APPENDIX A: CAST OF CHARACTERS
House of Bush
James A. Baker III -- Former presidential chief of staff, secretary of state, and secretary of the treasury, James Baker is a senior counselor and partner at the Carlyle Group, which had many Saudi investors, including members of the bin Laden family and, according to his attorney, Abdulrahman bin Mahfouz as well. Baker is also a partner at Baker Botts, the powerful energy-industry law firm whose clients include members of the Saudi royal family, Exxon-Mobil, ARCO, Schlumberger, BP Amoco, Halliburton, and other major energy companies. The firm defended Saudi royals, including Prince Bandar's father, Prince Sultan, in a $1-trillion lawsuit brought by families of the 9/11 victims. Baker's business links to the Saudis date back to 1981, when Khalid bin Mahfouz helped develop a seventy-five-story office building for the Texas Commerce Bank, in which Baker owned more than $7 million in stock. In late 2003, George W. Bush assigned Baker the task of reconciling the massive debt compiled by Iraq, whose biggest creditor was Saudi Arabia.
George H. W. Bush -- The forty-first president of the United States, Bush has been close friends with Prince Bandar for more than twenty years. Both were key figures in the Iran-contra scandal in the eighties and, along with James Baker, they waged the Gulf War together in 1991. An independent Texas oilman before he entered politics, after his presidency Bush served as senior adviser to the Carlyle Group until October 2003, and spoke before potential investors in Carlyle, including prominent Saudis. After his son became president, he attempted to mollify Crown Prince Abdullah to heal a rift between the Saudis and the White House in the summer of 2001.
George W. Bush -- The forty-third president of the United States, Bush also started out as an independent oilman in Texas. When he was director of Harken Energy, the company was bailed out by Saudis and other investors with links to BCCI, the corrupt, Saudi-dominated bank in which Khalid bin Mahfouz was the largest shareholder. During his presidency, approximately 140 Saudis, including Prince Ahmed and about two dozen members of the bin Laden family, were evacuated immediately after the events of 9/11 with White House approval -- without having been seriously questioned.
Frank Carlucci -- Former secretary of defense and managing director and chairman emeritus at the Carlyle Group, Carlucci helped build Carlyle into a defense-industry powerhouse by buying defense companies whose prices were depressed after the end of the Cold War. "I've made it clear that I don't lobby the defense industry," Carlucci said after a meeting with his old Princeton wrestling teammate Donald Rumsfeld, who had just become the newly appointed secretary of defense.
The Carlyle Group -- The giant private equity firm that became a home to James Baker, George H. W. Bush, Frank Carlucci, Richard Darman, John Major, and other powerful figures from the Reagan-Bush era, Carlyle now owns companies with assets of more than $16 billion. An element in its ascendancy has been its lucrative relationships with the Saudis, including Saudi royals, the bin Ladens, and the bin Mahfouz family, both as investors and as clients for defense contractors owned by Carlyle.
Dick Cheney -- Vice president of the United States under George W. Bush, Cheney had been a prominent Republican congressman and served as secretary of defense under Bush senior during the Gulf War. As CEO of Halliburton between 1995 and 2000, Cheney received $34 million in compensation during his last year at the company and became vice president without relinquishing more than 400,000 stock options in it.
Donald Rumsfeld -- In 1983 and 1984, as a presidential envoy for the Reagan-Bush administration, Rumsfeld met Saddam Hussein and assured Iraqi leaders that even though the United States would publicly denounce Iraq for using chemical weapons, the issue should not interfere with developing a warm relationship between the two countries. In 2002, however, he turned against Saddam and led the war against Iraq the following year.
House of Saud
Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz -- The de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and heir to the throne now held by King Fahd, Prince Abdullah threatened the Bush administration with ending the special Saudi-U.S. relationship just before 9/11.
