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28 full name/al-Qatani: bin Ladens & Sasson, 301;

29 “Lion”: e.g. entry, Muslim Internet Dictionary.

30 “I was named”: transcript, int. of OBL, ABC News, 1/2/99, & see “Usama’s Expedition,” www.al-islam.org. According to Bin Laden’s son Omar, “Ossama Binladen” is the more correct rendering. U.S. officialese, meanwhile, frequently renders the first name as “Usama.” The authors use “Osama bin Laden” because that is the version most commonly used in Western publications. Variations arise as a result of transliteration from the Arabic (bin Ladens & Sasson, 291 & re “Usama” e.g., “Most Wanted List,” www.fbi.gov).

31 “My father”: transcript, “Usmah bin-Laden, Destruction of the Base.” The exact year of Mohamed bin Laden’s birth remains unknown, but he was apparently born in the first decade of the twentieth century. Family biographer Steve Coll writes that he was fourteen or fifteen when he arrived in Saudi Arabia, while author Lawrence Wright reckoned he was twenty-three (Coll, Bin Ladens, 26, 583n11, Wright, 62, & see bin Ladens & Sasson, 292).

32 Mohamed legend/rise, etc.: For the historical background of the bin Ladens’ early lives, the authors have, except where indicated, drawn on Steve Coll’s definitive study, The Bin Ladens, and on Lawrence Wright’s authoritative The Looming Tower.

33 memory: Wright, 65;

34 Mohamed/Saudi royals/loan: Wright, Simon Reeve, The New Jackals, London: André Deutsch, 1999, 158–, Atwan, 40–;

35 “Religion”: Coll, Bin Ladens, 201;

36 Religion/​royalty/​banning/​Wahhabism: Stephen Schwartz, The Two Faces of Islam, NY: Doubleday, 2002, 69–, 261, Posner, Secrets, 18–, Lacey, Inside the Kingdom, 10–, Yaroslav Trofimov, The Siege of Mecca, NY: Doubleday, 2007, 13–, 16, Wright, 63;

37 “fascism”: Schwartz, 105;

38 beheading/crucifixion: Amnesty International, “Reported Death Sentences and Executions 2009,” 3/10, John R. Bradley, Saudi Arabia Exposed, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 144, Reuters, 2/22/09, Mark Hollingsworth with Sandy Mitchell, Saudi Babylon, Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2006, 62, 228, UPI, 11/4/09, Amnesty International, “Man Beheaded & Crucified,” 6/1/09, AP, 8/19/10;

39 Human rights: Economist, 7/25/09, AFP, 7/23/09;

40 Women: Lacey, Inside the Kingdom, 277, Qanta A. Ahmed, In the Land of Invisible Women, Naperville, IL: Source Books, 2008, refs.;

41 Mohamed devout/“Your highness”: transcript, int. OBL by Hamid Mir, 3/19/97, translated by FBIS, bin Ladens & Sasson, 17, Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, London: Gibson Square, 2007, 91.

42 Osama product: Osama told an interviewer he was one of twenty-five sons fathered by Mohamed bin Laden. Author Coll refers to twenty-five sons and twenty-nine daughters. Osama’s son Omar believes Osama was the eighteenth of twenty-two sons. The total number of Mohamed’s offspring must remain approximate (int. of OBL by Hamid Mir, 3/18/97, translation by FBIS, Coll, Bin Ladens, 126–, bin Ladens & Sasson, 292).

43 short marriage/Allia: bin Ladens & Sasson, 291–, Atwan, 41–, Wright, 72;

44 “a shocking”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 169;

45 remarried/loved “more”: Wright, 73, Atwan, 41, bin Ladens & Sasson, 166;

46 “In my whole”/“when he met”: bin Ladens & Sasson, 190, 168–, 40, Bergen, OBL I Know, 17;

47 “Most of us”: Evening Standard (U.K.), 5/26/06;

48 “very anti-Israel”: Bergen, OBL I Know, 7–, Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, 91, Der Spiegel, 6/6/05;

49 bellicose noises/tanks: John Ciorciari, “Saudi-US Alignment After the Six-Day War,” Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 2, 6/05, David Holden & Richard Johns, The House of Saud, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981, 251–. This according to the Pakistani editor Hamid Mir, citing one of his interviews with Osama bin Laden (Bergen, OBL I Know, 7–);

50 father/10,000: Coll, Bin Ladens, 128, Gunaratna, 17;

51 “right arm”: transcript, int. OBL by Hamid Mir, 3/19/97;

52 $1 billion: as calculated at www.measuringworth.com;

53 present/cars: bin Ladens & Sasson, 20, 169–;

54 “shy … aloof,