The Bin Ladens

by Steve Coll

  Another area that seemed to require additional investigation was the Swiss and offshore banking and investments overseen by Yeslam Bin Laden and other family partners and aides in Switzerland. After the September 11 attacks, Swiss and French investigators had initiated their own inquiries into Bin Laden bank accounts and investment vehicles in Switzerland and elsewhere. On March 27, 2002, Swiss police raided nine offices and companies connected to Yeslam Bin Laden, including his principal firm, Saudi Investment Company, in Geneva. They hauled away boxes and records, but ultimately filed no charges against him.7

  Despite these lingering issues, the FBI’s counterterrorism investigators felt by early 2002 that they had no reason to argue for the continued blocking of Bin Laden family credit cards and checking accounts in the United States. The final decision, according to one person involved in the discussions, was carefully reviewed by interagency groups run by the National Security Council and approved at a very high level.8 Such a decision would almost certainly have required President Bush’s personal endorsement, although what role, if any, Bush actually played in the ruling is not known. What seems clear is that a specific decision was made at the White House sometime early in 2002: barring the emergence of new evidence, the U.S. government would not sanction the Bin Laden family in any way because of its history with Osama.

  An FBI analyst summed up the bureau’s assessment of the evidence in a breezy e-mail written in September 2003: There were “millions” of Bin Ladens “running around” and “99.999999% of them are of the non-evil variety.”9

  FBI SCRUTINY of the Bin Ladens had at least one virtue, from the family’s point of view—it took place almost entirely in private. Far more painful were the public repudiations of the family by American universities and corporations that had courted them in the past. In the emotional climate that pervaded during the autumn of 2001, some of these institutions felt they had no choice but to end or suspend their dealings with the Bin Ladens. None explicitly declared that the family might still be aiding Osama, but this was a possibility that could be freely interpreted from their decisions to cut ties.

  Harvard University, which had accepted $2 million in donations from Bakr Bin Laden, received many calls from people “who were emotional” and who “said it was murder money and we should give to the victims,” recalled Peri Bearman of the Islamic Legal Studies program. Harvard soon chose to suspend its Bin Laden fellowships.10

  The University of Miami, Bakr’s alma mater, also backed away from him. Before September 11, university fundraisers had contacted the Bin Ladens, looking to coax funds from their wealthy alumni. Bakr had indicated that he might be willing to fund a research project into the health of the Red Sea’s coral reefs, which were under assault from pollution, silt, and too much fishing. John C. McManus, a University of Miami professor who specialized in coral reef management, obtained a Saudi visa and planned to leave for the kingdom to meet with Bakr and others on September 24, 2001. The trip was canceled and the project was abandoned. McManus recalled that the decision was mutual: “The family wasn’t pursuing it, so we didn’t either.” Bakr, however, believed that the university had shunned him because of September 11, and he felt hurt by the episode, according to a person who talked with him about it.11

  Cadbury-Schweppes, the British chocolate maker, announced that it was breaking ties with a Bin Laden subsidiary. Companies that sold telecommunications equipment through the Bin Laden’s company made similar announcements. A few of the family’s more prominent corporate partners stood by them. A General Electric spokesman said that it was confident that the Saudi Bin Laden Group “is fully separated from Osama Bin Laden.” Chas Freeman, the former U.S. ambassador who now developed business projects in the kingdom, said that “Bin Laden” remains “a very honored name,” and he suggested pointedly that American companies that “had very long and profitable relationships” with the family were “now running for public relations cover.”12

  Even after their American Express cards were restored, the Bin Ladens were reluctant to travel to the United States. None of the senior brothers around Bakr was willing to go. The atmosphere seemed too unsettled, too threatening. Saleha, Bakr’s half-sister, did go back from time to time with her Italian husband, but she was often detained at U.S. airports for two hours or more, which she found increasingly depressing. “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to keep this up because we just can’t travel this way,” she told Gail Freeman.

