The Looming Tower (65 page)

67
Hotel al-Yamama:
interview with Michael M. Ameen, Jr.

bin Laden began diversifying:
Aramco,
Binladen Brothers for Contracting and Industry
(N.p., n.d.)

Grand Mosque:
figures from Abbas,
Story of the Great Expansion,
364ff., and a Saudi Binladin Group promotional film.

68
less than a hundred dollars:
Lacey,
The Kingdom,
323.

fronted the money:
interview with anonymous Saudi source.

special permission:
Lippman,
Inside the Mirage,
127. At the time, the king also had to personally approve every takeoff and landing of flights in the Kingdom.

69
training Saudi forces in
1953
:
Rachel Bronson, personal communication. According to Bronson, the Saudis permitted the Americans to build an air base in 1945, which was designed to facilitate troop movement to the Pacific theater during World War II. The American presence was renegotiated after the war, and the Americans conducted a survey to determine Saudi military needs. In 1953 the United States and the Saudis signed the agreement that allowed American forces to train Saudi units. It has served as the basis for all subsequent military cooperation.

view the ruins:
interview with Stanley Guess.

70
al-Qaeda would use this:
Wiktorowicz and Kaltner, “Killing in the Name of Islam.”

surrendered to the Ikhwan:
Champion,
The Paradoxical Kingdom,
49ff.; al-Rasheed,
A History of Saudi Arabia,
66; Lacey,
The Kingdom,
188.

He had a vision:
interview with Prince Turki al-Faisal.

Bin Laden’s brilliant solution:
anonymous bin Laden family spokesman, personal communication.

bin Laden pushed a donkey:
interview with Mahmoud Alim. According to Ali Soufan, Osama bin Laden often recounted the same story.

For twenty months:
anonymous bin Laden family spokesman, personal communication.

beginning in 1961:
Saudi Binladin Group brochure.

dynamite charges:
interview with Khaled Batarfi.

marking the path:
interview with Jamal Khalifa.

71
unbudgeted expenses:
interview with Prince Turki al-Faisal.

He paid for the operation:
Othman Milyabaree and Abdullah Hassanein, “Al-Isamee al-Kabeer Alathee Faqadathoo al-Bilad” [The Big Self-Made Man the Country Has Lost],
Okaz,
September 7, 1967.

“What I remember”:
“Walidee Ramama al-Aqsa Bilkhasara” [My Father Renovated Al Aqsa Mosque, with a Loss],
Al-Umma al-Islamiyya,
October 18, 1991.

fathered fifty-four children:
interview with anonymous bin Laden family spokesman, who told me there were twenty-nine daughters and twenty-five sons. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,
The 9/11 Commission Report
(55), puts the total number of children at fifty-seven.

The total number of wives:
interview with anonymous bin Laden family spokesman.

An assistant followed:
interview with anonymous bin Laden family spokesman.

concubines:
bin Ladin,
Inside the Kingdom,
69.

“My father used to say”:
Anonymous,
Through Our Enemies’ Eyes,
82.

72
his seventeenth son, Osama:
The 9/11 Commission Report,
55.

Syrian wife:
“Ashiqaa’ Wa Shaqiqat Oola Zawjat Bin Laden Billathiqiya Khaifoon ’Alayha wa ‘ala Atfaliha al 11 Fee Afghanistan” [The Brothers and Sisters of the First Wife of bin Laden in Latakya Are Afraid for Her and Her 11 Children in Afghanistan],
Al-Sharq al-Awsat,
November 14, 2001.

fourteen-year-old girl:
interview with Khaled Batarfi.

Alia Ghanem:
Ali Taha and Emad Sara, “Al-Majellah Fee Qaryat Akhwal Osama bin Laden Fee Suria” [Al-Majellah in the Village of the Uncles, of Osama bin Laden’s in Syria],
Al-Majellah,
December 8, 2001.

the Alawite sect:
Joseph Bahout, personal communication. Whether Alia Ghanem herself was an Alawi is a subject of dispute. Ahmed Badeeb, an assistant to Prince Turki when he was head of Saudi intelligence, told me that she was an Alawite, as did Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, Jamal Khalifa, and his friend Jamal Khashoggi. The family has denied it—which, of course, could be religious dissimulation. Ahmed Zaidan told me that he had asked the guests at the wedding of Osama’s son in Jalalabad in 2001 if Alia was an Alawite and was told that she was not. Wahib Ghanem, an Alawite from Lattakia in the 1940s, was a founder of the Baath Party. There are, however, Ghanems who are Christian or Sunni Islam, especially in Lebanon.

