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FBI Told to Back Off Bin Ladens After Bush's Election
LONDON, Nov 7 (News Agencies) - Special agents in the United States probing relatives of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden before September 11 were told to back off soon after George W. Bush became president, the BBC reported Tuesday.
The BBC's current affairs program, Newsnight, said that Bush at one point had a number of connections with Saudi Arabia's prominent bin Laden family, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
It added there was a suspicion that U.S. strategic interest in Saudi Arabia, which has the world's largest oil reserve, dulled its inquiries into individuals with suspected terrorist connections - so long as the U.S. was safe.
Newsnight said it had obtained evidence that the FBI was on the trail of bin Laden family members living in the United States before, as well as after, the September 11 terrorist attacks.
It added that Bush made his first million 20 years ago with an oil company partly funded by the chief U.S. representative of Salem bin Laden, Osama's brother.
Bush also received fees as director of a subsidiary of Carlyle Corporation, a little-known private company which in just a few years since its founding has become one of America's biggest defense contractors, and his father, former U.S. president George H. Bush senior, is also a paid advisor, the program said.
The connection became embarrassing when it was revealed that the bin Ladens held a stake in Carlyle, sold just after September 11, it added.
Newsnight said it had been told by a highly placed source in a U.S. intelligence agency there had always been "constraints" on investigating Saudis, but under President George W. Bush it had become much worse.
After the elections, the intelligence agencies were told to "back off" from investigating the bin Laden family, and that angered field agents, the program added.
The policy was reversed after September 11, it reported.
The former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah from 1987 to 1989, Michael Springman, told
Newsnight, "In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants.
"People who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained there. I complained here in Washington... to the Inspector General and to Diplomatic Security and I was ignored."
Newsnight also said it had seen a document that showed U.S. special agents were investigating a close relative of Osama bin Laden, identified only as Abdullah, because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which the program said was a suspected terrorist organization.
In Riyadh, the former chief of the Saudi Secret Service said that bin Laden had no links with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), nor with any other U.S. agency.
"His presence in the area [Pakistan and Afghanistan] and his activities did not call on him to have contacts with these bodies," Prince Turki al-Faisal said in an interview with the English-language Arab News and London-based Saudi-owned MBC TV.
"We had no information that he [bin Laden] had contacts with any foreign government agency, except with Pakistan," Prince Turki said in the serialized interview.
Turki said that he met bin Laden several times in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan before he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994.
Bin Laden is "a gentle, enthusiastic young man, not talkative and who did not raise his voice while talking. Bin Laden is generally a 'nice guy'," said Turki.
Turki said bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1989 aiming to "defend Muslims all over the world against injustice."
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