Osama’s motivations are easier to document than his particular logistical plans. The harassment he faced from Saudi officials over his Yemeni organizing, and the humiliation he felt over their rejection of his wartime advice, left him burning with a desire to be free of the kingdom’s stifling repression, to re-create the independence and prestige he had enjoyed during his late years in Afghanistan—preferably without the constant exposure to gunfire, however. He was as exhausted in his own way by the narrowness of Saudi political culture as were the more secular members of his family who decamped periodically to Los Angeles or Orlando or Paris to enjoy some breathing space. As Osama later described his passage into exile during that spring of 1991:
The Saudi regime imposed on the people a life that does not appeal to the free believer. They wanted the people to eat and drink and sing the praise of God, but if the people wanted to encourage what is right and forbid what is wrong, they could not. Rather, the regime dismisses them from their jobs and in the event the people continue to do so, they are detained in prisons. I refused to live this submissive life, which is not befitting of man, let alone a believer. So I waited for the chance when God made it possible for me to leave Saudi Arabia.20
How did Bakr and his half-brothers regard his departure? The evidence is thin, but it nonetheless makes plain that as Osama left the kingdom, his family made no effort to exclude him from access to his own money or from participation in new family investments. In July 1991, for example, Yves Bruderlein, a Swiss lawyer with offices in Geneva, formed a Cayman Islands company called Cambridge Engineering “to make and hold investments,” particularly “in hedge fund products offered by major financial institutions, including Deutsche Bank.” According to Bruderlein, Cambridge was “indirectly owned” by the Saudi Bin Laden Group, and Bakr Bin Laden had signing power at the firm. The Saudi Bin Laden Group chose the Cayman Islands as its place of organization “based on the advice of their attorneys,” he said later. Its Swiss directors received “our instructions solely from the Saudi Bin Laden Group.” In the initial period after the formation of Cambridge Engineering, Bruderlein and other Swiss directors never had contact with Osama, but nonetheless, Bruderlein said he was aware that Osama was “part of the Saudi Bin Laden Group” and thus a participant in the hedge fund investments.21
Bakr said later that he “never intervened” with anyone in the Saudi government to help Osama leave the kingdom, “nor was I aware at that time of any involvement by Osama in terrorist activities of any kind.”22 He was, he suggests, passive and accepting of Osama’s decision. The broader credibility of his assertion may depend in part, of course, on the definition of “terrorist activities.” Al Qaeda had been founded three years earlier. Its volunteers still participated in the Afghan civil war; others fought in Yemen or evaded capture by the Egyptian security services from which they had fled. Whether some or all of this violence constituted terrorism lay to some extent in the eye of the beholder. It is also uncertain how much Bakr knew about these militias or Osama’s involvement with them.
The Bin Ladens continued to facilitate financial transfers to Osama. On October 28, 1991, a sum of $482,034.37—his original deposit, plus accrued interest, less banking fees—was transferred out of Osama’s sub-account at the Swiss Bank Corporation in Geneva to the custody of his half-brother Haider. The transfer occurred during a period when other subaccount holders among Mohamed’s children were taking full control of their own Swiss accounts, now that the war crisis had passed. Osama apparently decided to reorganize his banking within the Islamic world. What became of his dollar deposit after it reached his half-brother Haider is unknown, but there is no indication that it was withheld from Osama. The transfer marks Osama’s last known use of the Western banking system.23 With a stubborn attitude, but without a coherent plan, he passed into a new life of voluntary exile. His circumstances were more complicated than those of his grandfather Awadh, whose flight from debt almost a century earlier had ultimately birthed the family fortune, but Osama’s instinct was the same: he had no choice, he felt, but to start again.
28. A ROLLS-ROYCE IN THE RAIN
IBRAHIM AND CHRISTINE BIN LADEN formally separated on November 22, 1991, after almost five years of marriage. They had a two-year-old daughter, Sibba; Christine moved with her into a Los Angeles–area duplex apartment. She hired divorce lawyers. In February they filed papers in Los Angeles County Superior Court seeking a temporary restraining order against Ibrahim; Christine feared, she wrote in a declaration, that her husband “may become angry with me” over her decision to leave their marriage “and may retaliate by taking my daughter with him to Saudi Arabia.”
Christine was then thirty-one years old, about five years younger than her husband. She told the court of her “desperate financial situation.” It was a sort of desperation, however, that was peculiar to the west side of Los Angeles. “For many years during the marriage, Ibrahim provided me with a monthly allowance of approximately $15,000,” she reported. Yet for January and February of 1992, following their separation, he had provided her only $5,000, which was “woefully inadequate.” She had no income apart from Ibrahim’s support. Because of her husband’s sudden parsimony, she wrote, “our lifestyle has been changed and our living conditions are substandard to those which we had during marriage.” She explained to the court:
Ibrahim, my daughter and I lived in our Bel Air mansion at 634 Stone Canyon Road. This was a 7,000 square foot house, on three acres of property, with a seven car garage. The house is presently worth between $8–$10 million dollars. We employed full-time groundskeepers, household help, chauffeurs, and enjoyed private security. We had many cars, two of which were Rolls-Royces. Ibrahim would take my daughter and I on frequent vacation trips. We always flew First Class or on one of the private family jets. We would spend a month at a time traveling in Europe, or skiing in Switzerland, or short trips to Hawaii. This lifestyle also supported me making trips to New York, to go shopping, the opera and the theater. Last year Ibrahim let me buy a $16,000 fur coat on a shopping trip.
Christine inventoried the considerable investments she had made in education and other forms of self-improvement, such as the $3,250 she had recently spent on cosmetic surgery, as well as additional sums on manicures, pedicures, waxing, hair coloring, and haircuts. She had enrolled in private needlepoint classes and took private lessons in English horseback riding, painting, watercolors, sculpture, and Arabic. It was “not uncommon” for her to spend $3,500 on a dress. Ibrahim bought her “furs, jewelry, a $30,000 watch,” and a $90,000 diamond wedding ring. She purchased a Steinway piano for their Bel Air home, and they “always ate at the best restaurants,” such as Spago and Morton’s.