Submitted for your consideration by Gabrielle Jones Price
with permission from the author and copyright holder.
with permission from the author and copyright holder.
Excerpt from Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
Business With The Bin Ladens: The Real Saudi Arabia
[w/updated footnotes]
Saudi Arabia: The Sarajevo of the 21st Century
• Is Iraq a Diversion from the Real Invasion or Will Bush Try to Occupy Both Countries at Once?
• A Saudi Sarajevo?
The global horrors of World War I (“the war to end all wars”) began with the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. The apocalyptic war of the 21st century may have begun with a $1 trillion lawsuit filed in the United States by 9/11 victims’ families against Saudi Arabian banks and members of the Saudi royal family. In what may be the opening salvos of a financial and energy apocalypse, the Financial Times reported that wealthy Saudi investors had begun a run on their US banking deposits that may have taken as much as $200 billion out of US banks. These massive withdrawals — carved off of an estimated $750 billion total in Saudi US investments — occurred within days of the August 15 filing of the suit. Ironically, the principal attorneys in the suit are all political insiders; one of them is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. You might think they would have thought of this beforehand.
There are two basic questions to ask about Saudi Arabia. Why was Saudi Arabia not a focus of US action and serious media attention in the immediate aftermath of September 11, even though there were so many obvious connections? And why is Saudi Arabia now so prominently a focus of what is apparently government-approved US animosity? One thing is obvious: the deployment of US military personnel in the region for the invasion of Iraq is also a convenient placement of resources for what may be a one-two punch to take over a tottering kingdom that owns 25 percent of all the oil on the planet at the same time that Saddam Hussein is removed from power in a country that controls another 11 percent. Together, the two countries — which appear not to have peaked in production capacity just yet, and which are the only two nations capable of an immediate increase in output — possess 36 percent of the world’s known oil. [FTW became the first news service to report on the possibility of Saudi Arabia’s having peaked in May 2003. This was more than a year before the possibility was raised in the New York Times.]
The Saudi situation is complicated by much of Saudi Arabia’s wealth being invested in US financial markets; its sudden loss could devastate the US economy. But Bush brinksmanship — an understatement — is making possible a scenario where Saudis long loyal to the US markets cut off their own arm in a coyote-like effort to free themselves from a trap that threatens the stability both of their kingdom and of the global economy.
Osama bin Laden is a Saudi. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers [according to their passports] were Saudi. There has been an obvious and clear financial trail showing Saudi support for al Qaeda. In fact, as has recently been noted by French author and former intelligence officer Jean-Charles Brisard in his Forbidden Truth, the financial support network of al Qaeda is a virtual cut-and-paste reincarnation of BCCI, a Pakistani bank known for terrorist, drug, and CIA connections in the 1980s. One of BCCI’s former executives, Khaled bin Mahfouz, remains the banker for the Saudi royal family today.
After months of strenuous and repeated assertions by the Bush administration that Saudi Arabia was a key ally in the war on terror, that they were loyal and trusted partners in US-led efforts, someone has suddenly turned on the tap for anti-Saudi propaganda, and the mainstream media outlets are eating it up.
On June 20 [2002] the Jang group of newspapers in Dubai reported that al Qaeda networks were active in Saudi Arabia. This followed a June 18 announcement that a group linked to al Qaeda had been arrested inside the kingdom and charged with planning attacks on Saudi government installations.
On July 18 the BBC reported that Saudi Prince Nayef bin Sultan bin Fawwaz Al-Shaalan had been indicted by a Miami court on charges of having smuggled 1,980 kilos of cocaine on his private jet in 1999.
On July 28, Britain’s Observer released a story that quickly spread around the world. It was headlined, “Britons left in jail amid fears that Saudi Arabia could fall to al Qaeda.” The lead paragraphs read, “Saudi Arabia is teetering on the brink of collapse, fueling Foreign Office fears of an extremist takeover of one of the West’s key allies in the war on terror.” Anti-government demonstrations have swept the desert kingdom in the past months in protest at the pro-American stance of the de facto ruler, Prince Abdullah.
At the same time, Whitehall officials are concerned that Abdullah could face a palace coup from elements within the royal family sympathetic to al Qaeda.
Saudi sources said the Pentagon had recently sponsored a secret conference to look at options if the royal family fell .…
Anti-Abdullah elements within the Saudi government are also thought to have colluded in a wave of bomb attacks on Western targets by Islamic terrorists.37
After finally mentioning the apparently unimportant subject of the headline — the fact that several Britons had been jailed on bootlegging charges — the story concluded with the statement that feuding between factions in the Saudi court was going to increase with the death of King Fahd who was unstable in a Swiss hospital.
