by Robert Baer
Every Saudi prince receives a substantial allowance, but since none can ever have enough money, many supplement their royal allotments through bribes on construction projects (mostly from the bin Laden family), arms deals, and outright theft of property from commoners. Besides visas, they also sell liquor and narcotics. In July 2002, Na’if bin Sultan bin Fawaz al-Shaalan was indicted by a Florida grand jury on charges that he used his personal plane to transport two tons of cocaine from Caracas to Paris in 1999. That incident surprised even me: I’ve known the Shaalan family for over a decade. Until then, they’d managed to avoid infection by the kingdom.
Stories of Al Sa’ud profligacy are legion, but Fahd’s youngest son, Azouzi, broke the mold when he built himself a sprawling theme park outside Riyadh because he was “interested” in history. He has told visitors that the park cost $4.6 billion. The property includes a scale model of old Mecca, with actors attending mosque and chanting prayers twenty-four hours a day. Also on the property: replicas of the Alhambra, old Mecca, and Medina, and half a dozen other Islamic landmarks. True to form, Azouzi seized the land the park was built on.
But he’s only following family tradition. When King Fahd’s family visits the palace at Marbella, they spend on average $5 million a day in the local stores, so much that shopkeepers want to name a street after the king. Yet as much as the Al Sa’uds love the objects money buys - diamonds, yachts, palaces, planes - they love human flesh more. Put simply, the Al Sa’ud are obsessed with sex, everything from prostitutes to little boys. Incidentally, Interior Minister Na’if has sex on the brain, too: He spends his spare time consulting with doctors about a cure for his impotence. It’s apparently affected his wife, Maha, who has a severe anger-management problem. In 1995, on a visit to Orlando, she assaulted a male servant, accusing him of helping steal $200,000 in cash and jewelry. As Maha beat the servant bloody in front of the off-duty sheriff’s department deputies assigned to her security detail, no one raised a hand. She had diplomatic immunity. The lesson didn’t go unnoticed. Six years later, also in Orlando, another Saudi princess was charged not only with beating her servant but pushing her down a flight of stairs. This princess didn’t get off so lightly, despite the Saudi embassy’s claim that she was protected by diplomatic immunity. Police charged her with aggravated battery, then tacked on grand theft for snatching $6,000 worth of electronics from her former chauffeur.
But I was talking about sex.
THE SAUDIS ARE PROBABLY the most sexually repressed people in the world. Women are kept out of reach of men until the day they marry. After that joyous occasion, the husbands keep their wives locked up at home until the day they die. Only 5 percent of women work. A woman cannot drive. If she needs to go somewhere, a male first cousin, brother, or father has to chauffeur her. Even then she is allowed to go only to gender-segregated malls, restaurants, and swimming pools. If she’s ever unfortunate enough to be caught in the act of adultery, she’s stoned to death, along with her lover. It’s easier for a young Saudi man to hitchhike to Afghanistan than to hook up with a young Saudi girl.
Like men anywhere, though, Saudi men won’t take no for an answer. One desperate trick they’ve resorted to is writing their cell-phone number on a piece of paper and taping it to the back window of their car. It looks as if the car is for sale. But the owner’s fantasy is that some brazen Saudi girl will call to introduce herself. With something like 380,000 young unemployed Saudi males, you can imagine all the cruising going on, waiting for that lucky phone call. Filipina and Indonesian servants in the kingdom live in constant fear of rape. Since foreigners work and live in the kingdom at the whim of their Saudi sponsors, the servants are afraid to go to the police. No one has any idea how much rape goes on in the country. Those statistics aren’t published, but if sexual frustration were gold, the Saudis wouldn’t need all that oil.
Saudis with money also don’t have to take no for an answer. In the early 1970s, when the petrodollars started flooding in, enterprising Lebanese began smuggling hookers into the kingdom for the princes. Since the women were posing as Middle East Airlines flight attendants and were driven directly to the royal palaces, the muttawa couldn’t do anything about it. Having established a beachhead in the kingdom, a lot of the Lebanese pimps branched out into interior decorating and construction. Since no one in the royal family knows how to balance a checkbook, the Lebanese became fabulously rich. More than a couple went back to Lebanon and built political careers with their fortunes.
