Sand Storm
Saudi Arabia does not allow US to gather intelligence there; various people discuss how terrorists find haven and recruits in Saudi Arabia
by Katie Couric; John Hockenberry; and Bob Mckeown
Dateline NBC
August 25, 2002
Announcer: From our studios in New York, here is Stone Phillips.
STONE PHILLIPS: Good evening. Know your enemy. That's a cardinal rule when a country's at war. But in the war on terrorism, this country may also need to know more about its friends, and one friend in particular.
By now, it's well known that Saudi Arabia was home to 15 of the September 11th hijackers. How did America's most important Arab ally become a breeding ground for anti-American terrorists? And why didn't we know it was happening? Could it be we simply chose not to look? As John Hockenberry discovered, when it comes to America's relationship with the Saudis, the cardinal rule seems to be, "See no evil." KATIE COURIC reporting: (Voiceover) Apparently a plane has just crashed into the World Trade Center here in New York City.
(Text of story name and production people)
Offscreen Voice #1: A large plane headed directly for the World Trade Center. Oh, another one just hit.
Offscreen Voice #2: ...crashed, a large plane just north of the...
Offscreen Voice #3: ...skeleton collapsed into the street.
Offscreen Voice #4: An obvious terrorist attack.
Prince TURKI AL-FAISAL: Very good to meet you.
JOHN HOCKENBERRY reporting: (Foreign language spoken)
Prince TURKI: (Foreign language spoken)
HOCKENBERRY: Well, there are many places to view this, but this is certainly one, right here.
Prince TURKI: This is incredible.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) This quiet man could be any one of the millions of people who have made a pilgrimage to ground zero.
(Turki al-Faisal talking to reporter)
Prince TURKI: It's really something that just overwhelms one. These kinds of acts are always misguided.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Here at ground zero, he comes to gaze solemnly on the work of some of his not-so-loyal subjects. Half a world away, in Arabia, he is His Royal Highness Prince Turki al-Faisal. Of the 19 hijackers on September 11th, 15 were Saudis. A modern miracle in the middle of a barren desert, a land of holy mosques and unholy riches, a land of almost frightening religious unity and bitter political rivalry--Saudi Arabia. No Arab nation has had a closer or longer relationship with the United States. It's an alliance built on one thing: oil. Beneath the shifting sands, vast oceans of black gold. After 70 years, still the source of 20 percent of US oil. On the surface, a simple, lucrative relationship.
(Turki talking to reporter; Turki in Arabia; photos of hijackers; Saudi Arabia; gate in wall; men worshipping; sun setting; American flag; sand; people at gas pumps)
Mr. BOB BAER: It is probably the most troubling relationship I've ever seen.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) For 30 years, Bob Baer was a dedicated field operative for the CIA in the Middle East. A decorated spy, fluent in Arabic, a trusted agent in a treacherous region, Baer left the CIA in 1997, his book "See No Evil" is a detailed, if disturbing, glimpse into the US/Saudi relationship, as he saw it.
(Bob Baer; photos of Baer; Baer; book cover)
Mr. BAER: We can't do anything in Saudi Arabia. We don't spy in Saudi Arabia.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Despite decades of being on the same side, he says the US knows virtually nothing about Saudi Arabia.
(Soldiers)
HOCKENBERRY: Do you think Saudi Arabia collects intelligence?
Mr. BAER: Oh, yeah. Of course they do.
HOCKENBERRY: Do we get access to that information?
Mr. BAER: No, no. I've never seen it.
HOCKENBERRY: Never?
Mr. BAER: Never.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) And so buried in the rubble of the worst attack on US soil was a chilling realization: our blindness to Saudi Arabia had provided cover for the best financed and most ruthless terrorists in history. How did we miss this? Bob Baer says it's because Saudi Arabia is the black hole in American intelligence.
(World Trade Center wreckage; excerpts from al-Qaeda training video)
Mr. BAER: If I want to know about the Saudi royal family, the last places I would go to is government computers, for instance--National Security Agency, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency--because there's nothing in them.
HOCKENBERRY: Well, maybe your security clearance wasn't high enough.
Mr. BAER: Believe me, I had plenty high security clearance. I mean, I was on the director of intelligence's computer in the Middle East.
HOCKENBERRY: If you couldn't find it, it wasn't findable?
Mr. BAER: No.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Not findable, because the rules of the US/Saudi arrangement trumped everything, including national security, he says.
(American and Saudi Arabian flags; US seal)
Mr. BAER: It really was "See no evil."
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) We asked the CIA to respond to the assertions Bob Baer makes in our report and his book. They declined. The 70-year modern history of Saudi Arabia is virtually unknown to the Americans who have so benefited from Saudi oil. Before oil, this was a primitive land of barbaric fiefdoms.
(CIA headquarters; people in Saudi Arabia; fire on refinery stack; fortress ruins)
(Excerpt shown from "Lawrence of Arabia")
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Exotic and fierce, perfect for Hollywood, where the Saudi desert was an unforgettable co-star in the film, "Lawrence of Arabia." Tribal clans fought colonial empires of the East and West until 1932 when one of the clans, the House of Saud, consolidated power in the city of Riyadh and established the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And the handshake between a president and a king quite literally fueled a nation of Americans behind the wheel. Every modern president has kept the Saudi royal family close. More than an ally, friends, business partners. A poor kingdom became a modern industrial nation. The House of Saud was suddenly running the most lucrative family business in world history.