The story ended by quoting Saudi dissident Dr. Saad al-Fagih who declared, “There is now an undeclared war between the factions in the Saudi royal family.”
On the same day a lengthy essay on Saudi Arabia in the Asia Times by Ehsan Ahrari observed, “It is interesting to note that [Prince] Sultan is believed to be a preferred US candidate for the Saudi throne.” Abdullah is the crown prince, not Sultan.
On July 29 Stratfor, an intelligence reporting and analysis service, reported that a feud was brewing between Saudi Arabia and neighboring Qatar over Qatar’s willingness to openly support the US invasion of Iraq. Qatar is nearly sinking under the weight of predeployed military equipment and has a brand new state-of-the-art US Air Force Base.
On July 30 the suggestions that internecine warfare had erupted in Saudi Arabia were given credence by an Agence France Presse report describing the recent deaths of three Saudi princes in eight days. Prince Fahd bin Turki died of thirst in the desert on July 30. Prince Sultan bin Faisal died in a car crash on July 23, and Prince Ahmed bin Salman died the day before of a heart attack.
On August 1 the World Tribune reported that Saudi Arabia, which has been acquiring long-range ballistic missiles had also, according to reports confirmed by US officials, been attempting to acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan — which has been well documented to have heavy concentrations of al Qaeda supporters within all parts of its government.
On that same day, Saudi dissident Dr. al-Fagih appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation program Lateline and offered some startling revelations:
Prince Abdullah who is supposed to be the next in charge, the next King, would not accept to appoint Prince Sultan as Crown Prince, and Prince Sultan insists that he should be the next in line for Abdullah to be [king]. Al-Fagih predicted the imminent death of the ailing King Fahd and noted, “That’s why probably the foreign office have [sic] expected some major thing happening in the next few weeks .… “I mean, Prince Abdullah is in charge of the national guard, and Prince Sultan is in charge of the army, and either one will use his own force to fight the other to fight for power. Now they will use all elements of the population, of the society …” [including a large portion of the population that supports al Qaeda and radical Islamic fundamentalism].
Al-Fagih said that there was a psychological barrier in the country because all information is so thoroughly controlled, and the regime maintains the appearance of complete control. Almost all Saudis dislike the corrupt regime for a multitude of differing reasons. But, said the medical doctor who once served with Osama bin Laden in the Afghan war against Soviet occupation, “Once this psychological barrier is broken, either by a dispute of the royal family, or by a financial collapse, you would expect a major act by the people against the regime.”
Al-Fagih also noted that in general the dislike of the Saudi people for the US was intense because of its unremitting support of Israel and also because the US had maintained a military presence on Saudi soil long after the end of the Gulf War.
Just five days later on August 6, the Washington Post reported that a month earlier on July 10, a top Pentagon advisory group had received a briefing from Rand Corp. analyst Laurent Murawiec describing Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the US and threatening seizure of its oil fields and financial assets if it did not stop supporting terrorism. The Pentagon group that received the briefing, the Defense Policy Board, is headed by renowned hawk Richard Perle. [Perle resigned from the board in February 2004 amidst growing controversy over his hawkish views and personal financial relations with firms seeking government contracts.] Although high-level Bush administration figures like Colin Powell downplayed the briefing’s significance, it received heavy-handed media play for several days. Subsequent reports stated that Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff had “embraced” the report.
On August 7 Saudi Arabia made clear and unequivocal public pronouncements that it would not allow its soil to be used for an invasion of Iraq.
On August 14 Reuters reported that King Fahd, who had just been moved to Spain, was in failing health and possibly near death.
On August 15 amid massive daylong publicity, a 15-count, $1 trillion lawsuit was filed against various Saudi interests for liability in the 9/11 attacks. Included among the defendants were the Saudi Binladin Group of companies (previously connected through the Carlyle Group to Bush family finances), three Saudi princes, seven banks, eight Islamic foundations, a number of charities, and the government of Sudan.
The three Saudi princes are Turki Faisal al Saud, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz (same as above), and Prince Mohamed al-Faisal.
This new suit eclipsed three earlier suits, largely ignored by the major media, filed by victim families charging various degrees of liability and/or complicity by the US government. The key lawyers in the case have a history of close affiliation with the Republican Party, the Bush family, and/or the Council on Foreign Relations. Media coverage of the suits continued through the weekend ending August 18.
What gives?