Saudis who can’t tap in to the stream of royal prostitutes take multiple wives, the younger the better. It’s common for seventy-year-old Saudi men to marry girls in their early teens. Other rich Saudis simply go whoring abroad. You need only take a flight out of the Gulf to see the robes come off and the cigarettes and the liquor come out: These gentlemen are on their way to a party. Spend a night visiting popular clubs on France’s Côte d’Azur or in Monte Carlo, and you’ll find young Saudi men (and women) staying up all night, enjoying every moment of their freedom. London’s red-light districts and call-girl services cater largely to Saudis and other Gulf Arabs.
Stories about Saudi whoring get a snicker in the American press and preachy editorials about women’s rights, but everyone seems to be missing the point: Saudi Arabia spends a staggering percentage of its GDP on sex. If we’re donating a dollar to the royal family’s bodyguards every time we fill up the tank with gasoline that began as Saudi crude, we’re probably donating half again as much for Saudis to get laid.
Needless to say, the royal family spends the lion’s share. You can find their rutting palaces along the Mediterranean, all built to entertain prostitutes. Being of royal blood, a Saudi prince couldn’t make do with some drab garçonnière; he needs all the comforts of home. Legend has it that King Fahd’s administrator for the palace near Antibes once made a proposal to the government that is still talked about in France today: to move the Paris-Nice railroad track away from the palace. It didn’t matter that the existing line didn’t run all that near the palace, or that moving it would cost millions. Fahd, the administrator explained, would be annoyed to hear even the distant sound of passing trains while strolling in his garden. The French officials shook their heads in disbelief - they knew the king hadn’t visited his Antibes palace in over a decade.
IN THE EARLY 1970S, the Al Sa’ud’s Riviera frolicking came to an abrupt end after Fahd lost in one sitting a reported $6 million at a Nice casino and was photographed with a phalanx of young beauties. The royal family had to find a new playground. As soon as King Hassan of Morocco heard that the Saudis were in the real estate market, he phoned Riyadh to offer up Morocco. Hassan had no choice; he was stone-cold broke. With no oil of his own and the remittances from Moroccans working in Europe just not cutting it, how else could he afford the upkeep on his twenty palaces?
So it was that King Hassan allowed dozens of Saudi princes to build secluded estates in Morocco, many in the rugged mountains around Tangier. The area, called the Rif, was wild and lawless - a perfect place to hold an orgy or go on a drinking binge, away from the prying eyes of the Wahhabis back home and the Western press in Europe’s old watering holes. A journalist trying to get a story or picture risked being kidnapped or having his throat cut. When I was in Morocco, the CIA picked up a rumor that a Saudi prince with well-placed friends in Washington had bitten off the breast of a young Moroccan girl in a drunken frenzy. King Hassan swiftly had the incident covered up. The girl’s family was paid off, and she was told she would keep her mouth shut or spend the rest of her life in jail. The strong-arm tactics worked; the incident never saw the light of day.
In return for Morocco’s delicate diplomacy, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs dumped loads of money into the country. It’s impossible to calculate precisely how much, but there are tantalizing hints. In 1998 Saudi defense minister Sultan secretly bought Société Anonyme Marocaine de l’Industrie du Raffinage (SAMIR), Morocco’s oil refinery, for $420 million. The transaction was handled through a cas
cade of nominees, shelf companies, and middlemen to keep Sultan’s name out of the press. Saudi Arabia also poured almost a reported billion dollars into the huge Casablanca mosque. But that was merely the public face of Saudi aid.
IF YOU’VE FOLLOWED THIS devil’s logic so far, then it’s a small step to the conclusion that we in the West and the Saudi rulers themselves are in serious trouble. All the ingredients of upheaval are in place: open borders, the availability of arms, political alienation, the absence of a rule of law, a completely corrupt police force, a despised ruling class, plummeting per capita income (and fabulously wealthy rulers to remind the poor exactly how poor they are), environmental degradation, surly neighbors, and a growing number of young home-grown radicals who care more about righteous murder than they do about living. The kingdom’s schools churn out fanatics faster than they can find wars to fight. Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Angola, Somalia, and Sierra Leone succumbed to chaos under less volatile conditions. Why should Saudi Arabia escape this fate?
