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The broad­cast begins with three sto­ries under­scor­ing the con­tin­ued vul­ner­a­bil­ity of this coun­try to dev­as­tat­ing ter­ror­ist inci­dents. Fail­ure by both pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors to guar­an­tee the integrity of ter­ror­ism insur­ance has left US busi­ness highly vul­ner­a­ble to the eco­nomic effects of a major ter­ror­ist inci­dent. Busi­nesses are not insured at all against domes­tic ter­ror­ism. The milk indus­try in the US is highly vul­ner­a­ble to a bio-terrorist attack. The broad­cast high­lights the fail­ure of the US to develop a viable radiation-detection sys­tem at ports of entry into the coun­try. After updat­ing the case of accused terrorist-financier Yassin al-Qadi, the pro­gram focuses on Prince Ban­dar, Saudi ambas­sador to the United States and a close asso­ciate of the Bush fam­ily for decades. In par­tic­u­lar, the pro­gram high­lights Bandar’s res­ig­na­tion and his long-standing par­tic­i­pa­tion with mem­bers of the Bush fam­ily in var­i­ous covert oper­a­tions. In eval­u­at­ing Prince Ban­dar and his involve­ment in covert oper­a­tions, the cen­tral role of for­mer CIA direc­tor George H.W. Bush in those oper­a­tions is impor­tant to bear in mind.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Bandar’s piv­otal role in gen­er­at­ing funds for the Nicaraguan Con­tras; Bandar’s efforts at facil­i­tat­ing US mil­i­tary and eco­nomic assis­tance to Sad­dam Hus­sein in Iraq; Bandar’s work on behalf of the Afghan mujahideen and the gen­e­sis of Osama bin Laden as war­rior; the elder George Bush’s role direct­ing the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen.

1. Exam­in­ing poten­tial eco­nomic impact of future ter­ror­ist inci­dents, the broad­cast notes that nei­ther the pri­vate sec­tor nor the U.S. gov­ern­ment has ade­quately pro­vided for a suf­fi­cient amount of ter­ror­ism insur­ance for busi­ness. This fail­ure threat­ens the pos­si­bil­ity of eco­nomic col­lapse in the event of another dev­as­tat­ing ter­ror­ist inci­dent. Note that ter­ror­ism insur­ance does not cover attacks by domes­tic ter­ror­ists. Should the next attack be per­pe­trated in part or in whole by domes­tic neo-Nazis or Islamists, busi­nesses dam­aged in the attack would not be cov­ered!! Recall in that regard the neo-Nazi links to the events of 9/11.) “Future ter­ror­ist attacks could dis­rupt the US econ­omy because the sys­tem of ter­ror­ism insur­ance in its present state would not offer busi­nesses ade­quate finan­cial pro­tec­tion, a new study, by the RAND Cor­po­ra­tion indi­cates. Ter­ror­ism insur­ance does not pro­tect busi­nesses against attacks by domes­tic ter­ror­ists, nor does it cover attacks involv­ing chem­i­cal, bio­log­i­cal or nuclear weapons, the report points out. Also, many busi­nesses have neglected to buy ter­ror­ism insur­ance because the cost has soared since the attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11.”
(“Insur­ance ‘Gives Too Lit­tle Cover for Ter­ror.’” By Ellen Kelle­her; Finan­cial Times; 6/21/05; p. 8.)

2. “RAND ana­lysts rec­om­mend that Con­gress con­sider pro­pos­als that would help lower the cost of ter­ror­ism insur­ance to encour­age more busi­nesses to buy it. They also believe Con­gress should expand the Ter­ror­ism Risk Insur­ance Act (TRIA), which pro­vides a fed­eral back­stop to cover insur­ers’ losses in case of a ter­ror­ist attack.” (Idem.)

3. “Peter Chalk of RAND said: ‘Pro­tect­ing busi­nesses against the eco­nomic impact of a ter­ror­ist attack should be part of a robust home­land secu­rity effort.’ TRIA’s fate still hangs in the bal­ance in Wash­ing­ton as Con­gress has yet to decide whether to extend it. It is set to expire by the end of the year.” (Idem.)

4. “Insur­ers, some of whom funded the RAND study, are lob­by­ing the gov­ern­ment aggres­sively amid fears that its pas­sage could be derailed. The Trea­sury is expected to release a long-awaited analy­sis on TRIA’s effec­tive­ness by the end of the month. Some Repub­li­cans oppose its pas­sage as they think ter­ror­ism insur­ance should be left to the mar­kets.” (Idem.)

5. “Under the act, the Trea­sury Depart­ment is obliged to cap insur­ers’ lia­bil­ity and reim­burse them for some losses. The bill spec­i­fies that the gov­ern­ment must pay all insured losses greater than $12.5bn (€9.4bn, £6.5bn) in the after­math of a nuclear, bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal attack on Amer­i­cans. In exchange, the gov­ern­ment forced insur­ers to stop strip­ping ter­ror­ism cov­er­age from their poli­cies.” (Idem.)

6. “The RAND report urges the US gov­ern­ment and insur­ers to con­sider pro­grams that would cover ter­ror­ism by national groups as well as chem­i­cal, nuclear, and bio­log­i­cal attacks. Ana­lysts at the promi­nent think tank also believe state gov­er­nors should form a national board to assess the per­for­mance of TRIA.” (Idem.)

