Editor's note: President Bush is campaigning for reelection as the Western world's leader in the war against terrorism. But the president's family has long been closely tied -- through a complex web of oil, money and power -- to the royal family of Saudi Arabia, which has maintained its despotic grip on the petroleum-rich kingdom through an alliance with the most militant strain of Islamic fundamentalism. Journalist Craig Unger has been covering the alliance between the Bush family and the House of Saud for years. His reporting raises crucial questions about the consequences of this personal, political and financial partnership for U.S. foreign policy, democracy and the future of the world. Salon is proud to present a series of excerpts from Unger's book "House of Bush, House of Saud," to be published on March 16 by Scribner.

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By Craig Unger

March 11, 2004  |  Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, had long been the most recognizable figure from his country in America. Widely known as the Arab Gatsby, with his trimmed goatee and tailored double-breasted suits, the 52-year-old Bandar was the very embodiment of the contradictions inherent in being a modern, jet-setting, Western-leaning member of the royal House of Saud.

Profane, flamboyant and cocksure, Bandar entertained lavishly at his spectacular estates all over the world. Whenever he was safely out of Saudi Arabia and beyond the reach of the puritanical form of Islam it espoused, he puckishly flouted Islamic tenets by sipping brandy and smoking Cohiba cigars. And when it came to embracing the culture of the infidel West, Bandar outdid even the most ardent admirers of Western civilization -- that was him patrolling the sidelines of Dallas Cowboys football games with his friend Jerry Jones, the team's owner. To militant Islamic fundamentalists who loathed pro-West multibillionaire Saudi royals, no one fit the bill better than Bandar.

And yet, his guise as Playboy of the Western World notwithstanding, deep in his bones, Prince Bandar was a key figure in the world of Islam. His father, Defense Minister Prince Sultan, was second in line to the Saudi crown. Bandar was the nephew of King Fahd, the aging Saudi monarch, and the grandson of the late king Abdul Aziz, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, who initiated his country's historic oil-for-security relationship with the United States when he met Franklin D. Roosevelt on the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal on Feb. 14, 1945. The enormous royal family in which Bandar played such an important role oversaw two of the most sacred places of Islamic worship, the holy mosques in Medina and Mecca.

As a wily international diplomat, Bandar also knew full well just how precarious his family's position was. For decades, the House of Saud had somehow maintained control of Saudi Arabia and the world's richest oil reserves by performing a seemingly untenable balancing act with two parties who had vowed to destroy each other.

On the one hand, the House of Saud was an Islamic theocracy whose power grew out of the royal family's alliance with Wahhabi fundamentalism, a strident and puritanical Islamic sect that provided a fertile breeding ground for a global network of terrorists urging a violent jihad against the United States.

On the other hand, the House of Saud's most important ally was the Great Satan itself, the United States. Even a cursory examination of the relationship revealed astonishing contradictions: America, the beacon of democracy, was to arm and protect a brutal theocratic monarchy. The United States, sworn defender of Israel, was also the guarantor of security to the guardians of Wahhabi Islam, the fundamentalist religious sect that was one of Israel's and America's mortal enemies.

Astoundingly, this fragile relationship had not only endured but in many ways had been spectacularly successful. In the nearly three decades since the oil embargo of 1973, the United States had bought hundreds of billions of dollars of oil at reasonable prices. During that same period, the Saudis had purchased hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons from the U.S. The Saudis had supported the U.S. on regional security matters in Iran and Iraq and refrained from playing an aggressive role against Israel. Members of the Saudi royal family, including Bandar, became billionaires many times over, in the process quietly turning into some of the most powerful players in the American market, investing hundreds of billions of dollars in equities in the United States. And the price of oil, the eternal bellwether of economic, political and cultural anxiety in America, had remained low enough that enormous gas-guzzling SUVs had become ubiquitous on U.S. highways. During the Reagan and Clinton eras the economy boomed.

The relationship was a coarse weave of money, power and trust. It had lasted because two foes, militant Islamic fundamentalists and the United States, turned a blind eye to each other. The U.S. military might have called the policy "Don't ask, don't tell." The Koran had its own version: "Ask not about things which, if made plain to you, may cause you trouble."

But in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the ugly seams of the relationship had been laid bare. Because thousands of innocent people had been killed and most of the killers were said to be Saudi, it was up to Bandar, ever the master illusionist, to assure Americans that everything was just fine between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Bandar had always been a smooth operator, but now he and his unflappable demeanor would be tested as never before.

Bandar desperately hoped that early reports of the Saudi role had been exaggerated -- after all, al-Qaida terrorist operatives were known to use false passports. But at 10 P.M. on the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, about 36 hours after the attack, a high-ranking CIA official -- according to Newsweek, it was probably CIA director George Tenet -- phoned Bandar at his home and gave him the bad news: Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Afterward, Bandar said, "I felt as if the Twin Towers had just fallen on my head."

Public relations had never been more crucial for the Saudis. Bandar swiftly retained PR giant Burson-Marsteller to place newspaper ads all over the country condemning the attacks and dissociating Saudi Arabia from them. He went on CNN, the BBC and the major TV networks and hammered home the same points again and again: The alliance with the United States was still strong. Saudi Arabia would support America in its fight against terrorism.

Prince Bandar also protested media reports that referred to those involved in terrorism as "Saudis." Asserting that no terrorists could ever be described as Saudi citizens, he urged the media and politicians to refrain from casting arbitrary accusations against Arabs and Muslims. "We in the kingdom, the government and the people of Saudi Arabia, refuse to have any person affiliated with terrorism to be connected to our country," Bandar said. That included Osama bin Laden, the perpetrator of the attacks, who had even been disowned by his family. He was not really a Saudi, Bandar asserted, for the government had taken away his passport because of his terrorist activities.

But Osama bin Laden was Saudi, of course, and he was not just any Saudi. The bin Ladens were one of a handful of extremely wealthy families that were so close to the House of Saud that they effectively acted as extensions of the royal family. Over five decades, they had built their multibillion-dollar construction empire thanks to their intimate relationship with the royal family. Bandar himself knew them well. "They're really lovely human beings," he told CNN. "[Osama] is the only one ... I met him only once. The rest of them are well-educated, successful businessmen, involved in a lot of charities. It is -- it is tragic. I feel pain for them, because he's caused them a lot of pain."

Like Bandar, the bin Laden family epitomized the marriage between the United States and Saudi Arabia. Their huge construction company, the Saudi Binladin Group, banked with Citigroup and invested with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Over time, the bin Ladens did business with such icons of Western culture as Disney, the Hard Rock Café, Snapple and Porsche. In the mid-1990s, they joined various members of the House of Saud in becoming business associates with former secretary of state James Baker and former president George H.W. Bush by investing in the Carlyle Group, a gigantic Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm. As Charles Freeman, the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the Wall Street Journal, "If there were ever any company closely connected to the U.S. and its presence in Saudi Arabia, it's the Saudi Binladin Group."

At the time of the 9/11 attacks, members of the Saudi royal family were scattered all over the United States. Some had gone to Lexington, Ky., for the annual September yearling auctions. The sale of the finest racehorses in the world had been suspended after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, but resumed the very next day. Saudi prince Ahmed bin Salman bought two horses for $1.2 million on Sept. 12.

Shortly after the attack, one of the bin Ladens, an unnamed brother of Osama's, frantically called the Saudi embassy in Washington seeking protection. He was given a room at the Watergate Hotel and told not to open the door. King Fahd, the aging and infirm Saudi monarch, sent a message to his emissaries in Washington. "Take measures to protect the innocents," he said.

