplomatic passports, and that we weren't allowed to talk to them."
Scheuer believes that these diplomatic privileges also helped the bin Ladens get out of the United States quickly after September 11, in a bizarre episode that has even been probed by the US Congress and an investigative commission.
Only two days after the attacks, when the US government had just reopened US air space, charter jets began taking off from various cities. Nine pilots flew 142 Saudi Arabians back to the kingdom. On Sept. 20, 2001, the "bin Laden jet" took off from St. Louis, making stops in Los Angeles, Orlando, Washington and Boston. At each stop, the plane picked up more half-brothers, nephews, nieces and cousins of public enemy number one. At that point, the FBI had already begun investigating two of the bin Ladens who were flown out of the country. They both lived in Falls Church, a suburb of Washington, and were officials in the "World Assembly of Muslim Youth."
Richard Clarke, for many years the chief of counterterrorism at the White House, has revealed that he was responsible for the flights. He says that he grantedhis approval after having been asked to handle the issue. And by whom? Perhaps by Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, after coordinating the plan with Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, a close friend of the First Family? "I would be happy tell you, but I don't remember," Clarke told a Senate investigating panel -- few believe he was telling the truth.
Of course, former CIA agent Scheuer is well aware that the bin Ladens, as investors in and customers of the Carlyle Group, an investment company, had common business interests with the Bushs. In fact, until October 2003 George W.'s father and predecessor in the White House still worked as an "advisor" for Carlyle, which is also involved in the defense sector. Although Scheuer is no wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, he also believes that the US government was "unusually" accommodating to the bin Ladens. Does he regret leaving the CIA, and does he dream of returning? Scheuer, a father of four, says: "I liked my job. I wanted to protect the country against its enemies -- but not the president against his critics."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/meet-the-bin-ladens-part-ii-tracking-osama-s-kin-around-the-world-a-359831.html
Despite these actions, OBL was still far from being a "black sheep" with no ties to his native country. Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki visited bin Laden several times after he had moved from Sudan to Afghanistan to join forces with the radical Taliban. Turki allegedly brought along expensive gifts to Kandahar, in the form of dozens of pickup trucks. According to a former member of the Taliban intelligence service, Prince Turki and OBL made a deal: The Saudis would support al-Qaida financially, but only under the condition that there would be no attacks on Saudi soil. (Prince Turki, now Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Great Britain, has denied these claims, telling SPIEGEL that they are "nothing but fantasy.")
On Jan. 9, 2001, OBL attended his son Mohammed's wedding in Kandahar, accompanied, according to CIA sources, by his mother and two of his brothers. The CIA also claims that "two of Osama's sisters traveled to Abu Dhabi" a month later, where they met with an al-Qaida agent at the Gulf emirate's airport to deliver large sums of cash.
In mid-January 2005, New York federal judge Richard Casey wrote, in his grounds for allowing the civil suit against SBG filed by the families of 9/11 victims, that "the Saudi Binladin Group maintained close relationships with Osama bin Laden at certain times," and that it remains "unclear" whether these ties continued when OBL became involved in terrorism.
Can this global company, with its close ties to the Saudi royal family, truly be brought to trial, or will the US government, officially allied with Riyadh in its "war on terror," work behind the scenes to have the case dismissed? SBG has already demonstrated its willingness to work with the West by entering into joint ventures with Motorola and a deal with Disney, and has also been Porsche's official agent in the kingdom. Moreover, SBG is developing new airport security equipment in Saudi Arabia, as well as building housing for US managers working in the oil industry.
In Kazakhstan, the Saudi Binladin Group is helping build the country's new capital, Astana. In Syria, SBG and a Spanish company jointly operate the country's biggest olive oil processing plant. And in Dubai, the family company has just submitted a bid for a portion of the construction of what will be the world's tallest building. Next to aircraft, it seems, the bin Ladens see towers as a special challenge.
PARIS, AVENUE MONTAIGNE, NEAR THE CHAMPS-ELYSÉES AND THE LUXURY HOTEL "PLAZA ATHÉNÉE". A dinner appointment with Yeslam bin Laden at one the French capital's most expensive and exclusive restaurants.