7. Another sce­nario involv­ing an eco­nom­i­cally and demo­graph­i­cally dev­as­tat­ing ter­ror­ist attack involves the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of the nation’s milk sup­ply to an attack by botolinum toxin. A gov­ern­ment study under­scored the threat posed by such an attack: “About a third of an ounce of bot­u­linum toxin poured into a milk truck en route from a dairy farm to a pro­cess­ing plant could cause hun­dreds of thou­sands of deaths and bil­lions of dol­lars in eco­nomic losses, accord­ing to a sci­en­tific analy­sis pub­lished Tues­day despite efforts by fed­eral offi­cials to keep the details secret.”
(“Study Shows How Ter­ror­ists Could Use Milk to Kill” [Wire Ser­vices]; Los Ange­les Times; 6/29/2005; p. 1.)

8. “The study by Lawrence M. Wein and Yifan Liu of Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity dis­cusses such ques­tions as how ter­ror­ists could release the toxin and what effec­tive amounts might be. Bruce Alberts, pres­i­dent of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences, said in an accom­pa­ny­ing edi­to­r­ial that a ter­ror­ist would not learn any­thing use­ful from the arti­cle about the min­i­mum amount of toxin to use. ‘And we can detect no other infor­ma­tion in this arti­cle impor­tant for a ter­ror­ist that is not already imme­di­ately avail­able to any­one who has access to infor­ma­tion from the World Wide Web.’” (Idem.)

9. “In fact, he said, pub­li­ca­tion of the arti­cle by the acad­emy could be valu­able for biode­fense. The analy­sis, posted Tues­day on the web­site of the Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences, seeks to quan­tify secu­rity weak­nesses in the nation’s milk sup­ply chain and makes rec­om­men­da­tions for clos­ing those gaps. Although some of the sug­gested changes are under­way, fed­eral offi­cials thought the mate­r­ial had enough poten­tial for mis­use to war­rant a last-minute effort to halt pub­li­ca­tion. That effort, which delayed the report’s unveil­ing by a month but ulti­mately failed to keep it from becom­ing pub­lic, proved to be as con­tentious as the pub­li­ca­tion itself and assured the report’s place in the sci­en­tific canon as one of the first test cases of how to bal­ance sci­en­tific free­dom and national secu­rity in the post-9/11 era.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

10. “Wein, whose pre­vi­ous research had fore­cast the likely effects of ter­ror­ist attacks involv­ing anthrax and small­pox, said he was sur­prised by the government’s push to block pub­li­ca­tion.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

11. “As long ago as last

fall, Wein said, he had briefed high-ranking offi­cials of the Depart­ments of Home­land Secu­rity and Health and Human Ser­vices, along with dairy indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives, on his work. ‘It was clear the dairy peo­ple were ner­vous about this paper com­ing out,’ Wein said. But when fed­eral offi­cials did not fol­low up, he said, he assumed they had con­cluded that every­thing in the arti­cle was already pub­licly avail­able and eas­ily obtained through an Inter­net search.” (Idem.)

12. “Bill Hall, a spokesman for HHS, said Tues­day that his depart­ment still opposed pub­li­ca­tion but was not in a posi­tion to block release of the data, which were not clas­si­fied. ‘We respect the academy’s posi­tion but we don’t agree with it,’ Hall said. The ‘con­se­quences could be dire and it will be HHS, and not the acad­emy, that will have to deal with it.’” (Idem.)

13. “The report describes the milk sup­ply chain from cow to con­sumer. It describes points where a toxin could be intro­duced, such as a hold­ing tank at a farm, a truck trans­port­ing milk to the pro­cess­ing plant or a raw milk hold­ing tank at the plant. The analy­sis by Wein and Liu con­sid­ered what might hap­pen if ter­ror­ists poured into a milk tanker truck a cou­ple of gal­lons of con­cen­trated sludge con­tain­ing bot­u­linum toxin, a potent bac­te­r­ial nerve poi­son now pop­u­lar in low doses as a wrin­kle eraser.” (Idem.)

14. “Because milk from many sources is com­bined in huge tanks, the toxin would get widely dis­trib­uted and within days be con­sumed by about 568,000 peo­ple, the report con­cludes.” (Idem.)

15. As ter­ri­fy­ing as the first two arti­cles are, they are no more fright­en­ing than the fol­low­ing story, doc­u­ment­ing the fail­ure to ade­quately guard the nation’s bor­ders against the impor­ta­tion of a nuclear device. “The fed­eral government’s efforts to pre­vent ter­ror­ists from smug­gling a nuclear weapon into the United States are so poorly man­aged and reliant on inef­fec­tive equip­ment that the nation remains extremely vul­ner­a­ble to a cat­a­strophic attack, sci­en­tists and a gov­ern­ment audi­tor warned a House com­mit­tee on Tues­day.”
(“U.S. Bor­ders Vul­ner­a­ble, Wit­nesses Say” by Eric Lip­ton; New York Times; 6/22/05; p. 1.)

16. “The assess­ment, com­ing nearly four years after the Sep­tem­ber 2001 attacks and after the invest­ment of about $800 mil­lion by the United States gov­ern­ment, prompted expres­sions of frus­tra­tion and dis­ap­point­ment from law­mak­ers. ‘If we go ahead and spend the money and don’t suc­ceed, I don’t under­stand that,’ said Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Steve Pearce, Repub­li­can of New Mex­ico. [Empha­sis added.]” (Idem.)

