BUSH AND OSAMA LINKS

Bush-bin Laden family links

Arbusto

In 1979 George W Bush was running an oil company called Arbusto. This was extremely unsuccessful, but he nonetheless managed to attracted some investors, and some accounts claim this included a member of the bin Laden family:

Salem bin Laden, Osama's older brother, was an investor in Arbusto Energy. - the Texas oil company started by George W. Bush. Arbusto means "Bush" in Spanish. Salem bin Laden died in an airplane crash in Texas in 1988.
http://www.rense.com/general14/bushsformer.htm

However, the truth was rather more complex, as a Texas Observer article made clear:

After the death of Mohammed bin Laden, control of the company passed to Salem bin Laden, Osama’s half brother. The roots of the first known Bush-bin Laden convergence date back to the mid-1970s, when the two clans were linked by a Houston businessman named James R. Bath. Bath had befriended George W. Bush in the late 1960s, when they both served in the Texas Air National Guard. By 1976, when Gerald Ford appointed the elder George Bush as CIA director, Bath was acting as a business agent for Salem bin Laden’s interests in Texas. (Texas and Saudi Arabia were well-connected by this point through U.S. oil companies and related industries with operations in both locations.) In 1991 Time magazine and later other publications reported on allegations by Bath’s former business partner that the Bush CIA hired Bath in 1976 to create offshore companies to move CIA funds and aircraft between Texas and Saudi Arabia. After W. lost a bid for Congress, he decided to launch an oil company in Midland in 1979. For $50,000, Bath bought a 5 percent stake in W.’s Arbusto (Spanish for "Bush") partnerships. At the time, Bath also served as business agent for several prominent Saudis, including Salem bin Laden. In exchange for a percentage of the deals, Bath made U.S. investments for these clients in his own name, according to Time. Although Bath has said that he invested his own money in Arbusto, not Saudi money, the fact that he was Salem’s agent at the time has fueled speculation that Osama bin Laden’s eldest brother was an early investor in W.’s first oil venture. It was around the time of this investment, incidentally, that Osama bin Laden made his first trip to the Khyber Pass, where he would soon join the Mujaheddin and the CIA in the holy war that expelled the Soviets from Afghanistan. (Salem, for his part, owned a house in Marble Falls, and died in a 1988 plane crash near San Antonio.)
http://web.archive.org/web/20061002024618/http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=480

The investment was made in the name of Bush friend James Bath, and (according to him) using his own money. He was an agent for Salem bin Laden at the time, but claims that is was bin Laden's cash are "speculation", at least according to this article. So where does the idea come from?

Enter Charles "Bill" White.

1978

Charles W. "Bill" White, a former Annapolis graduate and US Navy pilot, graduates from Harvard's business school. He is then introduced to Jim Bath who is looking for someone to manage his real estate company. Bath hires White as his partner. Money from the bin Laden and bin Mahfouz families is invested in Bath's real estate company. Among other things, Bath buys the Saudis an airport, office and apartment buildings, and invests in Texas banks. Eventually, Salem Bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz buy an enormous mansion in River Oaks, Houston's most affluent neighborhood...

1986

Bill White and Jim Bath have a falling out. Bath then launches 28 frivolous lawsuits against White, leading to White's financial ruin and expulsion from Houston's business community. White fights the lawsuits, refusing to take a huge pay off to keep silent about his knowledge of Bath's relationship to the Saudis and Bush family.
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/saudi.html

Some time after their "falling out", Bill White made various accusations about Bath, telling CBCs "the fifth estate" this about the Arbusto investment:

NOW JIM BATH HAS EFFECTIVELY DENIED HE PUT SAUDI MONEY INTO GEORGE W. BUSH’S COMPANIES AT THAT POINT.

I don’t believe that he’s either denied it or admitted to it. My understanding is that he’s dodged the question by refusing to answer questions pertaining to the funding of Dubya’s companies. I do know that Time Magazine, when they began to investigate this got George Bush Junior to go on the record having denied being in business with Bath and saying that they were just personal friends. Once he was confronted with the documents, then Bush recanted and admitted that Bath had put money in. But my understanding is that in the aftermath of the 9-11 catastrophe, the White House denied that any of that money was Saudi money. They are maintaining that it was all Bath’s money. “Well I know that it was Saudi money because Bath had no money of his own. We were in business together. I saw his personal financial statements. I knew the amount of cash he had available at any given time. “

AND HOW DO YOU KNOW THERE WAS SAUDI MONEY THERE?

Well I know that it was Saudi money because Bath had no money of his own. We were in business together. I saw his personal financial statements. I knew the amount of cash he had available at any given time. And he also confided in me that the money invested both in our Real Estate business and in Dubya’s Energy business was Saudi money. That was the only money there was.