(Excerpts shown from "Lawrence of Arabia"; video of Arabian battle; photo of Riyadh; Saudi Arabia; photo of Arabians and Franklin Roosevelt; old video of cars driving; video of Harry Truman and Arabians; video of Richard Nixon and Arab; video of Jimmy Carter and Arab; video of Ronald Reagan and Arabs; video of George Bush and Arabs; video of Bill Clinton receiving medal from Arabs; modern Arab city; Arabs working oil drill; oil refinery)
Prince TURKI: And where did most of our money go? To American companies who came and participated with us in the construction of--of the kingdom. So, a lot of the wealth in your--in your industry here and your commerce comes from the kingdom.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) The son of a king, Prince Turki al-Faisal, witnessed his nation's remarkable transformation. Overnight a deeply primitive and deeply religious people were caught in an updraft of unimaginable wealth. A literal time warp of modernism.
(Turki talking to reporter; high-speed video of city being built; modern city)
Prince TURKI: We have leaped, in terms of civilization, from the 15th or 16th century AD to the 21st and 22nd century AD in a period of 70 years.
(Voiceover) It brought our people from a level of extreme poverty to a level of well-off wealth.
(Photo of Riyadh in 1932; Riyadh in 2002)
HOCKENBERRY: Some would say extreme wealth.
Prince TURKI: Well, there are extremes in every society. But, the average Saudi lives a good life.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) A royally good life, at least that's what it looked like at the top of the food chain. And as long as the oil flowed, there was no reason to question what lay hidden behind the veil of this deeply religious society.
(Reporter and Turki touring city; Riyadh)
Mr. BAER: It's oil. Oil, oil, oil. Cheap oil.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) "Cheap oil," two words, all Americans ever needed to know about Saudi Arabia. Even to the CIA, Bob Baer says, any intelligence that wasn't about barrels per day has always been non-existent.
(Sand; oil refinery)
Mr. BAER: We didn't know the birth rate in Saudi Arabia until we found out from Pampers. Because they knew. They told us how many diapers they were selling. That's the only reason we knew.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) While the CIA counted diapers, gathering scraps of information, a terrorist had the big picture -- tapping a vast pool of young Saudi men who, it turns out, were prime candidates for radicalism. Most important, they were invisible to US intelligence because, Bob Baer says, the royal family wanted no one poking around in Saudi Arabia's shadows.
(CIA headquarters; excerpt from al-Qaeda training video)
Mr. BAER: No one in the White House is ready to take on the Saudi royal family. The deliberate blindness came from the top. Because the orders were--and they're implicit--'Do not collect information on Saudi Arabia because we're going to risk annoying the royal family.'
HOCKENBERRY: "Annoying the royal family?"
Mr. BAER: The royal--yes. I mean, don't even look at it as a conspiracy. It's a consent of silence. The fundamentalists get what they want, the royal family gets what they want, American contractors and business get what they want. It's catastrophic scenario. Because we don't want to know. We want to postpone the day of reckoning.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) That day of reckoning, a crisp sunny morning, September 11th, 2001, a day that ended with an urgent question: what is behind the curtain of oil and silence in the US/Saudi arrangement? What would we find if we could see inside this land of wealth and suicide bombers? An answer, when we come back.
(Smoke from World Trade Center bombing; gate in wall; refinery; men talking at table; gate in wall)
(Announcements)
Announcer: Sand Storm, tonight's DATELINE Special, continues.
Prince TURKI: There are a lot of question marks being put on Saudi Arabia. 'What is Saudi Arabia? Why Saudi Arabia? Who is Saudi Arabia?'
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Amazingly, these basic questions about a US ally are being asked for the very first time, and the answers can only be found here, in Saudi Arabia--a land rich in oil, history and religion, yet off limits to non-Muslims, tourists and especially journalists. But with Prince Turki al-Faisal as our guide, this land opened up to DATELINE's cameras.
(Saudi Arabia; empty building; people walking in city; men talking; woman riding on camel; oil refinery; people in city; Turki)
Prince TURKI: The local tribes, the local...
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) This is what US presidents see when they're the guests of the Saudi royal family. It's a hospitality familiar to oil barons and generals who plotted strategy while feasting on whole goats, resting on soft pillows, safe inside the Saudi royal bubble.
(Reporter eating with Arab men)
Prince TURKI: Are you comfortable?
HOCKENBERRY: How could I not be?
(Voiceover) On this day the menu is traditional whole roast lamb from the prince's own herd, served without the skin but with the head. The table, or rug, is set with a truckload of sterling silver flatware for an occasion where it's most polite to eat with one's fingers. When you travel there is only one class of service: first. Our caravan of white 12-cylinder Mercedes sedans whisks past every checkpoint with a salute.
