[iwar] [fc:How.vulnerable.are.the.Saudi.royals?]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-17 06:44:37
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY
Issue of 2001-10-22
Posted 2001-10-15

KING'S RANSOM

How vulnerable are the Saudi royals?

by SEYMOUR M. HERSH, The New Yorker

Since 1994 or earlier, the National Security Agency has been collecting
electronic intercepts of conversations between members of the Saudi
Arabian royal family, which is headed by King Fahd.  The intercepts
depict a regime increasingly corrupt, alienated from the country's
religious rank and file, and so weakened and frightened that it has
brokered its future by channelling hundreds of millions of dollars in
what amounts to protection money to fundamentalist groups that wish to
overthrow it. 

The intercepts have demonstrated to analysts that by 1996 Saudi money
was supporting Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and other extremist groups in
Afghanistan, Lebanon, Yemen, and Central Asia, and throughout the
Persian Gulf region.  "Ninety-six is the key year," one American
intelligence official told me.  "Bin Laden hooked up to all the bad guys
-- it's like the Grand Alliance -- and had a capability for conducting
large-scale operations." The Saudi regime, he said, had "gone to the
dark side."

In interviews last week, current and former intelligence and military
officials portrayed the growing instability of the Saudi regime "and the
vulnerability of its oil reserves to terrorist attack" as the most
immediate threat to American economic and political interests in the
Middle East.  The officials also said that the Bush Administration, like
the Clinton Administration, is refusing to confront this reality, even
in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. 

The Saudis and the Americans arranged a meeting between Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and King Fahd during a visit by Rumsfeld to
Saudi Arabia shortly before the beginning of the air war in Afghanistan,
and pictures of the meeting were transmitted around the world.  The
United States, however, has known that King Fahd has been incapacitated
since suffering a severe stroke, in late 1995.  A Saudi adviser told me
last week that the King, with round-the-clock medical treatment, is able
to sit in a chair and open his eyes, but is usually unable to recognize
even his oldest friends.  Fahd is being kept on the throne, the N.S.A. 
intercepts indicate, because of a bitter family power struggle. 

Fahd's nominal successor is Crown Prince Abdullah, his half brother, who
is to some extent the de-facto ruler -- he and Prince Sultan, the
defense minister, were the people Rumsfeld really came to see.  But
there is infighting about money: Abdullah has been urging his
fellow-princes to address the problem of corruption in the kingdom --
unsuccessfully, according to the intercepts.  "The only reason Fahd's
being kept alive is so Abdullah can't become king," a former White House
adviser told me. 

The American intelligence officials have been particularly angered by
the refusal of the Saudis to help the F.B.I.  and the C.I.A.  run
"traces" -- that is, name checks and other background information -- on
the nineteen men, more than half of them believed to be from Saudi
Arabia, who took part in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.  "They knew that once we started asking for a few traces the
list would grow," one former official said.  "It's better to shut it
down right away."

He pointed out that thousands of disaffected Saudis have joined
fundamentalist groups throughout the Middle East.  Other officials said
that there is a growing worry inside the F.B.I.  and the C.I.A.  that
the actual identities of many of those involved in the attacks may not
be known definitively for months, if ever. 

Last week, a senior intelligence official confirmed the lack of Saudi
cooperation and told me, angrily, that the Saudis "have only one
constant -- and it's keeping themselves in power."

The N.S.A.  intercepts reveal the hypocrisy of many in the Saudi royal
family, and why the family has become increasingly estranged from the
vast majority of its subjects.  Over the years, unnerved by the growing
strength of the fundamentalist movement, it has failed to deal with the
underlying issues of severe unemployment and inadequate education, in a
country in which half the population is under the age of eighteen. 

Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam, known as Wahhabism, and
its use of mutawwa'in -- religious police -- to enforce prayer, is
rivalled only by the Taliban's.  And yet for years the Saudi princes --
there are thousands of them -- have kept tabloid newspapers filled with
accounts of their drinking binges and partying with prostitutes, while
taking billions of dollars from the state budget. 

The N.S.A.  intercepts are more specific.  In one call, Prince Nayef,
who has served for more than two decades as interior minister, urges a
subordinate to withhold from the police evidence of the hiring of
prostitutes, presumably by members of the royal family.  According to
the summary, Nayef said that he didn't want the "client list" released
under any circumstances. 

The intercepts produced a stream of sometimes humdrum but often riveting
intelligence from the telephone calls of several senior members of the
royal family, including Abdullah; Nayef; Sultan, whose son Prince Bandar
has been the Saudi ambassador to the United States since 1983; and
Prince Salman, the governor of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's capital. 