Prince Ahmed bin Salman -- A nephew of King Fahd's who is best known as the owner of 2002 Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem and other great racehorses, Prince Ahmed was named by Al Qaeda boss Abu Zubaydah as the terror group's contact within the House of Saud. Zubaydah also said that Ahmed had foreknowledge that Al Qaeda would attack inside the United States on 9/11. Shortly after 9/11, Ahmed left the United States as part of the White House-approved evacuation of Saudis. He died of a heart attack at age forty-three not long after the Saudis were informed of Zubaydah's allegations. He was a son of Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the governor of Riyadh, who is one of the relatively pro West Sudairi Seven, but who had a close working relationship with Osama bin Laden back in the eighties.
Abdullah Taha Bakhsh -- A major investor in Harken Energy, the struggling oil company of which George W. Bush was a director, Bakhsh was one of several people who had ties to BCCI and came to Harken's rescue when Bush's father was president. His representative on Harken's board, Talat Othman, later gained President George H. W. Bush's ear in the lead-up to Operation Desert Storm in 1990, and ten years later addressed the GOP convention at which George W. Bush was nominated. Bakhsh is a Saudi real estate magnate ith ties to Khalid bin Mahfouz.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan -- The longtime ambassador to the United States and close friend of George H. W. Bush and his family, Prince Bandar went on vacations and hunting trips with the elder Bush and also waged war with him and participated in covert operations. He oversaw the evacuation of approximately 140 Saudis, including members of the royal family, just after 9/11. He once remarked, "If the reputation ... builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you'd be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office." Bandar has reportedly been an investor in the Carlyle Group with the elder George Bush. He gave $1 million to the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and a $1- million painting to President George W Bush. He is a nephew of King Fahd.
King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz -- nominal ruler of Saudi Arabia, incapacitated by a 1995 stroke. Half brother of Crown Prince Abdullah and uncle of Prince Bandar.
Princess Haifa bint Faisal -- Prince Bandar's wife, Princess Haifa indirectly and seemingly unwittingly may have provided funds to two of the 9/11 hijackers. After Newsweek's revelations about her role in the funding, both Laura Bush and former president Bush called to console her.
Khalid bin Mahfouz -- A billionaire Saudi banker, bin Mahfouz joined Salem bin Laden in creating the Houston-Jeddah connection through James Bath. A major shareholder in BCCI and longtime owner of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, bin Mahfouz was for many years the most powerful banker in the kingdom. He helped develop a seventy-five-story skyscraper in Houston for the Texas Commerce Bank, in which James Baker was a major shareholder. When he was the biggest shareholder at BCCI, various individuals and entities linked to BCCI helped bailout Harken Energy, where George W. Bush was a director. According to the family attorney, two of his sons invested $30 million in the Carlyle Group. Khalid was also on the Golden Chain, the list of wealthy Arabs who helped fund Al Qaeda at its inception. He founded Muwafaq (Blessed Relief), which the U.S. Treasury Department called "an al Qaeda front that transfers millions from wealthy Saudis to Bin Laden."
Salem bin Laden -- Osama's half brother and longtime manager of the Saudi Binladin Group, Salem was a contemporary and friend of Khalid bin Mahfouz, the billionaire Saudi banker. The two men began establishing contacts in the United States through James R. Bath, a Texas Air National Guard buddy of George W. Bush. Salem died in a 1988 plane crash.
The Sudairi Seven -- King Abdul Aziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, had forty-three sons and the Sudairi Seven refers to the seven sons by his favored wife. They include King Fahd; Defense Minister Prince Sultan, who is Prince Bandar's father; Riyadh governor Prince Salman, who is the father of the late Prince Ahmed; Interior Minister Prince Nayef; business leader Prince Abdul Rahman; Prince Ahmad; and Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz, who is not to be confused with Prince Turki bin Faisal, the longtime minister of intelligence. This powerful faction within the ruling family is considered pro-West, save for Prince Nayef, who maintains close relations with militant clergy and has blamed the events of 9/11 on Zionists.
Other Key Players
Sami Al-Arian -- A professor at the University of South Florida who campaigned for George Bush and later visited him in the White House, Al-Arian was allegedly a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In 2003, he was arrested on dozens of charges, among them conspiracy to finance terrorist attacks that killed more than a hundred people, including two Americans.
