What's most shocking is that Abdallah al-Thani has been widely accused of helping to spirit KSM out of Qatar in 1996, just as the FBI was closing in on him. Robert Baer, a former CIA supervisor in the region, contends in a 2003 memoir that the emir himself actually sanctioned tipping KSM. The staff of the 9/11 Commission, meanwhile, noted that the FBI and CIA "were reluctant to seek help from the Qatari government" in the arrest of KSM, "fearing that he might be tipped off." When Qatar's emir was finally "asked for his help" in January 1996, Qatari authorities "first reported that KSM was under surveillance," then "asked for an alternative plan that would conceal their aid to Americans," and finally "reported that KSM had disappeared."
Giuliani's lifelong friend Louis Freeh, the FBI head who talked to Giuliani periodically about terrorist threats during Giuliani's mayoral years and has endorsed him for president, was so outraged that he wrote a formal letter to Qatar's foreign minister complaining that he'd received "disturbing information" that KSM "has again escaped the surveillance of your Security Services and that he appears to be aware of FBI interest in him."
Illustration by Wes Duvall
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Special reporting by Samuel Rubenfeld and additional research by Adrienne Gaffney and Danielle Schiffman
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Abdallah al-Thani remains a named defendant in the 9/11 lawsuits that are still proceeding in Manhattan federal court, but his Washington lawyers declined to address the charges that he shielded KSM, insisting only that he never "supported" any "terrorist acts." Asked if Abdallah al-Thani ever supported any terrorists rather than their acts, his lawyer David Nachman declined to comment further. The Congressional Research Service report summarized the evidence against him: "According to the 9/11 Commission Report and former U.S. government officials, royal family member and current Qatari Interior Minister, Sheikh Abdullah (Abdallah) bin Khalid Al Thani, provided safe harbor and assistance to Al Qaeda leaders during the 1990s," including KSM. While numerous accounts have named Abdallah as the KSM tipster, the report simply says that "a high ranking member of the Qatari government" is believed to have "alerted" KSM "to the impending raid."
Freeh's letter in 1996 highlighted the consequences of this government-orchestrated escape with a prophetic declaration, saying that the "failure to apprehend KSM would allow him and other associates to continue to conduct terrorist operations." Indeed, had KSM, who was even then focused on the use of hijacked planes as weapons, been captured in 1996, 9/11 might well have never happened.
In other words, as incredible as it might seem, Rudy Giuliani—whose presidential candidacy is steeped in 9/11 iconography—has been doing business with a government agency run by the very man who made the attacks on 9/11 possible.
This startling revelation is not a sudden disclosure from new sources. It has, in fact, been staring us in the face for many months.
The Wall Street Journal reported on November 7 that one Giuliani Partners client the former mayor hadn't previously disclosed was, in fact, the government of Qatar. Quoting the recently retired Bush envoy to Qatar, Chase Untermeyer, the Journal reported that state-run Qatar Petroleum had signed a contract with Giuliani Security "around 2005" and that the firm (of which Giuliani has a 30 percent equity stake) is offering security advice to a giant natural-gas processing facility called Ras Laffan. While the interior ministry wouldn't confirm individual contracts, it did tell the Voice that Qatar Petroleum and security "purchasing" are part of its portfolio.
(The Journal story was followed by a similar piece in the Chicago Tribune last week, which revealed that Giuliani's firm has also represented a complex casino partnership seeking to build a $3.5 billion Singapore resort. The partnership included "the family of a controversial Hong Kong billionaire who has ties to the regime of North Korea's Kim Jong II and has been linked to international organized crime by the U.S. government.")
The Journal story, however, didn't go into detail about the unsavory connections that Giuliani had made in the Middle East. The Journal wrote that it learned about the Qatar contract after reading a speech that Untermeyer gave in 2006, when he said that Giuliani's firm had "important contracts" in Qatar. In fact, Untermeyer—who returned to Texas when he stepped down as ambassador to join a real-estate firm partnered with the National Bank of Qatar—told the Houston Forum that Giuliani's "security company" has "several" contracts in Qatar, and that Giuliani himself "comes to Doha [Qatar's capital] twice a year." Untermeyer's wife Diana spoke at the same event about their daughter Elly, who she said "makes friends with all she meets—other kids, generals, sheikhs, and even our famous American visitors like former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, whom she deems 'cool.' "
While it is true that Giuliani hasn't disclosed the particulars of his Qatar business, he and others at the firm have been bragging about it for years, presumably on the assumption that mentioning good-paying clients is the best way to generate more of the same. Giuliani told South Africa's Business Times in June 2006, for example, that he'd "recently helped Qatar" to transform Doha in preparation for the Asian Games, an Olympics- sanctioned, 45-country competition that occurred last December. He was in Johannesburg in part to offer to do the same before South Africa hosts the 2010 World Cup. "They had the same concerns as you," he said at the Global Leaders Africa summit, "and I helped them pull things together. You can see not only how they pulled together physical things that were necessary, such as stadiums, but how they used the plan to improve their security."