Following The Money
The instability in Saudi Arabia may well be just the end result of internal decay and rot. But the consequences and implications of Saudi Arabia’s current crisis are deeper once one examines the financial threat that Saudi chaos might unleash.
Like that of the United States, the Saudi economy is in tatters, and like the US economy it needs only one thing to keep it afloat — cash. Saudi Arabia, for all of its wealth, actually began borrowing money to meet budget deficits and finance economic development in 1993.38 It says something about the level of corruption that a nation with as much wealth and income as Saudi Arabia found its treasury running low. Yes, oil prices change things. But the implication is that the Saudi elites are lining their own pockets to the detriment of the long-term financial stability of their country — as happens in the United States, it seems.
The Saudi government rightly fears US military success in Iraq. A first inevitable consequence would be serious anti-American protests from the Saudi population. The second inevitable consequence would be an almost immediate increase in Iraqi oil production, [Iraq’s outof-control insurgency and the continuing sabotage of infrastructure have prevented this], generating a price reduction that might break the back of OPEC and dramatically reduce oil income. Seeing that the US economy is on the brink of collapse, the Bush administration, facing a potentially disastrous 2004 presidential election, must do whatever it takes to keep itself in power. For this administration, so predominantly populated by oil men (and woman), cheap oil is the obvious first choice; in other words, oil is not only the actual issue, it’s also the one to which the public relations and electioneering skills of this particular regime gravitate in the face of electoral trouble. By focusing their policy efforts on the energy issue — while pursuing a profligate, oil-dependent, war-driven future — they are addressing exactly the right thing in the most wrong way possible. Without significant capital investment in any alternatives, oil remains king. Where the oil is, there will be war.
Saudi Arabia seems to have seen this coming for some time. In April 2002 the Saudi government announced that it was considering privatizing parts of Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, and selling off some of Aramco’s operations to Exxon, BP-Amoco, Shell, and other major companies. Though little has been disclosed since the early announcements, this move would benefit the Saudis in two big ways. First, it would give Western companies an equity stake in the stability of the monarchy, making it difficult for the US to consider bombing or imposing embargos upon operations owned by Western companies. Secondly, it would generate large amounts of cash to offset declining economic growth, rising unemployment, and declining per capita income, according to Stratfor on April 29, 2002.
The oil-based standoff is mirrored by what is effectively a much more successful financial deterrent — the Saudis’ ability to wreck the US financial markets should they see their situation become utterly desperate.
Owning the American Dream
It is impossible to quantify exactly the Saudi holdings in the US economy. But anecdotal evidence is compelling. The New York Times reported on August 11, “An adviser to the Saudi royal family made a telling point about Saudi elites. He said an estimated $600 billion to $700 billion in Saudi money was invested outside the kingdom, a vast majority of it in the United States or in United States-related investments.” The BBC has estimated Saudi US investment at $750 billion.
Adnan Khashoggi, perhaps the best-known Saudi billionaire, controls his investments through Ultimate Holdings Ltd. and in Genesis Intermedia, which was reported to have been connected to suspicious stock trades around the time of the September 11 attacks. (No linkage has been made between these trades and the attacks themselves). The rest of his private US holdings are administered through his daughter’s name from offices in Tampa, Florida, not far from where many of the hijackers received flight training at both private schools and US military installations.
Khashoggi is a longtime financial player, deeply connected to the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s and also to BCCI. But Khashoggi doesn’t even make the Forbes list of the richest people in the world. One Saudi who does is Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, who ranks as the fourth richest man on the planet with an estimated net worth of $21.5 billion (Alwaleed is also an investor in and reported client of the Carlyle Group).39
Some of Alwaleed’s holdings and recent acquisitions include:
• The single largest sharehold in Citigroup, the teetering US financial giant, which is reported to have a derivatives bubble of more than $12 trillion and has reportedly sought recent emergency assistance from the Federal Reserve. Alwaleed’s shareholding in Citigroup remains near the $10 billion mark. The BCCI scandal was not the last instance where the prohibited foreign ownership of US banks was an issue that touched Saudi interests. Prince Alwaleed’s heavy stake in Citigroup was concealed from 1991 until recently by the Carlyle group, which, acting as a virtual cutout, disguised Alwaleed’s heavy investment in the bank.40
• Alwaleed also owns, according to an August 9, 2002 story in the Guardian, three percent of the total shares of Newscorp (FOX), making him the second-largest shareholder behind Rupert Murdoch.
