Monday, August 08, 2005
The Saudis and 9/11
Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote the linked item about the Saudi succession and the kingdom's famous brothers-in-law Turki bin Faisal (recently appointed Saudi ambassador to the US and, incidentally, a former colleague of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University in the 1960s) and Prince Bandar a month or so before the death of King Fahd, a coincidence akin to the one described near the end of the piece:
One of Turki's assets (when he was Saudi intelligence chief) was Osama bin Laden, one of the 56 children of a Yemeni-born construction tycoon who had a monopoly on the building of all royal palaces in the kingdom.
Osama collected tens of millions from wealthy Saudis for the Afghan campaign. He also took under his wing Arab and other Muslim volunteers funded to fight in Afghanistan by Turki and wealthy princes and private sector entrepreneurs.
By the time the defeated Soviets left Afghanistan in February 1989, bin Laden had been elevated to hero status in Saudi Arabia. So when bin Laden asked to see Turki Aug. 2, 1990, the day Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq (sic), he was not kept waiting.
What followed was described by Turki as one of history's most expensive laughs. Bin Laden told Turki the royals must not invite the U.S. Army to the kingdom to push the Iraqis out of Kuwait. His "Afghan Arab" fighters could do the job. Turki laughed and a furious bin Laden stormed out.
That was a crucial turning point in history. Bin Laden became convinced the royal family was conspiring with Washington to facilitate the occupation of Saudi Arabia and control of its oil production facilities and that Saddam had been entrapped into invading Kuwait to provide a pretext for U.S. occupation. That was when he decided to take on the royal family - a career path that led him to become the world's most wanted terrorist.
A yet unsolved mystery was when Turki resigned as intelligence chief after a quarter-century at the helm - just three weeks before September 11, 2001. He says it was merely coincidence. Conspiracy theorists believe Turki knew something very big was in the works and that some Saudis were involved. Again, Turki laughs. He simply needed a break to smell the desert. That didn't last long before he accepted the post of ambassador to the Court of St. James.