James Bath -- Beginning in the mid-seventies, the Houston-based Bath served as business representative for Salem bin Laden, Osama's older brother and the head of the Saudi Binladin Group, and billionaire banker Khalid bin Mahfouz. Bath also served in the Texas Air National Guard with George W. Bush and knew the elder George Bush, James Baker, and John Connally. A key figure in introducing the Saudis to the United States, he was also an investor in Arbusto, George W. Bush's first oil company.
Richard Clarke -- The nation's first counterterrorism czar as head of the National Security Council's Coordinating Subgroup. Appointed initially to the NSC by George H. W. Bush, Clarke rose to power under Clinton. He devised an early and forceful strategy to confront Al Qaeda but his plans were largely ignored by the administration of George W. Bush.
Grover Norquist -- A powerful conservative strategist, Norquist invented the Muslim Strategy to win the votes of millions of Muslim Americans through alliances between George W. Bush and Islamic extremists such as Sami Al-Arian and Abdurahman Alamoudi. "George W. Bush was elected President of the United States of America because of the Muslim vote," he wrote in the right-wing publication American Spectator. "... That's right," he added, "the Muslim vote."
Osama bin Laden -- Scion to the multibillion-dollar bin Laden construction fortune and archterrorist of the early twenty-first century, Osama bin Laden rose to prominence in the 1980s as a leader of the "Afghan Arabs" fighting the Soviets in the Afghanistan War. Originally backed by the House of Saud, the Saudi merchant elite including the bin Mahfouz and bin Laden families, and the United States, he launched a jihad against the United States after American troops went to Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War of 1991. As the leader of Al Qaeda, he has been charged with orchestrating attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania, bombing the USS Cole, and perpetrating the 9/11 attacks among many other terrorist acts.
Abu Zubaydah -- High-ranking Al Qaeda leader who was captured in March 2002 and who, while being interrogated, asserted that Prince Ahmed bin Salman, the wealthy racehorse owner and nephew of King Fahd, was an intermediary between Al Qaeda and the royal family. Zubaydah tried to strangle himself when he realized that he had been tricked by the agents who were interrogating him.
APPENDIX B: CHRONOLOGY
1924 -- George H. W. Bush is born on June 12.
1938 -- The first oil deposits are discovered in Saudi Arabia.
1945 -- President Franklin D. Roosevelt meets King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal on Valentine's Day, initiating the modern U.S.-Saudi relationship based on oil for security.
1946 -- George W. Bush is born on July 6.
1957 -- Osama bin Laden is born on March 10.
1966 -- George H. W. Bush sells his shares in Zapata, his oil company, for $1 million and embarks on a career in politics.
1968 -- Billionaire Saudi construction mogul Mohammed bin Laden dies in a plane crash, leaving his son Osama a large inheritance.
1970 -- U.S. oil production peaks and begins a decades-long decline, while American oil consumption continues to grow, beginning a trend that leads to the nation becoming dependent on foreign oil.
1973 -- OPEC's oil embargo begins in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war.
1976 -- George W. Bush founds Arbusto, a small independent Texas oil company
1979 -- On November 4, fifty-two Americans are taken hostage when Iranian militants seize the American embassy in Tehran a few months after the shah is ousted and replaced with a fundamentalist regime.
On November 20, more than a thousand members of the Muslim Brotherhood invade Mecca and seize control of the Grand Mosque. Mahrous bin Laden is later accused of playing a role.
On December 26, the USSR invades Afghanistan. Zbigniew Brzezinski writes, "We now have the opportunity to give Russia its own Vietnam War." U.S. support for the Afghan Arabs had begun earlier that summer and would later grow to more than $700 million a year. Within days, Osama bin Laden decides to join the battle against the Soviet "infidels."
1980 -- On September 22, Iraq invades Iran, launching the Iran-Iraq War. On November 4, Ronald Reagan is elected president. George H.W. Bush becomes vice president and James Baker becomes chief of staff to the president.
1981 -- Thanks to the lobbying of Prince Bandar and the support of Vice President George H. W. Bush, the U.S. Senate narrowly approves the $5.5-billion sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia on October 28. It is the birth of a policy that eventually sends approximately $200 billion in U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Khalid bin Mahfouz develops the seventy-five-story Texas Commerce Bank building in Houston in partnership with the bank itself, which was founded by James Baker's family. At the time Baker owns approximately $7 million of the bank's stock.
