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 organisation.
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 defence 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 organisation.
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 organisation 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