Saudi Ties to Terrorism

Aug 11, 2003

Information has come out about classified parts of the Congressional report on the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. Omitted from the 900-page report when it was released on July 24 was a 28-page section about the role that senior officials in the Saudi Arabian government played in funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to organizations and individuals involved in the attacks.

In what is apparently the most important case cited, a Saudi intelligence agent is said to have assisted two of the hijackers-to-be after visiting the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles in 2000. While this Saudi agent was briefly detained in England after 9/11, and questioned by both British and U.S. officials there, he was released and allowed to return to Saudi Arabia, where the Saudi government has so far prohibited any further questioning of him.

By itself, this incident doesn’t prove much. But the fact that the Saudi government is apparently protecting him and the Bush administration wants to keep this secret shows they both have something to hide.

The Bush administration is clearly very sensitive about Saudi involvement in the attacks. And it has good reason to be. The Bush family itself has many ties to the rich Saudi businessmen and government officials who are said to have funneled money to the terrorists charged with carrying out the attacks. In particular, they have had dealings with the bin Laden family that owns the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia.

In this respect, the Bush family is like virtually every other bourgeois family involved in the oil industry. They all have extensive business dealings in Saudi Arabia, the largest oil-exporting country in the world, with an oil industry dominated by U.S. oil companies.

And they also have extensive ties with the terrorists. Starting in the 1970s, the U.S. with the assistance of the Saudi government pushed Islamic fundamentalism and assembled and trained tens of thousands of guerilla fighters and terrorists. One reason for this was to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviet-supported government. But the other reason was to divert rising discontent in the population against the Saudi government itself. The main Saudi leader of these fundamentalists and terrorists was of course Osama bin Laden.

Even after the Soviet Union pulled out of Afghanistan and bin Laden officially turned against the U.S. and Saudi governments, he continued to receive unofficial support from many rich Saudi businessmen and top government officials and security agents. His terrorist apparatus was an extension of their own power structure. And since the U.S. still had close ties to this the Saudi power structure, it at least tolerated the terrorists. After all, the occasional terrorist attacks were not a threat to U.S. control of the region. And, in fact, the U.S. government just used these attacks as an excuse and justification to build up its own military presence in the region.

So, of course, the Bush administration doesn’t want to draw attention to the Saudi role in organizing and financing terrorism in the Middle East, especially since it would draw attention to the U.S. links to these same officials.

As for the supposed war against terrorism: that is just the Bush administration’s excuse and justification to carry out its own terrorist wars against the peoples not just of Iraq, but of the entire Middle East as well.