by Robert Baer
IT WASN’T as if the rest of the Fahd clan was united. Sultan, Salman, and Na’if might have arrived at the hospital in a great show of solidarity - or to make sure none of the others got there first - but they were in for a rude shock once they pushed through the front doors. Jawhara and Azouzi had set up camp outside of Fahd’s hospital room, deciding who would get in and who wouldn’t. That included ministers, senior princes, doctors, petitions, decrees, and everything else. In other words, there had been a de facto coup d’état.
Fahd’s brothers were furious, but there was nothing they could do. It wasn’t as if they could arrest Jawhara and her son. The other choice, making ‘Abdallah regent, was unthinkable. Their only consolation was that Jawhara and Azouzi were more or less on their side. Jawhara would always be a handful, but they reassured themselves that they could handle Azouzi. Let him ride his Harleys around the palace and steal a piece of property here and there. They needed to make sure Fahd outlived ‘Abdallah so Sultan could assume the throne and the Sudayri would be back in power. As it turned out, they’d misjudged Azouzi.
For a start, they hadn’t plumbed the depths of his bottomless greed. He was the biggest leech in Saudi Arabia’s history. He had learned about money at the feet of the masters - the Ibrahims, his mother’s clan. In one deal, the $4.1 billion AT&T contract, Azouzi not only landed a staggering $900 million commission, he outmatched his own brother Muhammad “the Bulldozer” bin Fahd, who represented Ericsson. Muhammad bin Fahd, who won his nickname through his predatory business tactics, wasn’t one to gracefully give up a commission. But things got even worse when one of the Bulldozer’s retainers embezzled $22 million from him and then stole his yacht. He couldn’t do anything because Jawhara and Azouzi didn’t care enough to get it back.
Azouzi did have his expenses to look after, including that legendary palace outside Riyadh. From the moment the first slab of marble was laid, it was clear he intended to outdo anything ever built by the Al Sa’ud. You enter the palace by going through four separate arched gates, and that’s for starters. And he did have the family spirit. In September 1997, when Jawhara had to make her husband sign a petition to put more of the Ibrahim on the state payroll, Azouzi stood foursquare behind her.
For Sultan and the other full brothers, Jawhara didn’t make things any easier. Sultan found himself cut out of military procurement, at one time his exclusive chasse gardee. On August 20, 1996, he desperately tried to get Fahd to process some defense contracts he knew had already been approved. No one in the king’s palace would return his calls. He finally cornered Jawhara’s brother Walid Al Ibrahim, who promised to do something about them. Jawhara pushed the contracts through, but at her own pace. Meanwhile, it drove Sultan and almost everyone else crazy that a queen ruled the most male-chauvinist country in the world.
By March 1997 the situation had become intolerable, even for Fahd’s family. Sultan teamed up with Salman in an attempt to block one of Azouzi’s property deals. I’m not sure what the outcome was, but if they succeeded, it was a Pyrrhic victory. Azouzi’s theft would only spread, soon to be accompanied by a brazen power grab.
SAUDI SUCCESSION doesn’t proceed according to primogeniture. By tradition, senior princes come to a consensus on succession, usually based on experience and wisdom. The system had served the royal family well. The incapable were taken out of the line of succession, and everybody got his turn. (Following King Khalid’s death in 1982 and Fahd’s ascension to the throne, the princes had made ‘Abdallah the new crown prince, perhaps because he commanded the powerful National Guard.) Now Fahd’s brothers were afraid that Azouzi was trying to upend custom.
Azouzi started involving himself more and more in national security, from foreign affairs to intelligence. Even the Americans noticed. When the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, General J. H. Binford Peay, came to Riyadh to meet Fahd on July 13, 1997, he was surprised to find Azouzi at Fahd’s side, whispering in his father’s ear. Where was ‘Abdallah? What had become of Sultan? Peay had to meet ‘Abdallah separately, and even then the crown prince studiously avoided the issues that should have been at hand.
But what really worried the family was Azouzi’s funding of radical Wahhabi causes. Azouzi seemed to have rediscovered his faith. He was obviously courting favor with the Wahhabis, knowing he would one day need their support to become king. Also, by giving generously to the radicals, he was buying insurance they would shut up about his $4.6 billion amusement park.
