The Rest Is Classified - 52. Bin Laden vs the CIA: Declaring Jihad (Ep 2)

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

How did a Saudi millionaire, seemingly more interested in a simple life than luxury, become the architect of a global terrorist organization? What personal and geopolitical forces converged to transform Osama bin Laden from a shy student into a war hero and the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda? And why was 1979 such a pivotal year for both him and the future of Islamic extremism? In this episode, Gordon and David dissect the pivotal year of 1979, a "hinge year" in the Middle East that profoundly impacted bin Laden. From the Grand Mosque siege in Mecca to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, we explore how these events provided an outlet for his burgeoning extremist beliefs and set him on the path to violence. Discover how he leveraged his family wealth and charismatic influence to build a network of Arab volunteers, laying the groundwork for a movement that would change the world. Join Gordon and David as they trace the critical turning points that led to the formation of Al Qaeda, and the surprising ways in which bin Laden cultivated his image as a holy warrior. ------------------- To sign up to The Declassified Club, go to www.therestisclassified.com or click this ⁠⁠⁠link⁠⁠⁠. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: ⁠https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up⁠ ------------------- Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restisclassified It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee  Exclusive INCOGNI Deal: To get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan, go to https://incogni.com/restisclassified ------------------- Pre-order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠via this link.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------------------- Email: [e-mail] Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@triclassified⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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So be it. Impress even the toughest of critics with freshly prepared Canadian barbecue favorites from Sobeys. of critics with freshly prepared Canadian barbecue favorites from Sobeys. I was there when Bin Laden changed. He got permission to make a speech in the mosque in Saudi Arabia after the Afghan war finished. In this speech, he attacked America very hard, and he asked all Arab people to cut off their relationship with the American people. He said, we have to make a stand against

America because it helps Israel. Well welcome to The Rest Is Classified, I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey. And that quote was from Esam Daraz, an Egyptian filmmaker who covered Osama bin Laden during the Afghan jihad and who's reflecting on filmmaker who covered Osama bin Laden during the Afghan Jihad, and who's reflecting on what was probably Osama bin Laden's first anti-American public speech, which came in 1990. Last time we looked at this incredibly consequential figure, Osama bin Laden, from the rich, large family of a construction magnate who becomes drawn into religious radicalization and then towards the jihad in Afghanistan in the 80s where he starts to build his image as someone who is willing to take risks and to fight the fight and take on the Soviet Union there.

But we left the story, David, with his organization being formed called Al-Qaeda, the base, with the Soviets withdrawing from Afghanistan and bin Laden really looking for a new purpose for himself and for this group of fighters that he'd drawn together. That's right. And it's February of 1989. The Soviets have withdrawn from Afghanistan. Coincidentally, Gordon, the Soviets withdraw on some of bin Laden's 32nd birthday. But of course, fundamentalist Muslims don't celebrate birthdays. So I'm sure he He didn't have a party with cake. to DC saying we won, there are parties at the CIA and in the White House, and we have the Soviets out of Afghanistan after a decade in the country. Now, there is still a kind of faltering communist government in Kabul that the Soviets have left behind, and Osama bin Laden, with his newly formed

group al-Qaeda, wants to be involved in its downfall. And there is going to be an assault on a communist position near Jalalabad in Afghanistan. And Osama bin Laden leads a company-sized group of Al Qaeda members in this battle, essentially head on into fortified positions. His al-Qaeda fighters sustained very heavy losses, maybe more than a hundred, potentially losing as many fighters in that one battle as they did throughout the entire Soviet war. And again, we have this theme of Osama bin Laden's military naiveté, his just complete sort of inability to link the actions of his group to a broader strategy because he's essentially encouraging his men to commit suicide. Yeah. And so Afghanistan is in a kind of period of chaos and it's going to be actually for the next few years. But bin Laden is now starting to set his sights more broadly, isn't he? And he's kind of being drawn into circles of people who are thinking like that. It's a critical period, this 89 and 90, and the next stage of his evolution into someone who's a global jihadist, rather if you like a local one focused on Afghanistan.

In many respects, there's this rump communist government that's still there, but it's going to fall pretty quickly. Afghanistan will collapse into a civil war. And I think in the midst of that, he is really looking for purpose for his organization. I mean, what will they do? Where will they go? Because the field of jihad in Afghanistan is kind of drying up. Now one of the important things that will happen in this period is that Usama bin Laden

is going to grow closer to a man named Aiman al-Zawahiri, who Osama meets in Peshawar when he's giving a lecture. Now, Zawahiri is going to become a senior figure in al-Qaeda. He is a surgeon who'd been a member of a jihadist group in Egypt, essentially a member of a clandestine cell. He had done time in Egyptian prisons. And he, like Osama, they share the sort of same brand of religious zealotry. And Zuwahriri had this belief that his jihad had been tough in Egypt because of the geography, right?