(Men eating; servants uncovering dishes; reporter eating with fingers; people getting into car; checkpoint)
Prince TURKI: On the right, you have the palace of Prince Sultan. And on the left is the palace of the ambassador to the United States.
HOCKENBERRY: This is the king's?
Prince TURKI: The king's compound.
HOCKENBERRY: It makes the White House look like--a little bit like a Holiday Inn.
Prince TURKI: We're going to show you some ostriches today.
HOCKENBERRY: Great.
(Voiceover) The ostriches are just one of three herds of animals. There are also goats and African elk.
After a day at the ranch, it's back to the palace for dinner for a few dozen of the prince's closest friends--all men. You could be forgiven for thinking the whole country lived this way, but you'd be wrong. Away from the palaces, on the streets where no royals go, it looks a lot like Scottsdale, Arizona, at first, from McDonald's and Wendy's right down to the mocha frappaccino at Starbucks. There are glittery strip malls everywhere. It's more like suburb Arabia than a kingdom in the desert, and on store shelves you can find the Pillsbury doughboy right around the corner from the camel's milk.
But five times a day, the call to prayer is a reminder that we're nowhere near Arizona. This nation's government is quite literally God's enforcer. The law of the land here is the Koran. The Muslim holy book is Saudi Arabia's constitution.
(Ostriches; sheep; goats; African elk; men in palace; men sitting at table for dinner; men smoking in cafe; people riding bus; Riyadh; McDonald's; Starbucks; mall; people in mall; items on grocery store shelves; city; statue; billboard in Arabic; Arabians in city; statue of hands)
HOCKENBERRY: Saudi Arabia is built on the notion you can have it all--that the ancient, the modern, the rich, the poor, the desert and the urban can all be balanced together without conflict indefinitely, and it's worked so far.
Ms. KHALOOD KHATANI: Our identity is Islam, and at the end it's the traditions we have. We are a conservative society.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Journalist Khalood Khatani speaks proudly, if defensively, about the rules for women in Saudi Arabia: Islamic work restrictions and the wearing of Islamic dress in public.
(Khalood Khatani; woman in Islamic dress)
Ms. KHATANI: But when it comes to our religion, it's God's order, and we don't do it by force. We love to do this.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Women can't drive here or mingle in public with men who aren't relatives. Dating is radical. Arranged marriages are the norm. In this modern-looking city you can actually go watch this--a beheading--on your Friday lunch hour. This is the penalty for drug traffickers. Steal a loaf of bread, they cut off your hand. These practices, and a justice and prison system closed to independent scrutiny, have put Saudi Arabia on human rights groups' short list of most repressive regimes.
Cranes may signify boom times for the royals building their princely palaces and skyscrapers, but income for ordinary Saudis has descended into a pit of economic stagnation. Twenty years ago, the average Saudi income was about the same as the average American's, $22,000. Today, it's barely a third of that. On the ordinary streets of Riyadh, for DATELINE's cameras--or for US intelligence agents, had they looked--fear is unmistakable.
(Women in market place; people in Saudi Arabia; men talking at table; man beheading person with sword; person tied up and kneeling; books on Saudi Arabia; building under construction; city; cars driving; people in Saudi Arabia)
Unidentified Man #1: On the street, no people can--cannot speak. On the street, nobody can speak.
Mr. BAER: You take the word, "Saudi Arabia," it means the property of the al-Saud family. They own the country and they treat everybody like servants. You have--you go and you kiss people's hands. They can seize your property. They can do anything they want. They can put you in jail on a whim.
HOCKENBERRY: But how does that explain why 15 people would kill themselves to fly into twin towers in New York and the Pentagon?
Mr. BAER: It's the same like, you know, somebody in the ghetto takes a tech nine and robs a liquor store. There is--there's no chance of getting work. There's humiliation.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Among ordinary Saudis former CIA Middle East specialist Bob Baer says, there's simmering economic discontent. And no one--not the administration nor the Saudi government, says Baer--pays any attention. Prince Turki al-Faisal says the whole idea of Saudi discontent is preposterous.
(City; people in market place)
HOCKENBERRY: Bin Laden's suggestion and others' suggestion that the royal family is out of touch with the people in this country?
Prince TURKI: They can't be out of touch because on a weekly basis, the leadership in the kingdom meets with literally thousands of Saudis, man to man, face to face, like you and I sitting like this.
HOCKENBERRY: Except they can't vote.
Prince TURKI: What--voting has nothing to do with expressing your opinion.
HOCKENBERRY: Well...
Prince TURKI: When you sit in front of your leader...
HOCKENBERRY: ...we fought a couple of wars about that.
Prince TURKI: Well, you did. We didn't have to, (foreign word spoken) Allah.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) But perhaps the royal family wouldn't like what they might hear if the Saudi people could really talk back. Before we turned on the camera, that nervous shopkeeper back on the streets of Riyadh wanted us to know that Osama bin Laden is considered a hero by ordinary Saudis. But on camera, his candor about bin Laden and anything else suddenly vanished.
(People in city; shopkeeper talking to reporter)
HOCKENBERRY: So you're not allowed to talk about the government.
Man #1: No, we never can.
HOCKENBERRY: Never can.
