← The Watch Floor with Sarah Adams
Loading summary
Transcript2 lines
- [00:01]
A
Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com
- [00:19]
B
welcome to the Watch Floor. I'm Sarah Adams. We're at this unique moment in time. It's the 15 year anniversary of the death of Osama Bin Laden. I can't believe it's been 15 years. It took so long to find him and it almost seems like ancient history that he's gone. One issue remains. This is the father of 13 sons. Yes, one was killed with him, but his other sons are out there. And today I want to spend time on just some of those sons. We're going to talk about four of them that are not only based back in Afghanistan, but they plan to carry on the goals and ambitions and the group their father ran. So today we're discussing the Bin Laden. To talk about the Bin Laden, we're not going to go back to their birth. We're just going to go a couple years before the death of their first father Osama, we're going to go to the year 2009. So in 2009, the US government took a strike on Saad Bin Laden in Waziristan. He ended up being injured, his leg was injured. Two of his bodyguards were killed. A famous Al Qaeda commander's daughter was killed. It was Abu Iklas Al Masri. His daughter had just married one Assad's brothers, Abdullah, just weeks before. And so she died in this. And at the time Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri said, hey, the US is getting way too close to the sons of Bin Laden. You know, I need to find a better way to protect them. Because remember these adult sons at this point were not living with their father in Abbottabad. They were living in like North Waziristan in the Pakistan Afghanistan border region. So Dr. Zawihiri took a step back and he how do I protect them best? So while making a plan, he first took Saud and then Hamza Bin Laden, he moved them to Peshawar, Pakistan. So he actually moved them more into a city instead of this wild, wild environment, even though Peshawar is still a little wild. And they ended up staying with in the home of Dr. Amino Hawk, a long time Al Qaeda operative. And he's now kind of one of the senior leaders on Al Qaeda's military commission. So the sons were harbored in his home in Peshawar. So what Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri decided to do. He said, hey, if we just say Saad is dead, we don't have to worry about the US attempting to target him again. And we need to dissociate him from the people he was connected to in Waziristan because we do not know how the US Government got the information that gave up his location. Right, so separate him from this network he was in and then report out that he died. So that was the plan. And that's what happened with Saad bin Laden. And you'll notice the US Government said he's likely dead, but they never confirmed it. So the interesting thing is, and we're going to fast forward well ahead now, we killed Dr. Ayman Al Zarahiri very famously, as most people know. It was our last strike in Afghanistan. That was in June of 2022. In May of 2022, he'd been moved from Peshawar to Kabul in Afghanistan by Abdulaziz Haqqani. This is one of the brothers of Surajeddin Haqqani. And he got moved into a Haqqani safe house in Afghanistan because they thought, hey, it's safe now. The US Is no longer striking here. They've handed over the counterterrorism mission to us and it now is safe to bring Al Qaeda senior leaders here. And then, of course, he died that day. Another famous terrorist was in the house with him at the time. Hamza Al Ghamdi. He survived and he now runs Al Qaeda's military commission, is still based in Afghanistan. So anyway, back to the story. So Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri dies and a few weeks later, there's a funeral for him. Saad bin Laden shows up at the funeral. Well, of course, all the senior Al Qaeda leadership knows he's alive, but this was shocking to some junior people who didn't really run in those circles and didn't realize, oh, he actually is alive. The other thing that was very fascinating, when Saad bin Laden came to Zawahiri's funeral, he came from with his two wives. So one of his wives ended up being the daughter of Jalaluddin Haqqani. And he also came with some of the Haqqani network members. They were actually even helping with some of his security. Even though he's long been protected by tricky Taliban, Pakistan, they've really, for gosh, the last 20 years have been his security detail. And in that strike, you know, where we attempted to kill him, his two TTP bodyguards were killed at the time. So anyway, he comes with that wife and then he brings A second wife. And his second wife ends up being one of the daughters of Mullah Omar. The interesting thing is she was the youngest daughter of his second wife. And his second wife, ironically enough, was the sister of Muladhadutalang. Right. One of the most famous daughter Taliban terrorists the US government took off the battlefield in Afghanistan. He probably was the most famous terrorist killed in Afghanistan. So it's a very interesting thing too because now you have like a Bin Laden, you know, married with an Haqqani, married with a Mua Omar. Right. So his kids now are right, half Taliban, half Al Qaeda. And it's really this stark reminder that there is no separation anymore. You could have said maybe on 9 11. Yes, there's a separation between Al Qaeda and the Taliban now because they're intermarried and their kids are half and half. There really is no separation. It's something we really need to spend time talking about as we go forward. All right, we're here for a quick update. Since I've now been using these ultra pouches for a few weeks and they've really helped replace my old routine. Like many, I relied on