In 1977, Bush Junior was set up with his first oil company, Arbusto [1].  He received $50,000 (5% control of the business) from James R. Bath, a man hired by Salem bin Laden (Osama's brother) to invest the bin Ladens' money in Texas ventures [2].

After leaving office, Bush Senior was a consultant for a defense contractor called the Carlyle Group.  The bin Ladens invested at least $2 million in this company [3].  The Carlyle Group owned a company called CaterAir, which was headed by Bush Junior until 1994.  Frank Carlucci, the head of Carlyle, also sits on the board of directors of the Middle East Policy Council... along with a representative of the bin Laden family business [4].

On 9/11, and the day before, Shafiq (Osama's brother) was at a Carlyle Group business conference, hanging out with Carlyle bigwigs such as Carlucci (Reagan's defense secretary), James Baker (Bush Senior's secretary of state), and John Major (former British Prime Minister) [5]

Incidentally, the bin Laden family supports Osama. They go to family functions together, and keep Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda well funded [6].

Haifi, wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., says that Bush Sr. and his wife are like parents to her [7].  Bush Sr. nicknamed the Saudi Prince "Bandar Bush" [8].  Prince Bandar donated $1 million to the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in Texas [9]. 

In the 1990's, the Saudi's spent more than $170 billion on armaments, a large chunk of which went through the Carlyle Group [10].  Prince Bandar is an investor in the Carlyle Group [11].  Since leaving office, Bush Sr. has traveled to the royal palaces at least twice on behalf of the Carlyle Group [12].

Bush Jr. met with the Saudi crown prince and "established a strong personal bond" with him [13].

Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia [14].

In February 2002, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence agreed to conduct a Joint Inquiry into the activities of the U.S. Intelligence Community in connection with the terrorist attacks perpetrated against our nation on September 11, 2001. The abridged version is available [15], but the Bush administration has kept classified a section that implicates Saudi Arabia in the attacks [16].

4.  In the days following 9/11, private jets under the supervision of the Saudi government and with White House approval, were allowed to fly around the U.S. picking up 24 members of the bin Laden family.  They were flown out of the country without any interrogation or investigation.

In the first few days after September 11th, while there was an air-travel lockdown and thousands of Americans were stranded and renting cars to travel hundreds or thousands of miles home, Bush Jr. was concerned about the bin Laden family's safety.  Private jets flew around America, picking up bin Ladens and assembling them in Texas.  From there they flew to Washington, D.C., on to Boston, and then to Paris [17].  FBI agents were not given the opportunity to question family members of the prime suspect to learn what they knew and how they might help capture the fugitive.

5.  The Bush family has business ties to the Taliban. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 happened just days after Bush Jr.'s administration cut off an oil pipe-line deal with the Taliban.

In 1997, while Bush Jr. was governor of Texas, the Taliban were invited to come to Texas to meet with Unocal, an oil and energy giant [18].  Unocal teamed up with the Taliban to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan (near the Caspian Sea) through Taliban controlled Afghanistan (south of Turkmenistan) and into Pakistan (south of Afganistan) [18].  During their visits, these members of one of the most repressive fundamentalist regimes on the planet were wined and dined, housed in a 5-star hotel, and taken to the zoo and the NASA space center [19].

Meanwhile, Enron, Houston based energy firm and top of the Center for Public Integrity’s list of Bush’s career patrons [20], was working on a plan to pipe natural gas from Turkmenistan under the Caspian Sea into Turkey (west of the Caspian) [21].

In 1996, Unocal began looking into including Uzbekistan (north of Turkmenistan) in its pipeline deal through Afghanistan [22].  Around the same time, Bush Jr. met personally with the Uzbekistan ambassador on behalf of Enron and its Chairman and CEO Ken Lay [23] for similar reasons.

Despite the Taliban's militant and murderous ways [24], Unocal continued with the Taliban pipeline deal.  Unocal teamed up with Saudi-owned Delta Oil, headed by Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi, a man investigated for ties to Osama bin Laden [25].  During this time, Osama took up residence in Afghanistan with the Taliban's blessing and issued a call for "Holy War" against the United States [26].

