<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<TITLE>Message</TITLE>
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1170" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2>by Jane Mayer Issue of 2003-05-05 Posted
2003-04-28<SPAN class=178171006-02052003><FONT
color=#0000ff> </FONT></SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial><FONT size=2><SPAN class=178171006-02052003><A
href="http://newyorker.com/printable/?talk/030505ta_talk_mayer">Http://newyorker.com/printable/?talk/030505ta_talk_mayer</A> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>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."</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>