17. “Four fed­eral depart­ments — Home­land Secu­rity, Defense, Energy and State — are involved in a global cam­paign to try to pre­vent the illicit acqui­si­tion, move­ment and use of radioac­tive mate­ri­als, which includes efforts to pre­vent theft of nuclear mate­ri­als from for­mer Soviet stock­piles and inspect­ing cargo con­tain­ers on arrival from around the world. Dirty bombs, crude devices that widely spread low lev­els of radi­a­tion, are rel­a­tively easy to detect. But highly enriched ura­nium, a cru­cial ingre­di­ent in a nuclear bomb, could eas­ily be shielded with less than a quarter-inch of lead, mak­ing it ‘very likely to escape detec­tion by pas­sive radi­a­tion mon­i­tors’ now installed at ports and bor­der sta­tions, Benn Tan­nen­baum, a physi­cist and senior pro­gram asso­ciate at the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence, tes­ti­fied at Tuesday’s hear­ing.” (Idem.)

18. “The mon­i­tors are unable to dis­tin­guish between nat­u­rally occur­ring radi­a­tion from every­day items like ceramic tile and dan­ger­ous mate­r­ial like enriched ura­nium. It has been, let me say, a bad few years,’ Dr. Tan­nen­baum said. Cus­toms offi­cials also at times allow trucks to pass through the mon­i­tors too quickly, said Gene Aloise, an offi­cial from the Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­ity Office. And because the devices sound so many false alarms, Mr. Aloise said, their sen­si­tiv­ity has been turned down, mak­ing them less effec­tive still.” (Idem.)

19. “Nation­ally, less than a quar­ter of the radi­a­tion detec­tion devices needed to check all goods cross­ing the bor­ders have been installed, fed­eral offi­cials said. In New York, for exam­ple, none of the cargo that moves through the largest ship ter­mi­nal or goods leav­ing the port by rail or barge are inspected for radi­a­tion, Bethann Rooney, man­ager of secu­rity for the Port Author­ity of New York and New Jer­sey, tes­ti­fied. The prob­lems extend beyond the bor­ders, wit­nesses said. About half of the mon­i­tors given to one for­mer Soviet state were never installed or put into use. A mon­i­tor that the State Depart­ment gave to Bul­garia was set up on an unused road. And sea spray and winds at some ports over­seas may have com­pro­mised the detec­tion equip­ment, Mr. Aloise said.” (Idem.)

20. “Richard L. Wag­ner Jr., a physi­cist at the Los Alamos National Lab­o­ra­tory and chair­man of the Defense Depart­ment task force on pre­vent­ing a clan­des­tine nuclear attack, agreed that the radi­a­tion detec­tion sys­tems installed across the United States were ‘quite lim­ited in their capa­bil­i­ties and, in gen­eral, are insuf­fi­cient to the task.’ But the sit­u­a­tion, Dr. Wag­ner said, is not sur­pris­ing given the rapid start up of the effort. ‘There will be false starts and there will be money wasted,’ he said. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Langevin, Demo­c­rat of Rhode Island, asked how Home­land Secu­rity should appor­tion $125 mil­lion in the com­ing fis­cal year between buy­ing more of the same radi­a­tion mon­i­tor tech­nol­ogy and sup­port­ing research into bet­ter tech­nol­ogy. Two wit­nesses called for putting the detec­tion equip­ment on ships, so threats could be iden­ti­fied before reach­ing the United States.” (Idem.)

21. “Mem­bers of Con­gress have also recently ques­tioned a pro­posal by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to spend $227 mil­lion in the com­ing year to cre­ate a Domes­tic Nuclear Detec­tion Office, skep­ti­cal that it will do more than add a new layer of bureau­cracy. ‘I am not too hope­ful about this sit­u­a­tion,’ Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Bill Pascrell Jr., Demo­c­rat of New Jer­sey, said.” (Idem.)

22. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the Swiss inves­tiga­tive author­i­ties’ deci­sion to pur­sue an inves­ti­ga­tion of Yassin al-Qadi, a wealthy Saudi who has allegedly financed both al-Qaeda and Hamas. (Ptech devel­oped the threat-assessment soft­ware for the FAA, Air Force and NORAD.) It remains to be seen if the Swiss inves­ti­ga­tion of Bank al-Taqwa is re-opened. “The U.S. government’s cam­paign against alleged ter­ror financiers has won a poten­tially impor­tant vic­tory with a deci­sion by Swiss pros­e­cu­tors to pur­sue a for­mal crim­i­nal case against a promi­nent Saudi busi­ness­man long accused of pro­vid­ing sup­port to Al Qaeda and other ter­ror groups. The busi­ness­man, Yassin al-Qadi, was first named by the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment as a ‘Spe­cially Des­ig­nated Global Ter­ror­ist’ in Octo­ber 2001 as part of a major cam­paign by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to demon­strate it was crack­ing down on ter­ror financiers in the after­math of Sep­tem­ber 11. The U.S. action prompted a num­ber of gov­ern­ments, includ­ing the Swiss, to freeze mil­lions of dol­lars of Qadi’s assets.”
(“Anti-Terror Vic­tory?” By Michaal Isikoff and Mark Hosen­ball; Newsweek; 6/22/05; p. 1.)

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23. “But his case also has raised seri­ous ques­tions about the strength of the U.S. government’s evidence–little of which has ever been made public—regarding the murky world of terror-finance net­works. Qadi, a top tar­get of U.S. inves­ti­ga­tors, has repeat­edly denied all accu­sa­tions of ter­ror ties. And more than three and a half years after he was first des­ig­nated by Trea­sury, no crim­i­nal charges have been brought against him—either in the United States or any­where else through­out the world where he does busi­ness.” (Idem.)

