[MAPC-discuss] Bush, bin Laden, Chelsea

[MAPC-discuss] Bush, bin Laden, Chelsea

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2001-11-14

Bush & Bin Laden: BBC spill the beans
London | Thursday

SPECIAL agents in the United States probing relatives of Saudi-born terror
suspect Osama bin Laden before September 11 were told to back off soon after
George W. Bush became president, the BBC reported on Tuesday. The BBC's
Newsnight current affairs programme said that Bush at one point had a number
of connections with Saudi Arabia's prominent bin Laden family. It added
there was a suspicion that the US strategic interest in Saudi Arabia, which
has the world's biggest oil reserve, blunted its inquiries into individuals
with suspected terrorist connections -- so long as America was safe.

Newsnight reported it had seen secret documents from a FBI probe into the
September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington which showed that
despite the reputation of Osama bin Laden as the black sheep of the family,
at least two other US-based relatives are suspected of links with a possible
terrorist organization.

The programme said it had obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of
bin Laden family members living in the United States before, as well as
after, the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Newsnight said Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company
partly funded by the chief US representative of Salem bin Laden, Osama's
brother.

Bush also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation,
a little-known private company which in just a few years since its founding
has become one of America's biggest defense contractors, and his father,
George Bush senior, is also a paid advisor, the programme said. The
connection became embarrassing when it was revealed that the bin Ladens held
a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11, it added. Newsnight said
it had been told by a highly-placed source in a US intelligence agency that
there had always been "constraints" on investigating Saudis, but under
President George W. Bush it had become much worse.

After the elections, the intelligence agencies were told to "back off" from
investigating the bin Laden family, and that angered field agents, the
programme added.

The policy was reversed after September 11, it reported. The former head of
the American visa bureau in Jeddah from 1987 to 1989, Michael Springman,
told Newsnight: "In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high-level
State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants.

"People who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I
complained there. I complained here in Washington... to the Inspector
General and to Diplomatic Security and I was ignored." He added: "What I was
doing was giving visas to terrorists -- recruited by the CIA and Osama bin
Laden to come back to the United States for
training to be used in the war in Afghanistan against the then-Soviets."
Newsnight also said it had seen a document that showed US special agents
were investigating a close relative of Osama bin Laden, identified only as
Abdullah, because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim
Youth (WAMY), which the programme said was a suspected terrorist
organization.

The programme reported it had found where he used to live with another close
relative, Omar, also an FBI suspect, in Falls Church, Virginia, a suburb of
Washington.

The house was conveniently close to WAMY, it said, and just a couple of
blocks down the road was a place listed by four of the alleged September 11
hijackers as their address.

The US Treasury has not frozen WAMY's assets, and insists it is a charity,
the programme said, yet Pakistan had expelled WAMY "operatives" and India
claimed WAMY was funding an organization linked to bombings in Kashmir. The
FBI did look into WAMY, but for some reason agents were pulled off the
trail, Newsnight said. - Sapa-AFP

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Published on Saturday, November 10, 2001 in The Times of London

Chelsea Joins the Hecklers at Rally by Glen Owen

CHELSEA CLINTON was among a group of American students which disrupted an
anti-war meeting in Oxford, it was revealed last night.

Frustrated at anti-American feeling, the daughter of the former President
arrived at the 500-strong meeting in Oxford Town Hall with a dozen friends
who heckled speakers.

Miss Clinton, a postgraduate student in international relations at
University College, Oxford, her father's alma mater, has confessed that she
is feeling isolated and threatened by the mood she has detected at the
university. She found it difficult encountering "anti-American feeling" from
peace demonstrators.

As soon as last Thursday's meeting, organized by the Oxford Stop the War
Coalition, began, members of her mostly American group shouted patriotic
slogans from the back. Speakers were prevented from continuing after other
young Americans approached them and unfurled a Stars and Stripes flag.

Chris Harman, editor of Socialist Worker, said: "When the group turned up I
thought, oh no, we're going to have some rugby-type fracas, but luckily it
was nothing like that." The flag-bearers were eventually sent back to their
seats by a 76-year-old American woman called Barbara, an Oxford resident.

Katy Beinart, a student CND member who spoke at the meeting, said that Miss
Clinton had arrived "making a lot of noise".

When John Haylett, editor of the Morning Star, began to argue that the media
had failed to consider the effects of the bombing on Afghan civilians, Miss
Clinton and her friends called out that he should remember the victims of
the terrorist attacks on New York. Mr Haylett responded that such meetings
were the only way to put an alternative viewpoint to that portrayed in the
media.

Miss Clinton left with her Secret Service bodyguards shortly afterwards,
stopping to buy a copy of the Morning Star from a vendor, and making "yet
more noise", according to Ms Beinart. "It was a shame that Chelsea Clinton
felt the need to interrupt a peaceful discussion with what I felt were
inappropriate comments," she said.

Speakers at the meeting, including the MP Jeremy Corbyn, said yesterday that
Miss Clinton took their comments too personally.

Copyright 2001 Times Newspapers Ltd.





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Wednesday, November 14, 2001 3:30 PM

[MAPC-discuss] Bush, bin Laden, Chelsea