The Secret Rela­tion­ship Between the World’s Two Most Pow­er­ful Dynas­ties
by Craig Unger
2004, Scrib­ner Book Com­pany
ISBN 07–4325-339–6
Illus­trated, 370 pages.

From the author’s web site:

The Great Escape
House of Bush, House of Saud begins with a sin­gle ques­tion: How is it that two days after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, even as Amer­i­can air traf­fic was tightly restricted, a Saudi bil­lion­aire social­ized in the White House with Pres­i­dent George W. Bush as 140 Saudi cit­i­zens, many imme­di­ate kin to Osama Bin Laden, were per­mit­ted to return to their coun­try? A poten­tial trea­sure trove of intel­li­gence was allowed to flee the country—including an alleged al-Qaeda inter­me­di­ary who was said to have fore­knowl­edge of the 9/11 attacks. Why did the FBI facil­i­tate this evac­u­a­tion, and why didn’t the agency ques­tion the peo­ple on the planes? Why did Saudi Ara­bia, the birth­place of most of the hijack­ers, receive exclu­sive and pref­er­en­tial treat­ment from the White House even as the World Trade Cen­ter con­tin­ued to burn?

Two Fam­i­lies, Deeply Entwined
The answers to these ques­tions, and ones far more trou­bling, lie in the largely hid­den rela­tion­ship that began in the mid-1970s, when the oil-rich House of Saud struck out for Amer­ica in the wake of the OPEC oil embargo and soar­ing oil prices. Saudi Ara­bia needed Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pro­tec­tion, access to Amer­i­can polit­i­cal power, and a place to invest its stag­ger­ing cash flow, which within 5 years reached $16 mil­lion an hour. Like wild­cat­ting oil drillers, the Saudis began prospect­ing among promis­ing Amer­i­can politi­cians, includ­ing the Bush fam­ily. And with the Bushes, the Saudis hit a gusher– direct access to Pres­i­dents Ronald Rea­gan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush, as well as to Sec­re­tary of State James Baker, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and the entire U.S. intel­li­gence apparatus.

A Dan­ger­ous Liai­son
What fol­lowed was an amaz­ing weave of influ­ence, strate­gic invest­ment, social­iz­ing, and secret pol­icy between the House of Bush and the House of Saud that arcs from the 1980s into the present day. The two par­ties con­ferred on war, oil, fund­ing for Osama bin Laden’s Afghan Arabs sup­port­ing the mujahideen in the Afghanistan War, ille­gal arms deals, bank­ing, pri­vate mat­ters, and much more. By the time George W. Bush was elected, the House of Saud had trans­ferred an aston­ish­ing sum of money to the House of Bush in deals involv­ing dozens of com­pa­nies. The total? At least $1.4 bil­lion in invest­ments and con­tracts went to com­pa­nies in which the Bushes and their allies held promi­nent posi­tions. But the impor­tance of the rela­tion­ship goes far beyond money. More than any other coun­try in the world, Saudi Ara­bia is respon­si­ble for the rise of Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ist ter­ror­ism that threat­ens Amer­ica. Hor­ri­fy­ing as it may seem, the secret liai­son between these two great fam­i­lies helped trig­ger the Age of Ter­ror and give rise to the tragedy of 9/11.

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