• Alwaleed’s other significant holdings include Apple Computer, Priceline, the Four Seasons Hotels, Planet Hollywood, Saks, and Euro Disney.
• Alwaleed also sits on the Carlyle Group’s board of directors.
• Alwaleed alone is in a position to pull the plug on the US economy. But, of course, he would cost himself billions to do it, and this is not a likely scenario because he has long been a pro-democratic US supporter.
This applies to the rest of Saudi-held assets in the US, just as surely as it applies to Alwaleed’s. Taken as a whole, the dollar-denominated wealth of the Saudi royals is so large that its sudden withdrawal from the American economy would be devastating to America. And it would entail very serious financial losses for the Saudi investors, who would find themselves with a mountain of dollars whose value they had just decimated, backed by the full faith and credit of the tooth fairy. So the dreaded Saudi money-withdrawal is in nobody’s near-term interest and it does not happen. It keeps right on not happening, and will presumably continue to not happen for a long time to come.
But this assumes, of course, that the Saudi monarchy remains a stable political entity; that the US economy does not implode under its own debt-load; that no major, protracted regional conflict occurs; and that the US therefore remains the most profitable place for Saudi investment. But if the US economy fails? If the Euro becomes stronger than the dollar? The Bush administration’s unilateral and illegal commitment to an Iraqi invasion brings all three essentials into question. The August 20 [2002] report from the Financial Times suggests that the Saudis are, at minimum, firing a clear warning shot across the bow of the USS “Bush”…41
________________________
Only two points of my analysis have proven incorrect. The now obvious guerilla war in Iraq and the deterioration of Iraqi oil infrastructure have prevented any real surge in Iraqi oil production. This fact alone would make Saudi Arabia and smaller swing producers in West Africa more important to US short-term needs. Second, King Fahd remains on life support in Spain. I can only conclude that his death will come at a time more convenient to US objectives, perhaps after the inauguration of a new president.
According to an investment banker in the author’s acquaintance who is well versed in Middle Eastern and oil finance, two capital streams emerged in the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. One was a stream of Saudi capital being returned to that country from the US. The second was a stream of Saudi flight capital fleeing to the US, being sent by an elite group who expected to soon be living here in exile, after the fall of the monarchy and the partition of the country.
Peter Dale Scott, reaching the same conclusions earlier, wrote:
The kingdom is now a key battlefield in the conflict between America and its allies and the forces of extremist Islam. It is a conflict that is now threatening to tear Saudi Arabia apart. Revolution is in the air.
The Western community [in Saudi Arabia] is living in fear. It has become the target of a series of bomb attacks, carried out by al Qaeda linked terrorists who want to drive all non-Muslims out of the Arabian Peninsula. But the terrified Westerners have received little help from the Saudi authorities.
The US may hope that it can weaken royal support for anti-American protests by its war preparations in the Middle East, including the timely regrouping of US forces from Saudi Arabia to neighboring Qatar. Alternatively, it may have to use them.42
Additional entries from the Thompson timeline add the necessary pieces to confirm that the movements and activities of Osama bin Laden and his family are desired outcomes rather than effects of collective stupidity:
1996: FBI investigators are prevented from carrying out an investigation into two relatives of bin Laden. The FBI wanted to learn more about Abdullah bin Laden, “because of his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth [WAMY] — a suspected terrorist organization.” Abdullah was the US director of WAMY and lived with his brother Omar in Falls Church, a town just outside Washington. The coding on the document, marked secret, indicate the case involved espionage, murder, and national security. WAMY has their offices at 5613 Leesburg Pike. Remarkably, four of the 9/11 hijackers later are listed as having lived at 5913 Leesburg Pike, at the same time the two bin Laden brothers were there. WAMY has not been put on a list of terrorist organizations in the US, but it has been banned in Pakistan. A high-placed intelligence official tells the Guardian: “there were always constraints on investigating the Saudis. There were particular investigations that were effectively killed.” An unnamed US source says to the BBC, “There is a hidden agenda at the very highest levels of our government.” [BBC Newsnight, 11/6/01; Guardian, 11/7/01]
July 12, 2001: Bin Laden supposedly meets with CIA agent Larry Mitchell in the Dubai hospital on this day, possibly others. Mitchell reportedly lives in Dubai as an Arab specialist under the cover of being a consular agent. The CIA and the Dubai hospital deny the story; Le Figaro and Radio France International stand by it. [Le Figaro, 10/31/01; Radio France International, 11/1/01] The Guardian claims that the two organizations that broke the story, Le Figaro and Radio France International, got their information from French intelligence, “which is keen to reveal the ambiguous role of the CIA, and to restrain Washington from extending the war to Iraq and elsewhere.” The Guardian adds that during his stay bin Laden is also visited by a second CIA officer, “several members of his family and Saudi personalities,” including Prince Turki al Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence. [Guardian, 11/1/01] At the very least, doesn’t this show bin Laden was never estranged from much of his family?