  Europe seemed easier to navigate, particularly since the Bin Ladens often moved in the protective bubble of private aviation and so did not have to worry about alarming fellow passengers on a commercial airliner. Still, they had trouble. Police from Scotland Yard boarded Bakr’s private jet at Luton Airport and questioned him before allowing him on his way. A man punched Hassan Bin Laden in the face on the street outside the Inter-Continental Hotel in London in August 2002. In Germany or Austria, a local police chief surrounded a hotel where Bakr was vacationing, apparently in the belief that he was about to write himself into the history books for nabbing the world’s most wanted fugitive.13

  Yasser Bin Laden was a younger half-brother of Bakr who lived in Jeddah and played squash with an English-speaking circle of friends in the city. He also belonged to a local Harley-Davidson motorcycle club. Each summer he and his Saudi friends would roar out on their Harleys on a cross-country road trip. After September 11 they biked through Europe. The other Saudi motorcyclists in the club joked with Yasser relentlessly, saying that his passport was going to cause them nothing but trouble every time they crossed a border. They were right: when Yasser presented his travel documents to British immigration at the entrance to the tunnel that runs beneath the English Channel from France, the British officer ordered Yasser aside, peered out his booth, and waved back all the rest of the motorcycle gang, which had previously been cleared. It took hours to run their names through all the relevant terrorist databases.

  The Harley club members decided to bike through Syria and Lebanon on the next trip they took. When they reached the Saudi-Syrian border station, they all started joking with Yasser again, complaining about the trouble they would now endure from the Syrian border officials.

  A Syrian guard combed through their passports and then came out to address the motorcyclists. “Where’s the sheikh? Where’s the sheikh?” the guard demanded.

  They found Yasser, but the interest of the police turned out to be of a different sort than that to which they had grown accustomed: when Yasser Bin Laden thundered past on his Harley, the Syrian guards stood and saluted. For them, Osama had turned all Bin Ladens into heroes.14

  “WHEN 20/20 RETURNS, a family name to be proud of—until September 11th. But what if your last name were Bin Laden now?”15

  Barbara Walters traveled to Saudi Arabia early in 2002 to produce an ambitious report for the ABC television network’s evening news magazine program 20/20. In setting up the trip, Walters and her producers worked closely with Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, and Adel Al-Jubeir, then a political and media adviser in the court of Crown Prince Abdullah. Walters told both of them that she very much wanted to interview a member of the Bin Laden family for her report. Her broadcast would offer an opportunity for the family to humanize themselves before a large American television audience and to emphasize their estrangement from Osama. This in turn might salve some of the wounds in U.S.-Saudi relations, which had become increasingly constrained by the mutually hostile attitudes of the two countries’ publics. The Saudi officials Walters spoke with agreed that the program might be helpful. Adel Al-Jubeir, in particular, enlisted the support of Crown Prince Abdullah, and he met with Bakr Bin Laden and two other members of the Bin Laden family in an effort to persuade them to cooperate. But Crown Prince Abdullah had made clear that he would not order the Bin Ladens to appear on American television; the choice was theirs. Bakr proved reluctant, despite repeated entreaties from Al-Jubeir and other Saudi officials.16

  The Bin
Ladens had by now become a commodity in the media marketplace. According to Khaled Al-Maenna, editor of the Arab News in Jeddah and a frequent interlocutor with foreign media, an American media outlet (which he would not identify) telephoned to offer him a fifty-thousand-dollar fee if he could get a Bin Laden family member on camera. As a media strategist, Al-Maenna agreed that the Bin Ladens might have helped Saudi Arabia if a confident, English-speaking member of the family would appear on television, apologize, and try to make themselves accessible to American audiences. Yet the hostility and presumptuous attitudes of the American media offended him and many other Saudis.17 Pride, resentment, and fear predominated after September 11 in both America and Saudi Arabia. The Bin Ladens—with so much to lose, and in Bakr’s evident judgment, so little to gain from media publicity—kept their collective heads down.