He did not reserve a table. Was it because he doesn't like to identify himself as a bin Laden on the phone? "No no," says Osama's brother, "despite everything, I am proud of our family's name. But they know me here, so I don't need a reservation." Indeed, the staff, apparently accustomed to princely gratuities, practically bends over backward for bin Laden, a regular here, and seats us at the best table in the restaurant. Yeslam bin Laden, 55, orders a steak, medium rare. "Osama and I grew up very differently, and I never shared his system of beliefs," says Yeslam bin Laden.
When Yeslam was six, his mother sent him to a school in Beirut, because it was far more liberal there than in Saudi Arabia. He later attended schools and universities in Sweden and England. Although he spent his vacations at home, he saw his father "rarely," and his "half-brother Osama no more than three or four times, the last time in 1987 or thereabouts." He says that his only clear memory of Osama is of his strict condemnation of music, and his religious fanaticism, which struck Yeslam as odd. Yeslam himself believes religion is a personal matter, and he refuses to take responsibility for others. "Am I my brother's keeper?" he asks, calling himself an "enlightened Muslim," clearly alluding to the biblical story of Cain and Abel.
As a young man, Yeslam went to night clubs, drove a Porsche and earned his pilot's license. He studied business administration in Los Angeles. Photos from his college days show him with his Persian fiancée, a long-haired, happy hippy couple ensconced in the California lifestyle. He rarely received visitors from Saudi Arabia. One of these visitors was his devout brother Mahfus, who brought news of the bin Laden family, the Saudi royals and the Wahhabite clerics. But despite his worldly influences, Yeslam bin Laden retained his Saudi roots and insisted on a wedding in Jeddah. Against his wife Carmen's will, the women were fully veiled at the ceremony.
After living in the United States, Yeslam spent more than a decade and a half in Saudi Arabia -- from 1977 to 1984 -- where he was one of the leading executives in the family company in Jeddah. After a dispute with his brothers over SBG's finances, Yeslam went to Geneva, where he founded an investment company that specialized in managing large fortunes. There were soon rumors that Yeslam had reconciled with Bakr and was involved once again in business dealings with the bin Laden family. He dreamed of the birth of a son, and probably of rising to the top of SBG management in Jeddah.
When Yeslam's third daughter was born in April 1987 and he began spending long periods away from home, his marriage failed. According to his wife Yeslam, worried about his business, he became increasingly tense. Members of the Saudi royal family were now traveling to Geneva regularly and demanding his attention, especially the influential Prince Mishal. Yeslam bin Laden's divorce developed, as he himself says, into a bitter "War of the Roses." But in 2001, after years of troubles, he was finally successful on another front when he was granted Swiss citizenship. What is Yeslam's relationship with his brother Osama, who, as he claims, he last saw 18 years ago?
"9/11 was a tremendous shock for me," says Yeslam, now an upstanding citizen of Geneva who has also donated many thousands of dollars to the local film festival. "Osama had long since become a stranger to me, nothing but a name one reads in the newspaper," he says. "I felt that I was being held responsible for the crimes of a relative." The offices of his Geneva-based Saudi Investment Company (Sico) and his properties near Cannes were searched by the authorities, "just like that, on the strength of suspicion," he says. In early 2001, he registered the name "Bin Laden" as a trademark. He planned to establish a fashion house that would sell Bin Laden jeans but then, heeding the advice of friends, he abandoned the idea after 9/11: "After the incidents in New York, it would have been seen as a label in poor taste."
He developed a new business idea in the fall of 2004, a line of perfume. It's named "Yeslam," after its inventor and, according to its advertising, marries the scents of jasmine and lilies of the valley with an underlying note of sandalwood. In ads for the perfume, this combination of scents produces "a penetrating but gentle message for those who yearn for inner peace." The company plans to sell 60,000 bottles to its peace-loving customers.
Everything could work out for the best in Yeslam's world -- if only these new, hateful accusations would go away. A shadow lies over the man who tries to be pro-American and anti-Osama with every fiber of his being. In late December 2004, the French paper Le Monde reported that examining magistrate Renaud von Ruymbeke plans to investigate the bin Laden family's allegedly dubious financial dealings.
