-Caveat Lector-
>From sfweekly.com
Originally published by SF Weekly September 19, 2001
�2001 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.
{ http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2001-09-19/mecklin.html }
The Tangled Path to a Response
As we prepare to retaliate for last week's atrocities, let's take time to be
sure of our targets
By John Mecklin
At this distance in time and place from last Tuesday's terror, I feel an
unjournalistic temptation to silence. So much has been written and broadcast
by and about people who were at or near the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, so much published in the local media, reflecting almost every
reaction, reasonable and otherwise. At a certain point, sheer repetition
threatens to demean the victims of tragedy, even mass, history-altering
tragedy.
So, because I have no experience of the World Trade Center and Pentagon
bombings that anyone with a television could not also possess, I have decided
to relate something from my past, hoping that it might be new to you, and
might help set some frames of reference, as the country ponders what it will
do and become in the initial months of the coming bin Laden War.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
In the late 1980s, when I lived in Houston and earned my keep as an
investigative reporter, I spent months looking into possible connections
among Texas business and political figures and Middle Eastern notables
associated with the fascinatingly fraudulent Bank of Credit and Commerce
International. In the end, my BCCI investigations didn't add up to a whole
lot; chasing worldwide fraud is not a particularly rewarding pursuit for a
local reporter without an expense account. As an offshoot of my research,
however, I ran upon, and wound up writing some stories about, a Houston
airplane broker named James R. Bath.
Among his varied business activities, Mr. Bath represented, as a sort of
business agent, at least four prominent and wealthy Saudi Arabian citizens in
their U.S. investments. According to public records, those citizens included
Salem (sometimes spelled Salim) bin Laden, the favored son of the founder of
a great Saudi construction empire, and one of dozens of half-brothers of a
then-obscure man named Osama bin Laden.
Bath's associations did not exclusively involve Saudi petrodollars. Among
other things, he also counted as a friend and minor business partner another
man who, except for his family connections, was not well known to the wider
public: George W. Bush.
A story I co-wrote for the Houston Post in October 1990 put the relationship
between George W. Bush and Jim Bath this way: "George W. Bush said he met
Bath [in the 1970s] when both were fighter pilots at the ANG [Air National
Guard] base at Ellington [Field, a former Air Force base near Houston]. The
younger Bush ... described Bath as a friend who is "a lot of fun.' George W.
Bush said he last saw Bath about three years ago, and speaks to him perhaps
once a year."
For that story, Bush said he had never been in business with Bath, American
agent to part of the bin Laden fortune. The assertion was less than
completely true, if subsequent stories in Time magazine and the Houston
Chronicle are to be believed.
"In sworn depositions, Bath said he represented four prominent Saudis as a
trustee and that he would use his name on their investments. In return, he
said, he would receive a 5 percent interest in their deals," a Houston
Chronicle piece about a lawsuit between Bath and a business partner said.
"Tax documents and personal financial records show that Bath personally had a
5 percent interest in Arbusto '79 Ltd., and Arbusto '80 Ltd., limited
partnerships controlled by George W. Bush, President Bush's eldest son.
Arbusto means "bush' in Spanish.
"Bath invested $50,000 in the limited partnerships, according to the
documents. There is no available evidence to show whether the money came from
Saudi interests."
Time, which first confirmed the Bath/ Bush investment connection, wrote this
about the airplane broker: "Bath controlled a fleet of companies connected to
his aircraft business, and he enjoyed unusual carte blanche to direct the
U.S. investments of several wealthy Middle Easterners. Associates confirm
that Bath has brokered more than $150 million in private plane deals in
recent years, concentrated in sales and leases to Middle Eastern royalty and
other influential figures. ... The firm that incorporated Bath's companies in
the Cayman Islands is the same one that set up a money-collecting front
company for Oliver North in the Iran-contra affair."
The Chronicle and Time pieces (and to some degree, alas, the story I wrote 11
years ago) have a sort of breathless, agape tone, as if Bath's connections
were almost magically far-reaching. "Bath, while insisting he is nothing more
than a "small, obscure businessman,' is associated with some of the most
powerful figures in the U.S. and Middle East," Time observed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Through subsequent experience, some of it involved with covering the Persian
Gulf War, I came to know, much more completely, that the connections among
the Saudi and American oil industries are many, and intricate, and of long
standing. A decade ago, a tenuous, friend-of-a-friend association between the
lower levels of the bin Laden and Bush families did not wind up meaning much.
In many senses, it probably has less meaning now.
Spokesmen for the bin Laden family have repeatedly stressed that the family
ostracized Osama in 1993 when he became a fugitive and began activities in
Sudan before going to Afghanistan. "The family is absolutely mortified by
what has happened in New York, and totally rejects Osama's activities and
ideology. I know that Osama has no business connections with them in any
shape or form," a London in-law to the bin Ladens said last week.
But if I am not suggesting a direct or nefarious connection between George W.
Bush and anyone named bin Laden -- and I truly am not -- there is a reason
I've written today about obscure facts from 11 years ago. I recount these
facts because you will be hearing a lot in coming weeks and months about
people, organizations, and entire countries with "links" and "connections" to
Osama bin Laden. Those with such links and connections may well be marked out
for arrest, or abduction, or annihilation.
But proving, with a reasonable degree of certainty, that such linkage amounts
to aid for terrorism takes time and money. The tangle of financial and other
relationships that characterizes al Qaeda, the shadowy movement headed by bin
Laden, is complex beyond the general imagination. As investigation of the
World Trade Center and Pentagon atrocities continues, the arc of relationship
between enemies will, at times, veer oddly -- even ironically -- close to
friends, or to those who may dislike U.S. policy in the Middle East but would
never countenance the slaughter of innocents.
For example: It is no particular secret that at least some of bin Laden's
financing has come from wealthy Saudis. It is regularly speculated in the
international press, in fact, that Saudi businessmen are essentially paying
his organization to refrain from targeting the Saudi kingdom and its royal
family. Is paying protection a "link," or an understandable reaction to
threats from a madman with a worldwide following? Is knowing about such
payments, but not moving to stop them, a "link"?
Is there any reason, except the political, to believe that retaliation for
last Tuesday's attacks will be less valid if investigators spend weeks or
even months exploring such links, and making sure the targets we choose
represent real, and not just possible, enemies?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Lest anyone misunderstand, let it be known, and clearly, that I have no
patience -- at all -- with the arguments of those who counsel a judicial,
rather than military, response to the evil acts that killed 5,000 innocents
last week. My sentiments are well expressed by this quote, contained in a
recent Peter Maas piece in the online magazine Slate: "This may not be
politically correct, but I don't want justice here," Maas quoted a special
forces captain as saying. "These people do not need to be brought to justice
or apprehended. They need to be killed. That's what you do to your enemy in
war -- you destroy him. And this is a war."
If it is a war, it's a peculiar kind, one in which the enemy may be the
brother of a friend of a friend, and relative unknowns may step quickly to
the center of the world stage. When I was in Houston just 11 years ago, after
all, Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush were at best footnotes to the
footnotes of history.
In such conflict, it would seem, there is special reason to take care, to
strike only at documented demons. Smite, yes, but verify.
For memory is long, and the killing of innocents creates enemies who cannot
forget.
Ever.
{ http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2001-09-19/mecklin.html }
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