That you essentially had no mountains, no place to kind of run a kind of guerrilla hit and run campaign. Now, this is one of the interesting things I think about al-Qaeda, because when the first histories of the group were really being written after 9-11, Zawahiri was kind of framed as being Bin Laden's brain in many respects, another mentor. He does have more work experience in these kind of clandestine fighting organizations than Osama does. But I do think that it's becoming more and more clear in a lot of these histories that Osama was his own man in this period, and very much not a kind of student of Zawahiri, even

though Zawahiri will rise to become a senior and influential member of al-Qaeda. So Zawahiri though, has one belief in this period, which is going to become very important. And that is that Abdullah Azzam, Osama's mentor, if you remember from the prior episode. So Zawahiri is going to essentially start a gossip that Abdullah Azzam had run the services office into the ground. He'll accuse Abdullah Azzam of being an agent

of the Americans, which is of course not true. And in 1989, in pretty mysterious circumstances, Abdullah Azzam is killed in a car bombing in Peshawar. The killers still remain a mystery, but are probably other jihadists who thought that Abdullah Azzam was not jihadi enough. Now, Osama is probably not involved in it. But in any case, I think it's a pivotal moment in his journey, because it removes from his orbit this old mentor and someone who had

really in Abdullah Azzam opposed this idea of a holy war against very distant enemies. Yeah, which is going to become Bin Laden's kind of guiding philosophy. So you don't think Bin Laden did it and we don't know who did it really, do we? We don't know who did it. There's no evidence implicating bin Laden in the attack. I think it's unlikely he would have. He would have done it. But again, it does remove somebody who's got a difference of opinion with Osama on the value of direct conflict between jihad in these kind of distant battlegrounds. So Osama is, as the Afghan war ends, I think a self-styled war hero, right? He's got his own side business, al-Qaeda,

but it doesn't really have purpose, I think, in this period. There's not really a clear enemy. Abdullah Zam is dead. Osama's father is dead. His older half brother is dead, died in a plane crash in 88. And I think this is really a turning point for Osama. He starts to become much more assertive and aggressive and more of a leader in this period after the Afghan jihad. He's got four wives and 11 children at this point. He, I think mentally believes he's been critical to the removal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan.

So he thinks he's won a war, right? And that quote you read at the beginning from Asam Deraz, that is the Egyptian filmmaker that Osama has hired to basically follow him and his men around in Afghanistan to build this image of him as this war hero. It's interesting, isn't it? Because it's a very modern thing to do to get your own documentary crew to follow you around and to build your brand and your image.

So on the one hand, he's this fundamentalist who is re-heard of the first episode, doesn't want to have any art on the walls. On the other hand, he's got a film crew following him around to kind of build the brand. It's a weird mix, isn't it? Osama, and I think this is another theme of the man. On the one hand, he's advocating for a kind of lifestyle and set of beliefs that anchor him into seventh century Arabia. And then on the other hand, Arabia. And then on the other hand, he is showing himself to be adept at using modern telecommunications, modern technology, to build his brand and to build his organization

and to eventually conduct terrorist attacks. And so he's an interesting blend, I think, of sort of ancient belief and very modern technology and very frankly, modern lines of thinking. It's a bit of a paradox, I think, in the man, Osama bin Laden. But in any case, in 89, he goes back home to Saudi. The war is done, Al-Qaeda is formed. And I think he's a bit in the wilderness here. So he's this international Islamic guerrilla leader who doesn't quite know what he wants to do next. And he's also loyal, I think, in this period to the Saudi royal family and to his own family. And there is a turning point here though, because in 1990 Saddam Hussein, the megalomaniac

running Iraq in that period for you, you young folk, invades Kuwait. Yeah, summer of 1990. I can remember it well, David, because I'm old enough to remember the summer of 1990. Gordon had just turned 45. He remembers it well. I was 18. I can remember. I was at a gig at the Marquis Club in London, actually, and it was a hot summer's night. And then I remember getting...

You were at a gig. I was at a gig, yeah, singing rock band. Anyway, and the next day, I remember learning that in that summer was a period when a lot was happening. The kind of Berlin Wall was coming down and this came out the blue. Iraq was invading Kuwait, Saddam Hussein, this kind of strange, mustachioed dictator figure, was taking over. But suddenly all the talk was about the Middle East and was he going to roll into Saudi Arabia next? He'd seized the oil fields in Kuwait, had a kind of dispute about it. And the question was, would it be Saudi next? Where was he going to stop? And

Saudi Arabia effectively turns to the US for help to defend itself and ultimately then to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. It's a turning point for Osama bin Laden as well, who I imagine was not at a gig when Saddam invaded. Now, bin Laden actually wants to sort of help defend the kingdom and potentially push Saddam out of Kuwait and he is just aghast that the Saudi royal family has turned to the United States to protect itself. 500,000 US troops arrive, including women, which Osama would have found very offensive, to defend the kingdom. And Osama believes that this is in

contravention to the prophet's deathbed admonition, quote, let there be no two religions in Arabia. So you have this massive American fighting force, presumably mostly non-Muslim, who has arrived. Osama, interestingly though, is not immediately publicly critical of the move. And in fact, that summer, it's very interesting in some of the work that the journalist Steve Cole has done on the Bin Laden family more broadly. He actually surfaced this very fascinating anecdote, which is that that summer, the Bin

Laden family starts to hedge a little bit, wondering if the al-Saud may actually collapse, if Saddam does roll into Saudi to depose the royal family. A Swiss bank account is set up in Osama bin Laden's name. It's established it's funded to the tune of almost a half million dollars in Switzerland as kind of a hedge in case the family needed to flee. These accounts are set up for most of the siblings in the kind of broader bin Laden brood. And interestingly, it's earning interest, which Osama would not have approved of, at least publicly. He's kind of denounced that practice personally.