1982 -- In January, George W. Bush sells 10 percent of Arbusto, his tiny, struggling oil company to New York investor Philip Uzielli, a longtime friend of James Baker, at a grossly inflated price.
On June 13, Crown Prince Fahd bin Abdul Aziz becomes king of Saudi Arabia.
1983 -- Prince Bandar is appointed ambassador to the United States by King Fahd in October.
On December 20, Donald Rumsfeld travels to Baghdad as a presidential special envoy to meet Saddam Hussein. Although Iraq is using chemical weapons almost daily, Rumsfeld does not raise the issue with Saddam. He returns in March 1984 to assure Iraq that U.S. protests against the use of chemical weapons should not interfere with a warm relationship between the two countries.
1984 -- With the approval of Vice President George H. W. Bush, Prince Bandar begins funding the right-wing contra rebels' attempts to topple the Sandinista government in Nicaragua on June 22 even though James Baker has warned that such an arrangement may constitute an impeachable offense.
1987 -- The Carlyle Group is founded by David Rubenstein and three other partners. It will become a private-sector home to some of the great icons of the Reagan-Bush era -- George H. W. Bush, James Baker, Frank Carlucci, Richard Darman, and John Major.
1990 -- Having been bailed out by a number of people and institutions linked to BCCI, Harken Energy, the small oil company of which George W. Bush is a director, astonishes oil-industry analysts by winning a lucrative exploration contract in January to drill offshore of Bahrain.
On June 20, despite warnings from Harken's general counsel against insider trading, George W. Bush unloads 212,140 shares of Harken stock for $848,560 just before the company announces major losses.
On August 2, Iraq invades Kuwait. "This will not stand," says President George H. W. Bush. As the United States and Saudi Arabia prepare for war against Iraq, Osama bin Laden warns the House of Saud not to invite American troops into Saudi Arabia and offers his Afghan Arab warriors instead. He is rebuffed.
On September 18, the Carlyle Group buys BDM International and its subsidiary Vinnell, companies that service the Saudi Air Force and train the Saudi Arabian National Guard.
On November 5, Rabbi Meir Kahane of the right-wing Jewish Defense League is shot and killed by a militant Islamist. He is the first casualty of Al Qaeda on American soil.
1991 -- The Gulf War begins on January 16.
In June, Khalid bin Mahfouz creates the Muwafaq (Blessed Relief) organization, which is later denounced by the U.S. Treasury for allegedly funding terrorists.
1992 -- Khalid bin Mahfouz is indicted in New York on July 2, for allegedly having fraudulently obtained $300 million from BCCI depositors.
1993 -- On February 26, the World Trade Center is bombed by militants including El Sayed Nosair, the man who killed Meir Kahane.
On March 11, James A. Baker joins the Carlyle Group as one of its first seven partners.
1995 -- On November 13, a car bomb in Riyadh, widely attributed to followers of Osama bin Laden, kills seven people, including five Americans, and wounds several American advisers with Vinnell, the Carlyle-owned firm that trains the Saudi Arabian National Guard.
1996 -- On August 23, Osama bin Laden signs a declaration of jihad against the United States.
1997 -- The Carlyle Group buys United Defense, makers of the Crusader gun and the Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
1998 -- On August 7, the seventh anniversary of the arrival of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War, Al Qaeda operatives bomb U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing about 260 and wounding 5,000. America responds less than two weeks later with cruise missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan.
2000 -- While campaigning for the presidency, George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, meet Sami Al-Arian and other Muslim leaders at a mosque in Tampa, Florida, on March 12. Al-Arian is later arrested and accused of being the U.S. head of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In September, the neoconservative Project for a New American Century releases an influential paper, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," a blueprint for U.S. global hegemony that urges, among other things, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Those affiliated with PNAC include Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz, all of whom will become key members of George W. Bush's administration.
On October 11, at the second presidential debate of the 2000 election, Bush wins over Arab Americans by saying he is against the use of secret evidence to prosecute alleged terrorists and that he is against racial profiling of Arab Americans.