coffee. But as we all know, it gives us the jitters and then eventually the crash. Ultra pouches are very different. Remember, they're nicotine free and they're caffeine free and they really do give this clean, steady focus. They use neotropics and adaptogen for that calm energy so you're not feeling on edge. I like to use them before I record and when I sit down to work on one of my investigations because they just work. Recently I've tried their blue razz flavor. It's now one of my favorites. It's like this sweet but tart blue raspberry. I'd be surprised if it doesn't sell out. Ultra is the ultimate guilt free pouch, delivering instant focus and mental clarity without the nicotine or caffeine. New customers can use Code watch to get 15% off@takealtra.com Again, that's takealtra.com for 15% off using code watch. And after you check out, they'll ask who sent you. Let them know the watch floor did. Another really interesting thing is Saad, you know, had a couple sons. One of his sons, Farqan Bin Laden, is now dead. He actually joined isis of all things. People say Al Qaeda and ISIS don't work together. He wasn't. He didn't break off from his family and go rogue. And Joan isis, they allowed him to be a member of isis and he actually carried out a suicide attack on behalf of the group in Syria. So this is other stark reminder. Hey guys, things have evolved. Bin Laden is in isis. Right. And you still get a lot of people saying, oh, these two groups are enemies, they don't work together really. Right. That's Osama Bin Laden's grandson, blew himself up for isis. Right. We have a huge problem. But you know, we're not going to get into all that today. I really want to just kind of focus on these sons. So the last piece that's kind of interesting with Saad and then we'll move on is there is another woman who lives in his house. So her name is Naima and she's the daughter of Abdelrahman Al Sudani. So this was a very close friend of, of Osama bin Laden's when he lived in Sudan. So we're going a very far time back. So she could be Saad's wife, but because of her age, she's more likely another wife of Osama Bin Laden that we might not even have known of. So this is a crazy, crazy thing. So Osama bin Laden was the number one target of the United States for years. So many years, so many resources were put into him. And first off, we might not know some of his wife's. We don't know what his kids do now. We don't know the names of his grandkids. We don't even know how many grandkids he has. Right. And it's crazy. We went from making him the center of the universe to having no clue now what's happening within the Bin Ladens. It's a very concerning thing. So we'll move on then to Hamza because we brought up how back in 2009 he went to Peshawar for a bit with his brother Saad. So Hamza is very interesting. This was a different case. So the US didn't actually take a successful strike on homs of Bin Laden. Al Qaeda got information, it sounds like maybe from a double agent that was reporting to the US Government and someone told them the US government was about to strike Hamza Bin Laden or they knew of him or knew of his location. So Dr. Ayman Al Zaire here, he said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we can't risk them taking this strike on Hamza. So what we need to do is put out misinformation that he's already dead. So they picked a strike that we took and interestingly enough, it killed two TTP commanders. I told you TTP did security for Assad. They've also done security for many years for Hamza. And so he said, this is great. It already fits the signature of the bin Laden's sons, right? Because they're TTP commanders. Nobody will bat an eye. But the other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to have the women in the family have discussions on the phone about him being dead, because I know the US Government's trying to collect on them. And it'll cement it. So we'll seed in information that Hamza died in this strike when he wasn't even at this location. And then we'll get people talking on the phone. Another interesting thing about talking on the phone is Hamza's mom was in Saudi Arabia. And the Saudi Arabian government said, hey, the only way we'll give you benefits is if you can prove your son Hamza bin Laden is dead. So she was part of this whole ploy. She also spoke from Saudi Arabia, calling Pakistan and saying she's sad about her son dying and all this stuff, and it was only a ruse for her to get money. I mean, it's this crazy thing. This is what they do. Terrorists deceive. So Hanzov never was there, you know, he never died. And then of course, the fall of Kabul happened. So fall of Kabul goes down and Al Qaeda is like, great, we got our base back. We need to regroup. The first thing we have to do, though, to regroup is we have to put a bin Laden towards the top of Al Qaeda, of course. So this is now January of 2022. So we're what, six months before, seven months before the death of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri. And he names Hamza bin Laden in a ceremony as the number two of Al Qaeda. And then he makes him like the military commander for the group. So, hey, good, we're back now on the right trajectory. We got a bin Laden at the top because Al Qaeda only exists with the bin Ladens. It's a bloodline organization. And Dr. Ayman Al Zahiri is really like mentoring and honing not just Hamza, but Saad, very importantly, Abdullah bin Laden, who had been kind of acting as a head of the military at the time. And then there's another brother that's going to come in, but he probably doesn't get there for about another year. So we now have how it was always going to align. Hamza's now moving up to one of his rightful places. Of course. Dr. Ayman Al