The Bin Ladens Read online

  Many of the interviews for this book were conducted on the record. Where an interview subject spoke on condition that he or she would not be named the notes provide as much information as possible, consistent with these agreements. For on-the-record interviews, the date and identity of the interviewer are indicated. Robin Shulman’s interviews are identified in the notes by (RS). Keach Hagey conducted several interviews for chapter 36, which are identified by (KH). I conducted all other interviews, supplemented by fact-checking re-interviews by Julie Tate.

  In response to numerous requests for interviews over a three-year period, Bin Laden family members offered only very limited cooperation, other than those in Yemen; senior family members based in Jeddah granted no extensive or substantive interviews. In explaining their decision, family members and representatives cited their desire for privacy and also their concerns about civil lawsuits filed in the United States by victims of the September 11 attacks. Nonetheless, after the manuscript was substantially drafted, Julie Tate and I attempted to fact-check material about living Bin Ladens with family representatives. Through their lawyers, the family declined to respond to the great majority of written questions submitted, but the family did offer a few helpful responses, as the text and the source notes reflect.

  PROLOGUE: “WE ALL WORSHIP THE SAME GOD”

  1. Interview with Lynn Peghiny, February 7, 2006. Description of the estate is from the author’s visit, as well as interviews with a previous owner, neighbors, and two members of Winter Garden’s historical society.

  2. The Ibrahims, their influence in Fahd’s court, and their Orlando investments: JeffreyL. Rabin and William C. Rempel, “Saudis Secretly Bought Stake in Marina Leases,” Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1989. Also, Michael Field, “Financial Times Survey: Saudi Arabia,” p. vi, April 22, 1985.

  3. Peghiny interview, op. cit. A spokesperson for Shields said she had no recollection of such a project.

  4. All quotations from Peghiny interview, op. cit.

  5. Quotations from an interview with George Harrington, February 23, 2006. Also, interviews with Thomas Dietrich, April 12, 2006; Peter Blum, May 5, 2006; and Bengt Johansson, October 3, 2006, all of whom were involved in preparations for the Pakistan trip.

  6. Harrington interview, op cit.

  7. Peghiny interview, op. cit. “Briefcase containing at least $250,000”: Harrington interview, ibid.

  8. Harrington interview, op. cit.

  9. Johansson interview, op. cit.

  10. All quotations from Harrington and Johansson interviews, op. cit.

  11. “This is it”: Harrington interview, op. cit.

  12. “For some reason”: Ibid. “He used to go”: Interview with Mohamed Ashmawi, November 26, 2005 (RS).

  13. For the dates and amounts of Saudi contributions to the Contras, see Brinkley and Engelberg (eds.), Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, pp. 49–57. Also, Bob Woodward, Veil, pp. 352–53 and 401. “I didn’t give a damn”: Simpson, The Prince, pp. 118–19. That McFarlane said the aid would ensure Reagan’s reelection: The Prince, pp. 113–

  14. McFarlane later emphasized in testimony before Congress that the Saudis had volunteered these financial contributions, a claim that Bandar disputes. 14. Guest list and Piscopo: Elizabeth Kastor and Donnie Radcliffe, “Fahd’s Night: Fanfare Fit for a King,” Washington Post, February 12, 1985. Also, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, White House Photo Collection, contact sheets C27237–C27257.

  15. Ibid. That Fahd decorated the boy’s palace rooms in matched style: From an interview with two former business partners of the Bin Ladens who worked on palace projects.

  16. The French intelligence report was published by the Public Broadcasting System’s investigative program Frontline and is available on its Web site. The report contains a variety of material about the Bin Laden family, only some of which is accurate. “had no idea where Nicaragua was”: Interview with Dietrich, op. cit. Attorney who remembered photo of Salem and Reagan: Interviews with Charles Schwartz, May 12, 2005, and September 20, 2006.

  17. Remarks by Reagan and Fahd, February 11, 1985, Office of the Press Secretary, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Box 189. The intriguing possibility is that Salem passed the video he made of Osama’s charitable work to the Reagan White House, or perhaps to the Saudi embassy in Washington, as part of the preparations for the Fahd summit. No such material has ever surfaced in previous investigations of Bin Laden’s time in Afghanistan or the history leading up to the September 11 attacks, but a great many relevant national security files from the Reagan administration remain classified. The strikingly specific language in Reagan’s welcoming remarks to Fahd—“Saudi aid to refugees uprooted…has not gone unnoticed here, Your Majesty”—is suggestive but inconclusive. CIA officials have asserted repeatedly that no CIA officer ever made direct contact with Osama during the covert Afghan campaign of the 1980s or afterward, and no evidence has yet surfaced to contradict this assertion.