Meanwhile, a Saudi prince sent a directive to the Tampa Police Department in Florida that young Saudis who were close to the royal family and went to school in the area were in potential danger.

Bandar went to work immediately. If any foreign official had the clout to pull strings at the White House in the midst of a grave national security crisis, it was he. A senior member of the Washington diplomatic corps, Bandar had played racquetball with Secretary of State Colin Powell in the late '70s. He had run covert operations for the late CIA director Bill Casey that were so hush-hush they were kept secret even from President Ronald Reagan. He was the man who had stashed away 30 locked attaché cases that held some of the deepest secrets in the intelligence world. And for two decades, Bandar had built an intimate personal relationship with the Bush family that went far beyond a mere political friendship.

First, Bandar set up a hotline at the Saudi embassy in Washington for all Saudi nationals in the United States. For the 48 hours after the attacks, he stayed in constant contact with Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Before the attacks, Bandar had been invited to come to the White House to meet with President George W. Bush on Sept. 13 to discuss the Middle East peace process. Even though the 55-year-old president and he were, roughly speaking, contemporaries, Bandar had not yet developed the same rapport with the younger Bush that he'd enjoyed for decades with his father. Bandar and the elder Bush had participated in the shared rituals of manhood -- hunting trips, vacations together, and the like. Bandar and the younger Bush were well known to each other, but not nearly as close.

On the 13th, the meeting went ahead as scheduled. But in the wake of the attacks two days earlier, the political landscape of the Middle East had drastically changed. A spokesman for the Saudi embassy later said he did not know whether repatriation was a topic of discussion.

But the job had been started nonetheless. Earlier that same day, a 49-year-old former policeman turned private investigator named Dan Grossi got a call from the Tampa Police Department. Grossi had worked with the Tampa force for 20 years before retiring, and it was not particularly unusual for the police to recommend former officers for special security jobs. But Grossi's new assignment was very much out of the ordinary.

"The police had been giving Saudi students protection since Sept. 11," Grossi recalls. "They asked if I was interested in escorting these students from Tampa to Lexington, Ky., because the police department couldn't do it."

Grossi was told to go to the airport, where a small charter jet would be available to take him and the Saudis on their flight. He was not given a specific time of departure, and he was dubious about the prospects of accomplishing his task. "Quite frankly, I knew that everything was grounded," he says. "I never thought this was going to happen." Even so, Grossi, who'd been asked to bring a colleague, phoned Manuel Perez, a former FBI agent, to put him on alert. Perez was equally unconvinced. "I said, 'Forget about it,'" Perez recalls. "Nobody is flying today."

The two men had good reason to be skeptical. Within minutes of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, the Federal Aviation Administration had sent out a special notification called a NOTAM -- a notice to airmen -- to airports all across the country, ordering every airborne plane in the United States to land at the nearest airport as soon as possible, and prohibiting planes on the ground from taking off. Initially, there were no exceptions whatsoever. Later, when the situation stabilized, several airports accepted flights for emergency medical and military operations -- but those were few and far between.

Nevertheless, at 1:30 or 2 P.M. on Sept. 13, Dan Grossi received his phone call. He was told the Saudis would be delivered to Raytheon Airport Services, a private hangar at Tampa International Airport. When he arrived, Manny Perez was there to meet him.

At the terminal a woman laughed at Grossi for even thinking he would be flying that day. Commercial flights had slowly begun to resume, but at 10:57 A.M., the FAA had issued another NOTAM, a reminder that private aviation was still prohibited. Three private planes violated the ban that day, in Maryland, West Virginia and Texas, and in each case a pair of jet fighters quickly forced the aircraft down. As far as private planes were concerned, America was still grounded.

Then one of the pilots arrived. "Here's your plane," he told Grossi. "Whenever you're ready to go."

What happened next was first reported by Kathy Steele, Brenna Kelly and Elizabeth Lee Brown in the Tampa Tribune in October 2001. Not a single other American paper seemed to think the subject was newsworthy.

Grossi and Perez say they waited until three young Saudi men, all apparently in their early 20s, arrived. Then the pilot took Grossi, Perez and the Saudis to a well-appointed 10-passenger Learjet. They departed for Lexington at about 4:30.

"They got the approval somewhere," said Perez. "It must have come from the highest levels of government."

"Flight restrictions had not been lifted yet," Grossi said. "I was told it would take White House approval. I thought [the flight] was not going to happen."

Grossi said he did not get the names of the Saudi students he was escorting. "It happened so fast," Grossi says. "I just knew they were Saudis. They were well connected. One of them told me his father or his uncle was good friends with George Bush senior."

How did the Saudis go about getting approval? According to the Federal Aviation Administration, they didn't and the Tampa flight never took place. "It's not in our logs," Chris White, a spokesman for the FAA, told the Tampa Tribune. "It didn't occur." The White House also said that the flights to evacuate the Saudis did not take place.

According to Grossi, about one hour and 45 minutes after takeoff they landed at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, a frequent destination for Saudi horse-racing enthusiasts such as Prince Ahmed bin Salman. When they arrived, the Saudis were greeted by an American who took custody of them and helped them with their baggage. On the tarmac was a 747 with Arabic writing on the fuselage, apparently ready to take them back to Saudi Arabia. "My understanding is that there were other Saudis in Kentucky buying racehorses at that time, and they were going to fly back together," said Grossi.

In addition to the Tampa-Lexington flight, at least seven other planes were made available for the operation. According to itineraries, passenger lists and interviews with sources who had firsthand knowledge of the flights, members of the extended bin Laden family, the House of Saud and their associates also assembled in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Dallas, Houston, Cleveland, Orlando, Washington, D.C, Boston, Newark, N.J., and New York.

Arrangements for the flights were made with lightning speed. One flight, a Boeing 727 that left Los Angeles late on the night of Sept. 14 or early in the morning of Sept. 15, required FAA approval, which came through in less than half an hour. "By bureaucratic standards, that's a nanosecond," said a source close to the flight.

Payments for the charter flights were made in advance through wire transfer from the Saudi embassy. A source close to the evacuation said such procedures were an indication that the entire operation had high-level approval from the U.S. government. "That's a totally traceable transaction," he said. "So I inferred that what they were doing had U.S. government approval. Otherwise, they would have done it in cash."

According to the same source, a young female member of the bin Laden family was the sole passenger on the first leg of the flight, from Los Angeles to Orlando. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, boarding any airplane was cause for anxiety. But now that the name Osama bin Laden had become synonymous with mass murder, boarding a plane with his family members was another story entirely. To avoid unnecessary dramas, the flight's operators made certain that the cockpit crew was briefed about who the passengers were -- the bin Ladens -- and the highly sensitive nature of their mission.

However, they neglected to brief the flight attendants.

On the flight from Los Angeles, the bin Laden girl began talking to an attendant about the horrid events of 9/11. "I feel so bad about it," she said.

"Well, it's not your fault," replied the attendant, who had no idea who the passenger really was.

"Yeah," said the passenger. "But he was my brother."

"The flight attendant just lost it," the source said.

When the 727 landed in Orlando, Khalil Binladin, whose estate in Winter Garden, Fla., was nearby, boarded the plane. After a delay of several hours, it continued to Washington.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, the Saudis had chartered a customized DC 8 that belonged to the president of Gabon and was equipped with two staterooms (bedrooms) and 67 seats. According to a source who participated in the operation, the Saudis had hoped to leave Las Vegas on Sept. 14, but were not able to get permission for two days. "This was a nightmare," said a source. "The manifest was submitted the day before. It was obvious that someone in Washington had said OK, but the FBI didn't want to say they could go, so it was really tense. In the end, nobody was interrogated." According to the passenger list, among the 46 passengers were several high-level Saudi royals with diplomatic passports. On Sunday, Sept. 16, the flight finally left for Geneva, Switzerland. The FBI did not even get the manifest until about two hours before departure. Even if it had wanted to interview the passengers -- and the Bureau had shown little inclination to do so -- there would not have been enough time.