And in late 91, that money is gonna get transferred back into Saudi and the banking systems of the Islamic world. It will be the last time that Osama Bin Laden uses the Western banking system. But it's very interesting because bin Laden in searching for a purpose for al-Qaeda brings up this idea and he writes it out in a 60 page paper. This idea that he will lead a legion of men to defeat Saddam Hussein's million man strong

army. I mean, this is nuts, isn't it? He's got this ragtag group who we've just heard haven't done very well in their battles in Afghanistan, and he thinks they're going to take on the Iraqi army who've just occupied Kuwait, a kind of modern huge army. He's suggesting to the Saudi royal family they use him rather than the Americans. It speaks of someone who is slightly deluded, to be honest. Well, if you have God on your side.

Yeah, and an inflated sense of themselves. And you know, this is going to become a big break because it's not surprising that they go, no, we'll take the Americans with their tanks and jets rather than... Well, he's essentially laughed out of the room. Yeah, he's laughed out of the room, yeah, which is not surprising. But I guess for him and his self-identity and his self-worth, maybe that is a big moment for him, even though it's unsurprising that he gets laughed out of the room. He's a bit high on his own supply after the Afghan jihad.

I mean, he's got the filmmaker following him around. He's got this wildly inflated sense of his own importance and the importance of his kind of group, al-Qaeda, in the defeat of the Soviet Union. But newsflash, he is a religious extremist, and he is connecting his own life and vision and purpose to God. I think he believes that the Saudi royal families turned to the United States Saudi royal families turn to the United States is in fact a massive display that they lack faith in turning to these infidel militaries to defend themselves. So he's becoming, I think in this period, I mean that quote you read up front from 1990, he's kind of quietly anti-American, I think, which would have been very in keeping with an average Saudi, I think, in that period.

He had actually pushed in the late 80s for Pepsi boycott, because he didn't want American companies to be supported. But the arrival of Americans, right, on what he sees as holy ground, I think turns that quietest anti-Americanism into something closer to abject hatred. And I think he really fears that there is going to be a push in Saudi society from the presence of all of these Americans being there for the kingdom to be secularized. It's going to corrupt the purity of the kingdom somehow by having all these American troops, Christians. So that's what he's worried about, isn't it? And he's failed his cause in a way.

I mean, this gives him a new cause, a new meaning at that point where he was looking for one. And yet there's no evidence in this period that his conscience was really affecting his core business and financial interests. We mentioned that bank account. He's not breaking with the Saudi royal family yet. He's taken that step to participate in the jihad in Afghanistan, and yet he's not done any of the more really painful things like breaking with his family or with his country. Now, interestingly, even he's asked to sign a petition

in early 1991, promoting a bunch of Islamist reforms in the kingdom. Osama refuses in 1991, even though presumably he agrees with everything that's written down there. Says basically, I don't wanna have any more conflict with the Saudi royal family. Now, obviously he's probably burning with

some measure of sort of shame and anger because they rejected his military proposal to defend the kingdom, but he's still not gonna take that leap. Now, he kind of continues to muck around with different ideas for where to point out Qaeda. So he's obsessed with Yemen. There's a socialist government in South Yemen

in this period. He wants to raise an army to go fight there. But once the Berlin Wall comes down, Yemen's united. Again, the Saudi royal family says, stay out, right? Stay out of Yemen. Now, we should note that the bin Laden family, his father actually is Yemeni, came out of Yemen. So there's a deep family connection there. And Osama has this kind of persistent contact with jihadists in Yemen in the early 1990s. And it appears that that may have been one of the last straws with the Saudi royal family, because he's essentially disobeying explicit guidance to

stay out of Yemen. And in the winter of 1990 1991, the Saudi state seizes his passport, right? So he presumably shouldn't be able to travel. And so he is really in this period of, he's struggling to find a place for al-Qaeda. He's bristling with the restrictions that the Saudi government have placed on him. And he starts to turn his sights back to Afghanistan, where, as we mentioned, there's a civil war that has engulfed the country. And Osama and some of his jihadist friends become concerned that the Afghan king, who is then in exile in Rome, might be brought back to rule the country. And Osama works with a Portuguese convert to Islam who has joined Al-Qaeda, and they work up a plan to assassinate

the Afghan king in Rome. This is 1991. It is probably the first external terrorist operation that Al-Qaeda ever conducts. It's a total failure, by the way. The Portuguese Al-Qaeda member stabs the king several times, but the king recovers. The al-Qaeda member is arrested and jailed for 10 years.