Alia joined bin Laden’s household:
Nawaf Obaid says that Alia was actually a concubine, a point that is reinforced by Carmen bin Ladin. Jamal Khashoggi says, “The fact that she gave birth to Osama meant that they were married, but there was the business of buying concubines—it was a thing of that time, the 1950s, particularly from the Alawi sect.”

Alia was modern and secular:
interview with Jamal Khalifa.

January 1958
:
Bin Laden says, “I was born in the month of Ragab in Hejira 1377.” “Walidee Ramama al-Aqsa Bilkhasara” [My Father Renovated al-Aqsa Mosque, with a Loss],
Al-Umma al-Islamiyya,
October 18, 1991. He told Jamal Ismail, “God Almighty was gracious enough for me to be born to Muslim parents in the Arabian Peninsula, in al-Malazz neighborhood in al-Riyadh, in 1377 Hejira”—which could be 1957 or 1958, depending on the month. Jamal Ismail, “Osama bin Laden: The Destruction of the Base,” presented by Salah Najm, al-Jazeera, June 10, 1999. Bin Laden allegedly gave his birth date as March 10, 1958, during that interview, but it was not a part of the transcript. Moreover, Saudi men of his age typically do not know their actual date of birth, since birthdays are not celebrated. Saudi authorities arbitrarily assigned many men the same birth date for passports and other official documents. For instance, bin Laden’s friend Jamal Khalifa was “officially” born on February 1, 1957; by chance, he found a notation in a family diary that he was actually born on September 1, 1956. The bin Laden family records, such as they are, do not give a particular date of his birth.

72
“Rest his soul”:
“Walidee Ramama al-Aqsa Bilkhasara” [My Father Renovated al-Aqsa Mosque, with a Loss],
Al-Umma al-Islamiyya,
October 18, 1991.

73
The children rarely saw:
interview with Ali Soufan, who says, “His brothers told me he never saw his father more than three or four times.”

he would call them:
interview with Jamal Khalifa.

gold coin:
interview with anonymous Saudi source.

he rarely spoke:
“Half-brother Will Pay to Defend bin Laden,” AP, July 5,2005. Yeslam bin Laden spoke of being afraid of his father on the al-Arabiya satellite channel, but his comments were misinterpreted in an English-language AP story to say that he had been beaten.

“I remember reciting”:
“Walidee Ramama al-Aqsa Bilkhasara” [My Father Renovated al-Aqsa Mosque, with a Loss],
Al-Umma al-Islamiyya,
October 18,1991.

religious debates:
Reeve,
The New Jackals,
159.

“He gathered his engineers”:
Salah Najm and Jamal Ismail, “Osama bin Laden: The Destruction of the Base,” al-Jazeera, June 10, 1999.

marrying off ex-wives:
interview with anonymous bin Laden family spokesperson.

Mohammed al-Attas:
interview with Khaled Batarfi.

Osama was four or five:
interview with Jamal Khalifa.

74
another teenage bride:
interview with Michael M. Ameen, Jr.

so charred:
interview with bin Laden family spokesperson. Bin Ladin,
Inside the Kingdom,
65.

“King Faisal said”:
Reeve,
The New Jackals,
159.

for the next ten years:
Mohammed Besalama, “Al-Sheikh Mohammed Awad bin Laden al-Mu‘alem” [Sheikh Mohammed Awad bin Laden, the Teacher],
Okaz,
June 2, 1984.

75
Only Osama remained behind:
interview with anonymous Saudi source.

al-Thagr:
interview with Prince Amr Mohammed al-Faisal.

class of sixty-eight students:
interview with Ahmed Badeeb. The two princes were Abdul Aziz bin Mishal bin Abdul Aziz and Abdul Aziz bin Ahmed bin Abdul Rahman.

found him shy:
Brian Fyfield-Shayler, quoted in “Meeting Osama bin Laden,” PBS, January 12, 2005.

Some ascribe the change:
interviews with Tarik Ali Alireza and Ahmed Badeeb.

Osama stopped watching:
“Half Brother Says bin Laden Is Alive and Well,” www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/meast/03/18/osama.brother, March 19, 2002.