Man #1: No.
HOCKENBERRY: If you go on the streets of Riyadh and Jeddah and say, 'Who's a hero of the Islamic world?' nobody's going to say "King Fahd," right?
Mr. JAMAL KHASHOGGI: The public might--the young public might say Osama bin Laden.
HOCKENBERRY: Might?
Mr. KHASHOGGI: And...
HOCKENBERRY: We've heard it.
Mr. KHASHOGGI: Yes, you heard it.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Jamal Khashoggi is the editor of Saudi Arabia's largest English daily, The Arab News.
(Jamal Khashoggi)
Mr. KHASHOGGI: And that's not only in Saudi Arabia. You will hear that in Egypt. You will hear it in Indonesia. His T-shirts are being sold in Indonesia.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) T-shirts, not for a rock star, for a terrorist who preaches holy war. Osama bin Laden's private jihad: first to oust the royal family, then to expel American troops, finally, against America itself. And in a land where the royal family holds all the cards, jobs and opportunities, Kashoggi says that bin Laden's jihad has become a career choice for more than a few.
(Video of Osama bin Laden; Arab men greeting; soldiers marching; American flag; city; people shopping; boy sitting)
Mr. KHASHOGGI: It's very unfortunate. The--the spirit of jihadi is a bad sign, should be examined.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) But our guide to Saudi Arabia and the man we first met at ground zero has been watching Islamic radicalism in his kingdom for 25 years. He's the former head of Saudi intelligence. In fact, Saudi spymaster Prince Turki al-Faisal watched the world's most dangerous man grow up.
(Turki talking to reporter; Turki; photo of bin Laden)
HOCKENBERRY: On more than one occasion you were as far away from bin Laden as I am to you, right?
Prince TURKI: Yes. Four or five times.
HOCKENBERRY: Four or five times?
Prince TURKI: Yes.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) But as we'll discover, the Saudi spymaster's failed attempts to stop Osama bin Laden are both his personal legacy and his personal agony.
(Turki)
(Announcements)
Announcer: Sand Storm, a DATELINE Special, will continue after this brief message.
(Announcements)
Announcer: We now return to Sand Storm.
Prince TURKI: This man is--is a criminal, and a criminal on an equal scale of the worst criminals that you have in history--Attila the Hun, Hitler.
Mr. BAER: He could bring down Saudi Arabia's oil industry, bring down the royal family, send gasoline up to $120 a barrel.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Former Saudi spymaster prince Turki al-Faisal and former CIA terrorism investigator Bob Baer now agree Osama bin Laden is the world's most dangerous terrorist. But once, he was just another rich guy in Saudi Arabia with a name as close to royalty as you can get: bin Laden. Their construction billions made them A-list in the kingdom. But Osama wasn't satisfied. In Afghanistan, during the 1980s fighting the Soviets, he became more than just a rich Saudi, he became a rich holy warrior. And in 1990 when Osama had an idea about liberating Kuwait with his own army of holy warriors, he went right to chief of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al-Faisal.
(Turki; Baer; video of bin Laden; bin Laden Group sign; scenes of battle; Arab fighters; soldiers marching)
Prince TURKI: Thereby not needing General Schwarzkopf and--and the other American soldiers who came to help us liberate Kuwait from--from the Iraqi invasion.
HOCKENBERRY: So he came to the royal family and said, 'Forget Desert Storm, I can do it.'
Prince TURKI: Forget--absolutely.
HOCKENBERRY: 'Me and my Mujahadeen.'
Prince TURKI: Absolutely. Of course, he was turned down. Ludicrous plan, ludicrous idea. That, obviously, embittered him.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Bitter perhaps because in his view, Saudi Arabia's royal family was paying the non-Muslim USA to fight the war with Iraq for them. Osama bin laden turned on the royal family. Calling for the overthrow of the House of Saud was a national scandal from a bin Laden. The government stripped him of his citizenship. He began an exile in Sudan. In 1995 Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda made its first strike on Saudi soil, killing five Americans in this bombing at a Saudi military training center in downtown Riyadh. One year later there was a chance to put him away.
(Video of bin Laden; soldiers and tanks; video of bin Laden; bombed military training center)
Mr. BAER: In 1996, Sudan offered bin Laden to Saudi Arabia. And Turki's response was 'We don't want him. He's too popular here.'
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Bin Laden had become a popular symbol. For whatever reason, the Saudis would not risk the political cost of arresting him and putting him on trial for treason. Prince Turki admits they blinked.
(Video of bin Laden; Turki talking to reporter)
Prince TURKI: There were opportunities--at least, on the part of the kingdom--that we did not try to take, particularly in trying to get our hands on bin Laden.
HOCKENBERRY: Osama bin Laden was way too hot to handle for Turki al-Faisal.
Mr. BAER: Absolutely. They don't like bin Laden, but he's a phenomenon.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) And Bob Baer says the US had its own chance to get bin Laden on his way from Sudan to Afghanistan. Nothing was done.
(Baer)
Mr. BAER: The Clinton White House said, 'Forget Afghanistan. It's not a problem. We're not going to worry about bin Laden in '96. We don't care if he goes from Sudan to Afghanistan.' We knew about...