At the same time, an even more lavish Boeing 727 was being readied for Prince Ahmed bin Salman and about 14 other passengers who were assembling in Lexington. If they felt they had to leave the country, at least it could be said that they were leaving in luxury. The plane, which was customized to hold just 26 passengers, had a master bedroom suite furnished with a large upholstered double bed, a couch, night stand and credenza. Its master bathroom had a gold-plated sink, double illuminated mirrors and a bidet. There were brass, gold and crystal fixtures. The main lounge had a 52-inch projection TV. The plane boasted a six-place conference room and dining room with a mahogany table that had controls for up and down movement. The plane left Lexington at 4 P.M. on Sunday, Sept. 16, and stopped in Gander, Newfoundland, en route to London.

And so they flew, one by one, mostly to Europe, where some of the passengers later returned home to Saudi Arabia. On Sept. 17, a flight left Dallas for Newark at 10:30 P.M. On Sept. 18 and 19, two flights left Boston, including the 727 that had originated in Los Angeles. According to a person with firsthand knowledge of the flights, there is no question that they took place with the knowledge and approval of the State Department, the FBI, the FAA and many other government agencies. "When we left Boston every governmental authority that could be there was there," says the source. "There were FBI agents at every departure point. In Boston alone, there was the FBI, the Department of Transportation, the FAA, Customs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Massachusetts state police, the Massachusetts Port Authority and probably the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. There were more federal law-enforcement officials than passengers by far."

In Boston, airport authorities were horrified that they were being told to let the bin Ladens go. On Sept. 22, a flight went from New York to Paris, and on Sept. 24, another flight from Las Vegas to Paris. According to passenger lists for many but not all of the flights, the vast majority of passengers were Saudis, but there were also passengers from Egypt, England, Ethiopia, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Norway, the Philippines, Sudan and Syria. "Not many Saudis like to do menial work," said a source, explaining the other nationalities.

Passengers ranged in age from 7 years old to 62. The vast majority were adults. There were roughly two dozen bin Ladens.

The full ramifications of allowing all these members of the Saudi royal family and the bin Laden family to leave the country would only become clear several months later, when the war in Afghanistan was in full swing. On March 28, 2002, acting on electronic intercepts of telephone calls, heavily armed Pakistani commando units, accompanied by American Special Forces and FBI SWAT teams, raided a two-story house in the suburbs of Faisalabad, in western Pakistan. They had received tips that one of the people in the house was Abu Zubaydah, the 30-year-old chief of operations for al-Qaida who had been head of field operations for the USS Cole bombing and who was a close confidant of Osama bin Laden's.

On Sunday, March 31, three days after the raid, the interrogation of Zubaydah began. For the particulars of this episode there is one definitive source, Gerald Posner's "Why America Slept," and according to it, the CIA used two rather unusual methods for the interrogation. First, they administered thiopental sodium, better known under its trademarked name, Sodium Pentothal, through an IV drip, to make Zubaydah more talkative. Since the prisoner had been shot three times during the capture, he was already hooked up to a drip to treat his wounds and it was possible to administer the drug without his knowledge. Second, as a variation on the good cop-bad cop routine, the CIA used two teams of debriefers. One consisted of undisguised Americans who were at least willing to treat Zubaydah's injuries while they interrogated him. The other team consisted of Arab-Americans posing as Saudi security agents, who were known for their brutal interrogation techniques. The thinking was that Zubaydah would be so scared of being turned over to the Saudis, infamous for their public executions in Riyadh's Chop-Chop Square, that he would try to win over the American interrogators by talking to them.

In fact, exactly the opposite happened. "When Zubaydah was confronted with men passing themselves off as Saudi security officers, his reaction was not fear, but instead relief," Posner writes. "The prisoner, who had been reluctant even to confirm his identity to his American captors, suddenly started talking animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would torture and then kill him. Zubaydah asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the ruling Saudi family. He then provided a private home number and cell phone number from memory. 'He will tell you what to do,' Zubaydah promised them."

The name Zubaydah gave came as a complete surprise to the CIA. It was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, the owner of so many legendary racehorses and one of the most westernized members of the royal family.

Zubaydah spoke to his faux Saudi interrogators as if they, not he, were the ones in trouble. He said that several years earlier the royal family had made a deal with al-Qaida in which the House of Saud would aid the Taliban so long as al-Qaida kept terrorism out of Saudi Arabia. Zubaydah added that as part of this arrangement, he dealt with Prince Ahmed and two other members of the House of Saud as intermediaries, Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, a nephew of King Fahd's, and Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, a 25-year-old distant relative of the king's. Again, he furnished phone numbers from memory.

According to Posner, the interrogators responded by telling Zubaydah that 9/11 changed everything. The House of Saud certainly would not stand behind him after that. It was then that Zubaydah dropped his real bombshell. "Zubaydah said that 9/11 changed nothing because Ahmed ... knew beforehand that an attack was scheduled for American soil that day," Posner writes. "They just didn't know what it would be, nor did they want to know more than that. The information had been passed to them, said Zubaydah, because bin Laden knew they could not stop it without knowing the specifics, but later they would be hard-pressed to turn on him if he could disclose their foreknowledge."

Two weeks later, Zubaydah was moved to an undisclosed location. When he figured out that the interrogators were really Americans, not Saudis, Posner writes, he tried to strangle himself, and later recanted his entire tale.

As for Prince Ahmed, on July 22, 2002, he died mysteriously of a heart attack at the age of 43, so he was never interviewed about his connections to al-Qaida and his alleged foreknowledge of the events of 9/11. Not that the FBI didn't have its chance at him. On Sept. 16, 2001, after the Bush administration had approved the Saudi evacuation, Prince Ahmed had boarded that 727 in Lexington, Ky. He had been identified by FBI officials, but not seriously interrogated. It was an inauspicious start to the just-declared war on terror. "What happened on Sept. 11 was a horrific crime," says John Martin, a former official in the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. "It was an act of war. And the answer is no, this is not any way to go about investigating it."

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By Craig Unger

The Bushes and their allies controlled, influenced or possessed substantial positions in a vast array of companies that dominated the energy and defense sectors. Put it all together, and there were myriad ways for the House of Bush to engage in lucrative business deals with the House of Saud and the Saudi merchant elite.

The Saudis could give donations to Bush-related charities. They could invest in the Carlyle Group's funds or contract with one of the many companies owned by Carlyle in the defense sector or other industries. (People tied to Carlyle as partners, advisers, counselors or directors of its companies have included the most powerful people in the world: Former president George H.W. Bush, former secretary of state James Baker, former British prime minister John Major, former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci and former head of the Office of Management and Budget Richard Darman.)

James Baker's law firm, Baker Botts, represented both the giant oil companies who did business with the Saudis as well as the defense contractors who sold weapons to them. Its clients also included Saudi insurance companies and the Saudi American Bank. It negotiated huge natural gas projects in Saudi Arabia. It even represented members of the House of Saud itself. And the firm's role was not limited to merely negotiating contracts. When global energy companies needed to devise policies for the future, when government bodies required attention, Baker Botts was there.

And the Saudis were also linked to Dick Cheney through Halliburton, the giant Texas oil exploration company that had huge interests in the kingdom.