24. “That now may change. Ear­lier this month, in a move long sought by Wash­ing­ton, Swiss deputy fed­eral pros­e­cu­tor Claude Nicati asked a Swiss fed­eral crim­i­nal tri­bunal to assign a juge d’instruction (inves­tiga­tive mag­is­trate) to pre­pare a pos­si­ble crim­i­nal case against Qadi. Swiss crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions pro­ceed in three stages. In the first stage, pros­e­cu­tors and police work together to gather the evi­dence for a crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. In the sec­ond stage, an inves­ti­gat­ing mag­is­trate sifts through evi­dence gath­ered by pros­e­cu­tors, inter­ro­gates wit­nesses and decides (much as an Amer­i­can grand jury is sup­posed to decide) whether there is enough evi­dence to send the case for trial. In the third stage, the inves­ti­gat­ing mag­is­trate would send the case to criminal-court judges-in Qadi’s case, fed­eral judges based in the south­ern Swiss city of Bellinzona—who would try it and deter­mine whether the defen­dants were guilty of any crime. The Qadi case is the first terrorism-finance case that Swiss pros­e­cu­tors have moved to the sec­ond inves­tiga­tive stage since 9/11.” (Idem.)

25. “Accord­ing to Qadi’s lawyer, Nicati’s four-page let­ter to the fed­eral tri­bunal focuses in par­tic­u­lar on a series of trans­ac­tions between Feb­ru­ary and August 1998 in which one of Qadi’s com­pa­nies, Car­a­van Devel­op­ment, trans­ferred $1.25 mil­lion to a firm owned by another Saudi busi­ness­man, Wael Julaidan Julaidan, a reputed one-time asso­ciate of Osama bin Laden dur­ing the guer­rilla war against Soviet occu­pa­tion of Afghanistan, was placed on both the United Nations and U.S. ter­ror financier lists in Sep­tem­ber 2002.” (Idem.)

26. “The money trans­fers were sup­posed to build dor­mi­tory hous­ing for an Islamic school in Yemen – the sort of reli­gious and char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties that both Qadi and Julaidan have long con­tended they have openly sup­ported. But the Swiss let­ter alleges the funds ‘end up in the hands of Al Qaeda.’ Accord­ing to an excerpt of the let­ter read to NEWSWEEK by one of Qadi’s lawyers.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

27. “But the Qadi lawyer, Saad Djeb­bar, vig­or­ously dis­puted the Swiss accu­sa­tions and pre­dicted his client will be fully vin­di­cated. He calls for the case against Qadi a ‘finan­cial Guan­tanamo’ that was ginned up by Swiss pros­e­cu­tors on the basis of noto­ri­ously spotty and inac­cu­rate intel­li­gence pro­vided by Amer­i­can offi­cials as part of their post-9/11 crack­down. ‘This is the Kafka school of jurispru­dence’, Saad Djeb­bar, a London-based lawyer who works with Qadi’s legal team led by the well known British firm of Carter-Ruck. ‘The intel­li­gence [regard­ing Qadi] is no bet­ter than the intel­li­gence [the U.S. gov­ern­ment] pro­vided about Iraq.’” (Idem.)

28. “Djeb­bar acknowl­edged that Qadi him­self per­son­ally con­firmed the money trans­fers to the Julaidan-connected com­pany dur­ing an inter­view with Nicati, the Swiss pros­e­cu­tor, in Riyadh, Saudi Ara­bia, in July 2003—a ses­sion he said that was arranged and facil­i­tated by Qadi’s lawyers. But, he added that,’ Qadi adamantly denied dur­ing that same inter­view that he ever intended or knew that any of the funds would be diverted to Al Qaeda.” (Idem.)

29. “‘I never gave one million—not even one cent to Al Qaeda,’ Qadi told the pros­e­cu­tor, accord­ing to an excerpt from his ques­tion­ing read to a reporter by Djeb­bar. ‘Not only Al Qaeda, not to any ter­ror­ist group. I always in my life was against any ter­ror­ist act. It is against our reli­gion, our belief, our com­mu­nity. Nobody in Saudi Ara­bia can believe I would have ever thought about sup­port­ing such groups.’” (Idem.)

30. “Djeb­bar said that Swiss pros­e­cu­tors mis­tak­enly thought that the Julaidan com­pany that received the money trans­fers from Qadi’s com­pany (which is based in Turkey) was con­nected to Mam­douh Mah­moud Salim, a noto­ri­ous finan­cial man­ager for Al Qaeda who has been indicted in the United States on charges con­nected to the 1998 bomb­ings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tan­za­nia. Salim, who is being held in a fed­eral deten­tion cen­ter in New York, is also accused of attempt­ing to a prison guard by stab­bing him in the eye with a comb in 2001. But Djeb­bar said that Salim was no longer affil­i­ated with the com­pany that received the money from Qadi at the time of the money trans­fers. Djeb­bar also noted that the Swiss action comes shortly after a Turk­ish pros­e­cu­tor dropped a sep­a­rate inves­ti­ga­tion into Qadi com­pa­nies in that coun­try after con­clud­ing that there was no evi­dence link­ing his firms to ter­ror financ­ing.” (Idem.)

