Bin Ladens Escorted out of US

When he was on the Daily Show a few months ago, Michael Moore mentioned something about a New Yorker article reporting that the Saudis got clearance to fly several members of the Bin Laden family out of the United States the week following Sept. 11.

I couldn’t believe the story he told and, after failing to locate it following a search at the New Yorker site, I concluded that Moore somehow got the details mangled, wound up misinterpreting something he read, or, worse, was citing second-hand information without double checking. After all, he does have a tendency of doing this.

Apparently I was wrong to assume such things. I finally ran across the story today, here, and it seems Moore was on target:

Around two dozen other American-based members of the bin Laden family, most of them here to study in colleges and prep schools, were said to be in the United States at the time of the attacks. The New York Times reported that they were quickly called together by officials from the Saudi Embassy, which feared that they might become the victims of American reprisals. With approval from the F.B.I., according to a Saudi official, the bin Ladens flew by private jet from Los Angeles to Orlando, then on to Washington, and finally to Boston. Once the F.A.A. permitted overseas flights, the jet flew to Europe. United States officials apparently needed little persuasion from the Saudi Ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, that the extended bin Laden family included no material witnesses. The Saudi Embassy says that the family cooperated with the F.B.I. The Saudi government has said that the family signed a statement officially disowning Osama in 1994, a year after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The Saudi government also stripped bin Laden of his citizenship, which resulted in self-exile to Sudan. When I asked a senior United States intelligence officer whether anyone had considered detaining members of the family, he replied, "That's called taking hostages. We don't do that."

The last line is particularly amusing. We don’t take hostages? What, then, do we call the detainees on Guantanamo?