How much did it all come to? What was the number? Where did the money go? With the understanding that the sums were paid by both individuals and entities to both individuals and entities, for diverse purposes at different times, it is nonetheless possible to arrive at a reckoning that is undoubtedly incomplete but which by its very size suggests the degree and complexity of the House of Bush-House of Saud relationship.

In charitable contributions alone, the Saudis gave at least $3.5 million to Bush charities -- $1 million by Prince Bandar to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, $1 million by King Fahd to Barbara Bush's campaign against illiteracy, $500,000 by Prince Al Waleed to Philips Academy, Andover, to finance a newly created George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship Fund, and a $1 million painting from Prince Bandar to George W. Bush's White House.

Then there were the corporate transactions. In 1987, a Swiss bank linked to BCCI and a Saudi investor bailed out Harken Energy, where George W. Bush was a director, with $25 million in financing. At the Carlyle Group, investors from the House of Saud and their allies put at least $80 million into Carlyle funds. While it was owned by Carlyle, BDM and its subsidiary Vinnell received at least $1.188 billion in contracts from the Saudis. Finally, Halliburton inked at least $180 million in deals with the Saudis in November 2000, just after Dick Cheney began collecting a lucrative severance package there.

In all, at least $1.476 billion had made its way from the Saudis to the House of Bush and its allied companies and institutions. It could safely be said that never before in history had a presidential candidate -- much less a presidential candidate and his father, a former president -- been so closely tied financially and personally to the ruling family of another foreign power. Never before had a president's personal fortunes and public policies been so deeply entwined with another nation.

And what were the implications of that? In the case of George H.W. Bush, close relations with the Saudis had at times actually paid dividends for America -- certainly in terms of Saudi cooperation during the Gulf War, for example. But that carried with it a high price. The Bushes had religiously observed one of the basic tenets of Saudi-American relations, that the United States would not poke its nose into Saudi Arabia's internal affairs. That might have been fine if the kingdom was another Western democracy like, say, Great Britain or Germany or Spain. By the late '90s, it was clear that Saudi Arabia, as much as any other country in the world, was responsible for the rise of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. Now that Islamists were killing Americans in the Khobar Towers bombing and in Kenya and Tanzania, America's national security was at stake. What had previously been considered a purely domestic issue for the Saudis -- the House of Saud's relationship to Islamist extremists -- was now a matter of America's national security. Hundreds had already been killed by Saudi-funded terrorists, yet former president Bush and James Baker continued their lucrative business deals with the Saudis apparently without asking the most fundamental questions.

Now, of course, George W. Bush was closing in on the White House. It remained to be seen how, if elected, he would deal with the Saudis and the global terrorist threat. Federal election laws prohibit foreign nationals from funding American political candidates. But the Saudis were not like last-minute holiday shoppers. They had begun buying their American politicians years in advance.

The number -- $1,477,100,000

What follows is a compilation of financial transactions through which individuals and entities connected with the House of Saud transferred money to individuals and entities closely tied to the House of Bush. The House of Bush is defined here as George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, James A. Baker III, Dick Cheney and the major institutions that they are tied to, including the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, the Carlyle Group and Halliburton. The House of Saud includes members of the Saudi royal family, companies controlled by them and members of the Saudi merchant elite such as the bin Laden and bin Mahfouz families, whose fortunes are closely tied to the royal family.

The list that follows is by no means complete. It was not possible to obtain the particulars of many business dealings between the House of Bush and the House of Saud, and as a result, those figures are not included. For example, the client list of the Houston law firm of Baker Botts includes Saudi insurance companies, the Saudi American Bank and members of the House of Saud itself, which Baker Botts is defending in the $1 trillion lawsuit filed by the families of the victims of 9/11. Because the payments made to Baker Botts are not publicly disclosed, they are not included. Likewise, Khalid bin Mahfouz was a partner in developing the Texas Commerce Bank skyscraper at a time when Baker was a major stockholder in the bank. Because the exact size of bin Mahfouz's investment could not be determined, it is not included.

It is worth adding that many other figures in the administration have close ties to Saudi Arabia through various other corporations that are not included in this list. Condoleezza Rice served on the board of directors of Chevron from 1991 to 2001. Among Chevron's business links to Saudi Arabia -- which date back to the 1930s -- are a 50 percent stake in Chevron Phillips Saudi Arabia to build a $650 million benzene and cyclohexane plant in Jubail, Saudi Arabia, and a joint venture with Nimir Petroleum, a Saudi company in which Khalid bin Mahfouz is a principal. These figures are not included. Finally, the Carlyle Group has owned a number of other major defense firms such as United Defense and Vought Aircraft that have had major contracts with Saudi Arabia, but their contracts are not included either. As a result, what follows is likely a conservative figure that may significantly understate the total sum involved.

The Carlyle Group: $1,268,600,000

Saudi Investors in Carlyle: $80 million

Former president George H.W. Bush, James Baker, and former prime minister John Major of Great Britain all visited Saudi Arabia on behalf of Carlyle, and according to founding partner David Rubenstein, the Saudis invested at least $80 million in the Carlyle Group. With the exception of the bin Laden family, who extricated themselves from Carlyle not long after 9/11, Carlyle declined to disclose who the investors were. But other sources say that Prince Bandar, several other Saudi royals, and Abdulrahman and Sultan bin Mahfouz were prominent investors and that it was an explicit policy of the House of Saud to encourage Saudi investment in Carlyle.

Contracts between Carlyle-owned corporations Carlyle and Saudi Arabia -- BDM (including its subsidiary Vinnell): $1,188,600,000

The Carlyle Group owned defense contractor BDM from September 1990 until early 1998. One BDM subsidiary, Vinnell, has trained the Saudi National Guard since 1975, thanks to a controversial contract that allowed it to be the first U.S. private firm to train foreign forces. While under Carlyle ownership, BDM's and Vinnell's contracts with Saudi Arabia included the following:

In 1994, BDM received a $46 million contract to "provide technical assistance and logistical support to the Royal Saudi Air Force."

Between 1994 and 1998, Vinnell serviced an $819 million contract to provide training and support for the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG).

In 1995, Vinnell signed a $163 million contract to modernize SANG.

In 1995, BDM signed a $32.5 million contract to "augment Royal Saudi Air Force staff in developing, implementing, and maintaining logistics and engineering plans and programs."

In 1996, BDM got a $44.4 million contract from the Saudis to build housing at Khamis Mshayt military base.

In 1997, BDM received $18.7 million to support the Royal Saudi Air Force.

In 1997, just before BDM was sold to defense giant TRW, the company signed a $65 million contract to "provide for CY 1998 Direct Manning Personnel in support of maintenance of the F-15 aircraft."

Halliburton: $180 million

Vice President Dick Cheney served as CEO of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. At press time, he continued to hold 433,333 shares of Halliburton in a charitable trust. Among Halliburton's dealings with the Saudis, those whose details have been made public include:

In November 2000, Halliburton received $140 million to develop Saudi oil fields with Saudi Aramco.

In 2000, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root was hired, along with two Japanese firms, to build a $40 million ethylene plant.

Harken Energy: $25 million

After George W. Bush became a director of Harken Energy, several entities and individuals connected to BCCI, the scandal-ridden bank in which Khalid bin Mahfouz was the largest stockholder, suddenly came to Harken's rescue. Among them, the Union Bank of Switzerland agreed to put up $25 million. When that financing fell through, Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, who was also close to bin Mahfouz, stepped in to help.