3. A Consent of Silence
WITH THIS KIND of rot, you’d think that every map in official Washington would have a red flag planted on the dot labeled “Riyadh” to remind the bureaucrats that Saudi Arabia is on life support. The truth is just the opposite. As I write this in early 2003, Washington still continues to insist that Saudi Arabia is a stable country, that its central government is in undisputed control of its borders; its police and army are efficient and loyal; and its people are well clothed, fed, and educated.
Let’s start with the State Department. It is more responsible than any other government bureaucracy in Washington for spreading the big lie about the kingdom. To listen to Foggy Bottom’s spin, you would think Saudi Arabia was Denmark. Just look at the way it handled visas for Saudis. By law, the State Department has overseas responsibility for visas; it issues them in our embassies and consulates. The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act is clear about eligibility. The section of the law related to granting tourist visas, Section 214(b), reads: “Every alien shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes that to the satisfaction of the consular officers… he is entitled to non-immigrant status.” In other words, a foreigner who has no reason to return home - he’s unemployed, unmarried, and broke - isn’t eligible for a visa. The presumption is that he will remain in the U.S.
According to the law, all fifteen Saudis who took part in the 9/11 attacks should have been turned down for visas. With male unemployment in the kingdom hovering around 30 percent, and with per capita income in a free fall, Saudis should be presumed immigrants (unless they are royals or their retainers). Since most Saudis could work part-time at a 7-Eleven and make a better living than at home, they are an inherent risk of remaining in the U.S. Simply put, they don’t meet the qualifications of the law. But it’s worse than that.
Right through September 11, 2001, Saudis were not even required to appear at the U.S. embassy in Riyadh or the consulate in Jeddah for a visa interview. Under a system called Visa Express, a Saudi had only to send his passport, an application, and a fee to a travel agent to get a visa. The Saudi travel agent, in other words, stood in for the American government. A short wait, and any Saudi who had the money for a flight was on his way to New York - to disappear like a diamond in an inkwell or to run his airplane into a skyscraper. In other words, in issuing visas to fifteen unemployed Saudis, the State Department broke the law. Sure, four other hijackers got into the U.S., but did we have to make it so easy for the majority of the assault force to take its positions?
Then there’s the question of State having zero political sense. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi by birth. Saudi citizens blew up the National Guard facility in 1995 and the Khobar barracks in 1996. Two Saudis hijacked a plane to Baghdad in 2000. Saudis almost certainly were behind the attack on the Cole. Saudis were involved in hundreds of other terrorist attacks, from Chechnya to Kenya and Tanzania. How much more evidence did the State Department need to figure out that Saudis were the world’s new terrorists and needed to be tightly screened and interviewed? The way they ran Visa Express, Osama himself could have slipped through.
It wasn’t only visas, though. The State Department gave the Saudi rulers a pass on almost everything. It shielded the Saudis from human-rights groups. It supported them in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It dismissed the National Guard and Khobar attacks as aberrations. Take, for instance, the State Department’s 1999 report: “Patterns of Global Terrorism.” The section for Saudi Arabia reads: “The Saudi Arabian Government, at all levels, continued to reaffirm its commitment to combating terrorism.” Having set a tone of dissembling, the report goes on: “The Government of Saudi Arabia continued to investigate the bombing in June 1996 of the Khobar Towers.” We know the last was a whopper. Na’if never lifted a finger to get to the bottom of it. But a lot else was going on in 1999 that State didn’t want us to know about. That year Na’if released from prison two clerics who had issued fatwas to kill Americans. One of them, Safar al-Hawali, inspired bin Laden. At the same time, the fifteen Saudi hijackers were apparently being recruited and indoctrinated in Saudi mosques. So much for Saudi Arabia’s “commitment.”