31. “Mark Wied­mer, a spokesman for the Swiss prosecutor’s office, said that the inves­ti­ga­tion referred to the fed­eral tri­bunal was one of three major ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions that Swiss fed­eral pros­e­cu­tors had recently been prepar­ing for pos­si­ble trans­mis­sion to the fed­eral crim­i­nal court, a new Swiss tri­bunal set up after 9/11 to han­dle com­pli­cated cases, includ­ing ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions. One case, which Wied­mer said that fed­eral mag­is­trates were already exam­in­ing, involved the arrests of nine Mus­lim immi­grants to Switzer­land fol­low­ing sophis­ti­cated attacks on West­ern res­i­den­tial com­pounds in Riyadh in May 2003. Accord­ing to a copy of the crim­i­nal refer­ral in that case obtained by NEWSWEEK, Swiss police opened the case after receiv­ing infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that 36 Swiss cell-phone num­bers were recorded in the mem­ory of a cell phone used by one of the mem­bers of the ter­ror­ist cell that car­ried out the Riyadh attacks.” (Idem.)

32. Much of the dis­cus­sion cen­ters on Prince Ban­dar, the Saudi ambas­sador to the United States and an inti­mate of the Bush fam­ily. For what­ever rea­son, Ban­dar has resigned his posi­tion as Saudi ambas­sador. Whether or not Bandar’s depar­ture has some­thing to do with any of the ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into ter­ror financ­ing and involve­ment of promi­nent Saudis in the under­writ­ing of al-Qaeda is a mat­ter for spec­u­la­tion. Ban­dar has been in charge of numer­ous accounts held by the Saudis at the Riggs Bank, cur­rently under inves­ti­ga­tion for the fund­ing of var­i­ous covert oper­a­tions. “Prince Ban­dar bin Sul­tan, Saudi Arabia’s ambas­sador to the US for more than two decades, has resigned his posi­tion. Accord­ing to peo­ple close to the Saudi gov­ern­ment. Prince Ban­dar, the longest serv­ing ambas­sador to Wash­ing­ton, has decided to quit. How­ever, he will remain for­mally in his role as ambas­sador until an announce­ment from the Saudi cap­i­tal, Riyadh. The announce­ment could take months.”
(“Saudi Ambas­sador to U.S. Resigns” by Stephen Fidler and Guy Din­more, Finan­cial Times; 6/28/05; p. 1; accessed at: http://www.ft.com.)

33. “The Saudi embassy in Wash­ing­ton said that a state­ment on Sun­day, in which it said that Prince Ban­dar remained ambas­sador to the US, still stood. ‘Prince Ban­dar is cur­rently on vaca­tion and is expected to return to his office at the end of August,’ the state­ment said. But one Saudi gov­ern­ment adviser said: ‘He is deter­mined to go. But as there is no for­mal decree reliev­ing him of his duties, he by default and by name remains ambas­sador.’ Another

said that Prince Ban­dar, 56, had already moved his belong­ings out of the Wash­ing­ton res­i­dence, though this could not be con­firmed.” (Idem.)

34. “Sev­eral rea­sons are cited for his expected depar­ture, includ­ing poor health, which has encour­aged him to spend more and more time away from Wash­ing­ton in recent years. But he is also said to have lost influ­ence in Riyadh as the ail­ing King Fahd weak­ens and his expected suc­ces­sor, Crown Prince Abdul­lah, gath­ers more of the reins of power. ‘It’s a ques­tion of how seri­ously he is taken in Riyadh and how much con­fi­dence they have in him,’ said an adviser. Prince Sul­tan, Prince Bandar’s father, is expected to assume the title of Crown Prince when Abdul­lah becomes king.”(Idem.)

35. “Prince Bandar’s high pro­file had also become a source of increas­ing con­tro­versy within the US, and there were ques­tions about whether this was help­ing Saudi efforts to improve rela­tions with Wash­ing­ton. These sources said that Prince Ban­dar was not expected to return to Riyadh in a senior pol­icy role.” (Idem.)

36. “There was no word on who would be his likely suc­ces­sor. Accord­ing to the Saudi gov­ern­ment. Prince Ban­dar did not attend a meet­ing in Riyadh last week between Crown Prince Abdul­lah and Con­doleezza Rice, the White House national secu­rity adviser, who was on a tour of the Mid­dle East. The Saudi embassy in Wash­ing­ton was rep­re­sented by Prince Salman bin Sul­tan, Prince Bandar’s half-brother, and a pos­si­ble suc­ces­sor. Prince Ban­dar, a for­mer Saudi air force pilot who trained in Eng­land, was appointed ambas­sador to the U.S. in 1983.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

37. Prince Ban­dar is a long-time par­tic­i­pant with the Bushes in the world of covert oper­a­tions. He worked with the elder George Bush on gen­er­at­ing sup­port for the Nicaraguan con­tras. “. . . The Saudis had no par­tic­u­lar inter­est in Nicaragua; they didn’t even have diplo­matic rela­tions with this small coun­try half a world away. But at the time, con­gres­sional oppo­si­tion to the administration’s pol­icy was so strong that on Decem­ber 8, 1982, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives voted unan­i­mously to pro­hibit the use of U.S. funds to over­throw the gov­ern­ment of Nicaragua.”
(House of Bush/House of Saud; by Craig Unger; Scrib­ner [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Craig Unger; ISBN 0–7432-5337-X; p. 63.)

