Khatib “got away with it.” The incident changed his feelings about Osama, however. “I didn’t like him anymore.”30
Saudi Arabia’s political fabric was stretching. Iran’s example seemed to prove that oil money might accelerate dissent rather than quell it. Fearful, Fahd and his brothers hurriedly began to accommodate the kingdom’s Islamists, showering them with increased budgets and acceding to the demands by religious scholars for stricter gender segregation and media censorship. Culture and public life in the kingdom grew steadily more conservative. Yet the secular wing of the royal family did not interrupt their lives behind palace walls or in Europe’s capitals.
The Bin Ladens remained united, too, after the Mecca uprising. The cultural distance between the secular wing and the religious wing of the family had widened considerably during the 1970s, but Salem’s leadership, and his strategy of mutual accommodation and generous financial subsidy, kept the family well intact. Bin Laden identity—and Bin Laden wealth—remained fixed on the same star that had guided Mohamed after his arrival in Jeddah a half century before. Above all else, they depended upon, and loyally served, the Saudi royal family.
16. THE AMUSEMENT PARK
AFTER THE MECCA UPRISING, Salem flew to New York for hemorrhoid surgery. He had put the procedure off for years; when he could delay no longer, he arranged his operation as P. T. Barnum might. He retained an American vascular heart surgeon at New York–Presbyterian; this was considerably more surgical talent than was normally required for such a minor procedure, but Salem said he would pay handsomely. He also announced that he would videotape the event, casting his exposed rear end as the star of the show. The hospital objected, but it did allow him to bring a friend with a Polaroid camera. Afterward, Salem created a multimedia show in which he set to music a medley of photos of his backside. He later showed the pictures at parties and to Saudi royalty, including Crown Prince Fahd.1
During his recovery, which he prolonged in a similar spirit of self-dramatization, Salem brooded about his family’s vulnerability to revolution in Saudi Arabia. He continued to prepare financial infrastructure that could aid the family if it was ever forced into exile. On January 23, 1980, Panamanian lawyers working for the Bin Ladens established a second company, following on Binar. It was called Saudin Inc., and its directors again read like a roster of the most influential brothers around Salem: Yeslam, Bakr, Omar, Tareq, Hassan, and Khalid. Around this time, Salem told one of his American business partners, Robert Freeman, that he was concerned about what might happen to the family “should there be some sort of turmoil in Saudi Arabia.” Salem had his estate near London, but he decided that he should build a larger compound where many of Mohamed’s children could also retreat, if it was ever necessary—a place where they could live side by side with their families, as they did in Jeddah.2
White, Weld & Co., an elite Boston-based investment bank, had introduced Salem to a property called Oaktree Village, in Orlando, Florida; it was a tract of land that had been divided into 229 lots for single-family homes but had been developed no further. The company that owned Oaktree “was having some cash flow problems,” recalled Aaron Dowd, who later managed the property, and it offered the tract for sale for $1.9 million, or about $8,300 per lot. Salem decided to buy. He put down about $380,000 in cash and assumed a mortgage on the rest of the purchase price. It was his first major real estate investment in the United States. He reserved about sixty of the Oaktree lots for the Bin Laden family; each brother or sister who participated would receive two, one for a house and a second for a spacious yard. He decided to create separate corporations, each named after a flower, to hold each family member’s property—he bought a book about flowers and paged through it, choosing his favorites. The first flowers went to those closest to him—his devout mother; his full “kid brother,” Ghalib; his full sister Mona; his free-living half-brother Shafiq; his half-sisters Raja and Raedah; and, of course, Randa. Salem envisioned that if all remained well in Saudi Arabia, the Bin Ladens would gather at Oaktree occasionally for group vacations around the nearby Walt Disney World resort. If, for any reason, the Saudi kingdom fell apart, they would have a ready refuge beside the Magic Kingdom.3
Salem preferred the sprawl and amusement parks of Orlando to Palm Beach, which was favored by some Saudi royalty. He rented limousines and arranged masseuses for visiting princes in Palm Beach but otherwise minimized his time there. He seemed to be put off by its social pretensions. He mocked all snobs. Once, at dinner, an American businessman sampled the wine and haughtily sent it back. Salem excused himself, slipped into the kitchen, and arranged for the waiters to pour the rejected wine into a new bottle. This time, the businessman made a show of being pleased—until Salem announced his prank.4
Still, he knew that his royal clients required a grander style than he generally favored for himself. In 1980, as construction began at Oaktree, Salem asked one of his partners if he could locate an elegant mansion in Orlando that might be suitable for rental by a vacationing Saudi prince. There was nothing on the open market, but after some effort, they found a wealthy local businessman named Miller McCarthy, who lived on a multi-acre estate overlooking Johns Lake, to the west of Orlando and not far from Disney World. His stunning Mediterranean main house had been constructed in the mid-1920s by a man named Pratt, a chemist who reputedly derived his fortune from patents on coagulants used in Jell-O. Pratt had taste: He purchased fine materials and commissioned arched walkways and careful detailing. The rear lawn sloped down from the swimming pool to weeping willows and palm groves beside the lake. In later years the property deteriorated, but McCarthy and his wife bought it during the early 1970s and spent about $600,000 on a painstaking restoration.5
For a handsome price, the owner and his wife agreed to move out temporarily while Salem’s royal friends moved in. The Saudis surrounded the estate with security guards who had been trained by the CIA, or so Salem told McCarthy. They left the place a mess, McCarthy said; he later billed them for $25,000. Still, “the Prince really enjoyed his stay,” as Robert Freeman recalled, and “that was good news” for Salem. Afterward, in Salem’s “impulsive way,” he immediately asked McCarthy if he could buy the entire property. According to Freeman, Salem thought he could use the place “to do some lavish entertaining of visitors from Saudi Arabia.”6
As they neared an agreement, Salem called McCarthy from Singapore in the middle of the night to bargain. He wanted everything in the house—sheets, pillowcases, even a Chevy van of McCarthy’s that had caught Salem’s eye because it had a phone inside. When they agreed on terms—McCarthy recalled that the total price was just under $2.2 million—Salem sent an emissary with a $250,000 cashier’s check. They closed the transaction in December 1980. Salem’s accountants in New York, at Price Waterhouse, set up a Liberian corporation to purchase and hold the estate, apparently as part of Salem’s international tax-avoidance strategy. Salem dubbed this offshore holding company Desert Bear Limited. From then on, the Orlando estate became known simply as Desert Bear.7
Neighbors around Johns Lake watched in astonishment as Salem and his royal guests transformed the place into a private amusement park. Hot air balloons lifted off the lawns and drifted over Orlando. Helicopters buffeted the palm trees as they landed inside the walls; men in suits climbed out, briefcases chained to their forearms, and jogged to the main house. Salem was friendly to his neighbors, and welcoming, and he tried to keep his parties under control, but the occasional amorous couple did tumble down the lawn, a neighbor said, and according to McCarthy, “they liked to smoke marijuana,” and they “did it openly.”8
When Salem’s brothers and sisters visited Desert Bear with their children, the atmosphere calmed considerably. Salem transformed one of the outbuildings into a hangar for ultralight aircraft. He hired a pilot from Texas, Pat Deegan, to assemble his fleet. Deegan walked into the main house one day and found Salem on a couch in the living room, still in his bathrobe, with a large group of Bin Laden children, all under twelve years old, lined up before him. Salem presided over a stack of one-hundred-dollar bills. “Come on up,” he told the children, handing out one bill after another. Deegan watched for a while and asked, “Hey, can I get in line?”9
By this time, Salem had purchased a seaplane. He kept it in America and used it for family recreation in Florida and Texas. He and Ghalib were among the family’s more active fliers during these years; they would zip above Johns Lake and nearby orange groves in ultralights or else haul out the seaplane for takeoffs and splashdowns. “Kid Brother” Ghalib was becoming considerably more religious than Salem, but he was pleasant and adventurous, and he had a growing family of young children who particularly enjoyed Disney World.
Flying ultralights off the back lawn at Desert Bear required some maneuvers during takeoff and landing; there was a fairly tight glide path between orange trees and power lines. Ghalib had flown the route many times