State never told the truth to Americans heading to Saudi Arabia. Dependents of American citizens were never advised to leave. Saudi Arabia was never warned to cooperate on terrorism. When I used to say to my State colleagues that the kingdom might one day collapse, they would sneer, “There are no problems,” then fling at me the old Saudi line: “The royal family is like the fingers of a hand. Threaten it, and they become a fist.” Catchy, to be sure, but the reality is that when the Al Sa’ud are threatened these days, they pony up more money for the fanatics, and State hands out more visas.
State not only turned a blind eye to Saudi Arabia’s radical Islamic foreign policy, it occasionally abetted it. State knew that Saudi Arabia’s plan to run gas and oil pipelines across Afghanistan, from Central Asia to Pakistan, would help the Taliban stay in power and ensure that bin Laden had a safe haven. Nonetheless, State went along, even encouraging an American company, Unocal, to participate.
I got a short course in Afghan pipeline politics on February 4, 1997, when I was introduced to [text omitted] for the Afghan pipeline. He had been sent by the State Department and the National Security Council to give me an update on Unocal’s scheme. In spite of the ongoing civil war and the Taliban’s tightening grip on Afghanistan, Unocal intended to proceed with both pipelines. It calculated that running a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan was going to cost $2 billion. A parallel oil pipeline would add another $2.5 billion. Putting this kind of money in a country in the throes of a civil war seemed to me like a risky investment. I asked [text omitted]if Unocal was nervous.
[text omitted] looked at me for a couple of seconds as if I were a dim bulb. “With U.S. government guarantees and the World Bank putting up the money, no,” he said. “We’re not stupid enough to do this on our own.”
[text omitted] was right when he said Unocal wasn’t alone. J. P. Morgan and Cambridge Energy Research had prepared a study on government-to-government payment structures in order to secure a World Bank loan. Unocal also roped in former U.S. ambassador Bob Oakley, one of Saudi Arabia’s best friends in Washington. A slew of corporate giants were promised a piece of the action, including Fluor Daniel. Unocal had official blessing.
A week later, on February 13, 1997, [text omitted] was in Afghanistan talking to the Taliban. They demanded that Unocal build a road from Torghundi to Spin Boldak and invest money in the Kandahar schools - no doubt mosque schools. I have no idea whether Unocal ever built the road, but if it did, I wonder if bin Laden used it to escape.
Even after the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, organized by bin Laden from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia continued to aid his host, the Taliban. In July 2000 Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, the bible of the international petroleum industry, reported that Saudi Arabia was sending as many as 150,000 barrels of o
il a day to Afghanistan and Pakistan in off-the-books foreign aid. This tactic - sending free oil in lieu of cash - was an established Saudi precedent. Turkey, Pakistan, and Morocco were similarly helped in the early 1990s, and Bahrain was getting its own daily 150,000 barrels in an acknowledged aid deal. We can only guess what motivated the House of Sa’ud to spend all this money when it was running a crippling deficit. According to press reports, beginning in the mid-1970s, Saudi Arabia poured over $1 billion into Pakistan to help it develop an “Islamic” nuclear bomb to counter the “Hindu” nuclear threat from neighboring India. The House of Sa’ud managed to keep that bit of foreign adventurism hidden from its American allies until well into the early 1990s.
Covert Saudi Arabian aid to the Taliban, which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars, continued right through the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Still the State Department didn’t protest. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that State was waiving visa interviews right through September 11, 2001. You want to see the U.S.A.? Fine, drop us a postcard when you get there. And by the way, have a bang-up time.
The CIA let State take the lead in this waltz. No stranger to Washington politics, the CIA decided that the safest bet was to ignore Saudi Arabia by cleverly pretending it was a U.S. domestic problem, and thus by statute not in its jurisdiction. CIA directors had picked up long ago that the door to the Oval Office was always open to Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan and not to them. While the country’s chief spymasters waited for months to get a face-to-face, all Bandar had to do to see the president was hit the speed dial. The joke in the directorate of operations during the Clinton years was that if the director would only take his cue from Bandar and show up with a box of the president’s favorite Cuban cigars, he would be invited back more often. Years later, Clinton’s first CIA director, Jim Woolsey, would tell me that when a nut flew a plane into the White House, the joke at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was that it was Woolsey trying to get in to see the president. Incidentally, Woolsey was one of the few CIA directors to come out and tell the truth about the kingdom.