At the center of the investigation is an account that brothers Omar and Heidar bin Laden opened in 1990 with Swiss bank UBS with an initial deposit of $450,000. According to documents presented to the court, this account was still in existence in 1997, and only two people were authorized to conduct transactions: Yeslam and Osama bin Laden. The French court also intends to investigate information suggesting that €241 million were funneled from Switzerland to shadowy bank accounts in Pakistan through Akberali Moawalla, a former business partner of Sico and an acquaintance of Yeslam. Could all this have occurred with Yeslam's involvement or knowledge?
"I am not involved in money-laundering, and especially not with al-Qaida," says Yeslam bin Laden, his voice becoming slightly hoarse and edgy. He says that he never used the alleged UBS account and, probably for this reason, forgot about it. He takes pains to point out that he has not been charged with anything, neither by the New York court nor the French judge. He says that he is "innocent until proven guilty" -- another Western concept that this man living between cultures values, knowing full well that it carries no particular weight in his native country.
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, HOME OF THE AMERICAN CEMETERY FOR WAR HEROES AND "HARRY'S TAP ROOM". It's a relatively inconspicuous burger-and-seafood restaurant conveniently located halfway between the White House and CIA headquarters in nearby Langley, Virginia. We are here for a meeting with the CIA agent who hunted down Osama, tried to shed light on the bin Laden family's business dealings, and probably knows a great deal about the mysterious departure of more than a dozen bin Laden family members from the United States after 9/11. This is the man who published the bestseller "Imperial Hubris" last year under the nom de plume "Anonymous."
Anonymous now has a name and a face. His name is Mike Scheuer, and a gray beard partially covers his finely-chiseled academic face. He resigned from the CIA after 22 years of service, because he was no longer able to remain anonymous. Journalists were on the verge of uncovering his identity, and his book was facing harsh criticism from the White House. "That was when I did what had to be done," says Scheuer, 52, before taking a bite of his hamburger. He leaves his French fries untouched, glancing at his stomach. Being overweight isn't exactly part of the image someone wants to convey who, as a CIA field agent, helped arm the mujahedeen to fight the Russians in Afghanistan and who, in 1996, was placed in charge of "Alec," the top-secret unit authorized by former President Bill Clinton to hunt down bin Laden.
It was the first time an entire CIA station focused on a single man. Scheuer headed the special unit for three years until his superiors, angered by his complaints that the hunt for the world's top terrorist was being conducted half-heartedly, reassigned him for the first time. But he was brought back after Sept. 11, 2001, when it became clear that his bleak predictions had come true. But Scheuer's criticism of the Iraq war ultimately destroyed his good standing with the White House. "Bush strengthened the terrorists with his invasion, but it was a truth that they didn't want to hear."
Scheuer's axis of evil differs markedly from the president's. He believes that Pakistan and, even more so, Saudi Arabia are the epicenters of global violence. "Many Saudis support the terrorists in Iraq to this day - but we're the ones who are putting up the money -- by paying $50 for a barrel of oil and making ourselves dependent on oil imports."
Scheuer, an experienced intelligence expert, doubts that the entire bin Laden family has severed ties with Osama: "I haven't seen anything in the last 10 years that's convinced me that would be the case." In his view, SBG still derives some of its profits from business dealings in the Islamic world that can be linked to the family's supposed "black sheep." "He's treated as a hero almost everywhere over there," says Scheuer.
The CIA came close to capturing OBL several times. On one occasion, during the al-Qaida leadership's hasty retreat from the Afghan city of Kandahar in the fall of 2001, family passports were inadvertently left behind. Saad, a son of Osama bin Laden, was supposedly sent back to al-Qaida headquarters to make sure the documents wouldn't fall into the hands of the Americans. When he realized he had forgotten the combination for the safe, he used a cell phone to get the information, directly violating his father's strict instructions. Several different intelligence agencies picked up the call, but by then it was too late to act.
