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IP: Bin Laden's relatives made a first-class escape
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 10:21:43 -0500
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.
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