The Unocal plan would terminate the pipeline at the Arabian Sea in Pakistan (south coast) [27], a short tanker ride from Enron's natural gas powered energy plant in Dabhol, India (west cost of India, on the Arabian, just south of Pakistan) [28]. However, in 1998, Osama blew up American embassies in Africa and Clinton retaliated by bombing Sudan and Afganistan [29], shutting down the pipeline deal [30].

In 1999, Enron became one of the biggest contributors to Bush Jr.'s presidential campaign [20].  Dick Cheney, CEO of the giant oil services company Hallburton which serviced Unocal among others, became Bush Jr.'s running mate in 2000 [31]. 

In early 2001, just after Bush Jr. took the presidency, the Taliban approached the Bush Jr. administration about the gas pipeline, offering a deal to deport Osama bin Laden [32].  One member of the Bush Jr. administration happened to be Zalmay Khalilzad, part of Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council, former Unocal consultant, attendee of the Taliban/Unocal meetings in Texas [33], and a promoter of the idea that the Taliban was not hostile to the U.S. [34].

Representatives of Bush Jr.'s administration met with the Taliban during the summer of 2001 in talks that continued into September, concluding without a pipeline deal [35].  Days later, two planes took down the World Trade Center and another one crashed into the Pentagon.

Incidentally, after the bombing of Afghanistan, the new American ambassador to Afghanistan became Unocal consultant and National Security Council member Zalmay Khalilzad, and the newly American-installed leader of Afghanistan is former Unocal staffer Hamid Karzai [36].  In December 2001, the pipeline deal was re-signed [37].

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Here is the documentation:

*********While I researched some of this material myself, most of this investigation was done by Michael Moore and his group of researchers and lawyers in his latest book called Dude, Where's My Country.  Moore has made it his job to investigate current politics, sift fact from fiction, and distill it all down into a form that the average American has time to read. I highly recommend reading Dude, Where's My Country for lots more information as incredible as what I've told you above.  You can also find links to many of the references and other related information on his website, http://www.michaelmoore.com/.*********


[1] Mike Allen, "For Bush, a slippery situation," The Washington Post, June 23, 2000.
[2] Thomas Petzinger Jr., et al., "Family Ties: How oil firm linked to a son of Bush won Bahrain Drilling Pact-Harken Energy had a web of Mideast connections; in the background: BCCI-entrée at the White House," The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1991; Mike Ward, "Bin Laden relatives have ties to Texas," Austin American-Statesman, November 9, 2001; Suzanne Hoholik & Travis E. Poling, "Bin Laden brother ran business, was well-liked in Central Texas," San Antonio Express-News, August 22, 1998.
[3] Kurt Eichenwald, "Bin Laden Family Liquidates Holdings with Carlyle Group," The New York Times, October 26, 2001 (aslo here).
[4] http://www.mepc.org/public%5Fasp/about/board.asp
[5] www.carlylegroup.com; Dan Briody, The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of The Carlyle Group; Greg Schneider, "Connections and then some," The Washington Post, March 16, 2003.
[6] Al Jazeera; Washington Foreign Press Center Briefing with Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, February 28, 2001; "Bin Laden full of praise for attack on USS Cole at son's wedding," Agence France Presse, March 1, 2001; Jane Mayer, "The House of bin Laden," The New Yorker, November 12, 2001; Borzou Daraghi, "Financing Terror," Money, November 2001.

[7] Elsa Walsh, "The Prince: How the Saudi Ambassador became Washington's indispensable operator," The New Yorker, March 24, 2003.
[8,9] Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil, Crown, 2003.
[10] TTim Shorrock, "Crony capitalism goes global," The Nation, April 1, 2002; Warren Richey, "New snags in US-Saudi ties play to bin Laden," Christian Science Monitor, October 29, 2001.
[11] Robert Kaiser, "Enormous wealth spilled into American coffers," The Washington Post, February 11, 2002.
[12] Oliver Burkeman, "The winners: The Ex-President's Club," The Guardian, October 31, 2001; Leslie Wayne, "Elder Bush in big GOP cast toiling for top equity firm," The New York Times, March 5, 2001.
[13] Elisabeth Bumiller, "Saudi tells Bush US must temper backing of Israel," The New York Times, April 26, 2002.

