Bin Laden as Fantasy Figure

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article18305.htm (the foot note references are also there.) It is originally
from LeMonde Diplomatique which is a subscription only site.


Bin Laden as a Fantasy Figure

Riches beyond belief

Most of the factoids that have become canon about Osama bin Laden and
the financing of terror were estimates, guesstimates or simply made up,
as in the case of his presumed $300m personal fortune. But these
fantasies have driven real and dangerous actions.

By Ibrahim Warde

09/04/07 "Le Monde diplomatique" -- - Michael Lewis, in Liar's Poker,
his classic portrait of Wall Street in the 1980s, described how he invented
"logical lies" as an investment banker to explain otherwise inexplicable
events to nervous clients. Asked why the dollar fell, he would confidently
say: "Several Arabs had sold massive holdings of gold for which they
received dollars. They were selling those dollars for marks and driving the
dollar lower." In his words: "Most of the time when markets move, no one
has any idea why. A man who can tell a good story can make a good
living as a broker. And it's amazing what people will believe... selling out
of the Middle East was an old standby. Since no one ever had any clue
what the Arabs were doing with their money or why, no story involving
Arabs could ever be refuted." (1).

That story was unavoidable in the wake of the 11 September 2001
attacks. No one knew anything specific about them. The magnitude of the
destruction suggested that a huge financial and logistical infrastructure
had been at work. With the involvement of Osama bin Laden, usually
described as a Saudi billionaire and terrorist financier, and the
participation of 15 Saudi hijackers, the plausibility of the financial
argument coincided with a common stereotype. As Jack Shaheen's
comprehensive study of the portrayal of Arabs by Hollywood suggests,
they had long been associated with "vile oil sheikhs with an eye for
western blondes and arms deals and intent on world domination, or with
crazed terrorists" (2). By joining two of the three stereotypes, the
billionaire and the bomber (the third was the belly dancer), the events of
9/11 seemed to verify the truth of the caricature.

An instant canon on terrorist financing was established in the days after
the attacks. The laundry list was familiar and mindlessly repeated: the Bin
Laden $300m fortune, business fronts legal and illegal, Islamic charities,
Saudis, rich Arabs, hawalas, drugs, gold and diamonds, etc. From the
popular press to prestigious thinktanks, the lists were almost identical.
Repetition looked like corroboration. The lackadaisical way in which the
discourse on terrorist finance had been constructed contrasted with the
authoritative way in which the dubious facts were cited and recited.

After 2004 there was considerable new information available about the
financial war on terror, but such evidence had little impact on perceptions
or policies. Key players such as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill,
former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, and Michael Scheuer, who
headed the "virtual Bin Laden station" at the Central Intelligence Agency,
published memoirs or contributed to books debunking much of what was
commonly believed.

The publication of the September 11 Commission report in August 2004
helped a clearer understanding of the reality and contradicted much of
the canon. The report, complemented by a terrorist financing monograph,
was based on "a comprehensive review of government materials on
terrorist financing from essentially every law enforcement, intelligence
and policy agency involved in the effort".

The story lives on

The report and monograph made important points: they showed how
little money is needed for terror attacks; they debunked the urban legend
of the Bin Laden personal fortune; and they hinted at the politicisation of
terrorist financing inquiries. Since Bin Laden had been singled out in 1998
as Public Enemy Number One, the financial war was driven by the belief
that his $300m fortune was the core of the al-Qaida funding network.
The report confirmed that the figure was fictive. Yet the story lives on. A
Google search in April 2006 yielded 154,000 hits.

The $300m factoid seems to have originated in 1996, when a State
Department analyst inserted it in a fact sheet on Bin Laden (3). It was
arrived at by a rough calculation based on approximate figures. The
analyst divided assets of the Bin Laden group (estimated at $5bn) by the
number of sons (estimated at 20). That gave $250m, which he rounded
up to $300m. The calculation rested on estimates and dubious
assumptions about the family, inheritance laws and practices, the actual
worth of the privately-held company and its ownership structure. Though
it was not even a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the figure soon
gained absolute status.

Most accounts of Bin Laden after 11 September describe a cave-dwelling
heir and tycoon with close ties to the Saudi establishment who ran his
business empire and made shrewd moves in the stock market while
plotting terrorism. The enduring legend became that "of the world's
richest terrorist, a business-savvy nomad who has used a vast inheritance
and a constellation of companies to finance a global network of violence"
(4).

With almost no exceptions, every news article, every thinktank report,
every book of revelations on terrorist financing, has repeated the
assertion that Osama bin Laden had a $300m personal fortune, the basis
of the financing for al-Qaida. That figure has been unchanged since
1996: despite a life of danger, Bin Laden's wealth stayed remarkably
stable: no gains or losses, no expenses or subsidies to Taliban hosts, no
confiscations and no accretions dented or inflated it.