  18. “create a problem”: Osama’s interview with CNN, March 1977, from Lawrence (ed.), Messages to the World, p. 55.

  1. IN EXILE

  1. Author’s visit to Gharn Bashireih, March 18, 2007. Forty villages, less than ten thousand people: Alyom (Aden), January 23, 2002, from reporting on Rakiyah by the journalist Alawi Abdullah Bin Sumait. His figures are recent; he cites a population in the entire canyon of seventy-eight hundred in 2002. A ceiling of ten thousand is an approximation supported by the absence of any evidence of dense towns and by earlier British population estimates in nearby areas.

  2. Interviews with twelve Bin Laden family members, primarily through their spokesman, Syed Bin Laden, in Gharn Bashireih, March 18, 2007. Their account of Awadh’s life, his dispute over the borrowed ox, and his migration to Doan is corroborated by research by two Hadhrami journalists, Alawi Bin Sumait and Awadh Saleh Kashmimi. The latter conducted separate interviews for the author with Bin Laden family members and representatives in the Hadhramawt. The author is indebted to the governor of the Hadhramawt, Abdelqader Ali Al-Hilal, for his invitation to visit the region and for his introductions to the Bin Laden family still living in Rakiyah.

  3. Interview with Syed Bin Laden, op. cit.

  4. Interviews with Bin Laden family members in Gharn Bashireih, op. cit. Those who remain in the family village are descendants of the Ahmed branch. According to them, the Mansour branch of the family emigrated years ago to Jizan in the Asir Province of Saudi Arabia. The Zaid branch migrated to other cities in Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa.

  5. The death threat is from Kashmimi’s interviews, op. cit. The Bin Ladens interviewed by the author in Gharn Bashireih implied that there had been such a threat, but did not say so explicitly.

  6. “parallel…on the map”: Mackintosh-Smith, Yemen, pp. 172–73. Swahili and Malay: W. H. Ingrams, Report on the Social, Economic and Political Condition of the Hadramaut, p. 12.

  7. “a smooth…fellow Doanis”: Doreen Ingrams, A Time in Arabia, p. 13.

  8. “Murder cases…sternal notch”: Ingrams, Report on the Social, op. cit., p. 97.

  9. Ba Surra cited twenty thousand in a meeting with the Dutch traveler van der Meulen. A Time in Arabia, op. cit., pp. 38–39.

  10. Kashmimi interviews, op. cit. Interviews with Gharn Bashireih Bin Ladens, op. cit. The male Bin Laden family line in Rabat appears to have been broken between the boys’ emigration for Saudi Arabia and Abdullah’s return in the late 1950s or early 1960s. However, their sisters presumably married and retained connections in the town; as is typical of research in Arabia, it was difficult to learn anything about them. It is possible that Awadh’s wife lived long enough to be reunited with her sons when they were wealthy enough to return to Doan after the Second World War, but the Bin Ladens in Gharn Bashireih were emphatic that their mother had died in Doan and had not enjoyed a particularly long life.

  11. Omar’s short life, three sisters: Kashmimi interviews. Mohamed’s birth year: Among others,
Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 118, uses 1908; it may have been two or three years later, if the reported recollections of his younger brother and the townspeople of Rabat are correct. On the other hand, one well-informed person close to the family cited 1904 as Mohamed’s birth year and suggested that he arrived in Saudi Arabia several years earlier than is usually described. Any date from Mohamed’s life before 1931, when he founded his company, must be taken as an estimate.

  12. Kashmimi’s interviews, op. cit., suggest Awadh may have made the Hajj before his death, but this seems dubious and likely crept into oral history to honor his memory. That he died young, probably before his boys reached adolescence, is from both the Kashmimi and Gharn Bashireih interviews.

  13. Father’s letter for a journey to Singapore: Quoted in Talib, “Hadhramis Networking: Salvage of the Homeland.” Iasin’s “long face”: Stark, The Gates of Arabia, pp. 126–27.

  14. The version in which the storekeeper hurls keys is from interviews with two people close to the family who asked not to be otherwise identified. The version in which the iron bar strikes Mohamed accidentally is from the Gharn Bashireih interviews, op. cit.

