"What would you think the Saudis' position would be, if they knew what they had done, they knew that the United States knew what they had done, and they also observed that the United States had taken a position of either passivity, or actual hostility to letting those facts be known?"
The US has turned a blind eye to the Saudi relationship with bin Laden since the end of the Cold War.
A classified US intelligence report revealed by journalist Gerald Posner in his book Why America Slept (2003), confirmed that the US was fully aware of a secret deal struck in April 1991 between Saudi Arabia and bin Laden, then under house arrest in the kingdom. Under the deal, bin Laden could leave the kingdom with his funding and supporters, and continue to receive financial support from the Saudi royal family, on one condition: that he refrain from targeting and destabilising the Saudi kingdom itself.
After 9/11, a former head of Taliban intelligence, Mohammed Khaksar, gave sworn statements to US intelligence alleging that in 1998, Prince Turki al-Faisal (then Saudi intelligence chief) had renewed this deal with bin Laden. Saudi Arabia agreed to provide material aid to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, along with continued funding to bin Laden through Saudi charities and businesses. In return, al-Qaeda agreed not to attack Saudi targets.
And in 2005, when the Saudis were accelerating support to groups linked to al-Qaeda as part of the Bush 'redirection' to counter Iran, bin Laden was being protected by Pakistani intelligence with Saudi funding.
Former Canadian diplomat Prof. Peter Dale Scott, a leading authority on US covert operations, writes about this nexus in his landmark book American Deep State (2014), published by the University of California Press. He argues that US protection of Saudi Arabia's terrorism infrastructure boils down to the existence of "a vital triangle at the heart of the American deep state, in which oil companies paid Saudi Arabia for oil; Saudi Arabia paid the US arms industry for planes and weapons, and the resulting huge arms contracts paid for of-the-books US covert operations like Iran-Contra."
This nexus of power undermines establishment claims that "the wars fought by America in Asia since 9/11 have been part of a global 'war on terror.'" In reality, says Scott, this "pseudowar" has been fought "in alliance with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Pakistan"--"precisely the principal political and financial backers of the al-Qaedist networks the United States has supposedly been fighting."
That compartmentalised nexus of power was responsible for harbouring Osama bin Laden since the very beginning.
After 9/11, the CIA issued a formal denial of having ever had a direct relationship with bin Laden:
"Numerous comments in the media recently have reiterated a widely circulatedbut incorrect notion that the CIA once had a relationship with Usama Bin Laden. For the record, you should know that the CIA never employed, paid, or maintained any relationship whatsoever with Bin Laden."
This is false, but throws light on how the bin Laden operation was outsourced to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan precisely to enable the US to deny responsibility.
In 1984, bin Laden and his mentor, Abdullah Azzam, established the charity front, Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) (which means "Services Office"), also known as al-Kifah, to funnel money, arms and fighters to Afghanistan. Bin Laden himself moved to Peshawar, a Pakistani town bordering Afghanistan, to help run MAK.
The 9/11 Commission Report describes MAK as the "precursor organisation to al-Qaeda," but denies that MAK received any assistance from the US in the context of the war against the Soviets.
Yet as Michael Moran reported for MSNBC, "What the CIA bio conveniently fails to specify (in its unclassified form, at least) is that the MAK was nurtured by Pakistan's state security services, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, the CIA's primary conduit for conducting the covert war against Moscow's occupation."
The ISI's handling of bin Laden's MAK was done under the rubric of the CIA, by way of 'plausible deniability.' In his book Prelude to Terror: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty, the Rogue CIA and the Compromising of American Intelligence (2005), investigative journalist Joseph Trento, formerly of CNN's Special Assignment unit and now at the National Security News Service, reported:
"Azzam joined forces with bin Laden in operating a recruiting center"--"Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK"--"Services Office). Though this was all fully known to the CIA, the Agency's regional experts asked no questions" CIA money was actually funneled to MAK, since it was recruiting young men to come join the jihad in Afghanistan. (This information comes from a former CIA officer who actually filed these reports; we can't identify him here because at the time of the writing of this book, he was back in Afghanistan as a private contractor)."
Trento goes on to note that "bin Laden's opening MAK branch offices in the United States, Europe, and Asia was applauded by the CIA." By some estimates, the MAK network recruited over 25,000 foreign jihadis into the Afghan war.
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