  Mark Bridges, Bakr’s principal attorney in London, who also served as personal solicitor to the Queen, reinforced these instincts. His advice was that there was simply no reason for the Bin Ladens to speak publicly or to make unnecessary disclosures.18

  Bridges was perhaps unable to conceive, however, of the force of nature that was Barbara Walters. As she traveled in Saudi Arabia early in 2002, conducting a number of interviews with members of the royal family and with families of September 11 hijackers in Asir, she grew increasingly frustrated. She had sought an interview with Crown Prince Abdullah, the most powerful man in the kingdom; this did not materialize. Without a Bin Laden on camera, she told the Saudis assisting her, her trip would be a bust—and the implication was, of course, that she would be very angry. Sensing a public relations fiasco, Bandar and Al-Jubeir concocted a bold ploy to help Walters. As it happened, Bandar owed the Bin Ladens a large sum of money for work they had completed on his palace in Jeddah. The Bin Ladens had been agitating for payment. Bandar proposed inviting Abdullah Bin Laden, the Harvard graduate, to his home, supposedly for a meeting with accountants called to settle the final palace bill. Barbara Walters would arrive—and Abdullah would have no choice but to submit to an interview.19

  The ambush came off seamlessly. Walters walked in on the business meeting and Abdullah, as Bandar hovered, reluctantly agreed to sit for a few questions. On her broadcast, Walters did not burden viewers with the story of how the interview had come about, but she did note on air, during her introduction, “As we sat down together, he was so nervous—and who could blame him?”

  “How difficult has this been for your family?” Walters asked Abdullah in her signature tone of empathy.

  “We went through a tough time, it was difficult. But—and we felt we are a victim as well, but no matter what happened to us, it is not—our tragedy is not as bad, or we didn’t feel as bad, as those victims, the families and victims in New York. Our tragedy compared to their tragedies—there is no comparison, and we do feel for them.”

  “Do you have any idea what made Osama bin Laden the man he is?”

  “I wish I can answer this question.”20

  38. BRANDS

  JACK KAYAJANIAN practiced family law in Costa Mesa, California, south of Los Angeles. He was a gregarious man who spent some of his spare time at the Del Mar racetrack, where he dabbled in Thoroughbreds and kept his eyes peeled for long-shot winners. He was an active member of the Armenian American community in conservative Orange County, and he regarded himself as a fiercely patriotic American. So when an Armenian friend of his telephoned in the summer of 2002 to say that his daughter, Christine, was having custody trouble with her ex-husband, who happened to be a member of the Bin Laden family, Kayajanian took up the case with some gusto.1

  After their divorce in 1993, Ibrahim Bin Laden and Christine Hartunian had accommodated one another for eight years without notable difficulty. They cooperated in raising their only child, their daughter Sibba. She lived with her mother and attended school in Southern California but also spent summers and Ramadan holidays with Ibrahim in Jeddah or at his Stone Canyon estate in Bel Air. The rise of Osama Bin Laden during the late 1990s created some tension within the family because Ibrahim started to think that he might not be safe in the United States. “I began to feel uncomfortable in Los Angeles in the summer of 2001,” he said later, “as a result of remarks that were made to me even before September 11.”2

  When the Bin Ladens evacuated to Jeddah, Ibrahim took Sibba with him; they had been vacationing in Geneva when the attacks took place. Sibba found the scene in Jeddah somewhat unnerving, according to Kayajanian: she told family members that some of the young people at the Bin Laden compound openly celebrated the September 11 attacks. Ibrahim enrolled his daughter in the British International School in Jeddah that autumn. Christine Hartunian, now a struggling artist who lived in a gated community in west Los Angeles, did not initially object, but she opposed the idea that Sibba would take up indefinite residence in Saudi Arabia. She was struggling financially; she had little money in her bank accounts and relied on loans from her parents. Christine flew to Jeddah to visit with Sibba at the Bin Laden compound.3