HOCKENBERRY: Could they have taken him out?
Mr. BAER: Well, probably. I mean, we knew about it because the Saudis came to us and said, 'Listen, we've been offered this guy, we can't take him.' He wasn't a menace in '96. But on the other hand, we didn't know whether he was a menace or not because we didn't have any intelligence.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) In an interview with NBC News, former Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger denied there was an opportunity to get bin Laden before he went to Afghanistan. But the Saudis were still paying attention.
(Sandy Berger; bin Laden wanted poster; Turki talking to reporter)
Prince TURKI: We kept a watchful eye on him--what he does, where he goes, and things like that.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) And they discovered that bin Laden was stepping up his opposition to the kingdom from Afghanistan. The Saudi government decided something had to be done. The prince went to Kandahar to see Taliban leader Mullah Omar to get him to give up bin Laden.
(Soldiers practising shooting in Afghanistan; Mullah Omar)
Prince TURKI: And initially at that first meeting, Mullah Omar seemed amenable.
(Voiceover) He agreed in principle to do that.
(Photo of Omar)
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) A second meeting was arranged, presumably to discuss details of a bin Laden hand-over.
(Video of bin Laden)
Prince TURKI: In the second meeting, he started using abusive terms about the kingdom and, 'Why do you want to arrest a worthy Muslim like bin Laden?'
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) It was that meeting, Prince Turki says, that sealed the fate of Mullah Omar, the Taliban and Osama bin Laden.
(Cave being blown up)
Prince TURKI: So I stopped the meeting, and I said, 'Look, I'm not going to take any more of this abuse.' But--and as I was leaving, I remember telling him, 'Remember, this action that you're taking is going to bring harm not just to you but to Afghanistan.' And I left.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Nearly a year after the attacks on New York and Washington, today the Taliban is in shambles, Afghanistan is an occupied nation, and Osama bin Laden is nowhere to be found. For the record, prince Turki believes Osama bin Laden is still alive. Bob Baer says if he is alive it's not a matter of luck.
(Explosion in Afghanistan; soldiers marching through Afghanistan; explosions in Afghanistan; helicopter; American soldiers; Baer talking to reporter)
HOCKENBERRY: Do you think the Saudis know where Osama bin Laden is?
Mr. BAER: I think they know where he is. Somebody's protecting Osama bin Laden. How do you disappear with 38 family members, Mullah Omar and all these people and just go into a cave, you know? These caves aren't bottomless. They didn't wander across the Pamir Mountains like the "Sound of Music" or something.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) The idea of a wanted terrorist finding a refuge in Saudi Arabia is not as far-fetched as it may seem. In fact, the idea is the basis of a $100 trillion lawsuit filed by victims of September 11th.
(City; press conference in Washington, DC)
Unidentified Man #2: That kingdom sponsors this terrorism; it pays the victims--the so-called "martyrs"--for killing people.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Named in that lawsuit, Prince Turki al-Faisal, who plaintiffs say failed to apprehend bin Laden and paid protection money to keep him from attacking the Saudi kingdom. It's something the prince vehemently denies.
(Turki)
Prince TURKI: We never paid anybody any ransom money, or any hostage money, definitely not bin Laden.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) But the combination of US blindness and a closed Saudi Arabia Bob Baer says was deadly.
(White House; Baer)
Mr. BAER: These people are not our friends. It's a hermit kingdom. They don't cooperate with us on intelligence. They don't cooperate with us on what's going on inside their country.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) And Baer says when they don't cooperate, the US, despite its superpower leverage, apparently can do little about it. The result: a massive security blind spot. We found that first hand, on the streets of Jeddah, with this man. A man on the Bush administration's list for financing terror, but is he at all worried about being arrested by the Saudi government, one of America's closest allies? We asked him.
(Baer; Yasin al-Qadi)
HOCKENBERRY: You're not going to get pulled over by Saudi police?
Mr. YASIN AL-QADI: No, no. I'm living my life here in Saudi Arabia without any problem.
(Announcements)
Announcer: We now continue with Sand Storm, tonight's DATELINE Special.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) He is a Saudi millionaire, Yasin al-Qadi, number 38 on a presidential order accusing him of financing terror. A rich Saudi, who the US accuses of using his Islamic charity to funnel millions of dollars to Osama bin Laden.
(Al-Qadi; presidential order; al-Qadi)
Presidential GEORGE W. BUSH: (From file footage) We will starve the terrorists of funding and bring them to justice.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) So you might expect that a front-line ally in the war on terrorism would arrest those targeted by the president of the United States, or seize them for extradition, or at least pick them up for questioning, maybe even send them a friendly warning. But you wouldn't expect this.
(Al-Qadi talking to reporter)
HOCKENBERRY: So, your government is protecting you?
Mr. AL-QADI: Yes, of course.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) He's not terribly worried about being on the US list.
(Al-Qadi talking to reporter)
HOCKENBERRY: You're not going to get pulled over by Saudi police?