Zarahiri dies in July of 2022. As we already talked about. So in September they meet, of course, around 9 11, and they said, hey, let's make Hamza kind of the de facto leader until we can do a full vote in and make them cemented. So he gets this de facto role. And then it was in November of 2022 that he gets officially approved as the mirror of Al Qaeda. So since September 2022, but if you're official, November 2022, Hamza bin Laden has led Al Qaeda. We spend a lot of time on this show talking about threats, identifying them early, understanding patterns and how to get ahead of things before they go very wrong. But a lot of people don't think about their health in that way. And honestly, I've been to doctor's appointments where I leave and it's like, okay, I'm fine. But I didn't really get anything useful. No real data, no action plan. That's why I really like what Superpower is doing. They make it incredibly simple. Either a licensed professional comes to your home or you go to a nearby lab. And with one set of lab tests, you can get answers into 100 different biomarkers. And that'll help you actually understand what's going on inside of your body. What stands out for me is this isn't some one time step snapshot. You can track things over time like your hormones, your metabolism, your heart, health, all of it. And then you can get real actionable recommendations so you're not guessing about supplements or sleep or what your body actually needs. You can even get your biological age and watch it change. Make this the year you stop guessing about your health. With Superpower for a limited time, our listeners get $20 off to unlock their new health intelligence. Head over to superpower.com and use code watch for $20 off your membership. That's Code Watch. And after you check out, they'll ask you who sent them. Let them know the Watch floor did. So when we go back to Hamza, we talked about Saad's wedding. Of course, when you're elevated and your Hamza bin Laden, you definitely are going to have four wives and they're all going to connect to someone and matter. That's how marriages and relationships work across terrorist groups. And Hamza is no different. So Hamza bin Laden has four wives. One is the daughter, like his brother Saad of Moloch Omar. One, just like Saad again, is the daughter of Jalaluddin Haqqani. Another is the daughter of Abu Muhammad Al Masri, very famously known as being one of the plotters of our 1998 attacks, you know, in Kenya and Tanzania. The crazy part is it's another one of those deceptive practices where the US government thinks he's dead. And the terrorists did this insane thing, right? They set him up, not him, but the person that was in the ruse to be killed on the anniversary of our embassy bombing. So he was killed in Iran by the Israelis. But again, that was just a ruse. They killed someone else. He's very much alive. He was in Afghanistan right after the fall. He then went to Mali, he got injured, he was in a hospital in Niger. And last we saw he was leading a lot of the efforts in Burkina Faso for Jim, he actually ended up becoming like the number two of their military commission. So he's very much still in play, you know, one of the key plotters of our 1998 attack. So we'd love to go get him. And then his last wife is a daughter, as you can imagine, of Dr. Ayman Al Zawahiri. Of course, Dr. Ayman Al Zahiri was paramount in keeping Hamza bin Laden alive this entire time. Right. Because he's family. Now I want to quickly move on to Abdullah. So Abdullah bin Laden, there is no argument about whether he is alive or not, Right? He's very public facing. He's one of the key members of Al Qaeda that goes and represents the group, be it with the Haqqanis, the Taliban, name your flavor. All these different terrorist groups come to Afghanistan. I mean Al Shabaab comes. Heck, guys come from Bangladesh, you know, people from the Philippines, it doesn't matter. So he's kind of become like the public face. So you usually have Abdullah bin Laden at a meeting and Abu Iklis El Masri and they're a little more forward facing. And then of course you have like a scifold that Al Qaeda likes to tease the world and pretend he's in charge when he's actually the head of external operations. Now you ask, well, why do they even let you think that? Why risk Sciofol Oddle and not others? It's a really, really great question. And the fact is Sciofol Oddle has a very bad heart condition, is believed to only live a couple more years. If that's true, who knows? The doctors in Afghanistan are not very good, even though Al Qaeda gets the best doctors. But that's a theory. He's only got a few years left to live. He can absorb the risk a lot better of course than Hamza bin Laden. So there's another family piece to it. We'll get to that in a second. So when we go back to Abdullah, Abdullah has been this public face. But the other thing Abdullah very famously did that he doesn't get credit for, and I'm really surprised by this, is when we talk about how the Taliban took back Afghanistan or the government of Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, nobody's honest that that was a joint Taliban Al Qaeda operation. And leading on the Al Qaeda side was Abdullah bin Laden. So Abdullah bin Laden helped basically mastermind the entire operational plan to take back Afghanistan. And he also was in a key planning meeting for the Abygate attacks. Right. So he's been doing this military strategy and being very successful. He got away with killing 13Americans. Do you see him on a wanted list here for being involved in Abigail? No. It's insane because nobody wants to be honest about the bin Laden. No one wants to talk about them, no one wants to tell you, yeah, they are still killing