The story in Le Figaro caused a great international uproar, including fierce personal attacks on me for having publicized it. If true, it establishes that just two months before 9/11, one of the most wanted men on the planet was exchanging information — personally — with CIA personnel. In light of what has been revealed in this chapter, one thing can safely be stated with confidence: The historical context of the relations between the bin Ladens, the Bushes, and US economic interests certainly makes the Le Figaro stories plausible.
September 13_19, 2001: Members of bin Laden’s family and important Saudis are flown out of the US. The New York Times explains, “The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under FBI supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened three days after the attacks.” If you read carefully, note they are flown to Texas and Washington before the national air ban is lifted — the fact of flights during this ban is now unfortunately widely called an urban legend. [New York Times, 9/30/01] There have been conflicting reports as to whether the FBI interviewed them before they left the country. Osama bin Laden’s half brother Abdullah bin Laden stated that even a month later his only contact with the FBI was a brief phone call. [Boston Globe, 9/21/01; New Yorker, 11/5/01]
It turns out that the flights did occur, and according to former National Security aide Richard Clarke, in his testimony before the Kean Commission, the orders possibly came from “The White House.”43
Paul Thompson’s timeline adds more details of the special flights:
September 13, 2001: Confirmation that bin Ladens and Saudis did fly during the no-fly ban and left the country before they could be properly questioned comes from a Tampa Tribune article. A Lear jet takes off from Tampa, Florida, while a ban on all non-military flights in the US is still in effect. It carries a Saudi Arabian prince, the son of the Saudi defense minister, as well as the son of a Saudi army commander, and flies to Lexington, Kentucky, where the Saudis own racehorses. They then fly a private 747 out of the country. Multiple 747s with Arabic lettering on their sides are already there, suggesting another secret assembly point. Intriguingly, the Tampa flight left from a private Raytheon hangar. [Tampa Tribune, 10/5/01]
October 27, 2001: The bin Laden family divests from the Carlyle Group around this time, in light of public controversy surrounding the family after the 9/11 attacks. [Washington Post, 10/27/01]
October 14, 2001: The Boston Herald reports: “Three banks allegedly used by Osama bin Laden to distribute money to his global terrorism network have well-established ties to a prince in Saudi Arabia’s royal family, several billionaire Saudi bankers, and the governments of Kuwait and Dubai. One of the banks, Al-Shamal Islamic Bank in the Sudan, was controlled directly by Osama bin Laden, according to a 1996 US State Department report.” A regional expert states, “I think we underestimate bin Laden. He comes from the highest levels of Saudi society and he has supporters at all levels of Saudi Arabia.” [Boston Herald, 10/14/01]
Two of the three banks referred to above are not included in President George W. Bush’s crackdown on terrorist financing after the attacks. Both of the banks had played financing roles in W.’s Harken energy deals in the region.44
A final note on the unwillingness of the US government to take advantage of numerous opportunities to neutralize bin Laden: Apparently several of the offers came directly from the Taliban. The Village Voice’s James Ridgeway wrote:
[Niece of former CIA Director Richard Helms and Taliban Lobbyist Laila] Helms described one incident after another in which, she claimed, the Taliban agreed to give up bin Laden to the US, only to be rebuffed by the State Department. On one occasion, she said, the Taliban agreed to give the US coordinates for his campsite, leaving enough time so the Yanks could whack al Qaeda’s leader with a missile before he moved. The proposal, she claims, was nixed.45
Before going to Pakistan let’s revisit one of the most important quotes in The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski:
Two basic steps are thus required: first, to identify the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially important shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely consequences of their seeking to attain them; second, to formulate specific US policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above.46
As with Russia, the political elites in Saudi Arabia are either created or defined by American money and influence. As the US used the Mafia in Russia to destabilize and neutralize that country, so too it appears it has done in Saudi Arabia with al Qaeda. That country, with 25 percent of the oil on the planet, has only existed since 1931. What arguable overriding loyalty to their country exists for those Saudis whose billions depend upon the Empire? If the performance of the Russian oligarchs is any standard, then the malignant Iraq war and the increasingly serious stirrings of Islamic protest might lead to a collapse in Saudi Arabia within a year or two that would play right into America’s hands. Then the biggest prize of all will have been safely secured before the world even understands what has happened. That prize will be secured whether the Bush regime endures in power or not because all the pieces are in place. The only delays as of this writing are the 2004 presidential election and the US military posture that has been seriously weakened as a result of massive Iraqi uprisings and the withdrawal of troops by many nations of the Bush coalition who no longer have the stomach for the carnage and the animosity created by US policy in occupied Iraq.
