By Matt Callan

Kean’s Connection
Did the commissioner of the 9/11 investigation have business
contacts with an al Qaeda funder?

If you knew Thomas H. Kean before he was appointed chair of the independent commission to investigate September 11, it was more likely from a tv commercial than his political legacy. As the Garden State’s governor from 1982 to 1990, Kean walked the New Jersey shoreline enticing tourists to come spend a day at the beach, uttering the tagline, "New Jersey and you, perfect together."

When President Bush announced that Kean would lead the federal investigation into 9/11, the media responded with a collective "Who?" But Kean’s apparent low profile was misleading, and a series of controversial articles has lately explored the former governor’s business dealings in the Middle East and Central Asia–dealings which may have brought him within uncomfortable proximity to a man accused of funding al Qaeda.

Tom Kean was hardly the most memorable local politician of his day. He had none of the youse-guys bluster of Al D’Amato, none of the ivy-covered erudition of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, none of the how’m-I-doin’ love-starved quality of Ed Koch. He had no slogans or mannerisms that could be mocked. His genial face seemed to defy both caricature and memory.

Kean flew through eight years in the state capitol without hitting any significant speed bumps. After his term ended, he became president of Drew University, served on the board of numerous public advocacy groups, and largely stayed out of political life. (Last year, he briefly emerged from obscurity to campaign for Doug Forrester’s unsuccessful Senate run. The ad spots in which Kean appeared showed the same man who had left Trenton 12 years before. His face, bland as ever, had aged little, and his voice still held the lockjaw cadences of a Boston Brahmin.)

Kean’s anonymity would seem to stand in stark contrast to the controversial brand name of Henry Kissinger, Bush’s original choice to head the probe, who stepped down rather than go public with the client list for his consulting firm. Kean, by comparison, is a complete unknown west of the Delaware; even his two-syllable name seems perfect for evading notice, like individual grains of sand too small to be picked up.

On March 31, the commission held its first hearing, during which Kean insisted that his goal is to discover "why things happened and…what could be done to avert this tragedy." This reassurance came amid revelations that six of the committee’s 10 members have substantial ties to the airline industry. One investigator, former governor of Illinois Jim Thompson, has legally counselled American Airlines, whose planes were involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, and does to this day. According to the Associated Press, "members are expected to steer clear of discussions that might present even the appearance of a conflict."

It is interesting, then, that Kean is a director at Amerada Hess, an oil corporation famous in New York for its white-and-green gas stations, toy trucks and Leon Hess’ ownership of the Jets. Less well-known is the company’s role in Delta Hess, a now-defunct petroleum pipeline joint venture. Thanks to incorporation in the Cayman Islands, information about the operation is scarce, and its still-active website contains little more than a sentence about its oil-line investments in Azerbaijan and the Middle East (ventures with such mellifluous names as Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan). According to Hess spokesman Carl Tursi, the venture was dissolved three weeks prior to Kean’s appointment, but not before Amerada Hess had established a working relationship with Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabian company with at least one extremely suspicious financier.

One of Delta Oil’s investors was Khalid bin Mahfouz, a member of a large and influential Saudi clan with various worldwide business interests and close ties to the royal family. He is accused of financing al Qaeda by both the U.S. and Saudi governments, and is one of 187 defendants in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed on behalf of families of the victims of Sept. 11.

Khalid bin Mahfouz has long been a shadowy figure. In the early 1990s, he was implicated in the Bank of Credit & Commerce International scandal. As a BCCI principal, bin Mahfouz was accused of bilking depositors. (He eventually escaped prosecution by agreeing to a $225 million settlement.) In the 1990s, he found himself in hot water in Ireland, where he had obtained passports from the government in exchange for investments, which he never made.

In 1999, the Saudi government bought a 50 percent interest in bin Mahfouz’s National Commercial Bank, in response to years of financial mismanagement. (Mahfouz denies reports that he was at this time confined to a military hospital in the town of Taif–which some have considered a surreptitious means of house arrest.) A government audit of the bank discovered $2 billion that was unaccounted for–money that U.S. and Saudi officials suspect went into the hands of al Qaeda, handed over to them by means of "donations" to "charities."

The Advice and Reformation Committee, a charity that may have been a beneficiary of Khalid bin Mahfouz’s largesse, was originally founded by none other than Osama bin Laden. Another group, Muwafaq ("Blessed Relief") was founded with bin Mahfouz’s money and run in part by his son, Abdulrahman. The U.S. Treasury Department froze Muwafaq’s assets in October 2001, calling the group "an Al Qaeda front that receives funding from wealthy Saudi businessmen."

The bin Mahfouz family has set up a website (binmahfouz.info) to dispel what they call "serious errors of fact" about its patriarch. It contains an FAQ stating the National Commercial Bank "is on record as ‘vehemently’ denying that any such audit" was conducted (though they studiously avoid mentioning if the Saudi government would say the same thing). It also insists bin Mahfouz left National Commercial Bank in 1999 "for reasons of ill health from which he has only recently recovered" and denies the reports that he was ever under house arrest.

Regarding involvement in Delta Oil, the website asserts bin Mahfouz’s connection to the company was limited to a joint venture called DNKL. According to the website, bin Mahfouz’s sons’ firm Nimir acquired a piece of an oil exploration field in Azerbaijan in 1994. In 1998, Nimir’s stake was returned to Delta. The same stake was later acquired by Amerada Hess.

So why would President Bush appoint Kean as chair of the 9/11 commission if he has any connection–any connection at all–to such a man, no matter how distant? And why hasn’t anyone raised the penalty flag?

For a year, the Bush administration strenuously fought the very formation of a federal commission. When it finally relented, its first choice for committee chair was Henry Kissinger–a long-time GOP insider famous for protecting his employers. The second-choice Kean may be as bland and innocuous as can be, but appears–like Kissinger–to also be fully in line with Bush’s wish that lawmakers conducting the investigation "understand the obligations of upholding our secrets."

Perhaps it is Kean’s unmemorable face that allows him to slip through the political cracks and escape scrutiny. Those who didn’t know him prior to the appointment probably won’t pay much attention to him now. And those who did know him will see the same man who strolled casually along the beach decades ago. Either way, there is more to Tom Kean than many of us ever suspected.