The Bin Ladens

23. KITTY HAWK FIELD OF DREAMS

1. All quotations from an interview with a person familiar with the conversations, who asked to not be identified.

2. Wedding description and guests from interviews with eight people who attended, as well as photographs of the event.

3. Interview with Bengt Johansson, October 3, 2006. Swiss accounts: Interview with a friend of Salem who asked to not be identified.

4. Interview with the person cited, ibid., and with a second business partner of Salem’s who asked to not be identified.

5. Flight logs reviewed by the author.

6. All quotations from an interview with Lynn Peghiny, February 7, 2006.

7. Ibid.

8. Interview with Gerald Auerbach, April 9, 2005.

9. All quotations from an interview with Jack Hinson, May 10, 2005.

10. History of Kitty Hawk: Interview with Earl Mayfield, April 9, 2005.

11. All quotations, interview with Hinson, op. cit.

12. The sequence of events before his flight: Interviews with Hinson and Mayfield, op. cit., and a third individual present. Salem’s eyes teared: Interview with Thomas Dietrich, April 12, 2006. In addition to Dietrich, two other people who were particularly close to Salem said they believed that blurred vision caused by tears from the wind was the most likely cause of what unfolded at Kitty Hawk. There is no evidence to support alternative theories of either suicide or a disabling health event such as a heart attack or stroke. Wind speed: Written report of May 29, 1988, by Schertz Police Officer Lori Harris, who arrived at Kitty Hawk in a police patrol car at 3:34 P.M. Interview with Lori Harris, March 16, 2005.

13. Salem’s flight trajectory: Interviews with Hinson, Mayfield, and the third individual, op. cit. A fourth individual who viewed the videotape described the same sequence. The author was unable to locate a copy of the video, but several people who saw it all described the same sequence.

14. Notes from the ambulance run report provided to the author by Schertz Police Chief Steve Starr, examined and typed, April 8, 2005. The run report and the Harris police report describe witness accounts of how Salem was lifted from the ultralight by those who initially arrived and was given CPR.

24. WRITER-DIRECTOR-PRODUCER

1. “Mickey Mouse plane”: Interview with Mohamed Ashmawi, November 26, 2005 (RS). Particular acuteness: Interview with a business partner who asked to not be identified. “family tragedy”: Interview with ABC’s 20/20, broadcast March 29, 2002. Barbara Walters asked Abdullah what he recalled of Osama at the funeral. “I don’t recall things because it was a family tragedy,” he replied.

2. Interviews with two friends of Salem’s who met the plane in Geneva.

3. Interview with one of the friends who was present.

4. “You haven’t…him now”: Interview with the friend, who asked to not be identified.

5. Interviews with two people present. For Hejazi and Wahhabi burial rituals, Yamani, Cradle of Islam, pp. 102–20. Bin Mahfouz declined to comment.

6. Buried with a child: Interviews with two people present. In an attempt to fact-check the reporting and interpretations in this book, I submitted to the Bin Ladens’ principal American law firm, Jones Day, scores of specific questions and factual summaries for comment, correction, or clarification. Apart from several matters concerning the relationship between the family and Osama after he became radicalized, Jones Day responded to only one of these questions, involving the account here of the burial of a young girl with Salem. The letter offered a review of the appropriateness of such burial practices under Islamic law and appended an article from a humanities journal published in Helsinki in 1965, which described the existence of this practice in a Jordanian village. The Jones Day attorney who wrote the letter, Timothy J. Finn, stated that “we have not been able to confirm whether anything like this happened” in Salem’s case, but then continued, “We have been told that Islamic custom does permit joint burial of an infant or small child who dies at the same time as an adult but that this is accomplished…by digging a notch at the foot of the adult grave where the child is laid to rest…both as [an] expression of community solidarity and, simply, as a convenience, since Islamic tradition requires immediate burial within 24 hours of death, with very simple or no grave markings. We have also found in Islamic tradition a little-known theological underpinning for this occasional practice to the effect that the angels of death will not treat the adult harshly in the presence of a child.”

7. Osama was present: Abdullah Bin Laden, to 20/20, op. cit., and interview with a second person close to the family, who asked to not be identified. “like a father…great deal”: Transcript of interview with Khaled Batarfi, supplied to the author by Batarfi.

8. Ghalib worried about a conspiracy: Interview with Gerald Auerbach, May 11, 2005. “Manner of Death: Accident,” Bexar County, Office of the Medical Examiner, report 759–88. “was a big event”: Interview with Jamal Khashoggi, March 17, 2006.

9. Date and place of Sama’s birth: “Application for Appointment of Administrator,” Bexar County probate proceeding, 91-PC-1012.

10. Bergen and Cruickshank, “How the Idea of Al Qaeda Was Conceived,” citing an interview with Osama Rushdi, an Egyptian militant living in Peshawar at the time.

11. “Abdullah Azzam wanted…is welcome”: Interview with Jamal Khashoggi, February 2, 2002. “from many different places…borders and walls”: in Lawrence (ed.), Messages to the World, p. 96.

12. From transcripted interview published by Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, April 30, 2006.

13. All quotations, including those attributed to Banjshiri, come from Al-Surayhi. Bergen, The Osama Bin Laden I Know, p. 83.

14. The notes were seized by Bosnian authorities during a 2002 raid on an Islamic charity. Unclassified document sets have been released subsequently under the title, drawn from the originals, “Tareekh Osama,” or “Osama’s History.” The quotations here are from a meeting on August 11, 1988.

15. Ibid. The second meeting began on August 20.

16. Messages to the World, op. cit., pp. 119–20.

17. Interview with a former business partner and also with Peter Blum, who worked occasionally with Ghalib and his family, May 5, 2006.

18. Flight logs examined by the author.

19. “some cash”: Interview with Gerald Auerbach, May 11, 2005. “They were almost…fences”: Interview with Bengt Johansson, October 3, 2006. “the cash…camps”: e-mail communication from Timothy J. Finn, November 24, 2007.

20. For an account of the assault on Jalalabad, see Coll, Ghost Wars, pp. 190–95. Night-vision equipment: “Lion’s Breeding Grounds of the Arab Partisans in Afghanistan,” 1991, “Rand: Early History of Al Qaeda Working Group, 2006.” About one hundred: Bergen and Cruickshank, op. cit.

21. All quotations, interview with Jamal Khashoggi, February 2, 2002.

22. “At that point…Arab agents”: Messages to the World, op. cit., p. 77. The first assassination plot in which Bin Laden is known to have been involved was an attempt on the life of the exiled king of Afghanistan, in 1991.

23. Badeeb, Orbit Television, late 2001, tape of interview supplied to the author by Badeeb, translated by The Language Doctors, Inc. Badeeb said, in full, “I suggested to [Osama] and the others to return to Saudi Arabia, since the task for which they came to Afghanistan was achieved. And in fact, [Osama] did return to the kingdom.