The Bin Ladens

as interviews with a previous owner, neighbors, and two members of Winter Garden’s historical society.

2. The Ibrahims, their influence in Fahd’s court, and their Orlando investments: JeffreyL. Rabin and William C. Rempel, “Saudis Secretly Bought Stake in Marina Leases,” Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1989. Also, Michael Field, “Financial Times Survey: Saudi Arabia,” p. vi, April 22, 1985.

3. Peghiny interview, op. cit. A spokesperson for Shields said she had no recollection of such a project.

4. All quotations from Peghiny interview, op. cit.

5. Quotations from an interview with George Harrington, February 23, 2006. Also, interviews with Thomas Dietrich, April 12, 2006; Peter Blum, May 5, 2006; and Bengt Johansson, October 3, 2006, all of whom were involved in preparations for the Pakistan trip.

6. Harrington interview, op cit.

7. Peghiny interview, op. cit. “Briefcase containing at least $250,000”: Harrington interview, ibid.

8. Harrington interview, op. cit.

9. Johansson interview, op. cit.

10. All quotations from Harrington and Johansson interviews, op. cit.

11. “This is it”: Harrington interview, op. cit.

12. “For some reason”: Ibid. “He used to go”: Interview with Mohamed Ashmawi, November 26, 2005 (RS).

13. For the dates and amounts of Saudi contributions to the Contras, see Brinkley and Engelberg (eds.), Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, pp. 49–57. Also, Bob Woodward, Veil, pp. 352–53 and 401. “I didn’t give a damn”: Simpson, The Prince, pp. 118–19. That McFarlane said the aid would ensure Reagan’s reelection: The Prince, pp. 113–

14. McFarlane later emphasized in testimony before Congress that the Saudis had volunteered these financial contributions, a claim that Bandar disputes. 14. Guest list and Piscopo: Elizabeth Kastor and Donnie Radcliffe, “Fahd’s Night: Fanfare Fit for a King,” Washington Post, February 12, 1985. Also, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, White House Photo Collection, contact sheets C27237–C27257.

15. Ibid. That Fahd decorated the boy’s palace rooms in matched style: From an interview with two former business partners of the Bin Ladens who worked on palace projects.

16. The French intelligence report was published by the Public Broadcasting System’s investigative program Frontline and is available on its Web site. The report contains a variety of material about the Bin Laden family, only some of which is accurate. “had no idea where Nicaragua was”: Interview with Dietrich, op. cit. Attorney who remembered photo of Salem and Reagan: Interviews with Charles Schwartz, May 12, 2005, and September 20, 2006.

17. Remarks by Reagan and Fahd, February 11, 1985, Office of the Press Secretary, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Box 189. The intriguing possibility is that Salem passed the video he made of Osama’s charitable work to the Reagan White House, or perhaps to the Saudi embassy in Washington, as part of the preparations for the Fahd summit. No such material has ever surfaced in previous investigations of Bin Laden’s time in Afghanistan or the history leading up to the September 11 attacks, but a great many relevant national security files from the Reagan administration remain classified. The strikingly specific language in Reagan’s welcoming remarks to Fahd—“Saudi aid to refugees uprooted…has not gone unnoticed here, Your Majesty”—is suggestive but inconclusive. CIA officials have asserted repeatedly that no CIA officer ever made direct contact with Osama during the covert Afghan campaign of the 1980s or afterward, and no evidence has yet surfaced to contradict this assertion.

18. “create a problem”: Osama’s interview with CNN, March 1977, from Lawrence (ed.), Messages to the World, p. 55.

1. IN EXILE

1. Author’s visit to Gharn Bashireih, March 18, 2007. Forty villages, less than ten thousand people: Alyom (Aden), January 23, 2002, from reporting on Rakiyah by the journalist Alawi Abdullah Bin Sumait. His figures are recent; he cites a population in the entire canyon of seventy-eight hundred in 2002. A ceiling of ten thousand is an approximation supported by the absence of any evidence of dense towns and by earlier British population estimates in nearby areas.

2. Interviews with twelve Bin Laden family members, primarily through their spokesman, Syed Bin Laden, in Gharn Bashireih, March 18, 2007. Their account of Awadh’s life, his dispute over the borrowed ox, and his migration to Doan is corroborated by research by two Hadhrami journalists, Alawi Bin Sumait and Awadh Saleh Kashmimi. The latter conducted separate interviews for the author with Bin Laden family members and representatives in the Hadhramawt. The author is indebted to the governor of the Hadhramawt, Abdelqader Ali Al-Hilal, for his invitation to visit the region and for his introductions to the Bin Laden family still living in Rakiyah.

3. Interview with Syed Bin Laden, op. cit.

4. Interviews with Bin Laden family members in Gharn Bashireih, op. cit. Those who remain in the family village are descendants of the Ahmed branch. According to them, the Mansour branch of the family emigrated years ago to Jizan in the Asir Province of Saudi Arabia. The Zaid branch migrated to other cities in Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa.

5. The death threat is from Kashmimi’s interviews, op. cit. The Bin Ladens interviewed by the author in Gharn Bashireih implied that there had been such a threat, but did not say so explicitly.

6. “parallel…on the map”: Mackintosh-Smith, Yemen, pp. 172–73. Swahili and Malay: W. H. Ingrams, Report on the Social, Economic and Political Condition of the Hadramaut, p. 12.

7. “a smooth…fellow Doanis”: Doreen Ingrams, A Time in Arabia, p. 13.

8. “Murder cases…sternal notch”: Ingrams, Report on the Social, op. cit., p. 97.

9. Ba Surra cited twenty thousand in a meeting with the Dutch traveler van der Meulen. A Time in Arabia, op. cit., pp. 38–39.

10. Kashmimi interviews, op. cit. Interviews with Gharn Bashireih Bin Ladens, op. cit. The male Bin Laden family line in Rabat appears to have been broken between the boys’ emigration for Saudi Arabia and Abdullah’s return in the late 1950s or early 1960s. However, their sisters presumably married and retained connections in the town; as is typical of research in Arabia, it was difficult to learn anything about them. It is possible that Awadh’s wife lived long enough to be reunited with her sons when they were wealthy enough to return to Doan after the Second World War, but the Bin Ladens in Gharn Bashireih were emphatic that their mother had died in Doan and had not enjoyed a particularly long life.

11. Omar’s short life, three sisters: Kashmimi interviews. Mohamed’s birth year: Among others, Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 118, uses 1908; it may have been two or three years later, if the reported recollections of his younger brother and the townspeople of Rabat are correct. On the other hand, one well-informed person close to the family cited 1904 as Mohamed’s birth year and suggested that he arrived in Saudi Arabia several years earlier than is usually described. Any date from Mohamed’s life before 1931, when he founded his company, must be taken as an estimate.

12. Kashmimi’s interviews, op. cit., suggest Awadh may have made the Hajj before his death, but this seems dubious and likely crept into oral history to honor his memory. That he died young, probably before his boys reached adolescence, is from both the Kashmimi and Gharn Bashireih interviews.

13. Father’s letter for a journey to Singapore: Quoted in Talib, “Hadhramis Networking: Salvage of the Homeland.” Iasin’s “long face”: Stark, The Gates of Arabia, pp. 126–27.

14. The version in which the storekeeper hurls keys is from interviews with two people close to the family who asked not to be otherwise identified. The version in which the iron bar strikes Mohamed accidentally is from the Gharn Bashireih interviews, op. cit.

15. This account is from the same two people who recounted the anecdote of the storekeeper’s keys, Gharn Bashireih interviews.