Mr. AL-QADI: No, no. I'm living my life here in Saudi Arabia without any problem.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Al-Qadi admits he gave money to Osama bin Laden for humanitarian work. And sounding a bit like an artful accountant, he explains that bin Laden's terrorism was a whole other enterprise. He gave nothing to that.
(Video of bin Laden; al-Qadi talking to reporter; video of bin Laden)
Mr. AL-QADI: We didn't gave one cent to al-Qaeda. And we challenge anybody to bring anything saying that we gave even one cent to al-Qaeda.
Prince TURKI: It's part of our religion that you give part of your income to charity. And if some of that money has gone where it was not intended to--you can take my word for it. I mean, no Saudi charity-giver wants either to breed terrorists or to create other Osama bin Ladens.
Mr. BAER: Here's the way it works. Saudi Arabia sends money to charities, which then give money to the terrorists, bin Laden in particular. It gives them plausible denial. It keeps the people around the charities quiet. They turn around and give the money--they buy arms. We've watched them buy arms with this money.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Even accused financiers of terror need cash from time to time, so we took a stroll to a street-corner ATM machine to gauge the reach of the US war on terror.
(Al-Qadi talking to reporter)
HOCKENBERRY: So how many cards do you have, Yasin?
Mr. AL-QADI: Five cards at the moment.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) So are his bank cards plastic money or frozen assets? It's a critical test. A working card from this ATM could be used to transfer cash to terrorists around the world.
(Al-Qadi at ATM machine)
TEXT:
(On ATM screen) SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE
YOUR CARD HAS BEEN RETAINED
PLEASE CONTACT YOUR BANK
HOCKENBERRY: It ate your card. It took it.
Mr. AL-QADI: (Foreign word spoken)? Finished? They took it?
HOCKENBERRY: Yes, they took your card. You're laughing.
Mr. AL-QADI: What do you want me to say? We say sometimes in Arabic, (foreign phrase spoken). 'When it is too bad, so many--so much bad, you just have to laugh.' I mean, what can you do?
HOCKENBERRY: What can you do? You want to try another one, or you want to hold...
Mr. AL-QADI: I'm afraid we will lose all our cards.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) At worst he seemed annoyed by the war on terrorism. But when al-Qadi moments later offered to buy us coffee in a hotel cafe, one of his cards worked--to our surprise, and his surprise.
(Al-Qadi talking to reporter)
Mr. AL-QADI: This is good news for me today. It seems somebody missed something.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) The Treasury Department declined our request to answer questions about al-Qadi on camera. But in a statement to DATELINE said it stands by the names on its list, saying they are "rightly designated." Without addressing why al-Qadi is walking around free, the Treasury Department told us the US government "is pleased with and appreciates the actions taken by the Saudis" in the war on terror.
(Al-Qadi talking to reporter; statement; excerpts from statement)
Prince KHALID AL-FAISAL: The Saudi government is taking this problem and facing this problem is--is the right way.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) His Royal Highness Prince Khalid al-Faisal is prince Turki's brother and is the governor of Asir Province.
(Khalid al-Faisal talking to reporter)
Prince KHALID: They are doing what is good for the country, what is good for the people of Saudi Arabia.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Yet many of the hijackers grew up in the province that this powerful member of the Saudi royal family controls.
(Asir Province)
Prince KHALID: The Saudis are the friends of the Americans. But they cannot be the "yes man" of the Americans.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) In fact, finding exactly what the US and Saudi Arabia can agree on these days is challenging--from the unrest in Israel, to what to do about Saddam Hussein. The Saudis took the unusual step this summer to buy commercial time to present these television ads. 'The US/Saudi arrangement is alive and well,' they would have you believe.
(American flag; American and Saudi flags; Israeli tanks; Saddam Hussein; Saudi ad)
(Excerpt from Saudi ad)
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) The slickly produced ad campaign papers over what are perhaps the deepest secrets inside Saudi Arabia: quiet, disgruntled, ultimately angry young men, bitter about Saudi Arabia's place in the world and looking for revenge and a leader, finding Osama bin Laden.
(Saudi Arabia; men in Saudi Arabia; video of bin Laden)
HOCKENBERRY: That despair is the resource that al-Qaeda draws upon?
Mr. BAER: Boredom, despair. It just all adds up.
HOCKENBERRY: And all factors that the US intelligence community couldn't, even if it wanted to, investigate?
Mr. BAER: Yes. We should have known how deep it was.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Perhaps it is only the families of the hijackers who had any chance of understanding this.
(Photos of hijackers)
HOCKENBERRY: To people in America, your two brothers are terrorists.
(Voiceover) When we return, a journey home to the place where the terror was born.
(Road; Saudi Arabian city; Alshehri home)
(Announcements)
Announcer: Coming up on DATELINE Tuesday, she was a young girl in love.
Unidentified Woman #1: She was overjoyed in love with him. It was just beautiful.
Announcer: But her love defied an ancient tradition.
Unidentified Woman #2: They had arranged for her to marry someone that was quite a bit older than herself.
Announcer: She decided to follow her heart, to be with the man she loved.
BOB McKEOWN reporting: And that's when they were actually married in secret?
Woman #1: Right.
Announcer: But soon their secret came out.
