The brothers did not propose retaining Dutton himself, but they asked him if he could recommend the names of some lawyers who might be willing to take the Bin Ladens on as clients. They wanted a law firm that could provide general advice, but that could also assist them on specific legal issues that might arise for the family in the United States in the aftermath of the suicide attacks. Civil lawsuits filed on behalf of the victims were one obvious possibility. The U.S. government would certainly renew its investigations of family finances and related issues. Dutton knew that the Bin Laden family had previously worked with Sullivan & Cromwell, but the brothers did not say whether they had also contacted Sullivan—whose New York headquarters was near the World Trade Center—or what had come of their inquiry if they had made one.
Dutton recalled that he “tried to throw cold water on them,” saying that he did not think this was a time when legal representation could be of any real help to the Bin Laden family. It was too early and feelings were too raw. But he agreed to explore the matter.
Over the next day or two, Dutton called a few prestigious Washington attorneys he knew to sound them out. He was not going to put people he did not know well on the spot by making cold calls. He concluded from the conversations he held that “this just is not the right time, and it can’t be done.”9
He called the Bin Ladens back and told them; he said he did not believe there was any merit in even holding exploratory meetings. He suggested that they pull back and “let some breathing space” develop. He also advised them to avoid working with any of the sorts of attorneys who might be willing to take them on in this atmosphere—such lawyers would be grandstanders, and would not ultimately help the family. The entire proposition, Dutton felt, was a “non-starter.”10
Shafiq and Abdullah also met in Washington during these initial days after September 11 with Chas Freeman, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia who had developed an acquaintance with Bakr. After leaving government, Freeman had become president of the Middle East Policy Council in Washington, to which the Bin Ladens had made financial contributions over many years; he also negotiated business deals in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere overseas. The brothers told Freeman they were receiving a stream of terrible threats. They had found the FBI “solicitous and kind,” and had tried to be helpful themselves in answering the bureau’s questions about family history and Osama’s situation within it, but given their circumstances in the United States, those Bin Ladens still in the country felt they were now essentially under the bureau’s protection.11
They talked with Freeman about the family’s public relations problem. After Osama declared war on the United States, the Bin Ladens had retained a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Timothy Metz, who had started his own public relations firm in New York, but Metz was mainly just a point of entry for the American media; he relayed inquiries from reporters and passed along clippings about the Bin Ladens from the American press. Freeman advised Shafiq and Abdullah to hire someone with specific experience in crisis communications. He felt that law firms were not the ideal advisers in a situation of this kind; they had a distinct orientation. The Bin Laden brothers said they would consider Freeman’s idea. Like many people during those September days, they seemed to be in something of a state of shock.12
WHEN THE FIRST PLANE struck the World Trade Center, Yeslam Bin Laden was driving to the airport in Geneva with a friend. His cell phone rang; a second friend, an American investment banker in New York, told him the news. At first Yeslam thought it was an accident, that a plane had somehow missed its approach. His friend called back a few minutes later to report the second strike. Yeslam said later that he knew then it was not an accident, and yet it still did not occur to him to think that his half-brother might be involved. It seemed “too sophisticated” to be Osama’s work, he said later. He “never thought” even for “a second” that Osama “could have been alone behind this affair.”13
Yeslam drove to a Geneva hotel where his mother and his brother Ibrahim were staying for a visit. They watched the news and heard Osama named as the suspected mastermind of the attacks. His mother fell ill from the strain. They had to call a doctor.
The next morning the Swiss federal police telephoned. They asked Yeslam to come for an interview. Earlier, when Yeslam was an applicant for Swiss citizenship, Swiss investigators had interviewed him about family history and his relationship with Osama. Now they wanted to go back through the same questions in greater depth. The session lasted several hours, according to Yeslam. That same day, he decided to issue a written statement from Geneva:
“I am shocked by this criminal attack of terrorism which killed innocent people yesterday,” it said. “I would like to express my deepest feelings of sorrow. All life is sacred and I condemn all killing and all attacks against liberty and human values. My thoughts and profound sympathy are with the victims, their families and the American people.”14
It was the first and most expansive expression of sympathy issued by any member of the Bin Laden family about September 11. It also placed responsibility for the attacks in a generalized context—“all life…all attacks against liberty and human values”—and it made no particular reference to Osama.
Yeslam flew to Cannes, France, to meet with Bakr and another Bin Laden brother on the first weekend after the attacks. They discussed “the possibility of bringing everybody back to Saudi Arabia” to regroup.15
Bakr’s reaction to the attacks seemed to be infused with caution. He did not issue any statement on behalf of the family or provide any media interviews or other public remarks for an entire week. At that point Bakr’s office issued a brief written statement on behalf of the Bin Laden family, under the name of his uncle, Abdullah, Mohamed’s aged brother. The statement expressed “the strong denunciation and condemnation of this sad event, which resulted in the loss of many innocent men, women and children, and which contradicts our Islamic faith.”
Privately, Bakr was more forthright. Sabry Ghoneim, the family’s communications adviser in Egypt, recalled that Bakr told him, “This is a criminal act. If America seeks revenge, it’s their right, because that’s the price of the people who died.” This was not unusual language for Bakr to use about Al Qaeda when there was no public audience listening in. Once, after an Al Qaeda–inspired bombing, he telephoned a British friend from his private jet to denounce the “bloody Arabs” and their destructive terrorism. But he never offered such strong language in public.16
Instead, the belated statement Bakr authorized followed what had become Saudi government policy. In the initial days and weeks following September 11, Saudi princes and spokesmen denounced the terrible violence of that day, expressed sympathy for the victims, and said that the attacks contradicted the tenets of Islam. But Saudi statements usually made no specific reference to Osama, Al Qaeda, or the Saudi nationalities of nineteen of the September 11 hijackers. Indeed, as late as December 2002, Prince Nayef, the interior minister, who had such a long history with Osama and the Bin Ladens, still refused to acknowledge that the hijackers were Saudis at all; he suggested that September 11 was a Zionist conspiracy concocted to discredit Muslims. Nayef ’s comments shocked many Americans. Of course, his opinions about September 11—and his beliefs about Zionists and Jews—were quite commonplace in the kingdom. It was just that Americans previously had little occasion to hear such opinions, and certainly not at a transforming moment of national shock and grief. Nayef ’s words wafted through American political and media circles like a toxic gas released from a long-buried cavern.