In December 1993 Azouzi authorized $100,000 for a Kansas City mosque. On September 15, 1995, he opened the King Fahd Academy in Bonn, and on September 17, 1995, he dedicated a new mosque there. Nine days later, he invited the head of the Islamic Society of Spain, Mansur ‘Abd-al-Salam, to Riyadh. In May 1996 Azouzi and Jawhara arranged for King Fahd to release Muhammad al-Fasi from prison. Fasi had been imprisoned for opposing the Gulf War and the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia: In other words, he shared one of bin Laden’s platforms for kicking the United States out of the Gulf. ‘Abdallah strongly opposed Fasi’s release, knowing that outside a prison cell, he would mean nothing but trouble for the Al Sa’ud.
Even the interior minister, Na’if, had to admit that Saudi Arabia had a problem with Islamic militants. In November 2002 he said, “All our problems come from the Muslim Brotherhood. We have given too much support to this group. The Muslim Brotherhood has destroyed the Arab world.” Na’if went on to accept, at least minimally, Saudi Arabia’s responsibility for militant Islam. “Whenever they got into difficulty or found their freedom restricted in their own countries, Brotherhood activists found refuge in the kingdom, which protected their lives” - even though, as Na’if was quick to add, “they later turned against the kingdom.” He failed to mention the unbreakable bond between Saudi Arabia’s homegrown Wahhabis and the Brothers.
‘Abdallah had a more immediate concern with the radicals. In September 1996 the newly appointed air force chief commissioned five followers of bin Laden. There was already open discontent in the Ministry of Defense and Aviation about the U.S. presence in the region. Officers of all ranks felt that the U.S. exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein as an excuse to keep troops in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. The officers opposed even the prepositioning of equipment in their country. The appointment of those five Islamic radicals was sure to aggravate the situation, but no one was willing to reverse the commander’s decision, including ‘Abdallah and Sultan. Over the next five years, Wahhabi militants continued to worm their way into military and intelligence jobs. By October 2002 the Saudi police were informing contacts in the American expat community that they could no longer count on the loyalty of junior military and intelligence officers. The arrest of several Bahraini military officers with ties to al Qaeda in February 2003 seemed to justify the Saudis’ fears.
The spread of Islamic radicals inside the military only encouraged Azouzi to give more to radical causes. In September 1997 he coordinated a $100 million aid package to the Taliban. It didn’t make the slightest bit of difference that the Taliban were protecting bin Laden, a man who had vowed to overthrow the Al Sa’ud. All Azouzi cared about was the support of the Wahhabis, come hell or high explosives.
In December 1999 the press caught wind of Azouzi’s arrangement with the Islamic militants. It turned out that he had been funding a fellow bin Laden traveler, Sa’d al-Burayk, who in turn was giving the money to Islamic groups in Chechnya to slaughter Russians, military and civilian alike. Any leftover money, Burayk shipped on to militant Islamic causes. With all the bad press, Na’if had no choice but to declare a moratorium on Azouzi’s spending and bring his charity back under control; he also promised to put Burayk under house arrest. But Na’if did nothing at all, and Azouzi continued to dump his millions wherever he wanted. Recall, this was the same Na’if who humiliated Louis Freeh and got away with it; the same Na’if who made it crystal-clear in all other ways that he had absolutely no intention of cooperating in the al Khobar investi
gation. If the U.S. didn’t call him on that, what were the chances of coming down on him like a load of bricks because he failed to rein in Azouzi?
Not only did Na’if let Burayk out of the country, Burayk accompanied Crown Prince ‘Abdallah on a state visit to Crawford, Texas, in April 2002 to meet with George W. Bush. Bush, ever the genial host, didn’t ask about Chechnya, bin Laden, or Burayk’s latest public exhortations for Muslim men to enslave Jewish women. I suppose this is what State means by “deference.”
AS WITH NA’IF, it was impossible for any of Fahd’s full brothers to get a rise out of Washington. Through the 1990s, Defense Minister Sultan continued to fund ‘Abdallah al-Ahmar, the head of Islah, the Muslim Brothers in Yemen. Washington ignored evidence that Islah may have had a hand in bombing the U.S.S. Cole. When the governor of Riyadh, Prince Salman, suffered a deep conversion to fundamentalist Islam in the mid-1990s, Washington disregarded that, too, even though Salman was in charge of the charities whose money found its way into the pockets of bin Laden and the Muslim Brothers. Fahd, Na’if, Sultan, and Salman were board members of corporate Washington. They were above the law.
