Word: kingdoms
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...book, Why America Slept, author Gerald Posner quotes U.S. officials as saying a key al-Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, Abu Zubaydah, told his interrogators that al-Qaeda had an explicit deal with the Saudi royals to desist from violence in the kingdom in exchange for Saudi financing. Abu Zubaydah is said to have claimed that bin Laden told him he had made the deal in 1991 with Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the longtime Saudi intelligence chief. Posner writes that Abu Zubaydah claimed to have attended several meetings with Turki and bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan...
...this for real? Is this the same Saudi Arabia that, despite plain evidence, questioned for months the fact that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were its citizens? The kingdom whose Interior Minister implied that the attacks on the U.S. were the work of "Zionists"? The country whose petrodollars have long funded terrorist groups? Americans, plainly, have misgivings about the Saudi kingdom, doubts that only grew when the Bush Administration, led by a President cozier than most to Riyadh, blacked out 28 pages dealing with Saudi Arabia from Congress's official report on Sept. 11, producing the smell of a cover...
...attacks, the House of Saud understood that it was under direct assault by an organization committed to its overthrow. Though bin Laden, a Saudi, long ago condemned the royal family for allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil starting in 1990, his group had refrained from violence within the kingdom. Its reasons were clear to U.S. intelligence. Says a former Bush Administration official: "There were al-Qaeda agents in the kingdom that urged al-Qaeda not to strike in Saudi Arabia because they [the Saudis] might cut off the spigot" of funds flowing to the group...
Whatever al-Qaeda's reasons, it had refrained from attacking within the kingdom until May 12. After the bombings that day, "the scales fell from the eyes of the Saudis," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has said. Says a U.S. official: "Now they are taking on the militant subculture head on." In his strongest denunciation so far of Islamic extremism, Prince Abdullah, in a televised address last month, described the battle against "deviant and misguided" terrorists as a "conflict between the power of good and the power of evil" in which "there is no room for neutrality...
...officials tend to praise the Saudis' recent sweeps of al-Qaeda cells. "We are now seeing excellent cooperation with U.S. personnel in this fight here in the kingdom," says Jordan. "The Saudis are sharing to a much greater degree the results of interrogations and on a much more timely basis." Another U.S. official refers to a "fire hose" of intelligence flowing out of the crackdown. "We know a lot more about how al-Qaeda operates in Saudi Arabia," he says. "We are getting information on its logistics, financing, operational planning and relations with al-Qaeda leaders outside the kingdom...