There was constant telephoning about King Fahd's health after his
stroke, and scrambling to take advantage of the situation.  On January
8, 1997, Prince Sultan told Bandar about a flight that he and Salman had
shared with the King.  Sultan complained that the King "barely spoke to
anyone," according to the summary of the intercept, because he was "too
medicated." The King, Sultan added, was "a prisoner on the plane."

Sultan's comments became much more significant a few days later, when
the N.S.A.  intercepted a conversation in which Sultan told Bandar that
the King had agreed to a complicated exchange of fighter aircraft with
the United States that would bring five F-16s into the Royal Saudi Air
Force.  Fahd was evidently incapable of making such an agreement, or of
preventing anyone from dropping his name in a money-making deal. 

In the intercepts, princes talk openly about bilking the state, and even
argue about what is an acceptable percentage to take.  Other calls
indicate that Prince Bandar, while serving as ambassador, was involved
in arms deals in London, Yemen, and the Soviet Union that generated
millions of dollars in "commissions."

In a PBS "Frontline" interview broadcast on October 9th, Bandar, asked
about the reports of corruption in the royal family, was almost upbeat
in his response.  The family had spent nearly four hundred billion
dollars to develop Saudi Arabia, he said.  "If you tell me that building
this whole country .  .  .  we misused or got corrupted with fifty
billion, I'll tell you, 'Yes.'.  .  .  So what? We did not invent
corruption, nor did those dissidents, who are so genius, discover it."

The intercepts make clear, however, that Crown Prince Abdullah was
insistent on stemming the corruption.  In November of 1996, for example,
he complained about the billions of dollars that were being diverted by
royal family members from a huge state-financed project to renovate the
mosque in Mecca.  He urged the princes to get their off-budget expenses
under control; such expenses are known as the hiding place for payoff
money.  (Despite its oil revenues, Saudi Arabia has been running a
budget deficit for more than a decade, and now has a large national
debt.)

A few months later, according to the intercepts, Abdullah blocked a
series of real-estate deals by one of the princes, enraging members of
the royal family.  Abdullah further alarmed the princes by issuing a
decree declaring that his sons would not be permitted to go into
partnerships with foreign companies working in the kingdom. 

Abdullah is viewed by Sultan and other opponents as a leader who could
jeopardize the kingdom's most special foreign relationship -- someone
who is willing to penalize the United States, and its oil and gas
companies, because of Washington's support for Israel.  In an intercept
dated July 13, 1997, Prince Sultan called Bandar in Washington, and
informed him that he had told Abdullah "not to be so confrontational
with the United States."

The Fahd regime was a major financial backer of the Reagan
Administration's anti-Communist campaign in Latin America and of its
successful proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.  Oil money
bought the Saudis enormous political access and leverage in Washington. 
Working through Prince Bandar, they have contributed hundreds of
millions of dollars to charities and educational programs here. 

American construction and oil companies do billions of dollars' worth of
business every year with Saudi Arabia, which is the world's largest oil
producer.  At the end of last year, Halliburton, the Texas-based
oil-supply business formerly headed by Vice-President Dick Cheney, was
operating a number of subsidiaries in Saudi Arabia. 

In the Clinton era, the White House did business as usual with the
Saudis, urging them to buy American goods, like Boeing aircraft.  The
kingdom was seen as an American advocate among the oil-producing nations
of the Middle East.  The C.I.A.  was discouraged from conducting any
risky intelligence operations inside the country and, according to one
former official, did little recruiting among the Saudi population, which
limited the United States government's knowledge of the growth of the
opposition to the royal family. 

In 1994, Mohammed al-Khilewi, the first secretary at the Saudi Mission
to the United Nations, defected and sought political asylum in the
United States.  He brought with him, according to his New York lawyer,
Michael J.  Wildes, some fourteen thousand internal government documents
depicting the Saudi royal family's corruption, human-rights abuses, and
financial support for terrorists. 

He claimed to have evidence that the Saudis had given financial and
technical support to Hamas, the extremist Islamic group whose target is
Israel.  There was a meeting at the lawyer's office with two F.B.I. 
agents and an Assistant United States Attorney.  "We gave them a
sampling of the documents and put them on the table," Wildes told me
last week.  "But the agents refused to accept them." He and his client
heard nothing further from federal authorities.  Al-Khilewi, who was
granted asylum, is now living under cover. 