On election day, November 7, Bush's courtship of Arab Americans pays off, particularly in Florida, where exit polls by the American Muslim Alliance say that more than 90 percent voted for Bush.
On December 12, the U.S. Supreme Court stops the recount of disputed votes in Florida, effectively awarding the presidency to George W. Bush.
On December 20, counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke presents National Security Adviser Sandy Berger with a plan to "roll back" Al Qaeda. The plan is postponed pending the arrival of the new administration, presented to the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and then ignored.
2001 -- On January 25, Richard Clarke follows up his briefing with Condoleezza Rice with a memo saying U.S. intelligence believes that there are now Al Qaeda sleeper cells in the United States.
On July 5, Clarke assembles officials from a dozen federal agencies in the White House Situation Room and tells them, "Something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon. "
On August 4, Bush sets out for Crawford, Texas, on the longest presidential vacation in thirty-two years. He does not return to the White House until September 3.
On August 6, Bush, still in Crawford, is given a briefing saying that bin Laden and Al Qaeda are planning an attack on American soil.
On September 4, Richard Clarke finally meets with the Principals Committee and presents his plan to attack Al Qaeda. No action is taken.
On September 11, Al Qaeda hijacks four airplanes. Two hit the World Trade Center towers, one hits the Pentagon, and one crashes near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Almost three thousand people are killed.
At about 2 p.m., Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld orders up plans to take out Saddam Hussein, not just Osama bin Laden. "Go massive," the notes quote Rumsfeld as saying, "sweep it all up, things related and not."
Two days later, on September 13, Prince Bandar meets President Bush for a private conversation on the Truman balcony in the White House. At the same time, a massive operation to evacuate 140 Saudis, including about two dozen members of the bin Laden family, has begun. The first flight leaves Tampa, Florida, for Lexington, Kentucky, that day.
On September 16, as part, of the White House-approved evacuation, Prince Ahmed bin Salman, a nephew of King Fahd's who is best known as the owner of famous racehorses, boards a flight in Lexington, Kentucky, to leave the United States. FBI officials meet and identify him, but he is not interrogated. Later, Al Qaeda boss Abu Zubaydah names Prince Ahmed as a liaison between Al Qaeda and the House of Saud and says that Prince Ahmed knew in advance that there would be attacks by Al Qaeda in the United States on September 11.
On September 19, Bush declares war: "Our war on terror ... will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated." However, the Visa Express program, through which Saudis are allowed to get a visa without even appearing at a consulate, is allowed to continue.
On October 7, U.S. and British forces begin air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
2002 -- On March 31, Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking Al Qaeda operative, is captured by Pakistani commandos, U.S. Special Forces, and FBI SWAT teams in the suburbs of Faisalabad, Pakistan.
On May 7, Prince Ahmed appears at the Kentucky Derby to see his horse War Emblem, a 20-1 shot, win.
On July 22, Prince Ahmed dies of an apparent heart attack in Riyadh at the age of forty-three. He is the first of three prominent Saudis named by Zubaydah as links between the royal family and Al Qaeda to die that week.
2003 -- On March 20, U.S forces begin bombing Baghdad.
On May 12, a suicide bomb set off by Al Qaeda kills at least 11 people in Riyadh and injures more than 120. The explosion takes place in a compound that houses mainly Arab families and is seen as a direct attack on the House of Saud rather than Westerners.
On July 25, the White House deletes twenty-eight pages in a nine-hundred-page congressional report on 9/11. According to Senator Bob Graham, the reason for the censorship was simple. "They are protecting a foreign government," he said. The government in question was clearly Saudi Arabia.
On December 13, U .S. forces capture Saddam Hussein.
On December 17, the State Department warns American families to leave Saudi Arabia. The decision has come after suicide bombings by Al Qaeda in May and November and is based on a review of the threat level to American interests in Saudi Arabia.
2004 -- On January 4, Aljazeera TV airs an audiotape purported to be from Osama bin Laden that refers to the recent capture of Saddam Hussein and calls on Muslims to "continue the jihad to check the conspiracies that are hatched against the Islamic nation." Bin Laden says the U.S. war against Iraq was the beginning of the "occupation" of Gulf states for their oil.