And in the spring of 1991, with again Osama falling out with the royal family, he leaves Saudi Arabia for Pakistan and heads onward to a kind of self-imposed exile in Sudan, and he will never again return to his native country. So there with Osama bin Laden having finally left, broken to some extent with Saudi Arabia. Let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll pick up with Osama bin Laden in Sudan, where he really does start to turn al-Qaeda into the terrorist organization that will later come to know and in many cases fear and the CIA will start to get on his trail. Welcome back. Osama bin Laden is now in Sudan, in Khartoum.

It's a place where a group of Islamist militants have taken power, I think, in a coup a couple of years earlier. Sudan is kind of interesting at this time. It's a kind of hodgepodge of terrorist groups and other militants and others have all kind of gathered here because of that kind of political context and instability. Osama bin Laden amongst them and they're kind of making it their home and their place where they're plotting and acting and organizing themselves. where they're plotting and acting and organizing themselves. And bin Laden is there and he's going to kind of build an interesting model of a kind of organization, isn't he, out of this place in Sudan. It's self-imposed exile. So he didn't have to leave the kingdom, but he decided to do

so. He hasn't formally broken with the royal family or with his own. And he strikes a deal with the Sudanese regime. Essentially, he promises that he'll invest in the country, try to persuade other Saudis to do so and the Sudanese will protect him, right, will guarantee his security. And he I think in this period, Gordon is starting to style himself as a kind of very righteous and persecuted Islamic guerrilla, right? Do you think of his two mentors, the prep school teacher in Jeddah, who had first, I mean, really started to teach him in these Islamic study courses that lead to his radicalization and then Abdullah Azzam, they're both exiles. And I think in this period, Osama starts to adopt

that mentality, right? That he maybe like the prophet who's exiled from Beka to Medina as well, he is starting to join their ranks. Now, his large family has come with him. Remember, he's got four wives by this point. They all arrive in late 1991. He puts them in a three story compound.

Each wife has her own apartment. Again, the Bin Laden restrictions, no air conditioning, no refrigeration apply. He becomes very fond in this period of taking family members on desert hikes to toughen them up, sometimes without water. We should note that Bin Laden is a big

outdoors guy, right? He loves to go out into the desert. He loves to take walks. He loves forced marches. I do have some sympathy for his family here. No air conditioning and no refrigeration at home and desert hikes to toughen you up in Sudan.

I mean, this is a kind of, yeah, anyway. The list of things that they get up to is interesting in this period. So they dig holes out in the desert to sleep in. Even the babies in the family sleep out in the holes. No blankets. Osama wants to get them tufts of, they cover themselves with dirt. He becomes very suspicious of modern medicine and a few of his sons actually have asthma and Bin Laden recommends that they treat this by breathing through a piece of honeycomb. They secretly don't listen to him and actually get medical treatment. He is increasingly surrounded by sort of bodyguards, strap hangers, dog's bodies. It's kind of a weird eclectic group of a few hundred Arab jihadists who are kind of on the payroll.

Because here's this rich guy, he's built a compound. I mean, it has got a slight culty feel to it, hasn't it? Yeah. It's a weird environment. And there's a mix, isn't there? Because he is doing businesses as well. He's doing something, I think he's building roads and doing some construction businesses, as well as running a kind of jihadist base to take the struggle to the outside world, to the United States. It's a kind of weird mix. He's a jihadist Renaissance man, Gordon, I think is what he is.

He's all over the place. I mean, he likes going to horse races, but when the music comes on the loudspeakers, he covers his ears because the music is haram. It's forbidden. And on the surface, I think things are going well, but those businesses you mentioned are actually for the most part not doing all that well. And I think he is pretty frustrated in this period

because he really wants a holy war. And I think he has a sense in this period that he is kind of removed from that objective, right? I mean, the glory days in Afghanistan are long gone. His ideas have been rejected by the Saudis, and here he is in Sudan without much purpose. He also does start to have some family troubles. His second wife wants a divorce, which sort of makes sense, as she didn't sign up to live in this sort of weird, culty Sudanese adventure. He lets her leave with their three children,

and his eldest son, Abdullah, Osama has a very strained relationship with him. In fact, I think it'd be fair to say Abdullah hates his father for how Osama forces them to live. Abdullah leaves Sudan at 19 and never sees his father again, and Osama won't even mention his name. Now, Osama does't even mention his name now Osama does get visitors from Saudi because the Saudis want him to stop criticizing

The monarchy they want him to come home. There are maybe nine visits between 1992 and 1994 of various family members and in 1994, various family members and affiliates who come from Saudi to try to convince Bin Laden to come back. So his half brother in the family, Amir, a man named Bakr comes in 1992. Interestingly, from the family business standpoint, I mean, that broader Bin Laden enterprise relies on patronage from the Saudi royal family. And Osama's jihadi adventures in Sudan are potentially jeopardizing this. So there's a real critical piece here from his family side where they have a business interest in getting Osama back home and turning him into a more kind of quietist Islamic radical in Saudi. And there's no evidence in this period, Gordon, that Osama's flight from Saudi Arabia has impacted his access to family money.