Unidentified Woman #3: And they were all...(network difficulties).
Before she left, her uncle threatened, 'I will kill you.'
Announcer: First defiance, then murder. Her body found in a ditch.
Woman #2: I didn't want to believe it.
Announcer: Investigators say the order to kill came by cell phone from a world away: Death by sword.
Unidentified Woman #4: It's--it's sick.
Announcer: Accused of giving the fatal order: her uncle and her own mother.
McKEOWN: We'd like to ask Mr. Bedesha about the murder of his niece.
Unidentified Man #3: Go--go home.
Announcer: They deny the accusation. But why haven't they even been questioned? Will a young bride's murder, go unpunished?
Woman #2: They can't let this happen.
Announcer: Forbidden Love, a DATELINE Special.
And next, the brother of two September 11th hijackers. He grew up with them. Could he have predicted the men they'd become?
HOCKENBERRY: Do you think that your brothers were capable of being part of this operation?
Announcer: When Sand Storm continues.
(Announcements)
Announcer: And now, the conclusion to Sand Storm.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) It is here where Osama bin Laden found his most potent weapon: ordinary angry Saudis. Off the radars of US and Saudi intelligence--men with some US education and, most important, US visas. They went largely unnoticed before September 11th. Safe in the shadows of the US/Saudi blind spot, al-Qaeda recruited without fear.
(City; photos of hijackers)
Mr. BAER: Inside the mosques, they're saying, 'Go kill yourselves in the name of Islam.' And where was the United States? Where was the Saudi royal family?
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Ordinary Saudis living far from the strategic oil fields simply never figured into the US/Saudi arrangement. But on September 11th, 2001, they redefined it. Even their parents were clueless.
(People in marketplace; photos of hijackers)
Prince KHALID: They didn't actually think that their sons were able to do such terrible action. But they also believe that they have been deceived. I mean, their children have been deceived.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Khalid al-Faisal is governor of Asir Province. A third of the Saudi hijackers grew up here.
(Asir Province)
Prince KHALID: And they are good people, by the way.
HOCKENBERRY: The families?
Prince KHALID: The families are very, very good people.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) It's a relatively isolated province in the extreme south where its rocky hills rise out of the Red Sea.
(Hills of Asir Province)
Prince KHALID: I think they have been chosen, especially to hit the American/Saudi relations.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Chosen well. Reports from southern Saudi Arabia suggest a loose network of radical clerics who identified aimless, possibly bitter young men, offering them a chance at immortality. Does the Saudi government have an explanation?
(Mosque; photo of bin Laden; Khalid talking to reporter)
HOCKENBERRY: Is there some aspect of Saudi life that would encourage well-to-do, educated young men to do these kinds of things? Bin Laden is one.
Prince KHALID: The only problem is the--the Palestinian problems.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) From Israel, brutal images which dominate Saudi media. It's an inescapable issue here and a catch-all official explanation for the motives of the 15 Saudi hijackers on September 11th. So what is the official explanation for why no Palestinians were among the hijackers on September 11th?
(Scenes of violence in Israel; men carrying guns and shooting)
HOCKENBERRY: Why didn't they fly the planes into the World Trade Center?
Prince KHALID: Why don't you ask bin Laden himself?
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) We decided to speak directly with the families of the hijackers in Saudi Arabia. What we found is that when you get on the trail of terrorists in Saudi Arabia, the journey takes you through some pretty nice neighborhoods.
(Saudi Arabia; town in Saudi Arabia)
HOCKENBERRY: Behind me is the home of the well-to-do family of Hani Hanjour, the man believed to have flown the plane into the Pentagon on September 11th.
(Voiceover) The Hanjour family is wealthy. From car dealerships selling every make from Chevrolet to Rolls Royce, Hani had money and privilege and access to a US visa, but he was denied the chance to be a pilot for the Saudi National Airline.
(Car dealership)
HOCKENBERRY: We came here to interview the family. We were told the family wanted to talk to Americans about the shocking events of September 11th, events caused in part by one of their family members.
(Voiceover) They even gave us these never-before-seen pictures of Hani--hardly images of a zealot, this snapshot he sent home from Arizona, skiing, presumably taken during a break from his pilot training in Phoenix.
(Photos of Hani Hanjour)
HOCKENBERRY: When we got here, though, we were told the family was in too much pain, too much grief to speak to the media. Then we were told what they really wanted was money--$12,000.
(Voiceover) Twelve grand to explain why their son was part of the worst terrorist attack in history, or 12 grand to deny it. We didn't hang around to find out.
But in Khamais Mushait, Saudi Arabia, where it is believed five of the hijackers grew up and were recruited, we finally met Saleh, a brother of Wail and Waleed Alshehri, both on Flight 11.
(Reporters and others talking to family members; Khamais Mushait; Alshehri home; Saleh talking to reporter; photos of hijackers with Wail and Waleed Alshehri's photos highlighted)
HOCKENBERRY: Do you think that Waleed and Wail, your brothers, were capable of being a part of this operation?
SALEH: (Through translator) In my judgment, impossible. I know them; I know their behavior.
HOCKENBERRY: What if it is true? What would you say?
