In pursuit of his doctoral degree, Abdullah embarked on a much more detailed elaboration on the same themes—his thesis would ultimately run to 327 pages, bearing the distinctly unglamorous title “Negotiability of Financial Instruments in Contemporary Financial Markets: An Islamic Legal Analysis.” Here Abdullah wrestled with how certain instruments of the global markets—such as warrants bonds and profit-sharing contracts—might be accommodated in an Islamic financial system. It was a lucid and richly footnoted thesis, if often arcane, and when it was eventually completed, it marked at least two milestones in the centuries-long history of the Bin Laden family: Abdullah became the family’s first academic doctor (alongside his half-sister Randa, the family’s first medical doctor) and the holder of the Bin Ladens’ first Harvard degree. Intellectually, Abdullah strived to reconcile the two worlds, Arabian and Western, in which the Bin Ladens lived and worked. Vogel respected “the academic seriousness” of his doctoral thesis, “that he really put himself to difficult research, and quite difficult or abstruse text.” As for the subject matter, and what it indicated about the Bin Ladens or Abdullah, in Vogel’s judgment, “For a Saudi to work on a topic related to Islamic law is not saying very much about whether he’s preoccupied with religion.” In the kingdom, there simply was no other way to approach economics, he believed.22
The fundraising opportunity represented by the presence of a young Bin Laden at Harvard was not lost on the law school’s professors. Around 1993—the same year Philip Griffin opened the Bin Laden office outside Washington—the Bin Ladens entered into discussions with the dean of Harvard Law School. “They were interested in the study of Islam, in lots of places,” Vogel recalled. The discussions were “extraordinarily sort of low-key.” Abdullah indicated to Harvard that Bakr would be interested in making a $1 million donation to the university to support the study of Islamic design, one of Bakr’s personal interests, plus an additional $1 million to support visiting scholarships and stipends for students from Arab League countries who wished to follow Abdullah’s footsteps and study at Harvard Law. Vogel and the law school dean traveled to Saudi Arabia; they were received by Bakr at the headquarters of the Saudi Bin Laden Group, where they admired the display models of the family’s work on the holy mosques in Mecca and Medina. Vogel explained to the family, “One of the purposes of our program is to build links with the Middle East.” There was, of course, no discussion of Osama; he was little known outside the Arab world.23
During this same period, Salem Bin Laden’s oldest son, Salman, enrolled as an undergraduate student at Tufts University, just outside Boston. Abdullah helped to keep an eye on him; Salman struggled at times to manage his money and his friendships. One of his business professors, Andrew Hess, felt that Salman had suffered psychologically because of Salem’s sudden death in Texas in 1988. Salman took after his father in some ways, and played the guitar, and he spoke fluent English in a British-inflected accent. But he had his ups and downs at Tufts. He made a personal connection with Hess, who prior to his professorship had worked for many years in Saudi Arabia, in the oil industry. Salman then introduced Hess to his Harvard uncle, Abdullah.24
They met several times for dinner at another of Abdullah’s favorite restaurants, in Cambridge. It was called Helmand, after a province in southern Afghanistan. It was run by a gregarious, exiled Afghan family—the Karzais.
Over dinners at Helmand, Hess mentioned to Abdullah that he was having trouble raising money to support some of his academic programs. The Bin Ladens were mostly interested in supporting Islamic studies, Abdullah told him. Hess said that if he had enough funding, he could bring in lecturers and speakers from the Islamic world, to address economic and political issues that fit the Tufts curriculum. Abdullah said he would see what he could do.
Later, he delivered a check to Tufts for $350,000.25
31. A TROJAN DESK
A CAR BOMB bearing about 250 pounds of explosives detonated in Riyadh on November 13, 1995. It was the worst terrorist attack in the kingdom since the almost-forgotten days of proxy war with Yemen during the 1960s. The targets this time were not Saudis, however. Seven people died, including five Americans, and thirty-four others were wounded. The attackers, soon beheaded, were former Afghan jihadis; one said in a televised confession that they had been inspired by the writings of Osama Bin Laden. From the point of view of the Bin Laden family, it was hard to judge which was the more discouraging possibility—that the terrorist’s confession had been authentic, or that he had been encouraged by Saudi interrogators to implicate Osama publicly, in order to discredit him. In an indirect sense, the Bin Ladens had also been on the receiving end of the attack. The targeted building was an American training facility for the Saudi National Guard. One of the facility’s principal contractors, a specialist in military training, was Vinnell Corporation, a low-profile company that has been described by a former board member as associated with the Central Intelligence Agency. Several spouses of Vinnell contractors were among the wounded. At the time, the Carlyle Group owned the firm—although not through the same fund in which the Bin Ladens had just invested. The larger point was the same: the family was now officially at war with itself, even if that war was embryonic and in many respects undeclared.1
Bakr said nothing in public, beyond the press statements he had previously issued, but in private, he tried to make clear to the Americans and Europeans he knew that he was appalled by Osama’s increasingly violent radicalism. Around Christmas 1995, just a few weeks after the Riyadh attack, Bakr flew a number of Salem’s old American and British friends to Jeddah, all expenses paid. Salem’s eldest daughter, Sara, was marrying a young man from a prominent Jeddah merchant family, one that had a lucrative car dealership. Bakr hosted a reunion of some of the pilots and musicians who had known Salem in the glory days.2
The contrasts now accumulating within the family, even at its home base in Jeddah, were startling. Bakr’s Red Sea estate lay a few miles south of one of the family’s grand real estate projects, the Salhia Lotus Beach Resort. The development was named for Saheha Bin Laden, the half-brother of Bakr who had traveled widely in Europe and the United States. The resort opened as a private beach club with two hundred furnished chalets and studios, located on Jeddah’s North Obhur Beach. Security guards carefully checked the names of Saudi members and authorized foreign guests before allowing them behind the resort’s walls. Once inside, the reason for such tight security became obvious: there were women in bikinis lounging alongside men in Speedos; Saudis mixing in their bathing suits with foreigners of both sexes; and Lebanese Christians splashing in the swimming pool with crosses and crucifixes dangling around their necks. It was as if the Bin Ladens had built, and were operating for profit, an alternative Saudi Arabia in a wealthy corner of Jeddah’s northern suburbs.3
Away from the beach club, at Sara’s wedding reception, Bakr was his more traditional self; the genders were duly segregated, and there was an emphasis on fruit juice. Bakr invited some of his foreign guests aboard his large, steel-hulled boat and motored into the Red Sea, where he dropped anchor and hosted an afternoon of shipside swimming. Spirits ran high throughout several days of celebration. Anita Pizza, the pianist, and Gerald Auerbach, the American pilot who had flown both Mohamed and Salem, and who was now in his seventies, were persuaded to run through some of Salem’s favorite numbers. Auerbach belted out “On Top of Old Smokey,” for old times.4