But he is increasingly sort of breaking from them on the tactics of how to respond to jihad around the world. For example, when the war breaks out in that period in the former Yugoslavia, Osama's elder brother sends a bunch of money to charity organizations and Osama bin Laden dispatches a team of Afghan veterans to try to join in the fight against Croatian Catholics. You can see how this would start to become a real problem from a Saudi foreign policy standpoint. We're still tied in at this point, we should say, to a very close alliance with the United States. And he's starting to kind of get into this terrorist business now, isn't he?

I mean, you're starting to see the first attacks, and you're starting to see the first signs of attacks against the West as well. In December of 1992, we have the first al-Qaeda operation against American targets. Bombs go off outside two hotels in Yemen, where there are 100 or so American servicemen being housed there on their way to Somalia, where the US military is conducting a humanitarian mission. The bombs kill a tourist and a hotel employee, no Americans, but it is the first time that al-Qaeda has really gone after an American target. And within days, the Pentagon says, look, we won't use Yemen, where these attacks occurred as a base for American troops on their way to Mogadishu, Somalia. And I think this is an

important point because although this attack didn't kill Americans and has kind of been lost in the Bin Laden story of the 90s in many respects. But Osama bin Laden sees this as a victory. This is very important because he draws a line between that terrorist attack and an immediate reaction from the Americans to back off. We won't use Yemen. It's a really important part of his rationale for the attacks that will come. And then in February of 1993, we of course, we have the first bombing of the World Trade Center, six are killed, thousand injured. It's masterminded by a man named Ramzi Yousef who'd been trained at some of the camps in Afghanistan.

But he's not directly linked to Bin Laden and al-Qaeda though, is he? As far as we know. As far as we know. And Osama in this period is sort of mentioned publicly in connection with financial support for the jihad. So you start to see Osama's public profile rising, not really as like an operational commander, but as someone who's financing and funding the people who are conducting these operations.

And I think after this World Trade Center bombing, which again, Bin Laden himself is not orchestrating, but he's connected as kind of a fellow traveler with the people who did. And that turns him into a major liability for the Saudi royal family. Because to your point, Gordon, the Saudis are intimately connected with the US. And Osama is helping people who are trying to attack the United States on its own soil.

And the hits just kind of keep on coming. So Osama sends a military commander to Somalia to see how al-Qaeda could get more involved in the war there. And in October of 1993, 18 American soldiers are killed in a very intense firefight. Black Hawk Down. Yeah, exactly. Black Hawk Down incident. The Somalis who fired those rocket propelled grenades at our helicopters were trained by Arabs who had fought with those Afghan Arabs in Afghanistan. So again, not Bin Laden, but you're starting to see, aren't you, the impact of Afghanistan, and of the fact that you had all these Mujahideen trained out there and who'd learned to fight out

there. It's now starting to hit the United States. It's often described as blowback, isn't it? It's not really blowback because the US hadn't trained these people directly. They've been training other Mujahideen, but you are starting to see them carry out attacks now, like, as you said, Black Hawk Down in Somalia. Well, and I think the precise al-Qaeda rule in Black Hawk Down is still a little unclear, but you're right, I mean,

Osama sees it as a victory nonetheless. And I think he's in his kind of delusional cult leader state probably willing to take a whole bunch of things that aren't directly connected to al-Qaeda and sort of in his own mind connect them. Right. And so he sees a, I think a connection between his attacks in Yemen, his involvement in Somalia, and these US withdrawals, right? Because the US gets out of Somalia pretty rapidly after Black Hawk down. And to him, I think it's, again, this mental model enforced of the US is weak.

And if we hit them, they will just pull back. And it's around this period that a profile appears on Asobin Laden in an Egyptian magazine. It's titled, A Millionaire Finances Extremism in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which is not a good title you want for a profile. And things have been snowballing, but his half brothers begin a legal process to expel Osama from the family business. Now, they still try to negotiate with him. So his mom and

his stepdad come to Sudan in 1993 with a message from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia urging Osama to make peace and come home. That doesn't work. They send one of Osama's uncles, an old man who's like about 80 at that point, which I think is a sign of just how desperate the royal family was to bring this guy back. They've borne Osama that they're going gonna take his assets and citizenship and tar him in the media. And Osama basically says, do whatever you want. There's gonna be no compromise. So Osama shares in the Bin Laden companies at that point, which are around $10 million.

They're seized, they're placed into a trust, frozen under court supervision. He's cut out of the family business. In February of 94, the family issues a really harsh press statement distancing themselves from Osama. And two months later, in the spring of 1994, the Saudi state strip him of his Saudi citizenship. And now, Gordon, this is a guy who's in Sudan and really doesn't have anything to lose.

