This account of the revelations in a new book by Gerald Posner alleging that our ‘allies’ Pakistan and Saudi Arabia were working with Osama bin Laden in the leadup to the Sept. 11 attacks extends the impression of many critics of the Wot® that we are ‘sleeping with the enemy’. While much has been written about the interrogation techniques used on captured top al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah (including withholding medical treatment for wounds he suffered when captured, drugging him, and creating the charade that he was being turned over to Saudi interrogators), Posner is the first to report what Zubaydah revealed — essentially that four Saudi princes and the chief of the Pakistani air force were deeply involved in supporting bin Laden’s efforts and knew in advance of the planned attacks. Four of these five have since mysteriously died. Posner has reportedly received independent support for these details from sources inside the CIA and the Bush administration, even though they are denied by the Saudi and Pakistani governments and Zubaydah has recanted, claiming his confessions were coerced. Posner speculates that the surviving accused conspirator, a senior Saudi prince and longtime head of their intelligence services, may have had the others killed as part of a coverup.
The evolving relationship between al Qaeda and the Saudi regime has turned hostile since the May 2003 al Qaeda bombings in Riyadh, which gave the Saudi government the political capital to defend itself against the militant Islamic elements to whom it had long perceived itself as vulnerable. Even as the House of Saud had distanced themselves from bin Laden as his horrific tactics became clearer, they may have felt they needed to continue to conceal their prior involvement, even including foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 plans. Are prior sympathy and complicity, however, necessarily the same thing?
On the other hand, I have found appeal in the assertion that a covert element of the strategic interest in Iraq in the neo-con grand design is that it would allow the US to extricate itself from elements of its strategic investment in Saudi Arabia, which they see as increasingly a liability. If this is the case, one might suspect that the Zubaydah insinuations about the House of Saud suit their purposes of portraying the Saudis as no longer our allies and placing them in our gunsights. Sources, thus, conclude that the administration confirmation of Zubaydah’s insinuations represent a disinformation campaign. It is asserted that they are contradicted by data emerging from the interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, now in US custody and more instrumental in planning the Sept. 11 attacks.
In short, it seems more plausible to some administration observers that the leak of classified material is a smear campaign against the Saudis than an accurate leak from CIA sources. On the other hand, there is that matter of the censorship of the pages in the 9/11 report ostensibly bearing on the extent of Saudi support for al Qaeda. The 9/11 commission was clearly not a neo-con front with an interest in a smear campaign. (It strikes me, as well, that this controversy has to be seen in light of the recent tension between the White House and Langley over the Valerie Plame leak.) The Saudis apparently feel their image in the US bears rehabilitating. They are making a major PR effort to ‘spin’ their cooperation with anti-Islamist terrorism efforts dating back long before Sept. 11, indeed back to 1997, although some of their claims are dubious. —Salon
