by popular demand: urls re "bizarre" coincidences

[pynchonoid]

<http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,410237,00.html>

Five Degrees of Osama
FORTUNE
Wednesday, January 22, 2003 
By Nicholas Stein 

In December, President Bush named Thomas Kean, the
former Republican governor of New Jersey, chairman of
an independent commission examining the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks. But FORTUNE has learned that Kean
appears to have a bizarre link to the very terror
network he's investigating--al Qaeda. 

Here's how the dots connect: Kean is a director of
petroleum giant Amerada Hess, which in 1998 formed a
joint venture--known as Delta Hess--with Delta Oil, a
Saudi Arabian company, to develop oil fields in
Azerbaijan. One of Delta's backers is Khalid bin
Mahfouz, a shadowy Saudi patriarch married to one of
Osama bin Laden's sisters. Mahfouz, who is suspected
of funding charities linked to al Qaeda, is even named
as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by families of Sept.
11 victims. True, Hess is hardly the only company to
cross paths with Mahfouz: He has shown up in dealings
with, among others, ultra-secretive investment firm
Carlyle Group and BCCI, the lender toppled by fraud in
1992. 

Kean, who was unavailable for comment, may not have
been aware of the Mahfouz connection. But Hess
spokesman Carl Tursi did reveal another interesting
coincidence: Three weeks before Kean's appointment,
Hess severed its ties with Delta. 
>From the Feb. 3, 2003 Issue	  


January 10, 2002 	
Arms Buildup Enriches Firm Staffed by Big Guns
 Defense: Ex-president and other elites are behind
weapon-boosting Carlyle Group.
<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-011002carlyle.story?null>

...enjoy!

-Doug



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<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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