SALEH: (Through translator) If that is true we have to be realistic and accept the tragedy.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Like the Hanjours, the Alshehris are a well-to-do, hardworking family. The father built this mosque as a gift to the town. It's across the street from the home in which Waleed and Wail Alshehri grew up.
(Alshehri home; mosque; Alshehri home)
HOCKENBERRY: You grew up in the same house with them. As human beings, who were they?
SALEH: (Through translator) They were youth who grew up in a house with the best upbringing. Their behavior was very normal. There is no need to think they had crazy, wild thoughts. There was nothing wrong with them. They were very normal.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Saleh says his brothers' alienation and eventual recruitment by al-Qaeda was invisible.
(Photos of Alshehri brothers)
HOCKENBERRY: They were in their 20s. Is it possible that they were lost, didn't know what their future would be, maybe frustrated?
SALEH: (Through translator) Regarding Wail, he was a teacher. He graduated from the university and he became a teacher, an art teacher.
HOCKENBERRY: It appears that your brother found something else to do, be part of al-Qaeda.
SALEH: (Through translator) I don't know. It is very difficult to imagine that. It is difficult because the time was very short. There was not enough time for him to be trained to fly a plane. Furthermore, he didn't know English.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) It's a denial motivated by family pride, but scratch below the surface and you find truth.
(Saleh talking to reporter)
HOCKENBERRY: Do you believe they're dead in your heart?
SALEH: For me? Yes.
HOCKENBERRY: You do? You carry that around in your heart, right? That's a terrible burden.
SALEH: (Through translator) As for myself, yes.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Saleh's truth bears no resemblance to the official line from the Saudi royals, that the hijackers were religious zealots seeking revenge for the Palestinians.
(Saleh talking to reporter; Palestinians mourning victims)
HOCKENBERRY: Were your two brothers religious?
SALEH: (Through translator) No. Not in the way one might imagine.
HOCKENBERRY: But your brothers didn't march in the streets and work day and night to free the Palestinians did they?
SALEH: No.
HOCKENBERRY: No. Did they talk about getting US military troops out of the kingdom? No? So it looks like your two brothers were brainwashed.
SALEH: Yeah.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) More blindness, or is it simply that no one ever asked the right questions of these people? We learned Osama bin Laden is no hero in this household.
(Alshehri home)
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) There is this famous video of Osama bin Laden talking about how some people on the airplanes in New York and Washington did not even know that they were going to die...
(Video of bin Laden)
HOCKENBERRY: ...had no idea that this was a suicide mission. Is it possible that Waleed and Wail were on a plane not knowing what was to happen?
SALEH: (Through translator) It is possible. They were still immature.
HOCKENBERRY: It is possible.
SALEH: Yeah.
HOCKENBERRY: If so, Osama bin Laden is laughing about the death of your two brothers.
SALEH: (Through translator) I hated this man for a long time. I hate his ideas.
HOCKENBERRY: But beyond his way of thinking, he's laughing about what might have been the murder of your two brothers.
SALEH: (Through translator) He is a devil.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) Can this devil who has devastated this family, and struck deep into the heart of America, achieve his goal of toppling the kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Prince Turki al-Faisal says he's not worried about Osama bin Laden.
(Video of bin Laden; poster of bin Laden; video of bin Laden)
Prince TURKI: And every time many experts have predicted the downfall of the kingdom. When the revolution in Egypt took place, at the time they said there's going to be a domino effect and--and the Arab world and all the kings will disappear. The kingdom did not.
HOCKENBERRY: (Voiceover) And there's little evidence that US/Saudi arrangement is about to disappear any time soon. But the jury is still out on this kingdom in the Arabian desert. The victims of September 11th are demanding unprecedented compensation for what they say is Saudi Arabia ignoring terrorists in their midst. In its few statements on the subject, Saudi Arabia has officially condemned the attacks on September 11th, and said it is working side-by-side with the United States in the war on terror. On our journey to Saudi Arabia we got something more: a heartfelt apology to the American people from an ordinary man at the center of an extraordinary tragedy.
(Photos of past presidents and Arab leaders; Saudi Arabia; aerial view of World Trade Center site; twin light memorial; driving through Saudi Arabia countryside; building in Saudi Arabia; Saleh talking to reporter)
SALEH: What I want to say for the American people, we are very sorry what happened on 11 September, for the families, for the everybody.
HOCKENBERRY: After all that's happened, can Americans and Saudis still be friends?
SALEH: (Foreign language spoken)
HOCKENBERRY: In Englezes.
SALEH: Yes.
HOCKENBERRY: You believe it?
SALEH: Yeah. I believe it.
JANE PAULEY: Despite the Saudi assertion that it's working side-by-side with America in the war on terror, US investigators have not been able to talk to the families of the hijacking suspects as DATELINE has done. The Saudis say they're conducting their own investigation.
Meanwhile, in response to that lawsuit filed by families of 9/11 victims, two
prominent Saudi businessmen are reportedly calling for the withdrawal of Saudi
investments here in the United States, worth some $750 billion.
Copyright 2002 National Broadcasting Co. Inc.
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