  15. This account is from the same two people who recounted the anecdote of the storekeeper’s keys, Gharn Bashireih interviews.

  16. Hossein Kazemzadeh, a Persian writer who made the Hajj pilgrimage in 1910–11, is the source of this population estimate. Peters, The Hajj, p. 286.

  17. “held a moisture…and sweat”: Yemen, op. cit., p. 202. “Newspapers flop…in the pocket”: De Gaury, Arabia Phoenix, p. 121. “The goods…their prey”: Peters, op. cit., p. 287. Kazemzadeh also reports the mayor’s manure estimate.

  18. “hodge-podge…earth”: Peters, op. cit., p. 288. “You see rich people…the bushes”: Ibid., p. 275.

  19. Ibid., p. 303.

  20. Ibid., p. 288.

  21. Ibid., p. 106.

  22. Covered with bags: Interview with Nadim Bou Fakhreddine, April 26, 2006 (RS). “a small shop”: Interview with Hassan Mahowil Mahmoud Al-Aesa, August 10, 2005. “fruit off a donkey”: FO 371/170190, T. E. Bromley, Damascus to London, December 9, 1963. That his company was founded in 1931: Saudi Binladin Group advertisement, Washington Post, October 14, 2005.

  23. Al-Aesa interview, op. cit.

  24. “He knew how…schooling”: Interview with Gerald Auerbach, March 10, 2005. Al-Aesa interview, op. cit.

  25. Al-Aesa interview, op. cit. His account of these years is corroborated by the Jeddah historian Sami Saleh Nawar, director of Naseef House, who has interviewed other former colleagues of Mohamed Bin Laden from this period.

  2. THE ROYAL GARAGE

  1. More than fifty-two battles: Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia, pp. 4–5. De Gaury, in Arabia Phoenix, offers a marvelous account of the Bedouin way of battle, pp. 48–52. Perfume to visitors: Al-Saleh, “Travels to Arabia During the Reign of King Abdulaziz.” “three things…and prayer”: Arabia Phoenix, op. cit., p. 66. “I am not…that is all I have”: Department of State 59/7209 Jeddah to Washington, April 29, 1948.

  2. “like a father…this sentiment”: FO 141/1094, January 14, 1946. “Praise be…in my territory”: Ibid. “My honor”: DOS 59/7212 Dhahran to Washington, June 14, 1946. “You drink…your colleagues”: Van der Meulen, The Wells of Ibn Saud, p. 15.

  3. What Abdulaziz told Philby: Howarth, The Desert King, p. 127. “The Saudi state…and enemies”: A History of Saudi Arabia, op. cit., pp. 9, 80.

  4. One American diplomat in Jeddah estimated in a cable dated April 3, 1950, that there were “not more than 2,000 slaves” in the kingdom and that Abdulaziz owned “some 200.” A second American diplomat, on October 2, 1951, quoted a “reliable” estimate of 50,000 slaves in Saudi Arabia. Those numbers would seem to provide a very rough boundary of the population; the inherent difficulty of such estimates was compounded by the ambiguous position of many slaves in Saudi households, where some enjoyed considerable status and were indistinguishable from free servants.

  5. Quoted in “The House of Saud,” Algeria Productions, 2004.

  6. “Here we are…be modern”: “Travels to Arabia,” op. cit. Negotiating with Islamic scholars about radio knobs: Arabia Phoenix, op. cit., pp. 96–97. Royal garage of 250 cars in 1927: Holden and Johns, The House of Saud, p. 106.

  7. Philby’s degree and service: “Travels to Arabia,” op. cit. “stocky, bearded…out of step”: Howarth, The Desert King, pp. 100–101. Baboons: Ibid., p. 179.

  8. Philby’s contract: A History of Saudi Arabia, op. cit., p. 92. The SOCAL contract: Lippman, Inside the Mirage, p. 16.

  9. Telephone interview with Tim Barger, March 7, 2006. Barger recorded some of his father’s recollections for a private oral history project; he later worked in Jeddah, where he became acquainted with Salem Bin Laden. American report, 1935: DOS 59 “The Bin Ladin Construction Empire,” Jeddah to Washington, September 25, 1967.

  10. Quoted in Abdulrahman Alangari, “Mataqat Qasr Alhokm: The Development of the 20th Century.”

  11. Materials at the surviving portions of the palace, which houses the King Abdulaziz Foundation, report that construction began in 1934 and ended in 1939. The Saudi historian Madawi Al-Rasheed writes that the palace was started in 1936 “out of the first cheque paid by the oil company” and was finished in 1937. A History of Saudi Arabia, p. 93.

