“Sleeping with the Devil”: Bandar is a Super Ambassador and the Al-Saud family is buying the ruling elite in Washington

He was involved in the bombing of Bir al-Abed that was aiming at assassinating the late Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. He recounted in his first book in 2002, “The Fall of the CIA”, important chapters about chasing operations that took place between him and the commander-resistance fighter martyr Imad Mughniyeh, where he plotted a security highly structured trap against him and recruited an agent that was going to kill Imad, but Mughniyeh surprised Bayer with a phone call after that failing assassination attempt, which was carried out by that fake agent. After Lebanon, Bayer became in charge of Iraq’s file in the CIA. 

The book “Sleeping with the Devil” was published in 2003 and was not translated into Arabic, but the ‘New Orient News agency’ was able to translate some of its chapters, which were spread and are found today on several websites. It is noteworthy that not everything mentioned in this book is an irrefutable truth, although it reveals many facts about the US-Saudi relations. Hence, we will pick and choose only what could be posted on our web pages: 

Bandar is a Super Ambassador and the Al-Saud family is buying the ruling elite in Washington 
 
If I have adopted the logic of this devil so far, then it is a small step to reach to the conclusion that we in the West, as well as the Saudi rulers themselves, are in serious trouble. All components of the turmoil are in the right place: the borders are open, weapons are available, policy is in weird, there is no rule of law, the police is corrupt, the contempt of the ruling class exists, per capita income is declining, the environmental degradation is present, the neighbors are irritated, and the number of young extremists is increasing at home.

Besides this, the Schools in the Kingdom include fanatics, who rush to engage in combat wars starting from Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Angola, Somalia, to Sierra Leone... Hence, why should Saudi Arabia escape from this fate? 

A visa without restrictions for the holders of the Saudi passports, if they belong to al-Qaeda 
 
With this kind of mold, it is believed that every official map in Washington will have a red flag planted on the point named “Riyadh” to support the bureaucrats who are backed by Saudi Arabia. The truth is just the opposite. While I was writing this article in early 2003, Washington was still insisting that Saudi Arabia is a stable country, its central government controls the borders unchallenged, the police and army are on a high degree of efficiency and fidelity, and that its people dress in, eat, and learn well. 

Let’s start with the Foreign Ministry, which has a great responsibility that is bigger than the government of the bureaucratic Washington, because if its role in spreading the Big Lie about the Kingdom. Having listening to what is said around you think that Saudi Arabia is Denmark. 
Just take a look at how they deal with the visas of the Saudis ... Under the law the State Department has a responsibility to get visas abroad, for it issues them from our embassies and consulates. 

In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality Act was clear about the “capacity”. The Department of the law on granting tourist visas, section 214 (b), stated the following: “Each alien shall be presumed to be an immigrant until he establishes to the satisfaction of the consular officer... that he is entitled to a “nonimmigrant” status”. In other words, an alien who has no reason to return to his homeland - is unemployed, not married, and broken - is not eligible for getting a visa - and is supposed to stay in the United States. 

Given the high unemployment rate among the males in the Kingdom to about 30% and the decline of the per capita income to a low level, the Saudis are considered immigrants in their country (unless they are from the royal family or are their special servers). There is an inherent risk relying in the survival of the Saudis, who are seeking to earn a living in the United States while not meeting the legal qualifications to return to the Kingdom, and this is what makes things much worse. 

Under the “Visa Express system”, the Saudi person used to send his passport only, as well as the fees to the travel agent to get a visa. The Saudi travel agent was in other words acting instead of the U.S. government. The waiting period for a visa was short. Any Saudi person having money becomes on his way to New York, hides like a diamond in the Inkwell, and drives the plane around skyscrapers. 

The American Coleman barge through the issuing of the visas to the fifteen unemployed Saudis exceeded the law of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Certainly, our attempts to make this issue simple and very easy allow the majority of the forces that seek to attack us to act likewise. Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia. He blew the Saudi citizens up in the facility of the National Guard in 1995 and attacked the barracks of “Al-Khobar” in the year 1996. Two Saudis hijacked a plane to Baghdad in 2000. The Saudis indeed were behind the attack on the “Cole” barge, and hundreds of Saudis took part in other terrorist attacks, from Chechnya to Kenya and Tanzania. Does the State Department need more evidence to know that the Saudis are the “terrorists of the New World”, and that they should be held accountable and should be tightly monitored? The way of managing the issuing of visas allows Osama bin Laden himself to infiltrate the United States. 

Washington protects the Saudi regime from international accountability 

The U.S. State Department granted the Saudi rulers an opportunity to pass almost everything. It protects the Saudis from human rights groups, and backs them by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It ignored the incident of the National Guard and the bombings of “Al-Khobar”. For example, the State Department’s report in 1999: “Patterns of Global Terrorism”, the section on Saudi Arabia, says: “The Saudi Arabian government re-affirmed, at all levels, its commitment to fight against terrorism”. The report goes on: “As the government of Saudi Arabia continued to investigate the bombing of June 1996 on “Al-Khobar” towers.