Charitable Donations: $3.5 million

It is worth pointing out that in terms of charitable donations, the House of Saud has been truly bipartisan and has contributed to every presidential library over the last 30 years. Many members of the House of Saud have directed their largesse to charities important to powerful Americans, including a $23 million donation to the University of Arkansas soon after Bill Clinton became president. The donations below represent those from the House of Saud to charities of personal importance to the Bush family:

1989: King Fahd gave $1 million to Barbara Bush's campaign against illiteracy.

1997: Prince Bandar gave $1 million to the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum in College Station, Texas.

2002: Prince Alwaleed bin Talal gave $500,000 to Andover to fund a George Herbert Walker Bush scholarship.

2003: Prince Bandar gave a $1 million oil painting of an American Buffalo hunt to President Bush for use in his presidential library after he leaves the White House.

Coming Monday -- "The Arabian Candidate": How George W. Bush sought and won the support of Saudi-backed Muslim-American lobbying groups, who ultimately provided his Florida margin of victory.

http://www.salon.com

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The Arabian candidate
How George W. Bush's close ties to Islamic lobbying groups -- and to an accused supporter of Palestinian terrorism -- may have brought him his razor-thin margin of victory in Florida.

Editor's note: Part 3 of Salon's exclusive excerpt from "House of Bush, House of Saud," to be published on March 16 by Scribner. Read Parts 1 and 2.

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By Craig Unger

March 15, 2004  |  On March 12, 2000, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, met with Muslim leaders at a local mosque in Tampa, Fla. Among them was Sami Al-Arian, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian who was an associate professor of engineering at the University of South Florida. George and Laura Bush had their photo taken with him at the Florida Strawberry Festival. Laura Bush made a point of complimenting Al-Arian's wife, Nahla, on her traditional head scarf and asked to meet the family. Nahla told the candidate, "The Muslim people support you." Bush met their lanky son, Abdullah Al-Arian, and, in a typically winning gesture, even nicknamed him "Big Dude." In return, Big Dude's father, Sami Al-Arian, vowed to campaign for Bush -- and he soon made good on his promise in mosques all over Florida.

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About the writer Craig Unger was deputy editor of the New York Observer and editor of Boston Magazine. He has written about George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush for the New Yorker, Esquire and Vanity Fair. He lives in New York.

Did the Saudis know about 9/11?
A new book claims that Saudi princes and a Pakistani official knew Osama bin Laden would strike America that day. But some critics say the whole story could be a neoconservative fabrication.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Mark Follman

Oct. 18, 2003  |  When U.S. and Pakistani special forces raided a house on the outskirts of Faisalabad, Pakistan, on March 28, 2002, and successfully nabbed top al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, the mood at CIA headquarters was upbeat. Langley watched the early morning raid via satellite, and once a Pakistani intelligence officer and some quick voiceprints confirmed Zubaydah's identity, the CIA knew it had captured one of its most sought-after adversaries, a figure who could potentially reveal the full story of the 9/11 terrorist plot. Shot several times in the raid, Zubaydah was given enough medical treatment to ensure his survival and hauled away for questioning. According to a new book, what Zubaydah said -- after being subjected to highly controversial interrogation methods -- stunned intelligence officials.

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About the writer Mark Follman is an editorial fellow at Salon. Sound Off Send us a Letter to the Editor Related stories Terror in the Saudi kingdom CIA veteran Bob Baer talks about the censored 9/11 report, why al-Qaida is still cozy in the house of Saud -- and why Osama is winning. By Mark Follman 08/01/03

				Salon.com >> News

Terror in the Saudi kingdom
CIA veteran Bob Baer talks about the censored 9/11 report, why al-Qaida is still cozy in the house of Saud -- and why Osama is winning.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Mark Follman

Aug. 1, 2003  |  With last week's release of the Congressional report on 9/11, veteran CIA officer Bob Baer must be feeling strongly vindicated, or seriously alarmed -- or both.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

About the writer Mark Follman is an editorial fellow at Salon. Sound Off Send us a Letter to the Editor Related stories A change of heart in the Saudi media The fall of Baghdad and the bombings in Riyadh have made the Arab News think seriously about the enemy within, says the paper's editor. By Mark Follman 05/18/03 Fury and favor in the Arab world While Qatar welcomes Uncle Sam, Egyptian police torture antiwar protesters. If the war lasts long, some say, the scales may tip toward rage. By Eric Boehlert 04/04/03 Big Oil fears war, too While "No blood for oil!" echoes in the streets, analysts say oil companies actually dread war in Iraq. By Dan Baum 02/25/03

				Salon.com >> News

Robert Baer, Former CIA Case Officer and Author of "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude."

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

Think About This: Whenever You Buy a Tank of Saudi Arabian Gas, You are Helping to Finance Terrorism.

Regular BuzzFlash readers know that we have regularly run articles, commentaries and editorials arguing that, in part, the invasion of Iraq was a Bush administration effort to divert attention from the primary financiers of terrorism -- and the source of much of the al-Qaeda leadership -- Saudi Arabia. Of course, there were other motivating factors for the Bush military action against Iraq, which we have detailed (see, as examples, The Perfect War and Endgame).

But a recent poll indicates that the American public still believes Iraq was behind 9/11, even though bin Laden received Saudi, not Iraq financing, and 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. The Bush administration kept -- and keeps -- insinuating that Iraq was involved deeply in 9/11, while trying to sweep under the carpet much, much stronger indications of key Saudi involvement in the financing, strategy and implementation of 9/11. As a result, they have successfully misled Americans about who was really responsible for 9/11.

It is within this context that we interviewed Robert Baer, a case officer for the Directorate of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1976 to 1997. He worked out of the Middle East.

You may, like BuzzFlash, not agree with all of Baer's remedies, but his insights are invaluable. And, like BuzzFlash, he believes that the Bush administration is letting the country that is the largest financial and religious sect supporter of terrorism get away with it, while attacking Iraq, which only had the most tangential involvement with terrorism.

His book, "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude," adds to a growing list of evidence that the Bush administration is conducting a war on terror that is politically calculated.

(You can purchase "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude" Here)

* * *

BUZZFLASH: Let me begin by asking you, just to establish your background, you wrote a book called See No Evil, in which you talked about your career with the CIA. Can you explain a little bit more about what your background and areas of responsibility were with the CIA?

ROBERT BAER: I spent 21 years in the CIA as what’s called a case officer. That means that I went overseas and served overseas almost all the years I spent with the CIA, meeting with what we call agents. Those are foreigners who spy for the CIA. And you write up their reports and send them back to Washington. So I was a field officer, in short.

BUZZFLASH: In what area? You did serve in Iraq, if I recall, in reading your book.

BAER: I served in Iraq for awhile. A couple times I was there on a temporary basis. I was mostly in the Middle East – Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Bosnia as well as a couple of other countries.

BUZZFLASH: So you have extensive experience with the Middle East.

BAER: Yes.

BUZZFLASH: As a gatherer of what is called "human intelligence."

BAER: Yes.

BUZZFLASH: Now in reading through the book we’re going to discuss, Sleeping With the Devil, I noticed there are many thick black bars through it that I assumed were censored by the CIA. Is that correct?

BAER: Yes. They get the manuscript in advance of publishing.

BUZZFLASH: So the CIA basically vets it and approves it, minus whatever they feel is necessary to black out or censor.

BAER: Yes, they don’t mess with the content. They just say: Listen, this is our stuff. You can’t publish it.

BUZZFLASH: The book’s full title is Sleeping With the Devil – How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, and you cover several administrations. The claims you make here seem to apply, for the most part, whether they’re Democrat or Republican. And you, of course, focus on Saudi Arabia. What compelled you to write the book?

