Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, met with President George W. Bush at the White House. They smoked cigars on the Truman Balcony, overlooking the South Lawn. The number of dead was still uncounted—in the thousands, certainly. The televised imagery of the attacks and their aftermath—the helpless office workers leaping to their deaths from the twin towers; the tear-streaked, dust-covered faces of the wounded; the shards of paper and debris; the impromptu bulletin boards covered by photos of the missing—still pulsed through the country like a crackling current. What the events would mean ultimately for the U.S.-Saudi governmental alliance was difficult to predict, but there would obviously be a rethinking on both sides.
Bandar insisted later that he did not trouble Bush that evening with the plans he had been working on at the Saudi embassy to evacuate the Bin Laden family, as well as the several dozen members of the Saudi royal family and their entourages who were scattered around the United States. (One group of royals had come to the country before September 11 to purchase Thoroughbred horses in Kentucky; another had come to vacation in California and Las Vegas.) According to Bandar, he called the FBI directly to obtain permission for the charter flights he organized and to ensure that Saudi nationals were adequately protected from vigilante revenge attacks. “Those people were scattered all over America and with tempers high at that time, rightly so, we were worried that someone getting emotional would hurt them,” Bandar said later. He did not say whom he telephoned at the FBI, but he had an excellent relationship with the director, Louis Freeh. After settling things with the bureau, Bandar telephoned Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism director at the White House, who told him, “I have no problem if the FBI has no problem.”6
About three or four days after September 11, Bandar also called Fred Dutton, a Washington lawyer who had served as a legal and political adviser to the Saudi royal family for many years. Bandar explained that some of Osama’s half-brothers happened to be in the United States and wanted to retain legal counsel. “Talk to them and see if you can be of any help,” Bandar said. Dutton was reluctant, but he agreed.7
Dutton was a white-haired doyen of the Washington bar, now in his seventies, a man who was protective of his reputation and who spoke with precision and care. He drove to the Four Seasons Hotel on the edge of Georgetown and rode the elevator to a two-room suite. There he introduced himself to Shafiq Bin Laden and Abdullah Bin Laden, the Harvard law graduate. The brothers both wore business suits. They all sat down to talk in the living room area of the suite.
Shafiq Bin Laden had been attending a Carlyle Group investors’ conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, near Dupont Circle, when American Airlines Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon across the Potomac River. Abdullah Bin Laden had been buying a latte at a Starbucks in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when news of the attacks flashed on the television. He had then made his way to Washington to join his half-brother, to assist with the efforts to evacuate his family, and to assess how to manage their legal position.
The brothers asked Dutton for advice on “what to do, how to handle what was obviously a very embarrassing, messy situation for most of the rest of the Bin Laden family,” as Dutton recalled it. They said they were estranged from Osama, hadn’t seen him in a very long time, and thought he was “a bad apple,” as Dutton put it later.8
The brothers did not propose retaining Dutton himself, but they asked him if he could recommend the names of some lawyers who might be willing to take the Bin Ladens on as clients. They wanted a law firm that could provide general advice, but that could also assist them on specific legal issues that might arise for the family in the United States in the aftermath of the suicide attacks. Civil lawsuits filed on behalf of the victims were one obvious possibility. The U.S. government would certainly renew its investigations of family finances and related issues. Dutton knew that the Bin Laden family had previously worked with Sullivan & Cromwell, but the brothers did not say whether they had also contacted Sullivan—whose New York headquarters was near the World Trade Center—or what had come of their inquiry if they had made one.
Dutton recalled that he “tried to throw cold water on them,” saying that he did not think this was a time when legal representation could be of any real help to the Bin Laden family. It was too early and feelings were too raw. But he agreed to explore the matter.
Over the next day or two, Dutton called a few prestigious Washington attorneys he knew to sound them out. He was not going to put people he did not know well on the spot by making cold calls. He concluded from the conversations he held that “this just is not the right time, and it can’t be done.”9
He called the Bin Ladens back and told them; he said he did not believe there was any merit in even holding exploratory meetings. He suggested that they pull back and “let some breathing space” develop. He also advised them to avoid working with any of the sorts of attorneys who might be willing to take them on in this atmosphere —such lawyers would be grandstanders, and would not ultimately help the family. The entire proposition, Dutton felt, was a “non-starter.”10
Shafiq and Abdullah also met in Washington during these initial days after September 11 with Chas Freeman, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia who had developed an acquaintance with Bakr. After leaving government, Freeman had become president of the Middle East Policy Council in Washington, to which the Bin Ladens had made financial contributions over many years; he also negotiated business deals in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere overseas. The brothers told Freeman they were receiving a stream of terrible threats. They had found the FBI “solicitous and kind,” and had tried to be helpful themselves in answering the bureau’s questions about family history and Osama’s situation within it, but given their circumstances in the United States, those Bin Ladens still in the country felt they were now essentially under the bureau’s protection.11
They talked with Freeman about the family’s public relations problem. After Osama declared war on the United States, the Bin Ladens had retained a former
WHEN THE FIRST PLANE struck the World Trade Center, Yeslam Bin Laden was driving to the airport in Geneva with a friend. His cell phone rang; a second friend, an American investment banker in New York, told him the news. At first Yeslam thought it was an accident, that a plane had somehow missed its approach. His friend called back a few minutes later to report the second strike. Yeslam said later that he knew then it was not an accident, and yet it still did not occur to him to think that his half-brother might be involved. It seemed “too sophisticated” to be Osama’s work, he said later. He “never thought” even for “a second” that Osama “could have been alone behind this affair.”13
Yeslam drove to a Geneva hotel where his mother and his brother Ibrahim were staying for a visit. They watched the news and heard Osama named as the suspected mastermind of the attacks. His mother fell ill from the strain. They had to call a doctor.
The next morning the Swiss federal police telephoned. They asked Yeslam to come for an interview. Earlier, when Yeslam was an applicant for Swiss citizenship, Swiss investigators had interviewed him about family history and his relationship with Osama. Now they wanted to go back through the same questions in greater depth. The session lasted several hours, according to Yeslam. That same day, he decided to issue a written statement from Geneva:
“I am shocked by this criminal attack of terrorism which killed innocent people yesterday,” it said. “I would like to express my deepest feelings of sorrow. All life is sacred and I condemn all killing and all attacks against liberty and human values. My thoughts and profound sympathy are with the victims, their families and the American people.”14
It was the first and most expansive expression of sympathy issued by any member of the Bin Laden family about September 11. It also placed responsibility for the attacks in a generalized context—“all life…all attacks against liberty and human values”—and it made no particular reference to Osama.
Yeslam flew to Cannes, France, to meet with Bakr and another Bin Laden brother on the first weekend after the attacks. They discussed “the possibility of bringing everybody back to Saudi Arabia” to regroup.15
Bakr’s reaction to the attacks seemed to be infused with caution. He did not issue any statement on behalf of the family or provide any media interviews or other public remarks for an entire week. At that point Bakr’s office