Americans. Right. Just in August of 2021. So it's a very, very frustrating thing. So Abdullah has kind of grown into this military strategist that no one expected. He's very similar in thinking and planning and style to Saif Aladdle, which is really interesting. Another thing with Abdullah bin Laden is he almost gets forgotten. It almost is like he doesn't exist because Osama has a brother with the exact same name. So anytime you talk about Abdullah, everyone's like, yeah, he went to school in New York, everybody knows who he is, he's a businessman. And they blow it off and they forget there's a son by the exact same name. So he's done this really interesting thing where he's like skirted under the radar. You even get people being like, oh no, that son's a businessman. You know, in uae it's like, guys, he lives in Kandahar. So it's just this interesting thing to watch kind of these games, you know, the bin Ladens have played and they've really been able to take advantage of it. Now, when we talk about Abdullah, I did bring up briefly how his third wife died, you know, in the strike that was against Saad Bin Laden and she was the daughter of Abu Iklis Al Masri. He still top five of Al Qaeda. He currently leads their like civil commission. But anyway, Abdullah then has two more wives, so one was is Afghan. So she's the daughter of Mullah Akhdar Mohammed Mansour. So this is very interesting because we have obviously his brothers are married to the daughters of Mullah Omar and then Mullah Akdar Maha and Mansour when he took over the Taliban it was almost like a little bit of a rift in the Taliban. And so they have marriages across all the public facing rifts. So they're married into the Haqqanis, they're married into Mullah Omar's family, they're married into Mullah Akhdar Mohammad Mansour's family and they're married into Muladhadu to Laing's family. So it's a very interesting thing. So when people say things like the Haqqani Taliban, the Kandahari Taliban, all these splits, it does not matter in the Bin Laden family because the Bin Ladens are married into every split. So it's something to keep in mind. It's incredibly important. So his second wife is the daughter of Abdullah Abd el Kar Al Masri. So he's dead, very senior though leader in Al Qaeda. And when like Sayf Al returned to Afghanistan, gosh, when was it? It was May 2022 I believe. So when he came back he brought his daughter, his son in law who we'll mention in a second and then he brought Abdullah's family with him. So he's actually taking care of his family now. Abdullah's entire family have now moved to Afghanistan. They were being harbored in Iran with Saif Al, with Hamza Bin Laden's family, extended family. Because Hamza left Iran right after the death of Qasem Soleiman, it freaked him out. He said I'm not going to risk it here. And he moved to Waziristan at the time. Then he came back of course to Afghanistan after the fall. So anyway, I just want you to see how mix these networks out, how everybody's very close. So lastly, the son in law of Saif Al, well that's Uthman Bin Laden. So Saif Al. Sorry. So Saif Al's daughter Saifa is married to Uthman Bin Laden. So the fourth son of Osama Bin Laden. So Uthman stays incredibly under the radar and it makes a lot of people think he's not operationally viable. But it's actually a lot more concerning why you don't hear about him. So if you know anything about the history of Al Qaeda, they had some big grand ambitions. So the different brothers have picked up on some of the ambitions. Right. Abdullah's picked up on some of the military strategy his dad had. Hamza Bin Laden picked up on the fact that his dad wanted like a Sunni Shia coalition and he's ran with that and made the Islamic Resistance Council. So they all have kind of taken On a piece. Okay, Saad bin Laden spent a lot of time kind of working on the Shura. Now Uthman has done something that's almost more concerning even though the Islamic army is probably the thing we should fear the most. But he has brought back Tarnak Farms. So if you know anything about Al Qaeda, Tarnak Farms was basically the base of their WMD program now which we would call like cbrn. And it was completely destroyed. So it's now been rebuilt. It's not in the same location. They have built some camps in the same location, which is crazy. But Tarneck Farms is in a different location but it is now being headed by one of the sons of Bin Laden. So their CBRN or wmd, whatever program you want to call it is back online and it is going like at 100%. So just another kind of threat factor nobody talks about. Like I spent a lot of time of course talking about their homeland attack and those plans. But you know, when we're talking about this chemical biological goals and ambitions, I mean they're scary, they're dangerous, they're harmful. And even now when they're just kind of in a lot of the testing phase, right, they're testing these on people, they're killing people, you know, with these chem bio agents. And the sad part is because there is this want to not talk about the Bin Ladens or to not be honest about the Bin Ladens or not to go after and target the Bin Ladens. Right? Al Qaeda's defeated. Al Qaeda is behind us. Right. That's what they told us about isis. Well it's not and the longer we ignore it, the more these major initiatives that all the brothers are working on are going to come to fruition and it's a very scary thing. So yea, we got Osama Bin Laden. Now we have four Osama Bin Ladens and we don't have someone targeting those four like the fervor that went against Osama. And that is going to come back and bite us. So I hope today was useful for you and hope you know now way too much about the Bin Ladens. And thanks for being here today on the watch floor.