38. “How­ever, even the Boland Amend­ment, as the bill was known, was not an insur­mount­able obsta­cle to a National Secu­rity Coun­cil that was prone to macho covert oper­a­tions, bravado, and cowboy-style adven­tur­ism. It con­sid­ered a vari­ety of options to fund the con­tras, includ­ing obtain­ing funds from other coun­tries and skim­ming prof­its from arms deals with Iran. Finally, in the spring of 1984, National Secu­rity Adviser Robert McFar­lane raised the pos­si­bil­ity of approach­ing Prince Ban­dar for the money. If the Saudis were to accede to the request, clearly they would gain favor from the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion. On June 22,1984, Ban­dar and McFar­lane agreed that the Saudis would give $1 mil­lion a month to the con­tras.” (Ibid. pp. 63–64.)

39. “But the gam­bit was like play­ing polit­i­cal Russ­ian roulette and had to be approved by the White House before it could pro­ceed. What would hap­pen if Con­gress found out? On June 25, 1984, a spe­cial meet­ing of the National Secu­rity Plan­ning Group was called to dis­cuss the issue. The high­est offi­cials in the coun­try were present—Ronald Rea­gan, George Bush, George Shultz, Cas­par Wein­berger, William Casey, and Robert McFar­lane, among oth­ers. Accord­ing to min­utes taken at the meet­ing, James Baker, ever the vig­i­lant attor­ney, argued that actively solic­it­ing money from third countries—such as Saudi Arabia—could be an impeach­able offense.” (Ibid.; p. 64.)

40. “But Vice Pres­i­dent Bush took issue with that posi­tion and said there was noth­ing wrong with encour­ag­ing third par­ties to help the anti-Sandinistas so long as there was no explicit quid pro quo. ‘The only prob­lem that might come up is if the United States were to promise these third par­ties some­thing in return so that some peo­ple could inter­pret this as some kind of exchange,’ he said. Bush, after all, had been direc­tor of the CIA. The way to do it, he seemed to be say­ing, was for the United States to let the Saudis finance the con­tras. After­ward, the United States could then reward the Saudis for their loy­alty, but the two events would have to hap­pen with­out being explic­itly tied to each other.” (Idem.)

41. The Saudis obtained U.S. Stinger mis­siles as par­tial pay­ment for their financ­ing of the con­tras. “And so, Ban­dar deposited $8 mil­lion in a Swiss bank. Over time, the amount given by the Saudis to the con­tras reached $32 mil­lion. No explicit promises had been made to the Saudis, so the admin­is­tra­tion could assert there was no quid pro quo, and there­fore no impeach­able offense had taken place. And yet the Saudis did not go away empty-handed. After all, tens of mil­lions of dol­lars had changed hands. At the time, King Fahd and Ban­dar wanted sev­eral hun­dred Stinger mis­siles from the United States, which had put restric­tions on the sale of such weapons. To help the Saudis out, Pres­i­dent Rea­gan invoked emer­gency mea­sures to bypass Con­gress and four hun­dred Stingers were secretly flown to Saudi Ara­bia. The Saudis had received their pay­off. To put it baldly: in exchange for doing some­thing that had been explic­itly pro­hib­ited by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by a vote of 411 to 0, Saudi Ara­bia received lethal, state-of-the-art Amer­i­can weaponry it would not have been allowed under nor­mal con­di­tions. The Saudis had come a long, long way from their first few air­plane deals with James Bath. But in many ways their deal­ings with the House of Bush had just begun.” (Ibid.; pp. 64–65.)

42. Ban­dar and the Saudis also joined with the Reagan-Bush admin­is­tra­tion in order to sup­port Sad­dam Hus­sein. “The Reagan-Bush admin­is­tra­tion and the Saudis were not just help­ing the con­tras. Early on, the admin­is­tra­tion also used Prince Ban­dar as an inter­me­di­ary to meet Sad­dam Hus­sein, and soon Ban­dar told the United States that Iraq was ready to accept Amer­i­can aid. Even though Con­gress would never have approved arms trans­fers to Iraq, the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion secretly began allow­ing Saudi Ara­bia, Kuwait, and Egypt to trans­fer U.S. weapons, includ­ing how­itzers, heli­copters, and bombs, to Iraq. These ship­ments may have been in vio­la­tion of the Arms Export Con­trol Act. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 65.)

43. By far the most impor­tant of the Bush/Bandar joint efforts in the area of covert oper­a­tions con­cerns the sup­port for the Afghan mujahideen, then fight­ing the Sovi­ets. It was this con­flict that saw the gen­e­sis of Osama bin Laden as a war­rior, and the for­ma­tion of the finan­cial sup­port struc­ture he par­layed into al-Qaeda. “ . . . By this time, Prince Ban­dar had become King Fahd’s trusted point man in Wash­ing­ton. When William Casey approached Ban­dar about Saudi Arabia’s fund­ing an esca­la­tion of anti-Soviet forces, the two men flew to Jed­dah with Ban­dar serv­ing as Casey’s trans­la­tor for the meet­ing with Fahd. Casey met a recep­tive audi­ence. This cam­paign was uniquely appeal­ing to the Saudis. Not only would it enable them to cement their ties to the United States, it would also help the royal fam­ily deal with domes­tic unrest. And so, the House of Saud eagerly joined in, match­ing ‘Amer­ica dol­lar for dol­lar, sup­port­ing the mujahideen,’ as Prince Turki, long­time head of Saudi intel­li­gence, puts it.” ( Ibid. p. 98.)