  12. “had a vision…the royalty”: Interview with Mohamed Ashmawi, November 26, 2005 (RS). “many royal orders”: “Mohamed bin Awad Binladen: From a Building Laborer to the Owner of the Biggest Construction Company in the Middle East,” Transport & Communications magazine, August 2002. The profile in this magazine, which appears to draw upon information supplied by the Bin Laden family, lists Atiaqua Palace, Naseriyah Palace, Mather Palace, the Guest Palace, the Government Palace, Al-Hamra Palace, and the Mansour Buildings as some of Mohamed’s projects in Riyadh, although no dates are given. “always available…bring one hundred”: Interview with Fahd Al-Semmari, director of research at the King Abdulaziz Foundation in Riyadh, February 9, 2005. He is also the source of the saying about entrepreneurial Yemenis.

  13. The figures of $38 million and $13 million are from DOS 59/7207 Murray to Acheson, January 27, 1945. This is the oft-quoted memo laying out American strategy in Saudi Arabia for decades to come; the December 22, 1944, memo quoted here, “A strong…airfields,” is from 59/7211 and probably was an earlier draft by Murray.

  14. Bronson, Thicker Than Oil, p. 14.

  15. DOS 59/7209 Jeddah to Washington, December 27, 1948.

  16. Export figures: The House of Saud, pp. 125, 151. Al-Khozam description and history: Author’s visit, February 20, 2005.

  17. Stegner in Inside the Mirage, p. 30. “phenomenal building boom…materials”: DOS 59/7210 Jeddah to Secretary of State, March 26, 1949.

  18. Interview with Hassan Mahowil Mahmoud Al-Aesa, August 10, 2005.

  19. Bin Mahfouz biography is from www.binmahfouz.info, the family’s official Web site, and from the author’s visit to Khraiker, March 17, 2007. Naming compact between Bin Laden and Bin Mahfouz is from an interview with a person close to the Bin Laden family. Documents submitted to an American court by the Bin Ladens in a civil lawsuit show that Aysha was born during the Hijra year 1362, which corresponded almost exactly to the Georgian calendar year of 1943. Salem’s Hijra birth year is not given. A longtime friend and employee of Salem’s, Bengt Johansson, said that Salem’s passport read that he was born in 1946, but that Salem said that his true birth year was probably 1944 or 1945.

  20. Interview with Al-Aesa, op. cit.

  21. Debts of $20 million and $40 million is from a conversation held by an American diplomat with Sayyid Hussain Al-Attas, a Hadhrami banker in Jeddah DOS 59/7211, August 16, 1949. The $250,000 kitchen and $600,000 trip to Paris: 59/7212, July 30, 1949, citing a conversation with a Bechtel Corporation executive. “construction projects…enormous family”: FO 371/82638 “Annual Review for 1949.”

  3. SILENT PARTNERS

  1. Suleiman’s biogr
aphy: Al-Rasheed, A History of Saudi Arabia, p. 88. “frail little man…in his soul”: Holden and Johns, The House of Saud, p. 107. “knew no fatigue…money and whisky”: van der Meulen, The Wells of Ibn Saud, pp. 189–90.

  2. “reputed to be a silent partner”: Department of State 59, “The Bin Ladin Construction Empire,” Jeddah to Washington, September 25, 1967. Suleiman’s palace cost $3 million: DOS 59/5467 Jeddah to Washington, April 12, 1953. Bahareth was Suleiman’s secretary: DOS 59/5471 Jeddah to Washington, October 4, 1953.

  3. “sizeable…shipments”: DOS 59/7207 Jeddah to Washington, December 29, 1949. “rampant graft…so long as the King lived”: DOS 59/7211 Jeddah to Washington, September 6, 1946, quoting the British minister in Jeddah.

  4. Pilgrim transport business: Long, The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, p. 100. Dammam hotel with theater and bar: DOS 59/5468 Jeddah to Washington, December 18, 1950. “one of the wealthiest…fat government contracts”: DOS 59/7214 Jeddah to Washington, August 14, 1946. Stopped the water project: DOS 59/7209 Jeddah to Washington, August 16, 1946. “hitting the bottle…increasing rate”: DOS 59/7210 Jeddah to Washington, July 12, 1949.