The terrorist-finance literature was a form of magic realism - a mix of
rich detail, surrealism and fantasy. Numbers were necessary, even when
invented, if only to lend precise cachet to reports or analyses and, to
paraphrase George Orwell, give the "appearance of solidity to pure wind".
The lawsuit filed on 15 August
2002 against several Saudi princes, banks and charities
(Burnett v Al Baraka Investment and Development Corporation), which
came to be called "the lawsuit of the 21st century", sought "an amount in
excess of $100trn" from dozens of defendants (5). The lawsuit was
thoroughly prepared and lavishly financed. Yet on the day after it was
filed, the attorneys issued a correction, claiming that a clerical error had
misstated the amount asked: the plaintiffs were only asking for $1trn.
Perhaps the lawyers had realised that the initial amount exceeded the
GNP of all countries in the world combined.

At the time of 9/11, the Bush administration was bent on implementing
an agenda of financial deregulation which included dismantling much of
the existing anti-money laundering apparatus. The attacks caused a
sharp policy U-turn. With the zeal of the newly converted, those very
people who had been intent on dismantling the legislative apparatus
found themselves hastily and vigorously expanding it.

More truthiness than truth

Throughout the war on terror, organised crime analogies came easily to
law enforcement agencies, as well as to influential pundits. Michael
Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the most influential
intellectuals in the early days of the war on terror, described Osama bin
Laden as "the CEO of a multinational terrorist corporation... very
imaginative at finding ways to make money from his terrorist ventures...
The best way to think of the terror network is as a collection of mafia
families" (6).

In the 1980s the focus was on Central and Latin American drug lords.
After 9/11 the war on drugs was overshadowed by the threat of Islamic
fundamentalism. The massive shift of resources resulted in a substantial
mismatch. Those government agents who did have some international
experience and cultural-linguistic skills were typically fluent in Spanish
and had no experience of the Islamic world. New experts appeared who
fitted the description of management scholar Henry Mintzberg: "An
expert has also been defined as someone who knows more and more
about less and less until finally he or she knows everything about
nothing. Perhaps this means that if you understand only certain discrete
chunks, ultimately you understand nothing" (7).

Since none of the "$300m fortune" was traceable, a new industry
purported to reveal the secrets of its whereabouts. Some practitioners
were partisan hacks with a transparent political agenda; others were
imaginative writers eager for a scoop. Those who made up the original
allegations seemed well-informed and were asked for further revelations.
Steven Emerson, a ubiquitous terrorist expert, said that immediately after
9/11 he "fielded 1,000 calls, many from news organisations" (8).

Another founding mythographer was Jack Kelley, star reporter of USA
Today, the largest circulation daily in the US, who produced countless
scoops until, in 2004, his paper discovered a "pattern of lies and deceit".
He found it easy to write about terrorism and financing. Hiding behind
confidential and anonymous sources, he broke many of the stories which
have since entered the journalistic bloodstream. They included an
eyewitness account of young Palestinian suicide bombers and their
culture of death; the revelation that prominent Saudi businessmen "worth
more than $5bn" continued to transfer tens of millions of dollars to Bin
Laden as "protection money to stave off attacks on their businesses in
Saudi Arabia"; and the discovery of computer records in Afghan caves
showing links between Chicago-based Islamic charities and al-Qaida (9).
For his suicide bomb eyewitness account, he was a Pulitzer prize finalist.

With the 9/11 attacks, the lines between fact and fiction were further
blurred since the unbelievability of the events lent credence to many of
the wildest assertions about Arabs and Muslims. Nobody then knew much
about al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden. Americans were ready to believe he
was a James Bond villain, rich enough to fund his own wars. Indeed, his
hidden wealth has captured the imagination of many novelists. Chris
Ryan's Greed (a bestseller, at least according to its cover) bears more than
a passing resemblance to non-fiction purporting to reveal the secrets of
terrorism financing. A character says: "Al-Qaida has a lot of money. Its
roots are in Saudi Arabia, and that's a rich place. But it has a lot of
support right across that region. There are contributions coming from
everywhere - Jordan, Egypt, Pakistan, Malaysia. That's what makes them
so deadly. Fanatics we can handle. Fanatics with cash are a different
story. Overall, we estimate the organisation has at least $5bn at its
disposal. They hide their money, and they are good at it. So it could be a
lot more" (10).

It could be said, to borrow from satirist Stephen Colbert, that there is
much more truthiness than truth in the terrorist financing discourse -
with truthiness defined as what you want the facts to be as opposed to
what the facts are. The parallels between Bin Laden's hidden stash and
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction are striking. They caused
the financial war against global terrorism and regime change in Iraq. The
usual suspects of terrorist financing - rich Arabs, the Saudis, Islamic
charities, etc - became as familiar as the smoking guns of WMD - mobile
labs, aluminum tubes, Niger uranium, etc - that helped sell the invasion
of Iraq to the US public. Both wars created created a new and very real
problem through pursuing an imaginary one.
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