And this is a crucial moment, isn't it? Because it's the break with the Saudi regime, this point of no return with them, and in which he really turns against the Saudi regime itself and the Saudi royal family. But also, I think the crucial bit of this is that he comes to see that it's the US backing for the Saudi royal family, which is the problem. In other words, in his mind, it's only all these regimes in the Middle East, which he sees as the obstacle to the kind of radical Islam he wants to see take over. He sees all of them as being backed by the United States and the regimes being supported by the United States. supported by the United States. And therefore, in his mind, if he's going to have this kind of radical Islamist change in the region, it's only going to come from the United States disengaging from supporting

those regimes. So it's really interesting, isn't it? Because this is the crucial leap he makes, which is, I'm not a kind of national jihadist against the Saudi royal family, like there are Egyptian jihadists against the Egyptian government or regime, but I'm going to go after the United States as the backer of all these regimes and try and take them on and force them out of the Middle East so there can be this radical change. I mean, this is the kind of core, isn't it, of what al-Qaeda is going to become and the ideology behind it. I think that is his big leap is the direct connection

between the United States and the propping up of all of these corrupt or apostate regimes in the region. Although he does have some vitriol to spare for the Saudis, because that summer in 1994, after he's lost his citizenship, even though Osama's not even 40 yet, I do think he kind of goes full old man style and starts to send out basically what are a mid 90s version of a bunch of crazy email forwards and insane memos that start to attack the Saudi regime, right?

And he's got an Al Qaeda member, which is kind of even insane to think about that in the 90s, there was an al-Qaeda member who was living in London. And Osama would send from Sudan, he'd send these messages to his contact in London, who would then basically blast fax them to recipients in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And apparently they sent so many of these Gordon, sometimes the phone bills ran to like 10,000 quid a month, which feels high to me for the mid 90s. But it is a basically like down the rabbit trail messages

like condemning the Saudi royal family for squandering public money. He's railing against them for allowing Christian women into the kingdom as part of the American army. He's criticizing Saudi banks for charging interest. He's got these great titles like Saudi Arabia unveils its war on Islam and its scholars. And then there's a sequel. Saudi Arabia continues war on Islam and its scholars.

It's not mass market stuff, is it? Right, and it's personal, right? I mean, he is going after the royal family personally. So this is, I think, fair to say a dark period for Osama, right, he's cut off from the family's cash, his Sudanese investments aren't really panning out, he's cut off from the family's cash. His Sudanese investments aren't really panning out. He's cut off from all of these private networks that he had used to finance the jihad in the 80s.

Apparently he has to cut al-Qaeda salaries in Sudan. He's maybe gone through $15 million in four to five years. So he's out of money. One of his wives is gone. His eldest son has abandoned him. Apparently he may have considered in 1995 moving to London, which feels like an unhinged decision for Osama bin Laden. Well, I mean, it's interesting, you made that point that the faxes are being sent out of

London and he's got this kind of London office effectively and a London spokesperson who's there. It does sound crazy, but I mean, famously, this is the era of what was known as Londonistan, which is what the French used to call it, because there were a lot of frankly jihadist and pretty extreme Islamists who'd based themselves in London and found exile in London. The general view was that the British police and security services were tolerating them. The French, for instance, were furious about this because there would be some attacks linked to people who were in London. But that's the remarkable thing is these faxes are going out in the mid 90s about jihadism from his London office effectively. It's where his press office is based. So you know, you do get the sense of a kind of weird organisational structure that's going on and a bureaucracy as well with a press office effectively.

Yeah, he could have gone out to the Cotswolds something, Gordon kind of set up shop out there, hung out for a while, but he doesn't, he doesn't. And he remains in Sudan for a little while longer. Now, I do think Gordon, we should take a bit of a moment to just explain, I think a bit of his ideology at this stage, because by the early nineties, I think in Osama bin Laden, we now have the kind of animating principles.

I think his ideology is formed by this point. And I think there's really five themes. And you mentioned one earlier, which is this concept, it's the first one of the far enemy, right? The US is a civilizational enemy of the Islamic world. It's like a crusader entity, almost obsessed with killing Muslims and killing

Muslim children. And so for him, he believes that his jihad against the US actually is defensive, right? All of his attacks against the US are for the protection of the Islamic world. So that's one. Two, the Islamic world, the Muslim world has been betrayed by corrupt governments in league with the US. Saudis, case in point right there. Three, there's an Islamic duty of self-defense. And if the war is defensive, this is a critical point. Osama can create a theological requirement for jihad at the individual level.

