One of the biggest paydays from these investigations came at the expense of Dee Howard, the San Antonio aviation pioneer who had remodeled King Fahd’s lavish 747 under the contract obtained through Salem. In a separate deal from the airplane project, Salem had invested just less than 1 million British pounds and had guaranteed an NCB loan of $1 million more to develop with Dee Howard some innovative aircraft-engine technology that could extend the flying range of certain jets. Ian Munro, who had been involved in this project, believed that Howard had profited from the technology Salem funded without properly compensating his partners. Howard denied this. Bakr hired lawyers in Florida to explore the claim, and ultimately they retained Charles Schwartz, a partner at the large Houston firm of Vinson and Elkins, to sue Dee Howard and his company. The case eventually came to trial before a civil jury in Bexar County, Texas. Appealing to the presumed skepticism of Texas jurors toward Saudi millionaires, Dee Howard’s attorney missed no opportunity to talk at trial about Salem’s riches or to refer to him as “sheikh.” Schwartz objected to all the “sheikhs” and tried to counter by emphasizing Salem’s reputation as a friend of Ronald Reagan and his success in international business. Finally, after a six-week trial highlighted by testimony from both Ian Munro and Dee Howard (the former speaking with aplomb in his British accent, the latter quarreling impetuously in a Texas drawl), the Bin Laden side won. The jury returned a verdict of $6 million in favor of Salem’s estate; the case later settled for just over half of that amount.15
To pursue the claim against Howard, Bakr had to submit certain legal briefs to the Texas court system, and in one of them, he referred to the existence, in the Jeddah courts, of an intriguing-sounding document entitled “Financial Position of the Inheritance of the Late Salem Binladin as of February 10, 1990,” which was “the only financial document filed with the court here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia regarding the financial affairs” of Salem and his estate, according to Bakr. This document did not make it into the public court file in Texas, however. Its scope is unclear, but one lawyer who read it at the time recalled that it estimated the value of Salem’s personal estate as perhaps several hundred million dollars, and certainly less than one billion dollars. Even that estimate seems high, given Salem’s perpetual cash flow struggles in the last years of his life, although the estimate may reflect the value of his relatively illiquid real estate holdings in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere.16
The question of Salem’s personal wealth was also complicated by his debts. He had borrowed large sums from the National Commercial Bank, but it was not always evident, at least to his foreign business partners, when he was borrowing for a personal transaction and when for the Bin Laden companies. According to two individuals close to Salem and NCB, the bank presented Bakr with a demand for repayment after Salem’s death, and Bakr worked out a settlement; the amounts involved are unknown, but according to these individuals, they may have been very large. “He didn’t always talk about it,” Ghoneim recalled, “but I saw he was exhausted. He had to deal with inheritance problems. He was doing his best to pay all the debts.”17
Bakr’s settlement agreements and his methodical pursuit of claims for Salem’s estate in Europe and America signaled the family’s new direction—more businesslike, better organized, more Arabian. In the absence of a family crisis, it was perhaps a welcome change for some from the volatility and peculiarity of Salem’s rein. But the Bin Ladens were not destined to live placidly. Very soon, as the family’s troubles deepened, Bakr would confront problems and choices of extraordinary importance and complexity. Was he up to the challenge? Despite all his admirable dedication and hard work, his innate caution framed a question he would never entirely shake: What would Salem have done?
26. AMERICA IN MOTION
THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION of 1979 cast thousands of privileged Persians into exile. Many gathered in Los Angeles, where they poured their agitations into business. First-and second-generation Lebanese and Armenian entrepreneurs maneuvered among them—builders, restaurateurs, retailers, developers, and hustlers sui generis. Some blocks on the west side of Los Angeles already resembled a stucco-and-Spanish-tile bazaar when the Saudis turned up in numbers, their pockets bulging after the second oil shock. Young merchant scions from Jeddah and Riyadh and Dhahran rolled through Beverly Hills in Porsches and Mercedes-Benzes, their sunglasses just a little too fashionable, their aftershave a little too pungent—as conspicuous a population of marks as ever swam in the seas of capitalism. Accountants looked at them and saw fees; lawyers saw billable hours; stockbrokers saw commissions; jewelers saw gold. There were plenty of Saudi businessmen who held their own in America, but many suffered from deficits of guile and ruthlessness. They were newcomers, flush but lacking in confidence and inside angles, and they did not have a locally rooted diaspora to protect them, as the Armenians and Lebanese enjoyed. Their instincts and traditions did not always serve them well. Arabian elites esteemed dignity, decorum, and reticence. Americans shouted, shoved, and brawled over money. Arabians settled disputes discreetly. Americans sued in open court.
Salem had thrived on this frontier, but his death cut the main artery connecting the United States to the Bin Laden family. Bakr was certainly interested in business partnerships with American multinational corporations, but he very rarely traveled to the States. By 1989 the most active family investor on American soil was Khalil Bin Laden, who lived in Los Angeles several months each year, usually in the summer, when Jeddah’s heat was particularly intolerable. He was a younger full brother of Yeslam, a half-brother of Bakr and Osama. He had come to America with considerable business ambition. Gradually, however, Los Angeles and its lawyers were threatening to strip him of his money and his serenity.
Khalil Bin Laden had studied business at the University of Southern California during the 1970s, but he never graduated. He was a thin, shy man, exceedingly polite, curious about American mores but conservative in his habits of mind. He dressed well but not flamboyantly—he wore Greg Chapman gray flannel suits handmade in Beverly Hills and Bally shoes. For a time he drove a Rolls-Royce convertible; later, as he settled into America, he chauffeured his family in a considerably less conspicuous green Ford minivan with cloth seats. He prayed punctually five times each day and gave up alcohol after a few cursory experiments, according to friends. He could be ruthless at French card games—“In cards, I don’t know my own mother”—but he was otherwise gentle and diffident. When he met his future wife in a Beverly Hills nightclub, some of his acquaintances thought she was probably the first woman he had ever dated seriously.1