But we know it was a big lie, for “Naif” did nothing to reach to final results in the related investigation. However, there were a lot of events that happened in 1999, but the State did not want us to know them. In that year, “Naif” released two clerics who issued Fatwas to kill Americans, and one of them was “Safar al-Hawali”. At the same time, the fifteen hijackers were recruited and indoctrinated in Saudi mosques, where this was considered as a great job in terms of the “commitment” of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

The United States does not say the truth to the Americans, who are traveling to Saudi Arabia, but it advises the American citizens to leave the country. It did not warn Saudi Arabia never about the counter-terrorism cooperation. When I often tell the colleagues that the kingdom could collapse one day, they “mock” and say: “There are no problems”. The royal family is such as the fingers of the hand when it feels threatened, it strengthens its grip, but the reality is that when the Al-Saud family members were threatened, they translated this by sending more money to the fanatics, and the United States has thus granted more visas. 

The United States did not turn a blind eye to the Islamic radicalism in the policy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but sometimes incited so. Washington was aware that Saudi Arabia intends to run gas pipelines and oil through Afghanistan from Central Asia to Pakistan, to help the Taliban to stay powerful and to ensure that Bin Laden has a safe haven. However, the United States participated with it, and encouraged U.S. companies to participate as well. 

Oil partnerships with Taliban, and providing a shelter to “Bin Laden” 

I’ve been taught a short course on the policy of the Afghan pipeline on February 4, 1997, when I was introduced to the Afghan pipeline (its name was deleted). The person, whose name was deleted, was being sent by the United States Department to the National Security Council to keep me informed about the “Unocal blueprint”- the Gas pipeline that the Taliban government rejected to approve its passage in the Afghan territory. The story is that the Central Asian republics that were part of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, were rich in gas and oil dramatically, and those countries that are with no view of any nautical port need a way to transfer these natural resources to the global market, and this need led them to think of establishing a pipeline that would achieve this purpose. Thus, there are a number of possible ways through which this pipeline could pass, but all of these ways were characterized by political complications that make the achievement of the project possible. The shortest path out of these paths was through Iran, but this country is subject to economic sanctions by the United States, while the other ways that pass through Russia and China were also rejected by the United States. Therefore, the U.S. oil company (Unocal) suggested extending the gas and oil pipelines from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan. 

Osama bin Laden is the Saudi terrorist who is made by America. Despite the ongoing civil war and tightening the grip of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the “Unocal” sought to move forward with the pipelines. As calculated, operating the gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan could cost two billion dollars, and a parallel oil pipeline will add another 2.5 billion dollars. Thus, putting this amount of money in a country that is in the midst of a civil war was a risky investment. 

That person (his name was deleted) was right when he said that Unocal is not alone. J. P. Morgan and the “Cambridge Energy Research” prepared a study of the structures of payment from government to government in order to secure the loan of the World Bank.
“Unocal” was linked to the former U.S. Ambassador Bob Oakley, one of the best friends of Saudi Arabia in Washington. A large number of giant companies promised to work, including Fluor Daniel, because “Unocal” was officially blessed. 

A week later, on February 13, 1997, he (whose name is deleted) asked “Unocal” to build a road from “Turghundi” to “Spin Boldak” and to invest money in the schools of Kandahar and in the mosques. I have no idea if “Unocal” built the road, but if it did so, I wonder if Bin Laden used it to escape. 

Even after the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which were organized by Bin Laden from Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia continued to help its host Taliban. In July 2000, the “Petroleum Intelligence Weekly” stated that Saudi Arabia was sending up to 150,000 barrels of oil per day to Afghanistan and Pakistan not included within the foreign aids. Saudi Arabia was the first to use this tactic i.e. to send oil instead of cash money. 

Turkey, Pakistan, and Morocco did likewise in 1990, and Bahrain was alone receiving 150,000 barrels per day within a known aid package. We can only “guess” the motives of the Al-Saud to spend all this money even when the Kingdom was in deficit and was paralyzed. According to press reports, Saudi Arabia began in mid-1970 to allocate one billion dollars to Pakistan to help it develop an “Islamic” nuclear bomb to confront the “Hindu” nuclear threat from the neighboring India. Saudi Arabia has been able to keep a little adventure with its American allies, until early 1990. 

The secret Saudi aid to Taliban amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the kingdom continued to send money even after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not complaint yet, so we should never be surprised when the United States does not insist on the interviews for visas in the course of September 11, 2001. If you want to visit U.S.A., leave a “postcard” and you will arrive there!