"Bandar Bush"................."At Bandar's behest, his government arranged and paid for the airlift of the bin Laden clan from the United States to Saudi Arabia, a week after Osama was fingered in the World Trade Center attacks.
On Sept. 13, 2001, George W. Bush invited Bandar to the White House -- not to press for more liberty and less hate-financing in Saudi Arabia, which is consistently ranked in the lowest 5% of all countries in global-measured freedoms -- but to hug him and smoke cigars (according to a hair-raising profile of Bandar in the March 24 New Yorker).
Why? It helps that Barbara and George H. W. Bush have all but adopted Bandar and Haifa. "The Bushes are like my mother and father," Haifa told The New Yorker. "I know if ever I needed anything, I could go to them." In the May issue of The Atlantic, Robert Baer, a retired CIA agent, wrote that, around the Bush family Kennebunkport, Me., compound, the prince is known as "Bandar Bush."
"To this day," the elder George wrote to The New Yorker, "Bandar is the only person besides the President of the United States that Bar lets smoke in our house, although both have to do it in their room with the door closed."
The Saudi ambassador, by all press accounts, is a charming, intelligent and funny man who knows how to keep a foot (and a face) in two worlds, making himself available for arbitrage. He has many friends in Washington.
It is illegal for foreign nationals to contribute money to the American political process. There are loopholes, of course, and Bandar has worked them better than most.
"In 1992, he persuaded King Fahd to donate $20-million to the University of Arkansas' new Center for Middle Eastern Sutides, a gesture of respect for the Arkansas governor who had just been elected president," Baer reported in The Atlantic. "Many of Washington's lobbyists, PR firms, and lawyers live off Saudi money. Just about every Washington think-tank has taken it. So have the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Children's National Medical Center and every presidential library built in the past 30 years."
He's also an enthusiastic player in diplomatic intrigues. When George W. Bush needs to lean on Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, Bandar hops on his private Airbus. He often carries back-channel messages from Damascus to Cairo, Washington to Tehran. More than once, he has served as the only translator in the room in high-level meetings between Washington and Riyadh.
This enthusiasm, selective discretion and access to a medieval governing system make Bandar an all-too-tempting bagman when a U.S. president feels handcuffed by such pesky irritants as laws, journalists or decency. After Sept. 11, according to The New Yorker, Bush told Bandar that if the United States couldn't make its captured al-Qaeda divulge information, "we'll hand them over to you."
According to Amnesty International documents, known well to the State Department and White House, typical Saudi interrogation methods include "beatings with sticks, electric shocks, cigarette burns and nail-pulling."
When the Reagan administration wanted to circumvent Congressional prohibitions on supplying the Nicaraguan Contras, Bandar helped Oliver North by putting together a US$32-million Saudi funding package. The New Yorker claims his "30 or so locked attaché cases ... contain evidence of the covert operations and secret agreements that Bandar co-ordinated at the behest of King Fahd and the United States, such as records of a Swiss bank account that Bandar had personally set up for the Nicaraguan Contras."
What does Bandar get in return, besides the ambassadorial corps' only State Department-provided security detail (according to The Atlantic) and some fireside stories for his 32-room, $37-million mansion in Aspen, Colo.? A series of remarkable concessions, some of which have directly harmed U.S. national security so as to lead to the deaths of U.S. citizens. To name just two:
- Saudis, until recently, enjoyed a "Visa Express" program whereby students could get rubber-stamped temporary visas to the United States at Saudi travel agencies, without talking to an American (three of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers entered the country this way, according to Joel Mowbray, a National Review reporter). In the year after Sept. 11, only 3% of Saudi visa applicants were denied, compared with 25% worldwide, according to Mowbray.
- In several FBI investigations, from the Khobar Towers terrorist attack, to nearly 100 kidnapping cases where Saudi fathers have snatched children from U.S. mothers, the Saudis have been obstructionist, but haven't paid any price except a few congressional and media slaps on the wrist. As Senator Charles Schumer put it, "It seems every time the Saudis are involved, we stop doing a proper investigation."
Bandar and Haifa have enabled terrorists and protected terrorist suspects. They've used their millions and their access to manoeuvre around the law. In the name of national security, it's time for them to go.
Matt Welch is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles. His work is archived at www.mattwelch.com. |