The Saudis were also shielded from Washington's foreign-policy
bureaucracy.  A government expert on Saudi affairs told me that Prince
Bandar dealt exclusively with the men at the top, and never met with
desk officers and the like.  "Only a tiny handful of people inside the
government are familiar with U.S.-Saudi relations," he explained.  "And
that is purposeful."

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington,
the royal family has repeatedly insisted that Saudi Arabia has made no
contributions to radical Islamic groups.  When the Saudis were
confronted by press reports that some of the substantial funds that the
monarchy routinely gives to Islamic charities may actually have gone to
Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks, they denied any knowledge of such
transfers.  The intercepts, however, have led many in the intelligence
community to conclude otherwise. 

The Bush Administration has chosen not to confront the Saudi leadership
over its financial support of terror organizations and its refusal to
help in the investigation.  "As far as the Saudi Arabians go, they've
been nothing but cooperative," President Bush said at a news conference
on September 24th. 

The following day, the Saudis agreed to formally cut off diplomatic
relations with the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan.  Eight days later,
at a news conference in Saudi Arabia with Prince Sultan, the defense
minister, Donald Rumsfeld was asked if he had given the Saudis a list of
the September 11th terrorist suspects for processing by their
intelligence agencies.  Rumsfeld, who is admired by many in the press
for his bluntness, answered evasively: "I am, as I said, not involved
with the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is conducting the
investigation.  .  .  .  I have every reason to believe that that
relationship between our two countries is as close, that any information
I am sure has been made available to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia."

The Saudis gave Rumsfeld something in return -- permission for U.S. 
forces to use a command-and-control center, built before the Gulf War,
in the pending air war against the Taliban.  Over the past few years,
the Saudis have also allowed the United States to use forward bases on
Saudi soil for special operations, as long as there was no public
mention of the arrangements. 

While the intelligence-community members I spoke with praised the Air
Force and the Navy for their performance in Afghanistan last week, which
did much to boost morale in the military and among the American
citizenry, they were crestfallen about an incident that occurred on the
first night of the war -- an incident that was emblematic, they believe,
of the constraints placed by the government on the military's ability to
wage war during the last decade. 

That night, an unmanned Predator reconnaissance aircraft, under the
control of the C.I.A., was surveilling the roads leading out of Kabul. 
The Predator, which costs forty million dollars and cruises at speeds as
slow as eighty miles an hour, is equipped with imaging radar and an
array of infrared and television cameras that are capable of beaming
high-resolution images to ground stations around the world.  The plane
was equipped with two powerful Hellfire missiles, designed as antitank
weapons.  The Predator identified a group of cars and trucks fleeing the
capital as a convoy carrying Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. 

Under a previously worked-out agreement, one knowledgeable official
said, the C.I.A.  did not have the authority to "push the button." Nor
did the nearby command-and-control suite of the Fifth Fleet, in Bahrain,
where many of the war plans had been drawn up.  Rather, the decision had
to be made by the officers on duty at the headquarters of the United
States Central Command, or CENTCOM, at MacDill Air Force Base, in
Florida. 

The Predator tracked the convoy to a building where Omar, accompanied by
a hundred or so guards and soldiers, took cover.  The precise sequence
of events could not be fully learned, but intelligence officials told me
that there was an immediate request for a full-scale assault by fighter
bombers.  At that point, however, word came from General Tommy R. 
Franks, the CENTCOM commander, saying, as the officials put it, "My JAG"
-- Judge Advocate General, a legal officer -- "doesn't like this, so
we're not going to fire."

Instead, the Predator was authorized to fire a missile in front of the
building -- "bounce it off the front door," one officer said, "and see
who comes out, and take a picture." CENTCOM suggested that the Predator
then continue to follow Omar.  The Hellfire, however, could not target
the area in front of the building -- in military parlance, it could not
"get a signature" on the dirt there -- and it was then agreed that the
missile would attack a group of cars parked in front, presumably those
which had carried Omar and his retinue.  The missile was fired, and it
"obliterated the cars," an official said.  "But no one came out."

It was learned later from an operative on the ground that Omar and his
guards had indeed been in the convoy and had assumed at the time that
the firing came from rocket-propelled grenades launched by nearby troops
from the Northern Alliance.  A group of soldiers left the building and
looked for the enemy.  They found nothing, and Omar and his convoy
departed.  A short time later, the building was targeted and destroyed
by F-18s.  Mullah Omar survived. 

Days afterward, top Administration officials were still seething about
the incident.  "If it was a fuckup, I could live with it," one senior
official said.  "But it's not a fuckup -- it's an outrage.  This isn't
like you're six years old and your mother calls you to come in for lunch
and you say, 'Time out.' If anyone thinks otherwise, go look at the
World Trade Center or the Pentagon."