Then again, Washington really had no choice. It wasn’t like the administration could show up in Riyadh, tin cup in hand, ask for Boeing’s money and, in the same breath, censure the royal family about funding and covering for people who were killing Americans. And it certainly was in no position to chastise the Saudis for being spendthrifts. The United States had enticed them to climb on this infernal merry-go-round. American defense companies lived off Saudi contracts. The United States took the lion’s share of the country’s defense spending, which accounted for half of Saudi government outlays. It talked the Saudis into spending multibillions on the Gulf War. This was dollar diplomacy with a vengeance, or at least with reckless abandon.
You didn’t have to be a CPA to see that the Saudis couldn’t afford the $7.2 billion Boeing-Saudia deal. The contract called for an initial $500 million signing payment, but the Saudis could come up with only $60 million. By 1997 they owed $2.8 billion on the airplanes, but not a penny could be earmarked out of the budget. In better days, Sultan might have stolen the money from Yamama, but that caper was already $1 billion in arrears. He also might have gone to his own well, but he had already kicked in $67 million to the cause. In July 1997 Sultan’s mad scramble led him to his own Ministry of Defense. The Boeing payment, he decreed, would have to come from that budget. To cover the tab, the ministry had to postpone the purchase of spare parts and the delivery of new aircraft, which ended up costing Saudi Arabia millions in penalties while undermining its ability to defend itself. The U.S. had to pick up that slack with its fleet in the Persian Gulf.
By late September 1996 ‘Abdallah was so alarmed about the kingdom’s financial solvency that he tried to send a message to the Clinton administration. ‘Abdallah couldn’t get the American embassy in Riyadh to listen; its sole mission seemed to be getting the Saudis to pay their bills on time. Nor did ‘Abdallah trust Prince Bandar as a conduit to the White House because at the end of the day, the ambassador was loyal to his father, Sultan. The best ‘Abdallah could do was raise Saudi Arabia’s problems with former ambassador Richard Murphy, then serving as a senior fellow with the Council of Foreign Relations. Murphy was known in the Arab world as the U.S.’s most able, balanced expert on the Middle East. ‘Abdallah trusted and liked him. Moreover, he had no connections to Israel, at least that ‘Abdallah was aware of. The problem was that Murphy had been out of the government for almost seven years and had little clout in official Washington. Still, ‘Abdallah decided Murphy was his only chance.
At their meeting on September 23, 1996, ‘Abdallah explained to Murphy that the United States needed to consult with Saudi Arabia before taking any new initiatives in the region. ‘Abdallah brought up the Gulf War. The Bush administration, he said, had misled Saudi Arabia about the costs. Helping to pay for the U.S. bases in Saudi Arabia was costing additional billions. (In other words, Saudi Arabia couldn’t afford the Boeings or any other expensive toys.) Moving on to regional problems, ‘Abdallah said that the Clinton administration had to get rid of Saddam right away - or never. At the same time, the Arabs could not be allowed to believe the U.S. was waging a war against the Iraqi people. Finally, the United States must come to a modus vivendi with Tehran. It was simply costing the Arabs too much to be in a constant state of conflict with Iran.
Needless to say, ‘Abdallah’s plea fell on deaf ears back in Washington. Clinton was running for a second term. All the White House cared about was that Saudi checks kept arriving in Seattle and that no one was laid off from Boeing’s assembly lines.
Meanwhile, Prince Sultan continued to buy guns that no one could afford. In December 1996 Saudi Arabia went ahead with another costly, useless arms deal, picking up forty-four model-412 Augusta helicopters that could be financed by Yamama oil, which meant even more grotesque commissions could be hidden from the Saudi street. A month later, Sultan was back in the marketplace, pricing 102 F-16 multirole combat aircraft. Later that year, the Saudis committed to a $3 billion frigate deal with France. Never mind that on the Yamama front alone, the kingdom was now $4.5 billion in arrears.
The real kicker came on December 18, 1996, when Secretary of Defense William Perry, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and Vice President Al Gore summoned Bandar to the White House. It wasn’t to inquire about the progress of the Khobar investigation. They weren’t going to let Bandar go home to his Potomac estate until he agreed to give Bosnia $2 million a month in aid.
