http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/index.ssf/2013/11/man_seeking_25_million_bounty.html
Man seeking $25 million bounty for finding Osama bin Laden claims he spied for free for 20 years
Tom Lee, shown in this 2001 file photo, says he worked for U.S. intelligence agencies for 20 years "without receiving a dime." Lee, who hired a Chicago lawyer to pursue the reward from the FBI, said he was instrumental in helping the U.S. Customs Service identify weapons traders trying to get weapons of mass destruction into the U.S.
After one case in which his cover was blown, Lee said he was offered entry into the government’s Witness Protection Program, which he declined.
Lee, 63, said he performed most of his undercover work while working in the gem industry.
He is the former owner of Gem River Corp., a company that mined sapphires in Montana and sold them around the world.
“In 20 years of undercover work for the United States, I never received a dime. I didn't do it for money,” Lee said. “This is the first time I’ve gone public with it.”
Told that his claims may be dismissed by skeptics as being unbelievable, the Grand Rapids native was dismissive himself.
“I won’t even answer that,” he said in a telephone and email interviews with Mlive/The Grand Rapids Press. “The facts are the facts.”
According to his lawyer, Lee decided to pursue the reward for bin Laden’s capture under the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program because “it is vital that people like Mr. Lee receive the advertised award when they come forward to provide the FBI with accurate information about highly placed terrorists, as Mr. Lee clearly did.”
RELATED: Why Grand Rapids resident Tom Lee says FBI owes him $25 million for Osama bin Laden's capture
In an interview, Lee said he received his information in 2003 from the son of a customer with whom he had worked for 30 years. The son worked for the Pakistani intelligence service and told him he had been assigned to escort bin Laden’s entourage to a safe house from Peshawar to Abbottabad.
“At the time I told them where he was in Pakistan, they were still feverishly hunting for him in Afghanistan, which he left two years before,” he said.
Lee said he contacted a U.S. Customs agent with whom he had worked in the past and together they met with an FBI agent who was assigned to the 9-11 investigation.
“After I talked to her an hour, I began to think it was going nowhere,” Lee said. “She made the mistake an agent never makes. She asked me to identify my informant.”
Lee said he never heard from the FBI again after that meeting. He said he began pursuing the reward shortly after bin Laden was killed in a raid at the location he had described to the FBI eight years earlier.
“The FBI has ignored my communications. They were very discourteous,” said Lee, who estimated he contacted the Grand Rapids office about 12 times since bin Laden’s death.
The Aug. 6 letter sent by his lawyer could be the prelude to a lawsuit, Lee said.
Lee said he became an informant as a gem dealer because “there were a lot of bad people in that industry worldwide.”
During one of his trips to Sri Lanka in the early 1990s, Lee said he had a chance meeting with bin Laden in a lounge at the Dubai airport. At the time, bin Laden was trading in East African gems, he said.
Although his revelations could attract jihadists, Lee said he is not concerned. His Egyptian mother is a direct descendent of the prophet Mohamed’s daughter, Fatima, he said.
“The Koran warns all Moslems to protect the children of Mohammed on pain of death.”
According to his lawyer, Lee decided to pursue the reward for bin Laden’s capture under the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program because “it is vital that people like Mr. Lee receive the advertised award when they come forward to provide the FBI with accurate information about highly placed terrorists, as Mr. Lee clearly did.”
RELATED: Why Grand Rapids resident Tom Lee says FBI owes him $25 million for Osama bin Laden's capture
In an interview, Lee said he received his information in 2003 from the son of a customer with whom he had worked for 30 years. The son worked for the Pakistani intelligence service and told him he had been assigned to escort bin Laden’s entourage to a safe house from Peshawar to Abbottabad.
“At the time I told them where he was in Pakistan, they were still feverishly hunting for him in Afghanistan, which he left two years before,” he said.
Lee said he contacted a U.S. Customs agent with whom he had worked in the past and together they met with an FBI agent who was assigned to the 9-11 investigation.
“After I talked to her an hour, I began to think it was going nowhere,” Lee said. “She made the mistake an agent never makes. She asked me to identify my informant.”
Lee said he never heard from the FBI again after that meeting. He said he began pursuing the reward shortly after bin Laden was killed in a raid at the location he had described to the FBI eight years earlier.
“The FBI has ignored my communications. They were very discourteous,” said Lee, who estimated he contacted the Grand Rapids office about 12 times since bin Laden’s death.
The Aug. 6 letter sent by his lawyer could be the prelude to a lawsuit, Lee said.
Lee said he became an informant as a gem dealer because “there were a lot of bad people in that industry worldwide.”
During one of his trips to Sri Lanka in the early 1990s, Lee said he had a chance meeting with bin Laden in a lounge at the Dubai airport. At the time, bin Laden was trading in East African gems, he said.
Although his revelations could attract jihadists, Lee said he is not concerned. His Egyptian mother is a direct descendent of the prophet Mohamed’s daughter, Fatima, he said.
“The Koran warns all Moslems to protect the children of Mohammed on pain of death.”
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/11/02/Mich-man-claims-he-told-US-where-bin-Laden-was
MICHIGAN MAN CLAIMS HE TOLD US WHERE BIN LADEN WAS
By JEFF KAROUB
Associated Press
DETROIT
A Michigan man claims he tipped federal investigators to the location of Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan eight years before his killing and has hired attorneys to help him collect the $25 million reward.
The al-Qaida leader was killed in May 2011 during a Navy SEAL raid on the three-story compound. U.S. officials have said the house wasn't built until 2005, and Pakistani officials have said they believe he moved there in the summer of that year.
A letter obtained Friday by The Associated Press from a Chicago-based law firm representing Grand Rapids resident Tom Lee says the 63-year-old gem merchant reported the location of bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad in 2003. The letter sent by the Loevy & Loevy law firm to FBI Director James Comey in August says a Pakistani intelligence agent told Lee that he escorted bin Laden and his family from Peshawar to Abbottabad.
The AP made a request to speak with Lee and Michael Kanovitz, the attorney who signed the letter, through the Loevy & Loevy law firm. The FBI didn't immediately comment.
According to the letter, Lee, a U.S. citizen of Egyptian heritage, shared the information with customs and FBI agents. Lee reported that the Pakistani agent "was a member of a family that Mr. Lee had done business with for decades," the letter said, and the agent and his family opposed bin Laden.
The letter said Lee, who lives in Grand Rapids, made "numerous attempts" to claim his reward but received no responses.
"Mr. Lee precisely identified the whereabouts of the most notorious terrorist of our era, a man responsible for the World Trade Center attacks, the most devastating act of terror committed on American soil, and numerous other assaults on Americans," the letter said.
Lee told The Grand Rapids Press in an email Friday that he couldn't understand why the government waited to act.
"It disturbs me, and it should disturb every American, that I told them exactly where bin Laden was in 2003, and they let him live another eight years," he said in the email.
Bin Laden had slipped away from U.S. forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in 2001, and the CIA believed he had taken shelter in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. The U.S. was eventually able to find bin Laden by tracing his courier, Ibrahim al-Kuwaiti.
One of bin Laden's wives told Pakistani investigators that she moved to the Abbottabad home in 2006 and never left the top floors.
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