A senior military officer viewed the failure to strike immediately as a
symptom of "a cultural issue" -- "a slow degradation of the system due
to political correctness: 'We want you to kill the guy, but not the guy
next to him.' No collateral damage." Others saw the cultural problem as
one of bureaucratic, rather than political, correctness.  Either way,
the failure to attack has left Defense Secretary Rumsfeld "kicking a lot
of glass and breaking doors," the officer said.  "But in the end I don't
know if it'll mean any changes."

A Pentagon planner also noted that some of the camps the bombers were
hitting were empty.  In fact, he added, it became evident even before
the bombing that troops of the Northern Alliance had moved into many of
the unused Taliban camps.  The Alliance soldiers came up with a novel
way of alerting American planners to their new location, the officer
said: "They walked around holding up white sheets so when the satellites
came by they're saying, 'Hey, we're the good guys.' "

The American military response has triggered alarm in the international
oil community and among intelligence officials who have been briefed on
a still secret C.I.A.  study, put together in the mid-eighties, of the
vulnerability of the Saudi fields to terrorist attack.  The report was
"so sensitive," a former C.I.A.  officer told me, "that it was put on
typed paper," and not into the agency's computer system, meaning that
distribution was limited to a select few.  According to someone who saw
the report, it concluded that with only a small amount of explosives
terrorists could take the oil fields off line for two years. 

The concerns, both in America and in Saudi Arabia, about the security of
the fields have become more urgent than ever since September 11th.  A
former high-level intelligence official depicted the Saudi rulers as
nervously "sitting on a keg of dynamite" -- that is, the oil reserves. 
"They're petrified that somebody's going to light the fuse."

"The United States is hostage to the stability of the Saudi system," a
prominent Middle Eastern oil man, who did not wish to be cited by name,
told me in a recent interview.  "It's time to start facing the truth. 
The war was declared by bin Laden, but there are thousands of bin
Ladens.  They are setting the game -- the agenda.  It's a new form of
war.  This fabulous military machine you have is completely useless."
The oil man, who has worked closely with the Saudi leadership for three
decades, added, "People like me have been deceiving you.  We talk about
how you don't understand Islam, but it's a vanilla analysis.  We try to
please you, but we've been aggrieved for years."

The Saudi regime "will explode in time," he said.  "It has been playing
a delicate game." As for the terrorists responsible for the September
11th attacks, he said, "Now they decide the timing.  If they do a
similar operation in Saudi Arabia, the price of oil will go up to one
hundred dollars a barrel" -- more than four times what it is today. 

In the nineteen-eighties, in an effort to relieve political pressure on
the regime, the Saudi leadership relinquished some of its authority to
the mutawwa'in and permitted them to have a greater role in day-to-day
life.  One U.S.  government Saudi expert complained last week that
religious leaders had been allowed to take control of the press and the
educational system. 

"Today, two-thirds of the Saudi Ph.D.s are in Islamic studies," a former
Presidential aide told me.  There was little attempt over the years by
American diplomats or the White House to moderate the increasingly harsh
rhetoric about the U.S.  "The United States was caught up in private
agreements" -- with the Saudi princes -- "while this shit was spewing in
the Saudi press," the former aide said.  "That was a huge mistake."

A senior American diplomat who served many years in Saudi Arabia
recalled his foreboding upon attending a training exercise at the
kingdom's most prestigious military academy, in Riyadh: "It was hot, and
I watched the cadets doing drills.  The officers were lounging inside a
suradiq" -- a large pavilion -- "with cold drinks, calling out orders on
loudspeakers.  I thought to myself, How many of these young men would
follow and die for these officers?"

The diplomat said he came away from his most recent tour in Saudi Arabia
convinced that "it wouldn't take too much for a group of twenty or
thirty fundamentalist enlisted men to take charge.  How would the
kingdom deal with the shock of something ruthless, small, highly
motivated, and of great velocity?"

There is little that the United States can do now, the diplomat said. 
"The Saudis have been indulged for so many decades.They are so spoiled. 
They've always had it their way.  There's hardly anything we could say
that would impede the 'majestic instancy' of their progress.  We're
their janissaries." He was referring to the captives who became �lite
troops of the Ottoman Empire. 

"The policy dilemma is this," a senior general told me.  "How do we help
the Saudis make a transition without throwing them over the side?"
Referring to young fundamentalists who have been demonstrating in the
Saudi streets, he said, "The kids are bigger than the Daddy."

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