BAER: I’d always been fascinated by Saudi Arabia. And I’d always noticed that on general intelligence reports that are sent around in the field, and in Washington, there’s virtually nothing said about Saudi Arabia. Every Arab that I talked to – and I know a lot of them – kept on talking about the disputes in the royal family, huge contracts, the Wahhabi's funding Lebanese politics. It became clear to me, even though I wasn’t seeing much in the CIA traffic, or State Department, or anywhere else, that this was a key country.

So when I got back to Washington in ’95 – and I stayed there until I resigned from the CIA – I said, all right, I don’t know a whole lot about Saudi Arabia. What about Saudi Arabia? And I got onto the computer and I took a look around, and there just wasn’t anything useful. I mean, you, as a journalist, would have looked at this and said: It’s junk. There’s nothing here. And especially nothing that goes deep into the problems in Saudi Arabia.

At the same time, I started running into these assessments of the oil industry, and just how much damage you could do to the processing facilities, not the pipelines, if you were a terrorist and wanted to bring the Saudis down. And then 9/11 came along, and the 15 Saudis that caused it. So I took notes about everything that I’d ever learned about Saudi Arabia and the government. And I said, this would make a book. I asked myself: Why don’t we know more about a country that’s so vital to the United States? And this is my effort at explaining that. You’d get a different perspective if you asked James Baker about it or an academic. But this is the continuation of my memoir, my gut reaction.

BUZZFLASH: We were told, after the Afghanistan war, that indulging in drugs is supporting terrorism. But you also make the claim: Every time we buy a gallon of gasoline, if the petrol came from Saudi Arabia, the oil was used for the gasoline. So we’re also supporting terrorism.

BAER: Well, it is. In the first Gulf war, if Saudi Arabia hadn’t been there to pump the extra gasoline, and if we had let oil hit $80 or $90 a barrel for a long period of time, people wouldn’t have been buying all these SUVs in the ‘90s. I mean, Saudi Arabia really does balance the market out. I’m in California right now, and we use a lot of gasoline. As you drive around this town, it’s amazing all the SUVs and four-wheel drives that you see.

In any case, we just use a lot of gasoline, and we depend upon it, just as we depend upon cheap imports from East Asia, from China. All these cheap imports and cheap gasoline, and wood from Brazil, it becomes a dependency. These aren’t my ideas. I talk to a lot of people about the drug problem, and they say, well, with dependency, your perceptions change. And I think the best I can tell is that’s what has happened. It's as if Saudi Arabia is our boss and is paying us a good salary. It would be difficult to find another job, so we're not going to really worry about focusing on what our boss is really doing. We're too dependent.

BUZZFLASH: So that’s the basis of your claim that through our dependence on Saudi oil, we’re, in essence, financing terrorism – because you do say in your book that, over the past decade, Saudi Arabia has transferred half a billion dollars to Al-Qaeda, and at least a hundred million dollars to the Taliban.

BAER: Exactly. And it’s obviously not intentional on the part of consumers; there’s no conspiracy in this on this side of the ocean. People in Washington didn’t sit around and say, let's finance terrorism. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s this process of what I call slow accrual.

BUZZFLASH: Why do the Saudis finance terrorism? From reading your book and elsewhere, we deduce that there are probably two reasons. One is that they’re paying protection money. You set up the scenario, as you discussed earlier, that if they didn’t buy off al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, they might be the target of a plane that’s hijacked into their oil processing plants, and that would ruin them for years. The second reason is that the Saudis practice what we would view in America as a fundamentalist branch of the Islamic faith that actually becomes a breeding ground for terrorism.

BAER: There's a lot that we really don’t know. There are a lot of people in the royal family that sympathize with bin Laden. There are people in the royal family that feel humiliated by colonialism -- call it what you want -- by the United States, by Israel. And they’re humiliated that they are citizens or subjects of a country that has never fought a war, and yet spends so much money on defense. They’re humiliated that they don’t take the Israelis on, because their army is worthless. And maybe they’re not humiliated but rather disenfranchised because they can never advance up the ranks of the family, and it’s a very tough culture. They sit around and they read the Koran. And they get on these Islamic websites, and they watch Al-Jazeera. And they go to the mosque, and I think they’re believers.

You've got a very fragmented Saudi society. I can only identify a couple of those princes. There’s a senior one named Salman, whom I mention in the book, who had some sort of late conversion. But there are other ones. You hear rumors about them, and I didn’t dare put them in the book, because I’m not sure of the information. Then there are the other princes who are Westernized in the sense of their tastes: They drink, they like women, they like to spend a lot of money. They have the diamond-studded Rolex watches. They just love money for the power it gives them over other subjects. And they know they have a problem with the fundamentalists. They figure, if I can make gestures toward them, they won’t bother me. And the fundamentalists haven’t, for the most part.

If I were a fundamentalist and I wanted to take Saudi Arabia over, what I would do is I’d go after the royal family. I would set off a few car bombs and kill a couple of them. Destabilize the country. But for some reason, the royal family has not been the victim of terrorism that they claim they have been. You cannot name a single case where the fundamentalists killed a Saudi prince. They claim all the time that there are all these plots afoot, and they’ve stopped them. But all the terrorism has really been against the United States and other Western countries, or Western interests in Saudi Arabia.

That ’95 National Guard barracks bombing within Saudi Arabia – we don’t really know who did that. Could have been bin Laden. And you have the ’96 Kobar barracks bombing. There are a lot of people who say that bin Laden was involved in the ’96 bombing, though there’s no proof of it.

That brings me to the State Department. You’ve got ’95, ’96, and ’98 bombings that had a bunch of Saudis. The bombings in Africa [U.S. Embassy in Kenya] and the Cole [U.S.S. Cole] had a bunch of Saudis involved. And we were hit September 2001, and we still don’t have visa interviews for these people. How can you explain that? If you’re a Syrian, you have to wait 30 days. If you’re an Iranian, you have to wait 30 days before you get your visa. In Saudi Arabia, you just send your passport to the travel agent. It comes back, without an interview, without any sort of check, and you get a visa. And that’s what disturbs me.

BUZZFLASH: And of course, 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 were Saudi.

BAER: The Saudi hijackers were spending time in these mosques paid for by the Saudi government. The clerics are essentially government employees that recruited these kids. I know why Americans don’t have time to think about the Middle East. It’s a very complicated place. I certainly don’t understand it all that well, but I’ve spent 25 years now doing nothing but trying to figure it out.

BUZZFLASH: You also mentioned how intertwined business relationships are with Saudi Arabia. Another point you bring out is that the Saudi Arabians keep possibly as much as a trillion dollars on deposit in U.S. banks. So how does that factor in?

BAER: Well, Kissinger set this up in the first oil embargo. He said, listen, fine, you can raise the price of oil. You’re going to get more money for your oil. But let’s be reasonable about this. Take this money and all this profit you’re making, and invest it in the United States, which is a perfectly good policy, by the way. Buy our arms. Keep your money here. It’ll keep our economy floating. We won’t go into a recession or a depression because of high oil prices. And we’re all going to win by this. And that worked fine.

But then that goes back to the dependency. We depend so much on Saudi investments in the stock market, in Citibank and other funds. This is not just Saudi money; it’s other Arab money too. If we go into a confrontation with the Middle East, especially with oil prices so high right now, and that money is not recirculated back in the United States, it’s going to do some real damage. Or if one day, they just completely pull their money out. I mean, that’s the perfect storm: an oil embargo, the Saudis and others' pulling their money out, and having the price of oil go up to $70 - $80 a barrel. We would be hurt, badly hurt.