According to Scheuer, members of the bin Ladin family who were doing business in the United States or studying at US universities were almost completely inaccessible. "My counterparts at the FBI questioned one of the bin Ladens," the former CIA agent recalls. "But then the State Department received a complaint from a law firm, and there was a huge uproar. We were shocked to find out that the bin Ladens in the United States had diplomatic passports, and that we weren't allowed to talk to them."
Scheuer believes that these diplomatic privileges also helped the bin Ladens get out of the United States quickly after September 11, in a bizarre episode that has even been probed by the US Congress and an investigative commission.
Only two days after the attacks, when the US government had just reopened US air space, charter jets began taking off from various cities. Nine pilots flew 142 Saudi Arabians back to the kingdom. On Sept. 20, 2001, the "bin Laden jet" took off from St. Louis, making stops in Los Angeles, Orlando, Washington and Boston. At each stop, the plane picked up more half-brothers, nephews, nieces and cousins of public enemy number one. At that point, the FBI had already begun investigating two of the bin Ladens who were flown out of the country. They both lived in Falls Church, a suburb of Washington, and were officials in the "World Assembly of Muslim Youth."
Richard Clarke, for many years the chief of counterterrorism at the White House, has revealed that he was responsible for the flights. He says that he grantedhis approval after having been asked to handle the issue. And by whom? Perhaps by Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, after coordinating the plan with Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar, a close friend of the First Family? "I would be happy tell you, but I don't remember," Clarke told a Senate investigating panel -- few believe he was telling the truth.
Of course, former CIA agent Scheuer is well aware that the bin Ladens, as investors in and customers of the Carlyle Group, an investment company, had common business interests with the Bushs. In fact, until October 2003 George W.'s father and predecessor in the White House still worked as an "advisor" for Carlyle, which is also involved in the defense sector. Although Scheuer is no wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, he also believes that the US government was "unusually" accommodating to the bin Ladens. Does he regret leaving the CIA, and does he dream of returning? Scheuer, a father of four, says: "I liked my job. I wanted to protect the country against its enemies -- but not the president against his critics."
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/meet-the-bin-ladens-part-ii-tracking-osama-s-kin-around-the-world-a-359831.html
Private Gun Ownership - What's the Point?
People who say that private gun ownership prevents crime and helps ensure public safety.
They also often advocate small, weak government, isolationism and self-interest.
I don't know why they delude themselves always into forgetting that if nothing else, we know this:
Bullies always run in packs and are smart enough to recognise there is strength in numbers.
It does not matter how strong you are or how well prepped or armed - this is an interdependent world and unless you have friends and allies, you are prey.
Thursday 24 January 2013
Wednesday 23 January 2013
Treasonous Coup Plotting Admiral fired by Panetta was Intended Recipient of "Bin Laden" Corpse
"Subject: FEDEX," May 2, 2011, 2:02 AM and related emails, released in response to an Associated Press FOIA request to the Department of Defense, Secret.
Hours after bin Laden was killed, Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette, Deputy Commander of U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, emailed Samuel Perez, Rear Admiral of the strike group including the USS Carl Vinson, tersely asking, "Sam, Any news on the package for us?" The "package" was the body of Osama bin Laden. At 2:02 AM at a location somewhere in the North Arabian Sea, Rear Admiral Perez emailed back: "Sir, FEDEX delivered the package. Both trucks are safely enroute home base."
Other emails describe the procedures taken to ensure the secrecy of the burial. In one email, Gaouette wrote, "The paucity of documentary evidence in our possession is a reflection of the emphasis placed on operational security during the execution of this phase of the operation." Another email asked "if soldiers knew what was occurring or who the burial was for." "No" was the eventual response.
An email addressed to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen describes the burial at sea: "Traditional procedures for Islamic burial was [sic] followed. The deceased's body was washed (ablution) then placed in a white sheet. The body was placed in a weighted bag. A military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. After the words were complete, the body was placed on a prepared flat board, tipped up, whereupon the deceased's body slid into the sea."
BCCI Sandstorm report, 1991
BCCI "Sandstorm" report. This previously released, partly redacted, confidential investigative report was commissioned by the Bank of England and kicked off the international BCCI banking scandal. The report has disappeared from the internet, despite its importance to world history, the Madoff and Stanford frauds and the current political crisis in Pakistan.
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