Rene — Bin Laden + Bechtel Link
Topic(s): Iraq | Comments Off on Rene — Bin Laden + Bechtel LinkNew Yorker Issue of 2003-05-05
Posted 2003-04-28
DEPT. OF CONNECTIONS
THE CONTRACTORS
by Jane Mayer
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?030505ta_talk_mayer
Back when Americans were still debating whether there was just cause for a
preëmptive strike against Iraq, few arguments were scrutinized more
closely than the Bush Administration?s contention that there were covert
links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. At the C.I.A., analysts pored over aerial
satellite photographs. At the Treasury Department, experts sifted through
financial records. At the National Security Agency, Arab-speaking
linguists eavesdropped on phone conversations. But, even after
Secretary of State Colin Powell put his credibility on the line, in a
damning, dot-connecting speech before the United Nations last
February, questions persisted about the solidity of the alleged links
between Saddam and Osama.
Now there is a new and demonstrable connection, but it is not the kind
that the Bush Administration had in mind. In fact, it is more likely to
fuel the speculations of conspiracy theorists than it is to put their
fears to rest. It turns out that a money trail runs albeit rather
circuitously from the lucrative business of rebuilding Iraq to the fortune
behind Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden?s estranged family, a sprawling,
extraordinarily wealthy Saudi Arabian dynasty, is a substantial investor
in a private equity firm founded by the Bechtel Group of San Francisco.
Bechtel is also the global construction and engineering company to which
the U.S. government recently awarded the first major
multimillion-dollar contract to reconstruct war-ravaged Iraq. In a closed
competitive bidding process, the United States Agency for
International Development chose Bechtel to rebuild the major elements of
Iraq?s infrastructure, including its roads, railroads, airports,
hospitals, and schools, and its water and electrical systems. In the first
phase of the contract, the U.S. government will pay Bechtel nearly thirty-
five million dollars, but experts say that the cost is likely to reach six
hundred and eighty million during the next year and a half.
When the contract was awarded, two weeks ago, the Administration did not
mention that the bin Laden family has an ongoing relationship with
Bechtel. The bin Ladens have a ten- million-dollar stake in the Fremont
Group, a San Francisco-based company formerly called Bechtel Investments,
which was until 1986 a subsidiary of Bechtel. The Fremont Group?s Web
site, which makes no mention of the bin Ladens, notes that ?though
now independent, Fremont enjoys a close relationship with Bechtel.?
A spokeswoman for the company confirmed that Fremont?s
?majority ownership is the Bechtel family.? And a list of the corporate
board of directors shows substantial overlap. Five of Fremont?s
eight directors are also directors of Bechtel. One Fremont director,
Riley Bechtel, is the chairman and chief executive officer of the
Bechtel Group, and is a member of the Bush Administration: he
was appointed this year to serve on the President?s Export Council.
In addition, George Shultz, the Secretary of State in the
Reagan Administration, serves as a director both of Fremont and of
the Bechtel Group, where he once was president and still is listed
as senior counsellor.
Rick Kopf, the general counsel of the Fremont Group, which manages some
eleven billion dollars in assets, confirms that the bin Laden family
invested about ten million dollars in one of Fremont?s private funds
before September 11, 2001. He noted that the bin Laden family has not
enlarged its stake since then, but he declined to provide additional
details about its association with the firm. He also chose not to discuss
the origin or the nature of the relationship between the bin Laden and
Bechtel families, both of which made fortunes in huge construction
projects in the Arab world. The Fremont Group evidently does not go in for
connecting the dots. As Kopf said, ?Ownership is private and is not
disclosed.?