So it's like a mass call up if your country's invaded, right? Everyone has to serve in some capacity because the United States and its sort of corrupt Muslim governments that are in cahoots with it are attacking you. So you have to rise up. Now, for innocence, including Muslims, we'll die in this war. This is a really important point because so many of the attacks that are going to come are very indiscriminate. And I think in Osama's mind, it's regrettable that Muslims will die, but it's

justifiable. And it's justifiable, because he essentially sees them as the equivalent of human shields. So if the Americans have invaded the Islamic world and taken human shields almost as hostages, Muslims will die if the Americans are targeted, which is what Osama wants to do. But even more will die if the Americans are left to their own devices to continue kind of ripping up the Islamic world. So he's got this very bizarre idea that he's justified in

killing Muslims because otherwise more Muslims will die if the Americans continue their presence in the Middle East and the lands of Islam. And then five, I think he really sees Al Qaeda as an inspiration for other jihadist groups as well. So it's an instigator for a bigger uprising to fight the Americans and their allies. And that'll be so important to the models that'll form in the decade to come, where you have all these kind of franchise groups all around the world. So it's interesting because he's got these ideas and because of who he is, this wealthy Saudi

with this experience in Afghanistan, he's also got an organization that he can test these ideas with, even if it's kind of fragmented globally and pretty fractious. And there is a bureaucratic theme to Al-Qaeda, which I think is pretty interesting because they've got 19 pages of draft bylaws. So it's a kind of network. It's a kind of inspirational group, but it is also a bureaucracy. Yeah. I mean, I find it amazing that some of the detail about how they ran it. They've

got a monthly salary, you get additional payments per wife and child. You get cost of living increases, pegged at 10% if you're a member of Al-Qaeda. Is this right? One month of vacation, two weeks of six leave, extra time off for those on the front lines? That's good. One month of vacation time is not bad. It's more than most get in America, isn't it? I think you're going to get a couple of weeks. So medical is provided if you're in network, if provided by a member of the al-qaeda staff

But if you go out of network, you need permission before you're treated and this is the craziest bit a furniture allowance But that's a loan deducted from salaries. I mean, this is like a kind of it's like a modern corporation I mean, that's what he's kind of building with trying to attract staff by offering them better benefits I don't know if you can go down the road in Khartoum and get worse, worse terms from Abu Nidal group or something like that. I don't know how that worked in jihadist terms. But anyway, it's amazing, isn't it? Well, he's a businessman, right? I mean, he's got experience in

the family business. He knows how business administration works. Now, this is the point in the story, Gordon, where I mean, thank God we're finally getting to the CIA, right? Let's let's just say that. I mean, Gordon has never looked happier to see the CIA coming to the rescue. And I think it'd be fair to say that if in this period of Sama is becoming very obsessed with the Americans, and even though he's running an organization that has already attacked or tried to attack American interests, and

Americans in the Middle East, he's not really on the CIA's radar just yet. It's probably worth painting a bit of a picture of what the CIA is like in the early 1990s. Because I think it's an agency that is in the midst of what was then known as the peace dividend, which means it's lost billions of dollars of funding relative to its Cold War budgets. It's maybe lost a quarter of its workforce through attrition. And this is a great anecdote.

In the mid 1990s, the CIA director was invited to participate in a panel at a think tank in DC that was titled, Does America Need the CIA? So you have a CIA that I think has decidedly lost some of its mojo. And Al Qaeda is running thousands of fighters through its training camps, while a few dozen people are going through the farm

each year, the CIA's training facility for incoming case officers. The FBI apparently had more special agents in New York than the CIA had case officers around the world. But there are some intrepid analysts, Gordon. It's always the analysts. It's always the analysts. Unfortunately, though, this one started actually at the State Department's Bureau for Intelligence and Research, which is, I Research, which makes me feel ashamed. An analyst, she'll later become a CIA analyst.

Oh, well, there you go. And she becomes one of the first that'll look at what all of these Afghan Arabs are up to after the Soviet jihad, because it's become this kind of far-flung network. Some people have gone home, others are with Osama. They're fighting in places like Bosnia or in Yemen or they're in Egypt. So they're all over the place. This INR analyst writes a paper in August of 93 titled The Wandering Mujahideen Armed and Dangerous and bin Laden is described in this piece as a donor. And I think it's fair to say that even by the mid 90s, all of the sort of people in the intelligence community

bureaucracy that are looking at Osama Bin Laden are looking at terrorism. It's not really like the cool thing to look at at that point. I mean, one of the CIA analysts who was actually looking at Bin Laden in the mid 90s was counseled that she was spending too much time on him and should look at other targets.

But this group in the CIA, they begin to kind of take note of connections between militants who were linked to al-Qaeda. And by 1996, the CIA stands up what was called a virtual station focused on Bin Laden himself. And this is the famous Alec station, isn't it? That's right. So it was run by a guy called Mike Shorier, who I got to know a bit. And Alec, it was actually his son.

So he named it after his son. So you already get the sense there that it was quite a kind of personal creation and probably quite a small group, probably kind of at the margins, maybe at the CIA. Is that fair? But Mike Shorier, driven man. I got to know him in the 2000s, so after he'd left Alex Station. But he was a very intense character, it's fair to say.

