Foreign Entanglement

Hooray to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford for engaging in a foreign entanglement of the delightful sort.

But this post concerns the less desirable foreign entanglements of the body politic, such as are addressed in George Washington's statement: "'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign World." Presently there are three entanglements fitting the criteria of such alliance: the relationships between the United States and the countries of Great Britain, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Here, we gather some reporting on the latter entanglement. In Exposed: British 'BAE' Hand Behind Terror, by Jeffrey Steinberg of Lyndon LaRouche's foundation, we read that BEA was allegedly slushing money around in the same pool that was utilized by 9/11 hijackers Alhazmi and Almidar, with facilitation by two of Prince Bandar bin Sultan's men. The background for this article is in the cited June 24 New York Times.

A couple of anecdotes have surfaced recently that attest to the intimacy of the U.S. entanglement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. First, it is reported that CIA director George Tenet had a Mel Gibson moment at Bandar's pool in 2004.

This is trivial but interesting; if Tenet's relationship with Bandar was similarly cozy as of early 2001, while Ahazmi and Almidar were receiving support, albeit via intermediaries, from Bandar, questions are raised about the refusal of the CIA to open leads (concerning the presence of Alhazmi and Almidar in the U.S.) to John O'Neill's FBI investigation of al Qaeda. See Lawrence Wright's chapter "The Big Wedding," and particularly his account of the June 11, 2001 meeting with the CIA in The Looming Tower, beginning at pg. 333. This account belies Tenet's claim, in a 2007 interview with 60 Minutes, that Alhazmi and Almidar simply fells through the cracks of bureaucracy.

And in other news, former FBI director Louis Freeh is now Prince Bandar's legal spokesman, as seen in the Frontline special, Black Money. As noted in the comment from "Louisville," Freeh proved to be another obstructor to John O'Neill's investigation of Saudi relationships with al Qaeda in the years and months preceding 9/11 (when O'Neill was killed at the WTC, as the new head of security)...

"The first time I ever heard of FBI director Freeh was when I watched Frontline's "The Man Who Knew". In that program he seemed to be the one who was instrumental in getting rid of FBI agent John O'Neill. John O'Neill was the counter-terrorism expert who had been tracking Al Qaeda for six years. Is it possible that Louis Freeh was on the Saudi payroll even before 9/11, and forced O'Neill out because he was getting too close to Bin Laden and some of his Saudi friends? Is it possible that Freeh was interfering with the investigation to protect his friend Bandar?..."

And there is a history between the two. Freeh's relationship with Bandar during the Khobar Towers bombing investigation in the late '90s, suggest that he was Bandar's dupe.