THE CONTRACTORS.(connections betweencontracts for rebuilding Iraq and fortune behind Osama bin Laden)

Back when Americans were still debating whether there was just cause for a preemptive strike against Iraq, few arguments were scrutinized more closely than the Bush Administration's contention that there were covert links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. At the C.I.A., analysts pored over aerial satellite photographs. At the Treasury Department, experts sifted through financial records. At the National Security Agency, Arab-speaking linguists eavesdropped on phone conversations. But, even after Secretary of State Colin Powell put his credibility on the line, in a damning, dot-connecting speech before the United Nations last February, questions persisted about the solidity of the alleged links between Saddam and Osama.

Now there is a new and demonstrable connection, but it is not the kind that the Bush Administration had in mind. In fact, it is more likely to fuel the speculations of conspiracy theorists than it is to put their fears to rest. It turns out that a money trail runs--albeit rather circuitously--from the lucrative business of rebuilding Iraq to the fortune behind Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden's estranged family, a sprawling, extraordinarily wealthy Saudi Arabian dynasty, is a substantial investor in a private equity firm founded by the Bechtel Group of San Francisco. Bechtel is also the global construction and engineering company to which the U.S. government recently awarded the first major multimillion-dollar contract to reconstruct war-ravaged Iraq. In a closed competitive bidding process, the United States Agency for International Development chose Bechtel to rebuild the major elements of Iraq's infrastructure, including its roads, railroads, airports, hospitals, and schools, and its water and electrical systems. In the first phase of the contract, the U.S. government will pay Bechtel nearly thirty-five million dollars, but experts say that the cost is likely to reach six hundred and eighty ...