Skeptics will point to the fact that on April 29, 2003, the Pentagon announced that it was beginning to remove American military personnel and aircraft from Saudi Arabia to nearby bases in Qatar, Kuwait, and Dubai. They might assert that this shows that the US has no intention of military action against Saudi Arabia. I would contend, on the other hand, that if the kingdom becomes unstable, having military resources out of the country, but close enough to launch immediate attacks, is a way of protecting them from sabotage or attack if the anti-American sentiment felt by most of the Saudi populace is unleashed. That eventuality arrived in 2004 as the state department ordered an evacuation of Saudi Arabia, and bombs blew apart Saudi police facilities.
As for Osama bin Laden, he will not be caught or killed until two things happen: He has outlived his usefulness as an enemy at a time when the United States need no longer fear economic reprisals; and Israel has emerged as the de facto global manager of all economic interests in the Middle East. Neither is a certainty.
As Caesar might say, “It’s the way things work.”
*******
Part Two Footnotes below
Audio excerpts are coming soon!
PART TWO FOOTNOTES [begin where part one left off for continuity]:
37 Martin Bright, Nick Pelham and Paul Harris, “Britons left in jail amid fears that Saudi Arabia could fall to al-Qaeda,” Guardian /Observer, Saturday July 27, 2002 [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/28/terrorism.alqaida1]
37 Martin Bright, Nick Pelham and Paul Harris, “Britons left in jail amid fears that Saudi Arabia could fall to al-Qaeda,” Guardian /Observer, Saturday July 27, 2002 [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/jul/28/terrorism.alqaida1]
38 Brisard and Dasquié, op. cit., p. 77.
39 Dan Brody, op. cit.;[www.forbes.com/maserati/billionaires2004/LIR0RD0.html]
41 Michael C. Ruppert, “Saudi Arabia: The Sarajevo of the 21st Century,” From The Wilderness, August 21, 2002, . New data updating this story has been added to the original, pending upload to the website, for greater clarity within this section. In-text notes within square parentheses were added to the story during the writing of this book. [Original print newsletter in pdf, with other articles: http://www.fromthewilderness.net/free/ww3/FTW_August_2002.pdf]
42 Peter Dale Scott, “FLASH 36: Is U.S. Arms Buildup In Response to Crisis in Saudi Arabia?” August 3, 2002, http://www.peterdalescott.net/qfsaud.html [< new link, orig. broken]
43 Richard A. Clarke, testimony before the Kean Commission, March 24, 2004.
44 Michael C. Ruppert, “Suppressed Details of Criminal Insider Trading Lead Directly into the CIA’s Highest Ranks,” FTW, Vol. IV, no. 7, October 15, 2001, pp. 6- 8 [http://www.fromthewilderness.net/free/ww3/10_09_01_krongard.html]; Tom Flocco, “Profits of Death: Insider Trading and 9-11,” ed. Michael C. Ruppert, FTW, Vol. IV, no. 9, December 27, 2001, pp. 13-16[http://www.fromthewilderness.net/free/ww3/12_06_01_death_profits_pt1.html]; Tom Flocco and Michael C. Ruppert, “Profits of Death, Part III: All Roads Lead to Deutsche Bank and Harken Energy,” FTW, Vol. IV, no. 10, January 29, 2002, pp. 11-16 [http://www.fromthewilderness.net/free/ww3/01_09_02_death_profits_pt3.html]; Cf. “The Real Dirt on Bush/Harken Scandal,” sf.indymedia.org, July 5, 2002, [www.sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/07/136245_comment.php]
45 James Ridgeway, “The French Connection,” Village Voice, January 2-8, 2002 [https://www.villagevoice.com/2002/01/01/the-french-connection-2/].
46 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, p. 40.
Semper fi 🗽
Jan. 8, 2012: Petroleum Man
Jan. 9, 2012: A Simple Exercise
Jan. 20, 2012: Unholy Trinity / Part One
Jan. 21, 2012: Unholy Trinity / Part Two
Jan. 22, 2012: Unholy Trinity / Part Three
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