On January 14, the Senate Finance Committee asked the IRS for secret tax and financial records of Muslim charities and foundations, as part of a congressional probe into terrorist funding. Muslim-American leaders assailed the investigation as a "fishing expedition." "Are they now going to start a witch hunt of all the donors ... so that Muslims feel they're going to be targeted?" asked Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). (Dan Eggen and John Mintz, "Muslim Groups' IRS Files Sought," Washington Post, January 14, 2004.) CAIR is a member of the American Muslim Political Coordination Council, which endorsed George W. Bush in 2000.
According to the Wall Street Journal, federal banking regulators began examining tens of millions of dollars in transactions in Saudi Arabian embassy accounts at Riggs National Corp. that were not properly reported. The investigation began after reports showed that money from Princess Haifa's account at Riggs ended up with two 9/11 hijackers. Initially, the irregularities were thought to involve only a few thousand dollars. But the U.S. Treasury Department charged the bank with failing to observe money-laundering regulations that require analysis of transactions for suspicious characteristics. The Journal said that Riggs repeatedly failed "to file suspicious-activity reports" regarding tens of millions of dollars in Saudi accounts. (Glenn R. Simpson, "Probe of Saudi Embassy Widens," Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2004.) The bank is known for serving foreign embassies located in Washington. The president's uncle Jonathan Bush is the CEO of Riggs Investment, a subsidiary of the bank.
In February, the 9/11 commission continued its investigation. A source close to the commission said that it was being "stonewalled" by the Bush administration in terms of getting crucial information about the tragedy.
APPENDIX C : THE NUMBER-$1,477,100,000
What follows is a compilation of financial transactions through which individuals and entities connected with the House of Saud transferred money to individuals and entities closely tied to the House of Bush. The House of Bush is defined here as George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, James A. Baker III, Dick Cheney, and the major institutions that they are tied to, including the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, the Carlyle Group, and Halliburton. The House of Saud includes members of the Saudi royal family, companies controlled by them, and members of the Saudi merchant elite such as the bin Laden and bin Mahfouz families, whose fortunes are closely tied to the royal family.
The list that follows is by no means complete. It was not possible to obtain the particulars of many business dealings between the House of Bush and the House of Saud, and as a result, those figures are not included. For example, the client list of the Houston law firm of Baker Botts includes Saudi insurance companies, the Saudi American Bank, and members of the House of Saud itself, which Baker Botts is defending in the $1-trillion lawsuit filed by the families of the victims of 9/11. Because the payments made to Baker Botts are not publicly disclosed, they are not included. Likewise, Khalid bin Mahfouz was a partner in developing the Texas Commerce Bank skyscraper at a time when Baker was a major stockholder in the bank. Because the exact size of bin Mahfouz's investment could not be determined, it is not included.
It is worth adding that many other figures in the administration have close ties to Saudi Arabia through various other corporations that are not included in this list. Condoleezza Rice served on the board of directors of Chevron from 1991 to 2001. Among Chevron's business links to Saudi Arabia -- which date back to the 1930s -- are a 50 percent stake in Chevron Phillips Saudi Arabia to build a $650-million benzene and cyclohexane plant in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, and a joint venture with Nimir Petroleum, a Saudi company in which Khalid bin Mahfouz is a principal. These figures are not included. Finally, the Carlyle Group has owned a number of other major defense firms such as United Defense and Vought Aircraft that have had major contracts with Saudi Arabia, but their contracts are not included either. As a result, what follows is likely a conservative figure that may significantly understate the total sum involved.
The Carlyle Group: $1,268,600,000
Saudi Investors in Carlyle: $80 million
Former president George H. W. Bush, James Baker, and former prime minister John Major of Great Britain all visited Saudi Arabia on behalf of Carlyle, and according to founding partner David Rubenstein, the Saudis invested at least $80 million in the Carlyle Group. [1] With the exception of the bin Laden family, who extricated themselves from Carlyle not long after 9/11, Carlyle declined to disclose who the investors were. But other sources say that Prince Bandar, several other Saudi royals, and Abdulrahman and Sultan bin Mahfouz were prominent investors and that it was an explicit policy of the House of Saud to encourage Saudi investment in Carlyle.