[14] http://www.suntimes.com/special_sections/sept11/attacks/thehijackers.html
[15] http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.html
[16] http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/080303A.shtml

[17] 50. Jane Mayer, "The House of bin Laden," The New Yorker, November 12, 2001; Patrick E. Tyler, "Fearing harm, bin Laden kin fled from US," The New York Times, September 30, 2001; Kevin Cullen, "Bin Laden kin flown back to Saudi Arabia," The Boston Globe, September 20, 2001; Katty Kay, "How FBI helped bin Laden family flee US," The London Times, October 1, 2001.

[18] "Taleban to Texas for pipeline talks," BBC World Service, December 3, 1997.
[19] Caroline Lees, "Oil barons court Taliban in Texas," The Telegraph (Online), December 14, 1997.
[20] http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/home.asp
[21] "Trans-Caspian gas line receives go-ahead," Europe Energy, February 26, 1999.
[22] 61. Justin Weir, "Natural resources," Institutional Investor International, April 1997; Gerald Karey, "Unocal's Uzbekistan deal adds to Central Asia plan," Platt's Oilgram News, November 5, 1996.
[23] David B. Ottaway & Dan Morgan, "In drawing a route, bad blood flows," The Washington Post, October 5, 1998; Daniel Southerland, "Haig involved in plans to build gas pipeline across Iran," Houston Chronicle, January 22, 1995.
[24] Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, March 2001.
[25] Jack Meyers, et al., "Saudi clans working with US oil firms may be tied to bin Laden," Boston Herald, December 10, 2001.
[26] Robert Fisk, "Saudi calls for jihad against US 'crusader,'" The Independent, September 2, 1996; Tim McGirk, et al., "The Taliban allow a top 'sponsor' of terrorism to stay in Afghanistan," Time magazine, December 16, 1996.
[27] Unocal press release, "Unocal, Delta sign MOU with Gazprom and Turkmenrusgaz for natural gas pipeline project," August 13, 1996.
[28] Claudia Kolker, "The Fall of Enron: Dead Enron power plant affecting environment, economy, and livelihoods in India," Houston Chronicle, August 4, 2002.
[29] James Astill, "Strike one: In 1998, America destroyed Osama bin Laden's Ôchemical weapons' factory in Sudan. It turned out that the factory made medicine," The Guardian, October 2, 2001.
[30] "Unocal Statement: Suspension of activities related to proposed natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan," press release, August 21, 1998; "Unocal Statement on withdrawal from the proposed Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline project," press release, December 10, 1998.

[31] Alison Mitchell, "Bush is reported set to name Cheney as partner on ticket," The New York Times, July 25, 2000.
[32] Zahid Hussain, "Taleban offers US deal to deport bin Laden," London Times, February 5, 2001; Joseph Kahn & David E. Sanger, "President offers plan to promote oil exploration," The New York Times, January 30, 2001; Eric Schmitt, "Cheney assembles formidable team," The New York Times, February 3, 2001.
[33] Joe Stephens & David B. Ottaway, "Afghan roots keep adviser firmly in the inner circle," The Washington Post, November 23, 2001.
[34] Christopher Ogden, "Good News/Bad News in the Great Game," Time magazine, October 14, 1996.
[35] Michael Elliott, et al., "They had a plan; Long before 9/11, the White House debated taking the fight to al-Qaeda," Time magazine, August 12, 2002; Chris Mondics, "US courted, castigated Taliban," The Philadelphia Inquirer, October 21, 2001; George Arney, "US Ôplanned attack on Taleban'" BBC News, September 18, 2001; David Leigh, "Attack and Counter Attack," The Guardian, September 26, 2001; Jonathan Steele, et al., "Threat of US strikes passed to Taliban weeks before NY attack," The Guardian, September 22, 2001; "US tells Taliban: End bin Laden aid," The Chicago Tribune, August 3, 2001; Barton Gellman, "A strategy's cautious evolution," The Washington Post, January 20, 2002; David B. Ottaway & Joe Stephens, "Diplomats met with Taliban on bin Laden; some contend US missed its chance," The Washington Post, October 29, 2001.
[36] Ilene R. Prusher, et al., "Afghan power brokers," The Christian Science Monitor, June 10, 2002.
[37] Balia Bukharbayeva, "$5 billion gas pipeline planned in Afghanistan," The Associated Press, December 28, 2002.

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