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Posted on 08/24/2002 9:56:15 PM PDT by GaryMontana
LONDON - Senior members of the Saudi royal family paid "protection money" totaling at least $300 million to Osama bin-Laden and the Taliban to prevent them from attacking targets in Saudi Arabia, the London Sunday Times reported yesterday.
The revelation, based on extensive investigations, was contained in papers filed in a $3,000 billion US lawsuit by lawyers representing the families of Sept. 11 victims.
According to the documents, the deal was struck after two secret meetings involving members of the Saudi royal family and al-Qaida leaders, including bin-Laden.
The cash enabled al-Qaida to fund training camps in Afghanistan that are said to have been attended by the Sept. 11 bombers.
The court documents reveal that the agreement committed bin- Laden not to use his forces to subvert the Saudi government, while the Saudis agreed to ensure that requests to extradite al- Qaida members and demands to close al-Qaida training camps were not carried out.
In addition, the Saudis agreed to supply oil and financial assistance to both the Taliban and Pakistan which, the documents report, was worth "several hundred millions" of dollars.
The revelations resulting from the investigation are likely to exacerbate already tense relations between the US and Saudi Arabia, which one analyst at the Washington-based Rand think-tank recently described at a Pentagon briefing as the "kernel of evil."
The document names the Saudi royals involved in the deal and provides details about the network of charities and businesses through which bin- Laden raised money.
The documents say the Saudi princes were informed about attacks by Islamic fundamentalists on American servicemen at a US army training facility in Riyadh in November 1995 and at the Khobar Towers barracks in June 1996, in which 19 US airmen died.
The princes decided to strike a deal with bin-Laden because they feared that al-Qaida, which opposed the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, would show its displeasure by attempting to destabilize the kingdom.
The documents say Saudi Arabia's secret service, the Istakhbarat, had decided in late 1995 to fund the Taliban and the initial decision to pay bin-Laden "protection money" was agreed at a meeting of the Saudi princes in 1996.
A further meeting in the Afghan city of Kandahar in July 1998 led to the deal between Saudi Arabia and the Taliban.
According to the documents, those present included Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, then chief of the Istakhbarat, Taliban leaders, senior officers from Pakistan's secret service and bin- Laden.
Turki was said to have known bin-Laden well through family connections and also because he had hand-picked bin-Laden in the early 1980s to organize Arab volunteers who were fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
The lawsuit also alleges that the Saudi royal family supported charities with close ties to bin-Laden, including a $6 million gift from Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan, to the International Islamic Relief Organization, al-Haramain, the Muslim World League and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth.
Also, see #32. Maybe we're puting a little pressure on--a little arm twisting to keep the oil flowing :)
I have to agree, I think the Saudi's will have to me handled at a later time when their true colors are obvious to the entire world not us news junkies. Terp
For instance, somebody is growing anthrax, experimenting with weaponization processes, and then producing weaponized anthrax; whoever knows how to do this has bootstrapped himself to a level of strategic power potentially near that of a nuclear state (and perhaps with more flexible tactical options).
Not all bees are equal in the hive.
That's old news too. ISI was heavily involved in the al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan. They set them up(with some US money) and used them to train jihadists for the fight in Kashmir. The US money was to set up the camps for binLaden to fight the Soviets.
In other words, were were using Pakistan and Afghanistan to check the Soviets. But the jihadists were using us to train for their conquest...
Countervalue is an even greater part of our strategy now, against biological weapons, than it was against nuclear weapons in the Cold War. The danger these days may be sitting in powder already in the U.S., making counterforce action virtually impossible.
But it's not clear how we're planning on responding to future attacks. The biggest danger is that the attacks may be slowly ratcheted up, never at any point seeming to pass the threshold requiring a severe reaction. (You've probably heard the parable of the frog in water slowly heated to the boiling point.) The events of Fall establish that 3,000 deaths in a near-WMD level attack, plus a small anthrax attack, do not constitute grounds for nuclear retaliation. Will we see 6,000 deaths next? We still won't be able to justify annihilating millions. Then it's 10,000. Maybe there's a nuclear weapon used after that, but it's a dud and doesn't kill many. So the level of attack builds up, slowly but surely. We do little in response; we start to be conditioned to accept it, just like the frog.
Arguably, this is what is happening in Israel right now with the homicide bombers.
Note that before the anthrax mailings, I think most people would have said that an attack on this country with a biological weapon would result in a nuclear response. But the events of Fall, 2001, proved this false; the U.S. government has found itself in a position where it cannot even acknowledge what happened.
I'm not suggesting that figuring out the correct response is easy. But we must not wait for attacks of greater viciousness before deciding to put an end to them.
What do you think the stockpiling of vaccines, the creation of depots and the innoculation of health workers really implies? And it's emulation by Israel? It implies among other things that if our counterforce efforts fail, if Saddam or someone else has a deployable biological weapon up his sleeve; that we stand ready to unleash an agent against which we alone have the antidote. A weaponized Arab-killer.
I don't see this at all. It's clear that both the U.S. and Israel are building up a defense against biological weapons; we've probably been refraining from taking further action (against Iraq or others) until better defenses are in place. But I don't see any evidence that we are planning to turn to the use of biological weapons ourselves. It sounds like you might have been implying that the U.S. would use smallpox as a weapon of last resort. I do not believe that -- we would turn to nuclear weapons if necessary, but we would not release smallpox on the world again. It would not be, as you suggest, an "Arab-killer"; it would devastate the third world, and kill many in the developed countries as well.
One final point: The period during which we build up our stockpile of vaccines may be particularly unstable, since there is a strong incentive for somebody possessing a particular biological weapon to gain advantage from its possession while they still can; after our defenses are in place, the other side becomes very vulnerable once again. [This is the old argument from the Cold War that the construction of an ABM system is dangerous, since, during the construction period, the other side has a strong incentive to carry out a first strike while it can, out of fear that the side building the ABM system would be able to carry out a first strike with impunity after the ABM system is finished.]
This, of course, isn't true. What the human race has never experienced is a war in which both sides used nuclear weapons.
Put that way, I guess you're right. I had never heard of that official meeting before, nor of the ISI direct participation in it. I had seen them as using the Taliban and bin Ladin as proxies. Good catch.
"It's clear that both the U.S. and Israel are building up a defense against biological weapons"
"The period during which we build up our stockpile of vaccines may be particularly unstable, since there is a strong incentive for somebody possessing a particular biological weapon to gain advantage from its possession while they still can."The problem with this argument is that it should have happened by now if the reasoning were valid. The Arabs should have struck on September 12, 2001 before the "defenses" were up. There is no window of vulnerability wider than that provided by unannounced first use. That would have been the simplest way of preventing the neutralization of their weapons. If you use it, you can't lose it.
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That's right, nearly three years ago.
Agreed but, why is the left embracing these freaks?
We can act after he takes over the country and then burns their oil wells!
The cash enabled al-Qaida to fund training camps in Afghanistan that are said to have been attended by the Sept. 11 bombers.WOW, how could I have missed this?? I know that on 9/11, two planes crashed into the WTC Towers, another crashed into the Penatgon and still another crashed in PA.
But I had no idea bombs were set off on 9/11.</sarcasm>
Let's tell it like it IS, shall we... The cash enabled al-Qaida to fund training camps in Afghanistan that are said to have been attended by the Sept. 11 murderers.
And let us not forget it. LET'S ROLL!!
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