And at that point, a very angry man and a very obsessive man about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, basically. The reason is because he is the one who, at a point where no one else is interested in him, is the one given this task of building a group to track them. And the virtual station means, I guess, that they are a group who are not a station in the sense of being on the ground in the country where their target is or abroad, but they're kind of acting like a station out of headquarters. Is that right? And a group is being brought together to do that. Yeah, I think initially they set up shop at one of these kind of unmarked random buildings in the DC metro area that the CIA owns, and that you won't see a CIA sign on the outside,

but you might see two people with carbines standing outside looking sort of suspicious. Right? So I think it started in one of those places and then eventually was moved into headquarters itself. But you're right. I mean, it's not a field station in the sense of it's not in Moscow or Damascus or something like that. And to your point on Mike Shoyer, a couple of points I'd make here. One is Lawrence Wright in his book on al-Qaeda, the Looming Tower, described Shoyer as you could imagine his portrait on the wall of a 19th century Prussian estate. And Mike Morrell, who is gonna become the deputy director of the CIA at the time of the Bin Laden raid,

described Scheuer as a zealot. I mean, so to your point, I mean, he's a maniac trying to prevent Osama Bin Laden from conducting attacks against Americans. Yeah, he's the man who feels like he and his team, which I think are largely women, actually, women. Mostly women. Mostly women. And he believes he is the one rigging that alarm belt and that no one is listening. And he will kind of rig it louder and louder and louder in the organization and

increasingly angrily as he feels people aren't listening to him. The Alex Station crew, I think, are so out there in the CIA of the mid-90s that they become known as the Manson family within headquarters. I will also note, and I think this is a really important point for much of what will come in the next episode, it is that Mike Scheuer is an analyst. He is an analyst running an operational unit in the mid 1990s. Every analyst's dream. Well, it's almost unheard of.

Or it's part of the problem that because he's an analyst running a station, people aren't listening. All those operations people are going to go, this guy warning about some jihadist in Sudan. The Manson family is kind of a fun way of saying it, or it makes it sound lighthearted. But it gives you a sense that in 1996, even after Osama bin Laden has attempted to kill Americans, the DO, the Directorate of Operations, cares so little about bin Laden at the time, that they're content to have an analyst running the unit targeting. Yeah, so it's pretty marginal.

It's pretty marginal. Now, by 1996, Alex Station is able to participate in kind of the first debriefing of a real defector from Al-Qaeda. And those debriefings give the CIA a sense of kind of Al-Qaeda's global reach, its vision, its mission. They make Alex Station and Mike Shoyer and his Manson family much more concerned about al-Qaeda. And pressure begins to ramp up on the Sudanese government to expel Osama bin Laden. It's driven by the CIA's concern. It's also driven in part by plotting that al-Qaeda is doing in Egypt and they potentially got plans to assassinate the Egyptian president. But the problem is that the Saudis don't want bin Laden at this stage, and neither do we. There's also no indictment, no formal indictment against bin Laden. So if we got bin Laden, what would we even do with him?

And the Sudanese leader essentially meets with bin Laden, gives him an ultimatum. He says, basically, keep quiet, or you're going to have to leave the country. And bin Laden is going to make the decision, I think, to go back to some degree to his, his roots to go back to Afghanistan. He's got kind of past there, he's got contacts, I think he's got Gordon, a bit of a romantic attachment to the place. And he's gonna leave Sudan quite angry because he leaves like 29 or so million dollars in investments behind. He's not compensated for the losses by Sudan, right? So he leaves with all of the investments he had made at the family money before he had broken essentially in tatters behind him or confiscated by the Sudanese government. Now, to give a sense of, I think,

just his mindset that this is a holy war that he is involved in, Osama tells his mother that he's going back to Afghanistan. He's still close with her. And she'd always been worried about him visiting the battlefield there. So the next day she calls him back and says that she had a dream in which Osama was sitting

between Jesus and Moses. And in the dream, Jesus and Moses turned to Aliya, turned to his mother, and tell her that her son would be protected. She says, don't worry, they've made arrangements for your protection. Let him go wherever he wishes. His mom says, you need to go to Afghanistan, trusting in God. There with Osama bin Laden heading back towards Afghanistan, this pivotal country will stop. Next time we'll see how when he's in Afghanistan, he is going to come onto a collision course with the CIA as he really begins to up this terrorist campaign against the US and the

CIA tries to hunt him down. Well, and Gordon, if listeners are just chomping at the bit to see how that war goes down, you don't need to wait. You can get access to this entire series charting the CIA's war against Osama bin Laden. You can get access to all of it now just by joining the Declassified Club. So go to therestisclassified.com, sign up, and you'll be able to take this journey all the way up and through the raid that kills Osama bin Laden. Our conversation with a special guest and I think Gordon this Friday, you and I are going to have a little Q&A. Yeah, bonus episode for the members. That's right. That's right. So you've got crazy questions about Gordon Carrera's gig that he was

at when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait or other inquiries about Gordon's home address or phone number, things like that. We're going to cover it all on the pod on Friday for members of the Declassified Club. We'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.