44. “In the U.S. Con­gress, the Afghan rebels were cham­pi­oned by Demo­c­ra­tic con­gress­man Char­lie Wil­son, the col­or­ful six-foot-seven-inch, skirt-chasing, cocaine-snorting Texan whose role in America’s biggest covert oper­a­tion was cel­e­brated in George Crile’s book Char­lie Wilson’s War. At din­ner par­ties in Hous­ton and in Wash­ing­ton, Wil­son would bring together the likes of Henry Kissinger, White House chief of staff James Baker,
and Prince Ban­dar along with a glit­ter­ing assort­ment of sen­a­tors, astro­nauts, diplo­mats, Texas oil barons, and mil­i­tary men in cel­e­bra­tion of the mujahideen.”(Ibid.; pp. 98–99.)

45. “ ‘Allah will not be pleased if the king aban­dons his free­dom fight­ers,’ Wil­son teased Ban­dar. To which Ban­dar replied, ‘Allah will soon be smil­ing, Char­lie. You will see.’ For his part, Wil­son played an impor­tant role in see­ing to it that Con­gress pro­vided the $3 bil­lion in covert aid for the mujahideen.” (Ibid.; p. 99.)

46. “The Saudis were a key part of the equa­tion. Thou­sands of young war­riors call­ing them­selves Afghan Arabs streamed out of Saudi Ara­bia, Jor­dan, Yemen, and all over the Mid­dle East to aid the mujahideen. Nei­ther the United States nor the Saudis seemed to mind that the cru­sad­ing young Mus­lims could not have cared less about help­ing Amer­ica win the Cold War. They were moti­vated by reli­gious fer­vor and pas­sion. This was a people’s war, a noble cru­sade against an infi­del super­power that had invaded Mus­lim lands, a fight to avenge the mar­tyr­dom of their Afghan broth­ers being crushed by Moscow. It was a time to demon­strate faith and courage. For many Mus­lims, the lib­er­a­tion of Afghanistan became a very per­sonal jihad.” (Idem)

47. “In sharp con­trast to the Mecca Affair, the Afghanistan War was a mis­sion that could be embraced by the gamut of Saudi soci­ety, from the wealthy mer­chant fam­i­lies and the House of Saud to the mil­i­tant cler­ics and the fun­da­men­tal­ist masses. For the royal fam­ily, the war was not just part of the cor­ner­stone of the bur­geon­ing Saudi alliance with the United States, but served other pur­poses as well. Con­tribut­ing to the war effort pla­cated the mil­i­tant cler­ics and helped accom­mo­date the grow­ing unrest and the more rad­i­cal ele­ments of soci­ety. In the wake of the Iran­ian rev­o­lu­tion, there was a new deter­mi­na­tion on the part of Saudi Mus­lims to outdo their Iran­ian coun­ter­parts, to cre­ate a ‘new Islamic man.’” (Idem)

48. “Instead of focus­ing their anger at the House of Saud or the United States, the mil­i­tants could now zero in on the athe­is­tic Sovi­ets. A mis­sion­ary zeal spread through every layer of soci­ety. ‘There was a sense that every penny you sent in made a dif­fer­ence,’ says Armond Habiby, an Amer­i­can lawyer who has prac­ticed in Saudi Ara­bia for many years. ‘It was a very noble move­ment. The poor gave away prayer rugs, embroi­dered table­cloths. It estab­lished a mon­u­men­tal foot­print that went across all lev­els of soci­ety.’” (Ibid.; pp. 99–100.)

49. “As the war got under way, with the United States, the Saudis, and the Pak­ista­nis secretly sup­port­ing the Afghan rebels, the Pak­istani Inter-Services Intel­li­gence (ISI) hoped that Prince Turki bin Faisal, then head of Saudi intel­li­gence and a mem­ber of the House of Saud, would bring an actual mem­ber of the royal fam­ily to the front to demon­strate the com­mit­ment of the House of Saud to the jihad. But no Saudi prince wanted to or needed to brave the Afghan moun­tains. Osama bin Laden, a pro­tégé of Prince Turki’s, was the next best thing. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 100.)

50. The elder George Bush over­saw the MAK covert oper­a­tions. (MAK were the mujahideen.) “ . . . More to the point, now, in the Afghanistan War, Vice Pres­i­dent Bush’s inter­ests and Osama bin Laden’s con­verged. In using bin Laden’s Arab Afghans as proxy war­riors against the Sovi­ets. Bush advo­cated a pol­icy that was fully in line with Amer­i­can inter­ests at that time. But he did not con­sider the long-term impli­ca­tions of sup­port­ing a net­work of Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ist rebels. Specif­i­cally, as vice pres­i­dent in the mid-eighties, Bush sup­ported aid­ing the mujahideen in Afghanistan through the Mak­tab al-Khidamat (MAK) or Ser­vices Offices, which sent money and fight­ers to the Afghan resis­tance in Peshawar. ‘Bush was in charge of the covert oper­a­tions that sup­ported the MAK,’ says John Lof­tus, a Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial in the eight­ies. ‘They were essen­tially hir­ing a ter­ror­ist to fight ter­ror­ism.’” (Ibid.; pp. 101–102.)

51. Long a ben­e­fi­ciary of Bush fam­ily polit­i­cal power and an inti­mate in Bush-driven covert oper­a­tions, Ban­dar was rel­ish­ing the 2000 return to power of his asso­ciates: “Even before the Supreme Court deci­sion awarded the pres­i­dency to the Repub­li­cans, the Bush team began behav­ing as if it had won. The elec­tion took place exactly ten years after the buildup of Amer­i­can troops in Saudi Ara­bia for the Gulf War, and to mark both that occa­sion and the impend­ing Bush restora­tion, for­mer pres­i­dent Bush and James Baker had pro­posed a hunt­ing trip in Spain and Eng­land. The orig­i­nal guest list included the usual sus­pects from the Gulf War—the senior Bush; James Baker; Dick Cheney; Gen­eral Nor­man Schwarzkopf, the com­man­der of U.S. forces dur­ing the war; for­mer national secu­rity adviser Brent Scow­croft; and, of course. Prince Ban­dar, whose enor­mous estate in Wych­wood, Eng­land, had been an ancient royal hunt­ing ground used by Nor­man and Plan­ta­genet kings.”(Ibid.; p. 217.)

