The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [112]
These extremely diverse enterprises were haphazardly grouped under various corporate entities. From the first, the men who oversaw bin Laden’s business interests realized that there was trouble ahead. In a 1992 meeting with bin Laden, Jamal al-Fadl and Abu Rida al-Suri asked him if it was really necessary for his companies to make money. “Business is very bad in Sudan,” they warned him. Inflation was over 150 percent, and the Sudanese currency was constantly losing value against the dollar, undermining the entire portfolio. “Our agenda is bigger than business,” bin Laden carelessly replied—a statement that ran a sword through any responsible management practices. When bin Laden’s Saudi allowance was suddenly cut off, he had to confront a river of deficits and no reliable stream of income. “There were five different companies, and nothing worked,” Abu Rida, his main business advisor, said. “All these companies lost. You cannot run a business on remote control.”
The crunch came at the end of 1994. Bin Laden told the members of al-Qaeda that he would have to reduce their salaries because he had “lost all my money.” When L’Houssaine Kherchtou, one of bin Laden’s pilots, mentioned that he needed to go to Kenya to renew his pilot’s license, which he had gained after three years of study on al-Qaeda’s payroll, bin Laden told him to “forget about it.” A few months later, Kherchtou’s pregnant wife needed a Caesarean section, and he asked the al-Qaeda paymaster for $500 for the operation. “There is no money,” the man told him. “We can’t give you anything.”
Suddenly Kherchtou felt expendable. The camaraderie that sustained the men of al-Qaeda rested on the financial security that bin Laden provided. They had always seen him as a billionaire, an endless font of wealth, and bin Laden had never sought to correct this impression. Now the contrast between that exaggerated image of bin Laden’s resources and the new destitute reality caused some of the men to begin looking out for themselves.
Jamal al-Fadl, who was one of bin Laden’s most popular and trusted men, had been chafing at the differential pay scale, which favored the Saudis and the Egyptians. When bin Laden refused to give him a raise, the Sudanese secretary reached into the till. He used the money to buy several plots of land and a car. In the narrow circles of Khartoum, such a burst of affluence was quickly noticed. When confronted, Fadl admitted to taking $110,000. “I don’t care about the money, I care about you. You are one of the best people in al-Qaeda,” bin Laden told him. “If you need money, you should come to us.” Bin Laden pointed to other members of the organization who had been given a new car or a house when they asked for help. “You didn’t do that,” said bin Laden. “You just stole the money.”
Fadl begged bin Laden to forgive him, but bin Laden said that would not happen “until you bring all the money back.”
Fadl considered the offer, then disappeared. He would become al-Qaeda’s first traitor. He offered to sell his story to various intelligence agencies in the Middle East, including the Israelis. He eventually found a buyer when he walked into the American Embassy in Eritrea in June 1996. In return for nearly $1 million, he became a government witness. While in protective custody, he won the New Jersey Lottery.
AFRICA WAS BLEEDING in the mid-1990s. Major wars and civil conflicts in Liberia, Angola, Sierra Leone, Congo, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burundi, and Zimbabwe took millions of lives. For bin Laden, the strife represented an opportunity to spread al-Qaeda’s influence. He sent Ali Mohammed to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, to conduct surveillance on American, British, French, and Israeli targets.