BUZZFLASH: Another factor in terms of the relationship that you’ve described as sleeping with the devil, and that you detail in your book, is that the Saudis have very shrewdly given jobs and consulting contracts to politicians and American government officials as they leave their government jobs.

BAER: I could have sat down and done a list of all my former colleagues from the CIA who ended up on the Saudi Arabian payroll. Some of them are known, like Ray Close. Others have gone public, but there are others that haven’t. A bunch of my colleagues went to work for a public consulting firm where the initial capital was paid for by the Saudi embassy to lobby the Hill for the Gulf countries. A former member of the National Security Council under Reagan set this up. And it’s not like it’s a secret. Even Bandar [Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi prince and U.S. ambassador] has said, according to the Washington Post, that if I take care of people coming out of office, the new ones coming in are going to be a lot friendlier to Saudi Arabia once it gets known.

BUZZFLASH: And it’s worked.

BAER: It works great. I’d be really popular in Washington if I could throw around a couple hundred million dollars every year to law firms and others. Another thing the royal family does is cultivate the press through public relations firms.

By the way, I just heard today The New York Times refused to review my book.

BUZZFLASH: Is that right? And you have no idea why?

BAER: Maybe they didn’t like my English. Maybe they didn’t like that I mentioned one of their reporters in it. I don’t know.

BUZZFLASH: What about the Wahhabi sect of Islam that’s practiced in Saudi Arabia?

BAER: It is absolutely susceptible to terrorism because its world view is so black and white and Utopian at the same time. Many Saudis are disgusted with their own lifestyles now, and they look back to the 18th Century with Abd-al-Wahhab. And they say things were better back then when we lived out in the desert. Saudis have told me, we’ll keep the oil in the ground. You can keep your weapons. We’re going to go back and we’re going to live in the desert off of camel’s milk and dates, because that’s when life was pure. In the times of Muhammad, we were honorable people, and we were warriors, and we were in control of our own destiny.

So with that kind of mentality, it’s very easy to recruit young kids, whether they’re men or women. In Saudi Arabia, it’s mainly the young boys. And when the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a violent political Islamic faction, left Egypt and set up in Saudi Arabia, they had a lot of influence on the Saudis.

This combination of a Utopian view of the world, plus the Muslim Brothers' advocacy of violence, have made people susceptible to suicide bombing. And it’s a little bit different from the Palestinians who live in refugee camps, and who have been disenfranchised completely. The Saudis are more privileged, of course. The best that I can tell, it’s just this combination that has been so lethal.

BUZZFLASH: Well, what then are we doing? Is Saudi Arabia continuing to finance Al-Qaeda?

BAER: I think they are. I think they’re going to continue to finance Hamas. Smart people in the Middle East tell me that there are a lot of Saudis heading into Iraq right now to set up cells to attack American troops. There was an article recently about it – I think it was in the Christian Science Monitor. And Bremer has even said it. What to do? I offer one solution, which is Syria, 1982, where they confronted a fundamentalist problem. And I’ve been criticized by people that say that you can’t shell cities like Asad did in ’82.

BUZZFLASH: Well, he just wiped the town out, didn’t he?

BAER: Yes. And that’s not what I’m advocating. I’m just saying that one solution is to outlaw this sort of fundamentalism at the state level, as we would. For example, a Christian sect in the United States could not go into a church and advocate and preach violence, which results in violence. That would be a conspiracy and it's against the law. If those same norms and laws were applied to these countries, we’d be a lot better off. And so I take Syria as an example of a country who had a terrible problem, and who pretty much solved it. This doesn’t address the question of Syria's support for Hesbollah – the kidnappings in the ‘80s and the terrorism that went on outside Syria. But inside Syria, I just wanted to point out that it is possible to do something about it.

We need the Saudis to get in that same position where they need to be removing these clerics from the mosque who are advocating righteous murder. We need to get the Saudis to account for the money that’s going to the charities, to make sure it’s going to orphans and widows and not weapons. And we need them as partners. And we have to hold them accountable. They have to tell us who these Saudis were that were apparently involved in September 11.

BUZZFLASH: Well, according to numerous accounts, although it’s hard to tell how extensive, the Saudis were allowed to fly members of the royal family and others out of the United States immediately after September 11th without questioning, on private Saudi jets. I believe I read one account of a security guard, a retired police officer in Florida, who was asked to accompany a member of a scion of a Saudi family who was at a university in Florida to Lexington, Kentucky, which I believe was a meeting point for many of the departing planes. [BuzzFlash Note: Since this interview was conducted in August, the issue of the Bush administration allowing bin Laden and Saudi families to leave the U.S. without questioning, within hours after 9/11 when U.S. airspace was closed, has been confirmed.]

BAER: Yes.

BUZZFLASH: One of the Florida papers, a mainstream daily, recounted this police officer's experience, and how he arrived on the tarmac in Lexington, and there was a whole fleet of Saudi jets there.

BAER: It’s crazy. There's a Syrian who's been convicted in Chicago and he has a Saudi wife. The Saudi embassy issued her a passport so was able to flee the U.S.; even though she was part of the case and shouldn’t have left. And the Saudis didn't really let us question Bayyumi [Bayyumi had showed up in San Diego with thousands of dollars and helped settle two Saudi 9/11 hijackers] But it was a controlled interrogation. You don’t get anything out of that.

BUZZFLASH: And it took awhile to arrange that.

BAER: Two years -- a guy that had met two of the hijackers and helped finance their stay!

BUZZFLASH: And wasn’t Bayyumi the guy that the wife of the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. sent money to?

BAER: The wife of the Saudi ambassador claimed that she gave the money to charities. As it turned out, the money was going into an account under a Jordanian woman's name. And the Jordanians and the Saudis despise each other. The chances of a Saudi princess sending money to a Jordanian woman without somebody's recommendation are highly improbable. But we don't know who made the recommendation, because we’re not getting the answers. We’re not holding Saudi Arabia accountable.

BUZZFLASH: Well, given that Saudi Arabia has 25 percent of the world’s oil reserves? Is that right?

BAER: Yes.

BUZZFLASH: And given that they have on deposit nearly a trillion dollars in the United States, and given all the intermingled business relationships, and the fact that they buy planes from Boeing, and the Carlyle Group is intertwined with them, what pressure could be put on them? What leverage does the United States have to actually get them to really crack down on the terrorist roots of many of the acts of terrorism?

BAER: Well, you hit the nail on the head. We don’t have a lot of pressure points because we’re so dependent on this oil. You could get rough with these people, but the problem is: Would the regime fall? As much as I despise Al Sa'ud, I wouldn’t want the regime to fall, for our benefit. It could lead to chaos. And I think that’s the problem Bush has: What do you do with these people that are clearly hiding something from 9/11, and have just said we’re not going to cooperate?

The Interior Minister said that 9/11 is a Zionist conspiracy. He said the Saudis had nothing to do with it. He stiffed Freeh [Louis Freeh, former FBI director] when he went out there in ’96 – just refused to see him. I don’t care what Freeh says now. He refused to see him, and no one did anything. The Saudis, and their arrogance, have gotten away with this for a long time because they think they have enough money to buy people off. Their attitude is: You don’t want to buy our oil, don’t buy it. We’ll sell someplace else. And what would happen if they did impose another embargo? Do we invade? I offer that possibility at the end of my book, but that’s if nothing else works. If the place is ready to go down, you have to consider it.

It wouldn't be an Iraq-like invasion with the stated goal of imposing democracy. An invasion of Saudi Arabia would be to save our economy.

BUZZFLASH: You’re very skeptical in your book on the possibility of imposing democracy in the Middle East.

