IP: Bin Laden's relatives made a first-class escape

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/11/09
> /MN98865.DTL
>
> Bin Laden's relatives made a first-class escape
>
> Rob Morse
>
> Friday, November 9, 2001
>
> Even though I've spent some time with the rich and powerful, I'm still
> naive about how small their world is. It came as a shock to me that
> President Bush's family and Osama bin Laden's family have socialized with
> each other and been involved in business ventures together.
>
> It's like finding out that Lyndon Johnson's daddy and Ho Chi Minh's papa
> used to go fishing together in the Gulf of Tonkin.
>
> But we're not talking about fishing or poor boys from the backwoods of
> Texas and Vietnam. We're talking about rich guys fishing for Saudi money,
> and a defense-oriented investment firm called the Carlyle Group, which has
> had many politically connected partners, including the elder George Bush.
> Investors have included Osama bin Laden's family.
>
> Since the attacks of Sept. 11, bin Laden's relatives withdrew their
> investments in the Carlyle Group when "the prospect of President Bush's
> father being in business with the half-brother of Osama bin Laden was
> politically untenable," as reporter Jane Mayer put it in this week's issue
> of the New Yorker magazine.
>
> Mayer also reported that bin Laden's relatives in the United States were
> allowed to leave the country after Sept. 11 without being interrogated or
> detained.
>
> The rich Saudis walked, and now poor Americans march. The sons of American
> farmers and factory workers will be risking their lives looking for bin
> Laden in caves all over Afghanistan.

<snip>


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