52. “The rela­tion­ship between Baker and the elder Bush had been frayed as a result of the failed reelec­tion cam­paign of 1992, but the two long-time friends had patched things up as the pres­i­dency of George W. Bush became increas­ingly prob­a­ble. When he arrived in Austin, Texas, on Elec­tion Day, Baker went to Dick and Lynne Cheney’s hotel suite to lis­ten to the results. How­ever, by the next morn­ing, Wednes­day, Novem­ber 8, Al Gore was con­test­ing the Florida vote, so Baker was enlisted to lead the legal bat­tle to win the pres­i­dency for Bush. As a result, both he and Cheney skipped the Euro­pean hunt­ing trip.” (Idem)

53. “But the lav­ish gath­er­ing went on as planned. On Thurs­day, Novem­ber 9, a pri­vate char­tered plane from Evans­ville, Indi­ana, picked up for­mer pres­i­dent Bush in Wash­ing­ton en route to Madrid, where the hunt­ing trip was to begin. Already on board was a con­tin­gent from Indi­ana. One mem­ber was Bobby Knight, the highly suc­cess­ful but extra­or­di­nar­ily tem­pera­men­tal bas­ket­ball coach who had just been fired from Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity. Other hunters on the trip were pow­er­ful coal indus­try exec­u­tives from the Midwest—Irl Engel­hardt, the chair­man and CEO of St. Louis’s Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal com­pany; and Steven Chan­cel­lor, Daniel Her­mann, and Eugene Aimone, three top exec­u­tives of Black Beauty Coal, a Peabody sub­sidiary head­quar­tered in Evans­ville, Indi­ana.” (Ibid.; pp. 217–218.)

54. “Dur­ing the cam­paign. Bush had pro­posed caps on the car­bon diox­ide emis­sions that sci­en­tists believe cause global warm­ing, a reg­u­la­tory mea­sure that coal exec­u­tives had not wel­comed. But among them, the coal exec­u­tives had con­tributed more than $700,000 to Bush and the Repub­li­cans. They still had high hopes of par­tic­i­pat­ing in energy pol­icy in a Bush admin­is­tra­tion and loos­en­ing the reg­u­la­tory reins around the indus­try. Even though the recount bat­tle was just get­ting under way in Florida, the Bush fam­ily was back in action, mix­ing pri­vate plea­sure and pub­lic pol­icy.” (Ibid.; p. 218.)

55. “Once in Spain, Bush, Knight, and the exec­u­tives were joined by Nor­man Schwarzkopf and pro­ceeded to a pri­vate estate in Pinos Altos, about sixty kilo­me­ters from Madrid, to shoot red-legged par­tridges, the fastest game birds in the world. Bush impressed the hunt­ing party as a fine wing shot and a gentleman—the seventy-six-year-old for­mer pres­i­dent was not above offer­ing to clean mud off the boots of his fel­low hunters. Through­out the trip, Bush kept in touch with the elec­tion devel­op­ments via e-mail. By Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 11, a machine recount had shrunk his son’s lead in Florida to a minus­cule 327 votes. ‘I kind of wish I was in the U.S. so I could help pre­vent the Democ­rats from work­ing their mis­chief,’ he told another hunter in his party.” (Idem.)

56. “On Tues­day, Novem­ber 14, Bush and Schwarzkopf arrived in Eng­land, where Brent Scow­croft joined them and they con­tin­ued their game hunt­ing on Bandar’s estate. They kept a close eye on the zigs and zags of the recoun

t bat­tle. As a power play to demon­strate his con­fi­dence to the media, the Demo­c­ra­tic Party, and the Amer­i­can pop­u­lace, George W Bush announced the mem­bers of his White House tran­si­tion team even before the Florida vote-count bat­tle was over.” (Idem)

57. “Ban­dar eagerly antic­i­pated see­ing the Bush fam­ily back in Wash­ing­ton. Dick Cheney, Colin Pow­ell, and Don­ald Rums­feld were men Ban­dar already knew quite well. Oth­ers who would have access to a new Pres­i­dent Bush—his father, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft—were also old friends.” (Ibid.; pp. 218–219.)

58. “More­over, a Bush restora­tion would also strengthen Bandar’s posi­tion in Saudi Ara­bia. Dur­ing the twelve years of the Reagan-Bush era, Ban­dar had enjoyed unique powers—partly because of his close rela­tion­ship to Bush, partly because he always had King Fahd’s ear. But dur­ing the Clin­ton era. Ban­dar had lost clout. Never an insider in the Clin­ton White House, he had dis­liked what he called the ‘weak-dicked’ for­eign pol­icy team of the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion. Ban­dar had also lost ground in Riyadh because Crown Prince Abdul­lah, who had effec­tively replaced the ail­ing King Fahd, had never been par­tic­u­larly fond of Ban­dar. But now, on his estate in Eng­land, Ban­dar was once again wired into the real pow­ers that be, and assum­ing that Bush won, he would be back in a posi­tion that no other promi­nent for­eign offi­cial could come close to.” (Ibid.; p. 219.)