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

Read more: Terrorism, Politics, News, CIA, Osama Bin Laden, Oil, Saudi Arabia, September 11th , 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.

In his new book, "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude," Baer bores deep into the half-century oil-and-military alliance between Washington and Riyadh. He goes to the heart of why the White House, which controversially censored the report, is bending over backward to keep locked away sensitive information that might shake up its relationship with Riyadh -- just as Baer warns that we can no longer afford to coddle the Saudi government.

"The Saudi regime is hanging on by a thread, presiding over a kingdom deeply torn between past and present, and dangerously at war with itself," he writes. It wouldn't take much, he argues, for Saudi militants to get hold of potent weapons, cull a small force from the largely disaffected population, and carry out an attack on the country's vital oil infrastructure. Halting the flow of Saudi crude would send world oil prices sky high and, in a worst-case scenario, could lead to regional war and global economic collapse.

Since May 12, when al-Qaida-linked suicide bombers struck a residential compound in Riyadh and killed 23 people, including nine Americans, the Saudis have announced a string of raids and arrests aimed at the terror network. While the Saudi regime and some in Washington are claiming tangible progress, Baer remains skeptical. "As far as I know, there hasn't been a single arrest inside the kingdom of anybody implicated in Sept. 11," he told Salon in an interview. Baer believes the 28 blacked-out pages of the 9/11 report, which he thinks will inevitably come to light, will offer sober evidence of the deep-rooted problem with Washington's longtime ally. "They'll point to a network of Saudis inside the kingdom that supported the hijackers at every stage," he says flatly.

So why does Washington still call Riyadh a partner?

According to Baer, the Saudis essentially act as the globe's Federal Reserve of oil. They are the only player in the market with significant surplus capacity. When a major crisis threatens to spike oil prices dramatically, as when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990 or when terrorists slammed planes into the twin towers in 2001, the Saudis literally pump massive liquidity into the global oil market to stabilize it.

Indeed, the catastrophe of Sept. 11 is the heavy price we pay for our dependency on the kingdom's oil, asserts Baer, because that dependency keeps Washington entrenched in a tainted, decades-long deal: We arm the Saudi rulers in exchange for guaranteed cheap and free-flowing crude, and we let them turn a blind eye to malignant Islamic militancy within their borders.

A CIA operative for 21 years until retiring in 1997, Baer worked the volatile turf of the Mideast and Central Asia long before terror struck on U.S. soil; field missions took him from Beirut to northern Iraq to Tajikistan, a hotbed of Islamist extremism. Ex-CIA officers turned whistle-blowers -- who are generally underpaid and have spent their careers toiling in obscurity -- may sometimes warrant skepticism, but Baer is not alone in his view of the Saudis. This week a chorus of U.S. lawmakers has joined him.

"There are substantial elements of the royal family that do not view the United States as an ally against terrorism," U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., said when discussing the 9/11 report, according to Knight Ridder Newspapers. "Right now, Saudi Arabia is a far greater threat to Americans than Iraq ever was." Wexler's comments followed his recent return from a third trip to the kingdom.

All but naming the Saudis, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., told the New York Times: "In my judgment there is compelling evidence that a foreign government provided direct support through officials and agents of that government to some of the Sept. 11 hijackers."

And House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., concurs with Baer's view that a section of the report was redacted for political cover and not national security. "[Classification] is not intended to protect reputations of people or countries. This administration has an obsession with secrecy, and this report is overclassified," she told the Associated Press.

To be sure, Saudi Arabia has been an important ally in the Arab world for the United States; it has welcomed U.S. air bases, allowed key military stagings for both Gulf wars, and shepherded the global oil market through some serious rough spots. The complex web of political, economic and military factors defining the Washington-Riyadh alliance has been around far longer than the current President Bush. And Saudi leaders have been quick to point out that al-Qaida is as hostile to them as to the U.S. -- or at least as hostile to some of them. In the hopes of deflecting some of the harsh criticism, the Saudis, too, have called for the 9/11 report to be fully declassified; foreign minister Saud al-Faisal maintained this week that the kingdom has "nothing to hide."

But Riyadh's hasty P.R. campaign aside -- al-Faisal quickly flew to Washington on Tuesday ostensibly to lobby the White House for full disclosure -- Baer believes the Saudi leadership is still burying its head in the sand at home. And, he says, the real war we should be fighting is not in Baghdad.

Baer spoke to Salon by phone from Washington on Wednesday about why al-Qaida remains cozy in the house of Saud, and why Washington must have full cooperation from Riyadh to win the war on terror -- a prospect he doesn't have a lot of faith in.

Next page: Valued partner or veiled enemy?