Thanks for calling this to my attention. I definitely want to follow-up on the Prince Turki al-Faysal matter! According to the BBC Monitoring Middle East - Date: 09/04/2001 "Text of report by London-based newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat on 1 September Jedda - Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd Bin-Abd-al- Aziz has issued a royal decree appointing Prince Nawwaf Bin-Abd-al- Aziz as head of the Saudi intelligence service with the rank of minister and relieving Prince Turki al-Faysal of the post at his own request"
Trying to get info on the Royal House of Saud is sometimes like pulling teeth, since, like the royal family of Kuwait, they spend millions of dollars on Washington PR firms to whitewash their image. Various members of the Saudi royal family also own large shares of US high tech & other firms.
No doubt that Prince Turki resigned under pressure, related to his relationship with Bin Laden, which began during the anti-Russian Afghan insurgency of the 1980's. According to Ahmed Rashid: "Among these thousands of foreign recruits was a young Saudi student, Osama Bin Laden, the son of a Yemeni construction magnate, Mohammed Bin Laden, who was a close friend of the late King Faisal and whose company had become fabulously wealthy on the contracts to renovate and expand the Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. The ISI had long wanted Prince Turki Bin Faisal, the head of Istakhbarat, the Saudi Intelligence Service, to provide a Royal Prince to lead the Saudi contingent in order to show Muslims the commitment of the Royal Family to the jihad. Only poorer Saudis, students, taxi drivers and Bedouin tribesmen had so far arrived to fight. But no pampered Saudi prince was ready to rough it out in the Afghan mountains. Bin Laden, although not a royal, was close enough to the royals and certainly wealthy enough to lead the Saudi contingent. Bin Laden, Prince Turki and General Gut were to become firm friends and allies in a common cause."
As for letting extremists in: if the man could either have been in Iran or here, there are many advantages to having him here; you can keep an eye on him, know that other troublemakes won't be as close, and perhaps even show him that democracy does work.
This is the rationale offered by supporters of this policy, and one that you often will hear from CIA spokesmen. I would say that if somebody has a history of terrorism, particularly if he has threatened to bomb targets within the United States, the smart thing to do is to try to keep him out of the country, not bring him in. We are talking about those who have been programmed or "brainwashed" to convert, and not be converted. IMHO it is playing with fire to bring them into this country and use them as assets or to do business with them.