SO EVEN THE FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS YOU SEE REFLECTED IN THOSE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS HE WOULD NOT HAVE HAD THAT AS … CASH?

No, if you look at his financial statement it’ll show that he has maybe fourteen thousand dollars in cash. He has millions of dollars in assets but the only cash available is this Bin Laden revolving line of credit.
http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/white.pdf

White has substantially more to say. Please follow the above link to get the full picture. Nonetheless, what we have here is still just the unsupported word of a former Bath business partner, perhaps with considerable reason to bear a grudge: not enough for us to say Salem bin Laden involvement in Arbusto has been established as a fact.

And we're not alone.

Craig Unger has been a fierce critic of Bush's Saudi connections, and has probably done more research into this area than anyone, but here's what he wrote on the supposed bin Laden links in "House of Bush, House of Saud":

Closely tied as they were to both the royal family and the United States, at this point the bin Ladens had only indirect connections to the Bush family and its allies. James Bath, the American business representative of Salem bin Laden, knew both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush. Khalid bin Mahfouz, who was close to both the bin Ladens and the royal family, had helped finance the Houston skyscraper for the Texas Commerce Bank, in which James Baker had a significant stake. He also had ties to Bath.

But these Bush-bin Laden "relationships" were indirect - two degrees of separation, perhaps - and at times have been overstated. Critics have asserted that money may have gone from Khalid bin Mahfouz and Salem bin Laden through James Bath into Arbusto Energy, the oil company started by George W. Bush, but no evidence has ever been found to back up that charge, which appears to be unfounded.

[A footnote adds] Bath had fronted for Saudi billionaires Salem bin Laden and Khaled bin Mahfouz on other deals, but in this case he says "One hundred percent of those funds were mine. It was a purely personal investment." Bin Laden and bin Mahfouz, he insists, had nothing to do with either the elder George Bush or his son. "They never met Bush," Bath says. "Ever. And there was no reason to. At that point Bush was a young guy just out of Yale, a struggling entrepreneur trying to get a drilling fund."

Breakfast on 9/11

Most of the Bush/ bin Laden links date back some time, but one is far more recent, occurring on the morning of 9/11 itself:

on the morning of the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- George Herbert Bush met with Osama bin Ladin’s own brother at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington D.C.
www.0nenation.com (Web Archive copy)

What can have been going on? Were bin Ladin and Bush discussing the coming attacks over some secret breakfast, just the two of them? Find out a little more about this meeting and it seems unlikely.

Like everyone else in the United States, the group stood transfixed as the events of September 11 unfolded. Present were former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker III, and representatives of the bin Ladin family. This was not some underground presidential bunker or Central Intelligence Agency interrogation room. It was the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, D.C., the plush setting for the annual investor conference of one of the most powerful, well-connected, and secretive companies in the world: the Carlyle Group...
http://web.archive.org/web/20050101105420/http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=6793&hed=Carlyle%27s+Way

Carlyle emerged from the shadows in spite of itself on September 11, 2001. That day, the group had organized a meeting at Washington's Ritz Carlton Hotel with five hundred of its largest investors. Frank Carlucci and James Baker III played masters of ceremony. George Bush senior made a lightning appearance at the beginning of the day. The presentation was quickly interrupted, but one detail escaped no one. One of the guests wore the name bin Ladin on his badge. It was Shafiq bin Ladin, one of Osama's many brothers.
http://www.culturechange.org/CarlyleEmpire.html

So "George Herbert Bush met with Osama bin Ladin’s own brother" would seem to be more accurately described by saying they were both at the same meeting, along with hundreds of other people. Did they actually meet in person? Bush reportedly wasn't in attendance for long ("Bush Sr. left the meetings early") so there may have been little opportunity. They may still have done so, of course, but in order to show that we'll need some evidence: misleading quotes are not enough.

Others

While serving as governor of Texas, George W. Bush met with high-level Al Qaeda leaders, hoping to get support to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. (Michael Moore, Dude, Where’s My Country?)
www.0nenation.com (Web Archive copy)

It was actually Taleban leaders, not al Qaeda, and Moore presents no evidence Bush met with them at all, simply assuming he might have done because he was the Governor:

Taleban to Texas for pipeline talks

A senior delegation of Afghanistan's Taleban movement has gone to the United States for talks.

The delegation is to meet officials of the company which wants to build a pipeline to export gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.

A spokesman for the company -- Unocal in Texas -- said it had agreed with Turkmenistan to sell its gas.

Last month an Argentinian company (Bridas) said it would soon sign a deal to build the pipeline.Unocal is said to have already begun teaching Afghan men technical skills.

The BBC regional correspondent says a pipeline deal would boost the Afghan economy, but peace must be established first, and that still seems a distant prospect.