THE MORE the Clinton White House saw of ‘Abdallah, the less they liked him. He was not only threatening to cut back defense and civilian aviation contracts but also demonstrating a definite independent streak on foreign policy.
He kept harping on the message he had delivered to Richard Murphy: Either overthrow Saddam Hussein, or leave him alone and lift the sanctions. Clinton’s do-nothing policy on Iraq - keeping Saddam in his box, or “containment,” as the White House euphemistically referred to it - was costing the United States and Saudi Arabia a lot of money, as well as what little goodwill was left in the Middle East. The average Saudi was starting to side more with Saddam than with the royal family; Islamic militants were becoming commonplace in the Saudi military. So desperate was ‘Abdallah to take Iraq off the griddle that in June 1997 he sent his own emissaries to meet with Saddam, opening up a back channel the U.S. wasn’t supposed to know about. The effort didn’t go anywhere, but it did add to Washington’s mistrust of ‘Abdallah.
The crown prince also irritated Washington when he cut a deal with Iran and Mexico to raise oil prices. By 1996 oil was averaging just under $21 a barrel. At that rate, all three countries were heading toward a financial abyss. ‘Abdallah arranged to make a pilgrimmage to Mecca with the son of former Iranian president Akbar Hashami Rafsanjani. The details of the pricing were worked out then. The following year, the price of a barrel of oil rose to $23, a jump of almost 10 percent. Almost no one noticed in the U.S. - the NASDAQ was going ape - but the White House didn’t at all like the precedent ‘Abdallah had set.
Most unforgivably for the White House, ‘Abdallah called the 1993 Oslo accords what they were: a lie. The accords had been sold to the Arabs on the grounds that the Palestinians would get some sort of workable state in the West Bank and Gaza - United Nations Resolution 242, more or less. But not a single settlement was dismantled under Oslo. The Jewish settler population in the West Bank went from 250,000 to 380,000, and 5,000 Jewish settlers in the Jordan Valley continued to consume 75 percent of the water, leaving the remainder for two million Palestinians to live on.
‘Abdallah knew that numbers like those would only inflame the militants inside his country, but the Clinton administration - as would the second Bush administration - blissfully ignored it all. The United States had made a pact with the devil and was going to stick with it until the catastrophic end. As long as Sultan kept buying American weapons and Aramco kept banking our oil, n
o one in Washington cared what was happening in the kingdom.
12. In the War on Terrorism, You Lie, You Die
A COUPLE OF MONTHS before I resigned from the CIA, I found myself wondering if there was anything not for sale in Washington. Although I was always an outsider, I couldn’t help but notice that the Bandars and the Boeings, the Carlyle Groups and the Exxons ran Washington. I’d seen the campaign-finance scandal from a front-row seat, noting how a couple hundred thousand dollars bought you instant access to the president. I’d seen, too, how some midlevel oil exec could pick up the telephone and get a meeting with the National Security Council as fast as Bandar could get one with the president. But Washington had to have its limits, didn’t it? Ironically, I would have to go back to the Middle East to get my answer.
When I checked out of the CIA on December 4, 1997, I had a lot of regrets. I was walking away from the place I had spent my adult life. As I headed across the parking lot one last time, my sole consolation - if you want to call it that - was that the agency I was leaving wasn’t the one I had joined [text omitted]It had lost touch with much of the world, especially the place I felt passionate about: the Middle East. Two separate incidents had convinced me of this.
In early October 1994, when I was deputy chief of Iraqi operations, I picked up a rumor from an agent in Amman that Saddam Hussein was moving armor back toward the Kuwaiti border. Saddam was reportedly sick of the embargo and intended to reinvade Kuwait. I didn’t believe it. How stupid could he be?
Sure enough, as soon as I got back to Washington, our satellites picked up the movement of Iraqi armor south toward the Kuwaiti border. The satellites were fine up to a point. But what they couldn’t tell us - and what the White House wanted to know - was whether Saddam intended to actually cross the border. For that we would need a human source. The only problem was that we didn’t have one. Not only did we not have someone next to Saddam, we didn’t have a source in his military to tell us, for instance, whether the army was putting in logistics lines, a sign that Saddam was serious about going all the way.
