"In early 1990 Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia and gave a lecture in which he predicted that Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait.
Jamal Khashoggi, who had travelled extensively with Bin Laden in Afghanistan, attended the talk and afterwards asked his old friend how he could be so certain of the future.
"He recited a verse from the Koran," recalls Jamal.
"The verse means the one who practises jihad for God, for Allah, God will show them the right path. I wasn't comfortable about it. He had given himself the position of 'I am seeing things because God is directing me towards it'. That was the first time I felt that Osama began to have an inflated ego."
Jamal lost touch with Bin Laden in the mid-1990s and Khaled in the early 1990s as both completely rejected his ideology.
Although it has been many years since either of them saw Bin Laden, both admitted feeling sad at the death of their old friend in a raid by US forces in Pakistan earlier this month."
"Yet Mr. Khalifa is unsure how long he will enjoy these freedoms. He is a wanted man, believed by analysts and intelligence agencies, including the FBI and CIA, to have links to the heart of Al Qaeda. Using charities in the Philippines as a cover, Khalifa is alleged to have funded the radical Islamic group Abu Sayyaf. He is also said to have spearheaded plots including a foiled 1995 plan to hijack planes and crash them into the Pentagon and CIA headquarters - widely seen as a blueprint for the Sept. 11 attacks.
The victims of Sept. 11 have named Khalifa in their multibillion dollar lawsuit for damages.
Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist whose views are aired in the Western media, is a Khalifa supporter.
"I know Jamal very well and there is no way I believe he is involved [with Al Qaeda]," says Mr. Khashoggi. . . "