Posted on 09/26/2001 3:54:42 PM PDT by Inspector Harry Callahan
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:49:20 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The White House is vehemently denying recent reports by various foreign news outlets that Saudi construction mogul Salem bin Laden, the eldest brother of Osama bin Laden, was in the late 1970s an early investor -- to the tune of $50,000 -- in then-oilman George W. Bush's Arbusto Energy Co.......... (snip) Source: scroll down for it.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Bin Laden's family link to Bush
by PETER ALLEN, Daily Mail
http://www.femail.co.uk/pages/news/article.html?in_article_id=74355&in_page_id=1263
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.
Hoo yeah.
In 1989, Osama Bin Laden's second cousin's orthodontist went to a
Texas Rangers game in Dallas!!
Connect the dots, eh Harry?
I don't think anybody's referred to Salem as a terrorist. Known or otherwise. Read the article in post #3.
It could have been the late 90s or yesterday and wouldn't matter a damn. Anyone realize that his brother and other relatives are STILL LIVING IN THE USA???
But, OH MY! Lookee here! A Salem bin Laden invested in a Bush company even before G Bush Sr. was Pres. There must be some evil there to dig up.
Even so, such a connection is definitely newsworthy. Let's see how the press handles it from this point.
Callahan
It doesn't matter whether they (the Bushes) were connected with Salem back then or not. As far as I've heard, Salem Bin Laden is not a terrorist. To assume Salem is guilty because his brother is guilty is called "corruption of blood", which has been repudiated in free countries like America.
To further assume that this somehow incriminates the Bushes is another bogus thing called "guilt by association".
I'll await more information before jumping to any conclusions...
Provided that Salem was not a terrorist (which he supposedly was NOT) then you have a point, it doesn't matter. What matters in this story is the White House's "vehement" denial. Why are they denying this?
Because it isn't true? Even the Mail admits that it was Bath who invested the money, not Salem bin Laden, and that the notion that it was really bin Laden's money was "speculation."
Thats what makes this story so irresponsible. Its like the liberals blaming Bush 1 for the S&L crisis because his son Neil was on the board of some podunk bank.
I wish a few democrats can come around and point out the blatant hypocrisy I'm seeing in these responses. Its this kind of information and WH responses that would have these same ones screaming for a congressional investigation during the Clinton administration.
How so?
FinCEN, a division of the U.S. Department of Treasury, investigates money laundering. Special agents and analysts from various law enforcement agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Customs Service, are assigned to work with the FinCEN staff. The federal review stems in part from court documents obtained through litigation by Bill White, a former real estate business associate of Bath. White contends the documents indicate that the Saudis were using Bath and their huge financial resources to influence U.S. policy. Such representation by Bath would require that he be registered as a foreign agent with the U.S. Department of Justice. In general, people required by law to be registered are those who represent a foreign entity seeking to influence governmental action or policy. An Annapolis graduate and former Navy fighter pilot, White, 46, claims that Bath and the judicial system, under the veil of national security, have blackballed him professionally and financially because he has refused to keep quiet about what he regards as a conspiracy to secretly funnel Saudi dollars to the United States. White became entangled in a series of lawsuits and countersuits with Bath, who for some six years has prevailed in the courts. White says the legal action has financially devasted him and Venturcorp Inc., the real estate development company in which he and Bath were partners. |
In sworn depositions, Bath said he represented four prominent Saudis as a trustee and that he would use his name on their investments. In return, he said, he would receive a 5 percent interest in their deals. Tax documents and personal financial records show that Bath personally had a 5 percent interest in Arbusto '79 Ltd., and Arbusto '80 Ltd., limited partnerships controlled by George W. Bush, President Bush's eldest son. Arbusto means bush in Spanish. Bath invested $ 50,000 in the limited partnerships, according to the documents. There is no available evidence to show whether the money came from Saudi interests. George W. Bush's company, Bush Exploration Co., general partner in the limited partnerships, went through several mergers, eventually evolving into Harken Energy Corp., a suburban Dallas-based company. Bush, known informally as George Jr., is a shareholder and director of Harken, which has been granted lucrative offshore drilling rights off the coast of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. One of the top shareholders of Harken, a public company, is Saudi businessman Abdullah Taha Bakhsh. Bush said that to his knowledge, Bath's investment was from personal funds, and no Saudi money was invested in Arbusto. Bath, 55, a former U.S. Air Force pilot, declined to comment for the record. Spokesmen for FinCEN and the FBI also declined to comment. According to a 1976 trust agreement, drawn shortly after Bush was appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen appointed Bath as his business representative in Houston. Binladen, along with his brothers, owns Binladen Brothers Construction, one of the largest construction companies in the Middle East. According to White, Bath told him that he had assisted the CIA in a liaison role with Saudi Arabia since 1976. Bath has previously denied having worked for the CIA. In a sworn deposition, Bath said he was the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., a company that a court document shows is owned by Khaled bin Mahfouz. Bin Mahfouz had been a major shareholder in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a banking empire that has been accused of money laundering and of using Mideast oil money to seek ties to political leaders in several countries. Mahfouz and his family own the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia. In 1990, Bath bought the Express Auto Park garage at Hobby Airport for $ 8.4 million, which included a $ 1.4 million loan provided by Mahfouz, according to transaction documents. Bath received a 5 percent interest in the companies that own and operate Houston Gulf Airport after purchasing it on behalf of Binladen in 1977. After Binladen died in 1988, his interests in the airport were taken over by Mahfouz, according to court documents. Photo: Bill White, a real estate developer, balances a stack of depositions which he plans to turn over to federal authorities. The documents suggest a Houston businessman has been illegally representing the Saudis in the United States; Larry Reese/Chronicle |
Callahan. The article is from The Spotlight. We're not talking about the temple of sweet reason, now, are we?
More like "Arbeit Macht Frei", if you ask me.
Meanwhile, speaking of the SS, anyone want to take me up on an Over and Under wager against how many days before The Guardian makes an ironclad connection between the SS, Prescott Bush, the Bin Laden Family, and Khun Sa, the Opium Warlord?
You heard it here first.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
FYI: Guess what? Counter to the info put out by yourself and the other Birchers...the CIA is not the villian. Everytime you commie dupes trash the CIA you're making sure there will be plenty of WTCs.
Come back now, ya hear!
In her speech, "Mrs. Clinton vowed to pursue fairness and justice in the issue of secret evidence and the Anti-Terrorism Act," the AMA Web site noted.
At the Boston event, the former first lady accepted a $1,000 contribution from Abdurahman Alamoudi, an official with the American Muslim Council who once vowed to eliminate Israel and had previously boasted, "We are the ones who went to the (Clinton) White House and defended what is called Hamas."
When Mrs. Clinton's campaign reported Alamoudi's American Muslim Council donation to the F.E.C., the AMC was camouflaged as the "American Museum Council." link
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