76
“In his teenage years”:
Khaled Batarfi, “An Interview With Osama bin Laden’s Mother,”
The Mail on Sunday,
December 23, 2001.

right after
isha
:
interview with Khaled Batarfi.

“beginning of his path”:
Michael Slackman, “Bin Laden’s Mother Tried to Stop Him, Syrian Kin Say,”
Chicago Tribune,
November 13, 2001.

77
companions of the Prophet:
Rahimullah Yusufzai, “Terror Suspect: An Interview with Osama bin Laden,” ABCNews.com, December 1988.

“The Abu Bakr group”:
interview with Khaled Batarfi.

78
“I decided to drop out”:
“Walidee Ramama al-Aqsa Bilkhasara” [My Father Renovated al-Aqsa Mosque, with a Loss],
Al-Umma al-Islamiyya,
October 18,1991.

wedding party:
interview with Khaled Batarfi.

“constantly pregnant”:
bin Ladin,
Inside the Kingdom,
160.

“Only nerds”:
interview with Jamal Khashoggi.

He studied economics:
interview with Jamal Khalifa, who is the source of much of the information about bin Laden’s university experience.

“I formed a religious charity”:
“Walidee Ramama al-Aqsa Bilkhasara” [My Father Renovated al-Aqsa Mosque, with a Loss],
Al-Umma al-Islamiyya,
October 18, 1991.

79
walk barefoot:
interview with Jamal Khalifa.

Mohammad Qutb…would lecture:
interviews with Khaled Batarfi, Jamal Khalifa, and Mohammed Qutb.

80
eleven children:
interview with Khaled Batarfi; Douglas Farah and Dana Priest, “Bin Laden Son Plays Key Role in al-Qaeda,”
Washington Post,
October 14, 2003.

sleep on the sand:
interview with Khaled Batarfi.

refused to let them attend school:
interview with Jamal Khalifa.

Abdul Rahman:
ibid.

81
using honey:
interview with Zaynab Ahmed Khadr, who has a child with a similar disability. She discussed the problem with Abdul Rahman’s mother.

82
Umm Hamza:
interviews with Zaynab Ahmed Khadr (who also supplied the tallies of bin Laden’s children) and with Maha Elsamneh.

house on Macaroni Street:
tour and interview with Jamal Khalifa.

83
“I want to be”:
interview with Jamal Khalifa.

“I recall, with pride”:
“Walidee Ramama al-Aqsa Bilkhasara” [My Father Renovated al-Aqsa Mosque, with a Loss],
Al-Umma al-Islamiyya,
October 18,1991.

just over six feet tall:
The 9/11 Commission Report,
55, drawing from American intelligence, places bin Laden’s height at 6'5". According to Michael Scheuer, that estimate derived from Essam Deraz, bin Laden’s first biographer, who told me bin Laden was “more than two meters tall, maybe two-five or two-four”—over 6'8" tall. John Miller, who interviewed bin Laden for ABC television, described him as 6'5", but he saw him on only one occasion. Ahmad Zaidan, the al-Jazeera bureau chief in Islamabad who met bin Laden several times, estimates his height at 180 cm., about 5'11". Bin Laden’s friends, however, closely agree on his height. Jamal Khashoggi told me that bin Laden was “exactly my height”—182 cm., nearly 6'. Bin Laden’s friend in Sudan, Issam Turabi, told me that bin Laden was 183 or 184 cm., about 6'. His college friend and housemate, Jamal Khalifa, places his height at 185 cm., just over 6'1". That is the actual height of bin Laden’s son Abdullah, who says his father is about two inches taller than he. Bin Laden’s friend Mohammed Loay Baizid also says that bin Laden is two inches taller than he is, but Baizid stands only 5’7”. One could theorize about the wide disparity in perceptions; I only include this survey as an example of one reporter’s frustration in trying to get an answer to a single simple question—among many that had conflicting responses.

4. Change

84
“Thanksgiving turkey?”
Prince Turki al-Faisal speech to Contemporary Arab Studies Department, Georgetown University, February 3, 2002.

Turk or Feaslesticks:
“The Lawrence,” yearbook for the Lawrenceville School, Lawrenceville, New Jersey, May 4, 1962, 5.

“Did you hear”:
Prince Turki al-Faisal speech to Contemporary Arab Studies Department, Georgetown University, February 3, 2002.

85
Bill Clinton:
Clinton,
My Life
, 110.

“Look, I didn’t give”:
interview with Prince Turki al-Faisal.