BAER: I look at Iraq today. Yesterday, you had the Turkmen killing the Kurds. You had the Shi'a Muslims blowing each other up in Najef. I wouldn't even know where to begin to impose democracy on these countries. In order for a democracy to be established in a country, there has to be an intellectual tradition of democracy within the country. There needs to be some prior rule of law. For example, the Weimar Republic had a democratic rule of law in the ‘30s that laid the foundation for the post-World War II occupation. And the Russians had sort of a democracy in the early 1900's even though they’re not doing very well now.

It’s really hard to get people in countries like Iraq to understand what you’re talking about [when you talk about democracy], when they’re so tied up in religion and the rule of God. In Saudi Arabia, the rule of law is whatever the prince that comes along says; that's the system of justice. I think we can offer by example democracy in adjoining countries, but at the end of the day, we really can’t impose it.

BUZZFLASH: Also, you point out that if you offered democracy, the fundamentalists might win.

BAER: I’ve seen conversations we’ve had with the Saudi government – why they didn’t want to arrest bin Laden in ’96. They were very frank. They said: Listen, we can arrest this guy and put him in jail. There would be a national uprising in support of him.

So, I think that Iraq should find its own way to democracy. We should set the example wherever we can. If the Palestinian-Israeli thing ever gets solved – it probably never will in our lifetime – there would be a sort of working democracy with the Palestinians or the Jordanians. Democracy has to be created from within the country; they just won’t accept it from the United States.

BUZZFLASH: You mentioned Asad earlier, and what he did to the Muslim Brotherhood – just annihilated the town that was the center for the uprising against him. Asad and Saddam Hussein were similar. Both were ruthless tyrants with comparatively secular versions of Islam in their countries. The Saudis were financing people who were actually opposed to Asad. There’s a kind of irony here. We overthrew a country that despite how cruel Saddam Hussein was, he was not one to aggressively foster terrorism within Iraq. And yet you have the Saudis, who are our closest friends and who do finance terrorism, as you point out, to the tune of a billion dollars over the last decade. It seems like everything’s upside down.

BAER: Well, I think it is. I think it’s pretty clear now that Saddam was not supporting bin Laden to any degree that we can establish. And now suddenly this week, we’ve got bin Laden claiming the U.N. bombing in Iraq. So we have created a terrorist state where we didn’t have one before. Are we worse off with the terrorist state in Iraq now, or with Saddam before, who was out of his mind and could attack a country like Saudi Arabia? Who knows what he was going to do next. We’re facing two evils here. I’m frankly more scared of the fundamentalists than I was of Saddam.

BUZZFLASH: Many commentators, including yourself, say the CIA over the years started to depend less on people like you and more on electronic intelligence and technology to do the spying. And yet you were the nitty-gritty human intelligence type of operative. You got to know the Middle East pretty well. Is there black and white there, or just shades of gray?

BAER: Shades of gray. You know, on the intelligence thing, you really need it all. You need the human intelligence. You need electronic intelligence. And you need good analysis. You need people that know the area and spend their lives following it. And you need satellite photography as well. So those are the four things you need. And then you need governments. You know, that’s really even a fifth thing. It’s very important. Other governments helping you on the ground – what we really need in Iraq is a government to tell us what’s happening there, which we’re lacking.

But the problem in the United States is we don’t do well with foreign countries. So many Americans came here and they just don’t want to know about what is happening in their home countries. I’m out here in California, and national security? -- they don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to know anything about it. They want to know about the movies. They want to know about the dot-coms coming back. They want to know about the latest diet book. So when we get into a war like Iraq, I don’t really think Americans know what the potential consequences are. And it's the same in the CIA and the State Department. You get more and more Americans that don’t spend much time overseas – certainly not in the Middle East. It’s harder for them to go up the learning curve on these countries. It certainly was for me.

BUZZFLASH: You’re in a small group of people that has had much contact with the darker side of terrorism, and you’ve had personal relationships that gave you an insight. The motivations for terrorism are multi-faceted. But we’ve been constantly perplexed by what one does about suicide bombers. If you’ve got the people who participate in 9/11 or Palestinians who blow themselves up on Israeli buses, you can’t punish them. You have no leverage to say: If you do that, you’re going to lose your life, because the mission itself involves their commitment to lose their lives by their own will. How does one gain an edge on that? And is there any way psychologically to gain that? Or is it purely a military function?

BAER: I think it’s more political. I think that the sooner we stop interfering in the Middle East, the more likely we'll be able to exact a truce with terrorism.

By going into Afghanistan, that was really acceptable to most Muslims, because we’d been attacked. They understand that. But going into Iraq will certainly irritate more people and add credence to bin Laden-type ideologies and zealots. We have to get together with the Europeans and solve this Israeli-Palestinian deal. And if it’s building a wall between the Palestinians and the Israelis, fine – let’s do it. We need to identify a leadership among the Palestinians that speak for 90 percent of them, for instance, and get a settlement. Even if we need to buy it, it’s really important that we do that because they’ve got such rotten systems in the Middle East that all they’re really allowed to think about are the Palestinian problems.

They can’t complain against their own governments. They can’t overthrow them. They can’t go into elections. So the governments, whether they’re Saudi or Jordanian or Lebanese, focus on Israel as the main misery in their lives. Of course, what do Palestinians have to do with the Saudis? Nothing, other than they share a religion.

But we don’t care about the Christians in Rawanda as Christians. So it’s a little hard for Americans to understand this. And if we could remove that irritant of the Palestinian problem, that would be a start. We need to wean ourselves from Middle Eastern oil with alternative fuels, with conservation, with better use of our own fuels, however you do that – I’m not a specialist in that – and just get out of that system because it so corrosive.

We can’t do it with a military force. It’s really sad that our military is up against this guerilla warfare in Iraq. And if they become the subject of terrorists and car bombs, it’s unfortunate for us, because we’re going to do some damage to an institution that’s very important in the United States.

BUZZFLASH: Meaning the military.

BAER: Yes, and ultimately we can’t do it. We can’t expect some private from Indiana to be out in the streets of Baghdad collecting intelligence on who these people are, what they’re doing, or even making raids. Because they’re knocking down people’s doors, and they have no idea who they are. The information’s hard to come by in that country, and there are a lot of fabricators. And you’re asking these soldiers to be policemen, which they can’t do at the end of the day.

BUZZFLASH: Do you think the Saudi royal family and their role is in danger of imploding? Are they less secure, more secure, than they were 10 years ago? What’s the outlook for their rule?

BAER: I think they’re more insecure, and I’m basing this on anecdotal information. The Crown Prince, 10 days ago, I think it was, said that they’re in the middle of a decisive battle – and it wasn’t very clear what he meant – and that the outcome is unknown. For a Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia to acknowledge that the royal family or the government’s in a battle with its own citizens is unprecedented. It's never happened before. Even when Islamic Fundamentalists took over the Mecca mosque many years ago, it was never construed as a battle between the people and the royal family.

So for the first time, a Saudi leader has acknowledged they're having some real problems. I certainly would be reluctant to give you a timeline when they fall. There are so many factors involved. If they continue to get a lot of money for their oil, they can maintain the welfare system for a long time.

Another factor is going to be Iraq because there was a poll saying that a majority of Americans think we should get out of Iraq. If we get out of Iraq and leave a mess there, sort of like Somalia, will it spread to Saudi Arabia? It’s a big desert out there and they have a lot of weapons. Who knows? It’s the Middle East. Anything can happen there. And that’s what scares me. I wrote an editorial on Sunday for the Washington Post saying we can’t get out now. And I’m one that doesn’t particularly like foreign engagements. So I don’t know. These are worrying times.

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW