Why Grand Rapids Resident Tom Lee Says FBI Owes Him $25 Million for Osama bin Laden's Capture

Michigan Live ^ | November 03, 2013

[nickcarraway]

In 2003, eight years before Osama bin Laden was found and killed by U.S. Navy SEALs, Grand Rapids resident Tom Lee says he told federal investigators exactly where to find the world’s most wanted terrorist.

That should qualify Lee for the $25 million award being offered for the successful capture of bin Laden, according to a letter his lawyers have sent to Federal Bureau of Investigations Director James B. Comey.

“It disturbs me, and it should disturb every American, that I told them exactly where bin Laden was in 2003, and they let him live another eight years,” Lee said in an email interview with The Grand Rapids Press/MLive.com on Friday, Nov. 1.

Lee, an international gem merchant who frequently traveled in the Middle East, said he learned of bin Laden’s whereabouts from a Pakistani intelligence agent who told him bin Laden was in Peshawar, a city in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

“The man further described how he had been dispatched on a mission by the ISI to relocate Bin Laden and his family from Peshawar to a small compound in Bilal, Abbottavbad,” according to the letter sent by Lee’s Chicago lawyer, Michael Kanovitz.

“This is the precise location where Bin Laden was eventually located and killed in 2011,” the letter said.

“I have no idea why they let him live for eight years,” Lee said. “At the time I told them where he was in Pakistan, they were still feverishly hunting for him in Afghanistan, which he left two years before.”

Lee, who claims to have provided the U.S. government with intelligence information on previous occasions, said the lack of action surprised him.

“For 20 years I was used to the government acting immediately on my intelligence,” he said.

In an Aug. 6, 2013, letter to Comey, Kanovitz said Lee has personally attempted to collect the $25 million award by contacting the Grand Rapids FBI field office.

“Unfortunately, all of Mr. Lee’s communications to that office have gone unanswered to date, as has his electronic submissions to the FBI via its website.”

Lee, a native of Grand Rapids West Side, has a long history of being involved in unorthodox adventures, including his 1997 purchase of a royal title as “Lord of the Manor” in Stanbury, England.

In the mid-1990s, Lee founded Gem River Corp. after discovering sapphire deposits in a remote region of Montana. The need to polish the raw sapphires led him to the Far East and Middle East to seek out gem polishers.

For a time in the late 1990s, Lee operated a heat treating facility in Kentwood that enhanced the color of the raw sapphires extracted from his mine.

Lee said he is halfway through his new book, the working title of which is, “We Only Catch The Dumb Ones, The True Story of an Unlikely Spy.”

[VerySadAmerican]

I knew a lady in Houston who found some documents showing her ancestor loaned some money to the revolutionary government in 1778. It was supposed to have been paid back with interest which now would be in the millions. It was never paid. She sued and every court ruled in her favor. It got to the SC and that court simply said “no”.