Contracts between Carlyle-owned corporations Carlyle and Saudi Arabia-BDM (including its subsidiary Vinnell): $1,188,600,000
The Carlyle Group owned defense contractor BDM from September 1990 until early 1998. [2] One BDM subsidiary, Vinnell, has trained the Saudi National Guard since 1975 thanks to a controversial contract that allowed it to be the first U.S. private firm to train foreign forces. [3] While under Carlyle ownership, BDM's and Vinnell's contracts with Saudi Arabia included the following:
In 1994, BDM received a $46-million contract to "provide technical assistance and logistical support to the Royal Saudi Air Force." [4]
Between 1994 and 1998, Vinnell serviced a $819-million contract to provide training and support for the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG). [5]
In 1995, Vinnell signed a $163-million contract to modernize SANG. [6]
In 1995, BDM signed a $32.5-million contract to "augment Royal Saudi Air Force staff in developing, implementing, and maintaining logistics and engineering plans and programs." [7]
In 1996, BDM got a $44.4-million contract from the Saudis to build housing at Khamis Mshayt military base. [8]
In 1997, BDM received $18.7 million to support the Royal Saudi Air Force. [9]
In 1997, just before BDM was sold to defense giant TRW, the company signed a $65-million contract to "provide for CY 1998 Direct Manning Personnel in support of maintenance of the F-15 aircraft." [10]
Halliburton: $180 million
Vice President Dick Cheney served as CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. At press time, he continued to hold 433,333 shares of Halliburton in a charitable trust. [11] Among Halliburton's dealings with the Saudis, those whose details have been made public include:
In November 2000, Halliburton received $140 million to develop Saudi oil fields with Saudi Aramco.
In 2000, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root was hired, along with two Japanese firms, to build a $40-million ethylene plant. [12]
Harken Energy: $25 million
After George W. Bush became a director of Harken Energy, several entities and individuals connected to BCCI, the scandal- ridden bank in which Khalid bin Mahfouz was the largest stockholder, suddenly came to Harken's rescue. Among them, the Union Bank of Switzerland agreed to put up $25 million. When that financing fell through, Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, who was also close to bin Mahfouz, stepped in to help. [13]
Charitable Donations: $3.5 million
It is worth pointing out that in terms of charitable donations, the House of Saud has been truly bipartisan and has contributed to every presidential library over the last thirty years. Many members of the House of Saud have directed their largesse to charities important to powerful Americans, including a $23-million donation to the University of Arkansas soon after Bill Clinton became president. The donations below represent those from the House of Saud to charities of personal importance to the Bush family:
1989: King Fahd gave $1 million to Barbara Bush's campaign against illiteracy. [14]
1997: Prince Bandar gave $1 million to the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas. [15]
2002: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal gave $500,000 to Andover to fund a George Herbert Walker Bush scholarship. [16]
2003: Prince Bandar gave a $1-million oil painting of an American Buffalo hunt to President Bush for use in his presidential library after he leaves the White House. [17]
_______________
NOTES:
Appendix C
1. Interview with David Rubenstein.
2. New Republic, October 18, 1993; and Washington Post, November 22, 1997.
3. Washington Times, May 14, 2003.
4, PR Newswire, October 27, 1994.
5. Associated Press, November 14, 1995.
6. http://www.icij.org/dtaweb/icij_bow.asp ... on&01D=230 .
7. Defense Daily, June 23, 1995.
8. Boston Herald, December 10; and Pentagon press release, April 1, 1996, Contract Number 175-96.
9. Defense Daily, February 4, 1997.
10. Pentagon press release, December 24, 1997.
11. CNN.com, October 25, 2003; FDCH Political Transcripts, September 25, 2003; and New York Times, October 1, 2003.
12. Boston Herald, December 10, 2001.
13. Platt's Oilgram News, January 29, 2003; and Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1991.
14. Time, September 15, 2003.
15. Ibid.
16. http://www.andover.edu/news/bush_scholars.htm .
17. Associated Press, July 18, 2003, Friday Final Edition.