During late November and early December 2007, several stories were published in the press regarding clients of Giuliani's consultancy firm, Giuliani Partners, and his law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani. The "Village Voice" and others reported that Giuliani Partners had been given contracts from the Qatar Ministry of the Interior for security advice and consulting since 2005, and these contracts had been overseen by then-Minister of Religious Affairs Abdullah Bin Khalid Al-Thani, a member of Qatar's royal family who is considered sympathetic to Al Qaeda and who had sheltered future September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from the FBI in 1996.