Reply #22: GID and ISI, most likely. Saudi General Intelligence Division and it's little brother agency

[leveymg]

Bin Laden was the head of the covert paramilitary arm of GID. His father was very close to King Faud. He was (and is still) beloved as a national hero by many within the Royal Family and the Court in Riyadh. A GID advance team negotiated Bin Laden's entry into Pakistan in 1991, and then in Khartoum, after he fell out of favor with the Americans and some of the Royals following the '93 WTC bombing.

UBL traveled freely in and out of Sudan on American procured business jets with American procured satellite phones for several years in the mid-1990s, as UBL commanded Saudi paramilitary in the CIA-led and Saudi-funded wars to grab oil areas in former Yugoslavia and the former Soviet southern republics. His usefulness and relationship with U.S. and other intelligence agencies did not end with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, as is so often repeated.

He was apparently under ISI care and safekeeping in Pakistan after the White House and top American commanders let him slip out of Tora Bora back to Pakistan. It is not clear what happened to UBL or where he went from the border area in January 2002 until he shows up in Abbotabad.

I've traced this back and wrote about what is known about UBLs relationship with the GID/ISI and CIA up to 9/11 at DKos last year. Interesting, Erik Prince and others at Blackwater -- particularly former CIA/CTC chief Cofer Black who let the Flt. 77 hijackers into the US in January 2000 -- appear repeatedly throughout this episode, as well : http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/04/810764/-Erik-Prince:-American-Bin-LadenCIA-Asset,-MoneyGunmen

Not sure why UBL was finally put into comfortable safekeeping in 2005, but we may learn more about that.