Steve Coll - The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

T WO JOURNALISTS now on the staff of the Washington Post made extraordinary contributions to the research for this book. Robin Shulman conducted interviews and dug up documents in Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Spain, France, and the United States. Her persistence, empathy, and eye for detail have made the book immeasurably stronger. After I drafted the manuscript, Julie Tate recontacted my interview subjects to deepen the research and recheck facts and interpretations. Her attention to detail and nuance, her passion for the subject matter, and her astonishing work ethic made an enormous difference.

Born from mid-1940s to 1950:

S ONS : Salem, Ali, Thabit, Mahrous, Hassan, Omar, Bakr, Khaled, Yeslam, Ghalib, Yahya, Abdulaziz, Issa, Tareq

D AUGHTERS : Aysha, Fatima, Sheikha, Suadd, Tayyeba, Wafa, Nour

Born from 1951 to 1959:

S ONS : Ahmad, Ibrahim, Shafiq, Osama, Khalil, Saleh, Haider

D AUGHTERS : Salma, Zeenat, Ruqqueiya, Randa, Zubaida, Najiah, Samiah, Muna, Saleha, Mariam, Fowziyah, Raja, Huda, Seema

Born from 1959 to 1967:

S ONS : Saad, Abdullah, Yasir, Mohammad

D AUGHTERS : Raedah, Eman, Aetedal, Sahar, Ilham, Sanaa, Malak, Muneera

T HERE IS NO uniform system for transliteration between English and Arabic. The spellings of Arabic-originated place-and proper names relied upon in these pages are to some extent arbitrary, typically chosen to employ the simplest or most common forms. Occasionally, to avoid changing the original text in a quoted document, names may be spelled inconsistently. The Bin Ladens themselves offer an acute case. It is not unusual for family members to render their names in two different spellings in the same English-language document, even in official court filings. Binladin has been one common formulation; it is the preferred English spelling for the familys flagship company, the Saudi Binladin Group. Yet Binladen, Bin Ladin, Bin Laden, and even Benladin are sometimes employed. I chose Bin Laden as the primary form because that is most familiar to American readers and also because when the familys name is written in Arabic script, it appears as two words. For the first names of Mohameds children, I relied upon the spellings in English-language shareholder documents submitted by the family to a U.S. federal court.

October 1984 to February 1985

L YNN P EGHINY played piano most mornings at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress Hotel in Orlando, Florida. She was twenty-four, dark-haired, slim, and spirited. She had grown up in Melbourne, on the Atlantic coast, and studied music at the University of Central Florida. She was drawn to the piano and made a living at it, if barely. The breakfast shift in the Hyatts cavernous atrium was normally subduedsleepy tourists fortifying themselves for a day at Disney World, businessmen murmuring about real estate. One morning in October 1984, however, a middle-aged man with bright eyes and a mop of black hair walked over and asked in an unfamiliar accent if she would play Beethovens Fr Elise . He listened appreciatively, then handed her a twenty-dollar tip. Do you play private parties? he asked.

They exchanged business cards. His name was Salem Bin Laden. He had a house just west of Orlando, he told her, not far from Disney World, and he happened to be entertaining some visitors from his native Saudi Arabia who were members of that oil-endowed countrys royal family. He owned a piano and hoped she would play at an evening party. A few days later, she drove out State Road 50, which ran due west through miles of orange groves toward Lake County. Salems home, near the decaying railroad town of Winter Garden, turned out to be an ochre-walled five-acre estate with horse stables, a tiled swimming pool, weeping willows, and palm trees. The main house, a Mediterranean Revival built during the 1920s, had russet Spanish-tile roofing, cupolas, and arched, shaded walkways; it rested on a knoll above a sparkling lake.

Leeen! Leeen! Salem exclaimed when she arrived, waving her into the dining room, where his guests were taking breakfast at four in the afternoon. Come, come, he said. Sit with us.1 He placed her next to his guest of honor. Abdul Aziz Al-Ibrahim was a brother of Princess Jawhara Al-Ibrahim, the fourth and reputedly the favorite wife of Saudi Arabias King Fahd. The Ibrahims had ascended from obscurity after Fahd fell for Jawhara; she left her husband for the king and gave birth to a son, Abdulaziz, upon whom Fahd doted. Princess Jawharas place at the kings side created opportunities for her brothers. They became influential businessmen, exciting jealousy and gossip in royal circles; they had recently started to invest in Orlando real estate.2 Salem Bin Laden, whose familys construction firm relied upon access to the kings court, cultivated the Ibrahims friendship.