  By the summer of 2002, her daughter had developed some health problems; these were not life threatening, but they required a specialist’s care. Doctors in Saudi Arabia referred her to specialists in Southern California, and Christine took Sibba back to Los Angeles. Ibrahim, however, wanted Sibba to return to live with him and his new wife in Saudi Arabia; he argued that Sibba could get the treatment she required in the kingdom, and that she would be better off attending school there and living among the Bin Ladens. Sibba’s parents could not reach an agreement about where she should live, as required by their divorce decree, and Christine believed she was about to lose custody of her only daughter to a Saudi system where she enjoyed few legal rights. She tried initially to represent herself in the court proceedings, but in about August 2002, her family called Jack Kayajanian onto the case.

  Kayajanian pored through the old divorce files, rushed to Los Angeles Superior Court, where the original decree had been filed, and won an order that would at least delay Sibba’s departure for Jeddah. Ibrahim hired a Santa Monica law firm that specialized in divorce; the lead partner on the case was a woman, as were two of her associates. These lawyers buried Kayajanian with motions and papers—new filings seemed to arrive almost around the clock. Kayajanian decided to concentrate on the medical issue, arguing that Sibba could obtain the care she needed only in the United States.4

  Ibrahim refused to travel to America for a hearing. Because of September 11, he feared for “my own safety” because of “the backlash against people of Arabic descent in the United States…The fear is real and justified, given the notoriety of our last name. I know that our surname triggers very strong reactions in many individuals.” Judge Roy L. Paul agreed to permit Ibrahim to testify by live video transmission from a studio in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, so that he would not have to travel to Los Angeles.5

  On October 4, 2002, Kayajanian and Ibrahim’s lawyers arrived at a special secure courtroom in Los Angeles known as “the bank,” where high-profile cases involving Hollywood celebrities were sometimes convened. Ibrahim appeared on a video monitor.6

  Judge Paul ordered Ibrahim’s testimony to be sealed, ostensibly to protect Sibba from possible vigilante violence. Open court records nonetheless make clear what happened at the hearing: By day’s end, Kayajanian had won on the crucial custody question. Judge Paul ruled that Sibba should attend school in Southern California and receive medical treatment in the U.S. The judge ordered Ibrahim Bin Laden to put up a $4 million bond to ensure that he would return his daughter to her mother after summer vacations and religious holidays. For almost a decade, Sibba’s custody arrangements with the Bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia had been based on mutual trust. On both sides, that era was gone.7

  IBRAHIM AND CHRISTINE had their difficulties, but their troubles remained unpublicized, and they paled beside the epic divorce between Yeslam and Carmen Bin Laden. Their lawsuit began in the Swiss courts during the early 1990s, but like many Bin Laden endeavors,
it soon hopped international boundaries. Carmen sued Yeslam in Los Angeles, seeking (unsuccessfully) to prove that Ibrahim’s Bel Air house should be considered one of her marital assets because it had been purchased in Yeslam’s name. She also alleged that her husband had improperly sold jewelry originally purchased in Beverly Hills that belonged to her. Motions, pleadings, and sworn declarations piled up on two continents, but the years passed without resolution. The shock of September 11 seemed only to spur on both sides. After the terrorist attacks, Carmen chose what many Saudis would regard as the nuclear option: she wrote a book.

  Inside the Kingdom became an international bestseller. Its tone was often respectful toward the Bin Ladens and even toward Yeslam, but Carmen suggested that the family had probably continued to support Osama long after the time it claimed to have cut him off. Carmen also offered this opinion repeatedly in television and newspaper interviews during her book tours in Europe and America. In addition, she was outspoken about the second-class condition of women in Saudi society, and she criticized the Islamic system of family law that empowered men in custody and divorce struggles. The descriptions in her book of the privileged but suffocating lives of Saudi women—accounts drawn from Carmen’s years as a wife and mother in the Bin Laden compound in Jeddah during the 1970s and early 1980s—were particularly powerful.