accounts that follow, however, this story about bin Laden is credible (controversial: e.g., “Rogue Statesman,” www.ocweekly.com, 9/5/02, Telegraph (U.K.), 9/13/08);
56 Girardet: National Geographic, 12/1/01, In the Footsteps of Bin Laden, CNN, 8/23/06;
57 Simpson: John Simpson, Simpson’s World, NY: Miramax, 2003, 82–, Telegraph (U.K.), 9/16/01, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 65.
58 “vanguard”/“al qaeda”: Bergen, OBL I Know, 75, Gunaratna, 3–;
59 discussed plans: “TAREEKHOSAMA/?50/?Tareekh Osama,” minutes of meeting 8/11/88, INTELWIRE, Coll, Bin Ladens, 336–, Bergen, OBL I Know, 74–, Wright, 131–, Burke, 1–, ed. Lawrence, 108.
60 never heard/first used: Flagg Miller, “Al-Qaeda as a ‘Pragmatic Base,’ ” Language & Communications, Vol. 28, 2008, “On ‘The Summit of the Hindu Kush’: Osama bin Laden’s 1996 Declaration of War Reconsidered,” speech by Flagg Miller, supplied to authors, int. Huthaifa Azzam, 2006, courtesy Paladin InVision. Only in 1996 did a CIA report refer to “al-Qaeda.” The word was first used by the State Department in 1998 (ed. Lawrence, 108fn);
61 “He rang”: Lacey, Inside the Kingdom, 148;
62 “playing”: Rashid, Taliban, 129;
63 “I mentioned”: Benazir Bhutto, Daughter of the East, London: Simon & Schuster, 2008, 410. Bhutto said she first heard of bin Laden in 1989, when told he had bribed members of parliament to vote against her in a no-confidence motion. In 2008, after Bhutto’s assassination, a newspaper editor in Pakistan claimed to have been present when bin Laden tried to bribe then–Pakistan Muslim League party leader—later prime minister—Nawaz Sharif to see that the no-confidence motion was tabled. The newspaper editor had reportedly himself been prosecuted on a separate matter, and the authors have seen no corroboration of this allegation (Bhutto, 405–, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 61, Coll, Ghost Wars, 212, Daily Frontier Post [Pakistan], 7/1/01, & see Reeve, 171, 179).
64 Zawahiri: Wright, 128, 139–, Bergen, OBL I Know, 203, 319–, int. Huthaifa Azzam, 2006, courtesy PaladinInVision;
65 Rahman: bin Ladens & Sasson, 130–, Wright 138, Bergen, OBL I Know, 68;
66 Mohammed: McDermott, 121, Financial Times, 2/15/03, Bergen, OBL I Know, 300;
67 Yousef: Reeve, 120, Miller & Stone, 78, Newsday, 4/16/95, Bergen, Holy War Inc., 138;
68 Atta: McDermott, 15–, CR, 160;
69 Hanjour/Jarrah/Shehhi: eds. Der Spiegel, 253–, McDermott, 50, The Independent (U.K.), 9/16/01;
70 “concerned, sad”: Wright, 75–.
71 “to reclaim”: Bergen, Scheuer, OBL I Know, 15, Osama bin Laden, 77. Suggestions that Palestine was not an issue for bin Laden do not appear well founded. It appears true, however, that he neither directed terrorist attacks on Israeli targets nor supplied funds to Palestinian groups. The Palestinian author and journalist Abdel Bari Atwan, who interviewed him in 1996, said Palestine “wasn’t actually No. 1 on his agenda … he wasn’t really that informed about Palestine. He didn’t like Yasser Arafat … maybe because he was involved with the Soviets … used to be considered an unbeliever.” For obvious reasons, organizations like Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been careful not to associate their groups with bin Laden (not a genuine: e.g., Gold, 10; Atwan: int., 2007; Hamas, etc.: Burke, 12).
72 boycott: bin Ladens & Sasson, 61, 110, ed. Lawrence, 115;
73 not drink: bin Ladens & Sasson, 60, Bergen, OBL I Know, 39.
74 “The Americans”: ed. Lawrence, 115. Recalling this speech in an interview after 9/11, bin Laden said it occurred in 1986. Author Lawrence Wright, in his book The Looming Tower, cites a speech with almost identical wording that he made in 1990. That speech did not mention Palestine (ed. Lawrence, 115, Wright, 151, 405n);
75 time and again: e.g., ed. Lawrence, 9, 36, McDermott, 253–, CBS News, 5/16/08.
76 “America allowed”/“The idea”: Lawrence, 239. Then–U.S. secretary of state Alexander Haig was to insist that the United States was not a party to the Israeli invasion. Others, including the military correspondent for Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, have said Washington gave Israel “the green light” (Haig: Business Week, 2/20/10; others: Foreign Policy, Spring 1983, Fisk, The Great War, 1037);
77 “The events”: MSNBC, 11/29/07.
CHAPTER 19
1
stocked up/despised Saddam/“will attack”:
bin Ladens & Sasson, 79–, Coll,
Bin Ladens
, 373, Bergen,
OBL I Know
, 179;
2
“The defense”:
David Ottoway, “The U.S. and Saudi Arabia Since the 1930s,”
Foreign Policy Research Institute
, 8/09;
3
“If you ask”:
William Simpson,
The Prince
, NY: Regan, 2006, 205;
4
delegation:
ibid., 209–, Richard Clarke, 57–;
5
“flooding”:
H. Norman Schwarzkopf with Peter Petre,
It Doesn’t Take a Hero
, NY: Bantam, 1992, 353;
6
“This is something”:
int. Prince Amr ibn Mohammad al-Faisal,
Frontline:
“House of Saud,”
www.pbs.org
;
7
religious study/“the last”:
