Saudis and Funding Terror

[Timber Loftis]

Let's see if I can derail the various threads discussing mod-ing on IWF, and remedy some of the lingering turmoil by starting a debate on something political.

Ping! Oh, wait, I mean. . . oh, nevermind. I really do take an effort to only put out good [img]graemlins/spam3.gif[/img] Ping! Ooops, how'd I do that again? Okay, I'm shutting up, see, I know how to shut up, I always shut up. [img]graemlins/thewave.gif[/img]

From AOL, off the AP news wire. By Calvin Woodward.

WASHINGTON (Nov. 25) - Saudi officials, facing harsh accusations that they are soft on terrorism, say they are checking records to see how money from the wife of their U.S. ambassador might have eventually gone to supporters of the Sept. 11 attacks.

In trying to calm the latest strain in their alliance with the United States, they called ``crazy'' any suggestion she intended to support the hijackers.

Embassy officials spent the weekend having bankers pore over the records of Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to figure out how thousands of dollars in monthly payments from her account apparently ended up in the wrong hands, said Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir.

Some of the money apparently went into the accounts of two men who U.S. officials think provided financial support to hijackers.

A parade of senators, including some who doubted the princess meant to help terrorists, upbraided the Saudi government on Sunday's television talk shows for what they saw as years of complicity in anti-American radicalism.

Saudis have a history of ``buying off extremism,'' even if only by averting their gaze from it, said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It's ``part of a saga where the Saudis don't know, have not checked, are not nearly conscientious enough in determining whether or not a 'charity' is genuinely a charity or a front for, or a back door for, terrorists or terrorist-sympathizing organizations or individuals,'' Biden said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''

President Bush's aides, for whom the matter is a troubling turn as they work to shore up Saudi support for a possible war with Iraq, did not join in the recriminations.

There might be a legitimate explanation for the payments, a senior White House official said.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, credited the Saudis with helping in the anti-terror war, in quiet ways that bring them no credit in the West but also do not attract the attention of fundamentalist elements at home.

Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York saw that balancing act differently.

Saudis ``have played a duplicitous game, and that is they say to the terrorists, 'We'll do everything you want, just leave us alone,''' he said on ABC's ``This Week.'' ``That game has got to stop.''

Still, the lawmakers did not know whether the princess had meant for the money to go to Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Basnan. U.S. officials believe those men provided financial support to two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers while the terrorists lived in the United States.

Saudi adviser al-Jubeir said the princess sent monthly checks to a Saudi woman living in this country who sought help paying for medical treatment. It came out only now that the woman was Basnan's wife and that some of the money ended up with al-Bayoumi's family as well, he said.

Basnan is believed to be back in Saudi Arabia after his deportation and al-Bayoumi is either there or in Britain, al-Jubeir said. Saudi officials will probably question them, he said, but he noted pointedly that U.S. and British officials already interrogated them months ago.

Al-Jubeir said Saudis had bank officials in Washington, starting at 3 a.m. Saturday, begin going through the princess' electronic transactions, which include hundreds or thousands of payments to expatriate Saudi charities and citizens.

``That's when we discovered that some of the checks were endorsed to third parties,'' he said.

``To think that Princess Haifa, whose father was murdered by a terrorist in 1995, who's a mother, who's a grandmother, would write checks to people who give it to terrorists is crazy,'' he added.

Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz., who together set up an independent commission that will investigate the terror attacks, joined Biden in criticizing Saudi conduct.

Saudi leaders ``have to decide which side they're on,'' Lieberman said on CBS' ``Face the Nation.''

``For too many generations they have pacified and accommodated themselves to the most extreme, fanatical, violent elements of Islam, and those elements have now turned on us and the rest of the world.''

Added McCain: ``The Saudi royal family has been engaged in a Faustian bargain for years to keep themselves in power.''

Al-Jubeir said the princess sent the woman $2,000 a month; other accounts have put the figure higher. The FBI is investigating the bank transactions.

U.S. officials suspect al-Bayoumi and Basnan helped Khalif al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after they came to the United States from a planning conference in Malaysia of the al-Qaida terror network.

Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, killing 189 people.

11/25/02 06:03 EST

Copyright 2002 The Associated Press.

[Night Stalker]

PONG!

Which, I must say was the ultimate in gaming! None of these sissy graphics or distracting music .... You had 80 games with a simple square and a pair of rectangles. What genious! Hours of fun!

Ok .... back off topic.

I am not in the intel community (and I wouldn't post anything here about this if I was). But there have been rumors of this kinda thing for years in the defense community.

PING
Is a very useful tool in trying to troubleshoot those iritating network glitches that can keep you from accessing IW.

Err There are also rumors in the defense community that the Saudi's are supplying covert intel on some terrorist groups, but are keeping it very low key, so it isn't in the news and doesnt attract the attention of the terrorists to the Royal Families.

[ 11-25-2002, 01:29 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[Ronn_Bman]

I would say if it is proven true look for the Saudi's to really start warming up to the idea of taking out Saddam and co-operating in any way possible with the UN/US regarding an attack on Iraq following an material breach. If it gets really bad they might even become a bit hawkish...lol.

"Look how we're helping you! We're your friends, and we'd never do something like that."

[Thoran]

PonG - A Unix library for creating configuration dialogs.

Frankly I think it's kind of silly for us to assume that just because there's ONE Saudi prince or princess who has decided to support terrorism, that the WHOLE country should be held accountable. Last time I was over there the Royal Family numbered over 2000 members(if memory serves [img]smile.gif[/img] )

However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be scrutenizing carefully the flow of ANY funds from Saudi Arabia to the US.

[Attalus]

As I understand it, the Saudis have always played a double game, deferring to the US in foreign policy, and buying the support of the radical Islamic fundamentalists in their so-called "Universties" to keep the populance quiescent and their power and riches intact. Given that scenario, I would not be surprised that some elements of the Royal Family had terrorist links.

[Ronn_Bman]

Originally posted by Thoran: PonG - A Unix library for creating configuration dialogs. Frankly I think it's kind of silly for us to assume that just because there's ONE Saudi prince or princess who has decided to support terrorism, that the WHOLE country should be held accountable. Last time I was over there the Royal Family numbered over 2000 members(if memory serves [img]smile.gif[/img] ) However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be scrutenizing carefully the flow of ANY funds from Saudi Arabia to the US.

True, but the money in question actually came from the account of the Saudi Ambassador to the US's wife. That gives it a bit more of an "official" link.