[A-List] Saudi Funding of Terrorists: Gore

["Anyutka" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

Story last updated at 7:13 a.m. Thursday, July 17, 2003


U.S. met secretly with Saudis over al-Qaida funding

1999 meeting set up by Vice President Gore failed to stop flow of money,
experts say

BY TONY BARTELME
Of The Post and Courier Staff
Long before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, officials in the White House
learned that Islamic charities and wealthy Saudi Arabian businessmen were
bankrolling al-Qaida.

By 1999, the evidence was so clear that Vice President Al Gore contacted
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to set up a secret meeting between U.S. counter
terrorism experts and high-ranking officials in Saudi Arabia and United Arab
Emirates.

"We wanted to show how seriously we took the issue, and requesting the
meeting through the vice president was one way to do that," said William
Wechsler, a former counterterrorism director with the National Security
Council.

Wechsler was a key member of the delegation that flew to the Gulf. He said
many details of the trip remain classified but described the talks with the
Saudis as "substantive ... We left hoping that we had started something."

Afterward, however, the Saudis did little to turn off the money spigot to
al-Qaida. "In the long run, the trip was of marginal utility."

Gore's help arranging the secret 1999 meeting, which has not been disclosed
until now, sheds new light on how top U.S. government officials grappled
with the threat from al-Qaida before Sept. 11, 2001, and how powerful
bureaucratic and diplomatic currents worked against them.

The 1999 trip also underscores how the U.S. and its longtime ally Saudi
Arabia knew a great deal about al-Qaida's organizational structure long
before the Sept. 11 attacks.

What the government knew about the attacks, and whether it could have done
more to prevent them, is a debate that's likely to become more vigorous. One
high-profile congressional commission is expected to release its final
800-page report about the attacks next week.

Former U.S. Rep. Tim Roemer, a Democrat who served on the House Intelligence
Committee, told The Miami Herald last week that it contains information that
is "highly explosive."

Other lawmakers who have read the report have said it is highly critical of
U.S. intelligence lapses and that classified sections focus on Saudi
Arabia's links to terrorism.

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, which also is investigating
the Sept. 11 attacks, is expected to wrap up its work early next year. In
hearings held this week, one al-Qaida expert said the United States allowed
Afghanistan to become a "terrorist Disneyland" in the 1990s.

"You didn't do what was necessary to prevent your country from being
humiliated," Rohan Gunaratna, a former United Nations investigator based in
Singapore, told the panel.

Meanwhile, the Gore-brokered meeting in 1999 with Saudi officials may get
some attention in another arena -- the courts.

Lawyers suing on behalf of nearly 4,000 Sept. 11 victims say that, because
of that trip, the Saudis knew or should have known that their banks and
charities were sending money to terrorists.

"After the trip in 1999, they were put on notice, so that trip is a critical
component in the case," said Mike Elsner, an attorney for Motley Rice in
Mount Pleasant. The firm is seeking $1 trillion from more than 200
charities, banks and wealthy businessmen, including members of the Saudi
royal family.

Attorneys for the defendants have denied that they supported terrorism, and
accused the victims and lawyers of "Muslim bashing."

CHARITIES AND TERROR

The 1999 trip was unusual in that its focus was on the financial aspects of
terrorism. The issue is a sensitive one because it often morphs into a
discussion about culture and religion.

One of the five pillars of Islam is zakat, a requirement that Muslims donate
a certain amount of money every year as a way of purifying their incomes and
possessions.

Experts say al-Qaida and other terrorist organization infiltrated charities
that were funded by zakat and other donations. Those cash infusions were
important because al-Qaida was spending huge sums on its network of training
camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The soon-to-be released congressional
report on Sept. 11 is expected to say that al-Qaida trained between 70,000
and 120,000 recruits, Sen. Bob Graham said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Al-Qaida's link to Saudi charities "was a very sensitive issue" for Saudi
leaders in the late 1990s, said Daniel Benjamin, who was director of
counterterrorism on the National Security Council under President Clinton
and recently co-authored a book, "The Age of Sacred Terror," with Steven
Simon, a senior counterterrorism official.

Benjamin, now a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies, a Washington think tank, said the Saudis were "by and
large quite helpful on identifying terrorist suspects." But when
"discussions touched on the involvement of wealthy Saudis, the gates came
down."

By the mid-1990s, the government had collected a large amount of information
about Islamic charities.

In 1996, an internal intelligence document estimated that one-third of
international Islamic charities supported terrorist groups or had employees
suspected of having terrorist connections.

These charities had particularly deep roots in Bosnia, where they provided
supplies to Muslim refugees, the document said. "Some Islamic organizations
provide military aid as part of a 'humanitarian' package."

The document, which The Post and Courier obtained from lawyers representing
Sept. 11 victims, said Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states had taken a few
steps to control the flow of money to terrorists, but that agencies that
monitor these charities were prone to corruption.

The document predicted that governments where these Islamic charities were
based would do little to regulate them "unless they believe these groups
threaten their own stability" or are damaging diplomatic ties with the
United States.

The 1996 document is notable in that it doesn't mention al-Qaida and describ
es Osama bin Laden briefly as "a wealthy Saudi-born businessman currently
residing in Sudan who supports various Islamic extremist groups."

Benjamin said bin Laden and al-Qaida didn't become primary targets of the
U.S. government until the 1998 bombings of two embassies in Africa, which
killed 291 people and wounded more than 5,000.

"It was clear to us that after the embassy bombings we were facing a threat
of new dimensions," Benjamin said. "It was an unusually dangerous threat
because of the enormous assets it had. So the decision was made to do
everything to cut off the money flow."

SEISMIC SHIFT

With that in mind, Gore contacted Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to set up a
meeting. Gore, who declined to discuss the issue with The Post and Courier,
did not attend the meetings.

Wechsler and others in the delegation traveled to Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates in June 1999 to meet with Finance Ministry,
intelligence and law-enforcement leaders.

"We wanted to show a good deal of what we knew," Wechsler said. "And we
wanted to ask them about things that we didn't know."

The Saudis were pleasant but noncommittal. They seemed especially anxious
when discussions focused on wealthy Saudi businessmen or how much
inheritance bin Laden received from his family, which controls a Saudi
construction conglomerate.

U.S. officials were dispatched again in 2000 to Saudi Arabia to discuss the
terrorism financing issue. Wechsler said he didn't go on that trip.

The Saudi response to these meetings was underwhelming at best, Wechsler
said. "It would be wrong to say they were ineffective and wrong to overstate
their effectiveness," he said. "The Saudis have spent a long time minimizing
the joint threat both countries face from al-Qaida and the specific problem
of fundraising through Saudi Arabia."

Benjamin and Simon argue in "The Age of Sacred Terror" that the Monica
Lewinski scandal, and lack of interest by the media, made it difficult for
the Clinton administration in 1999 and 2000 to take the kinds of aggressive
measures needed against al-Qaida and its financiers. They said the Bush
administration didn't tackle the problem in a serious way until Sept. 11,
2001.

Wechsler, now an executive director for Greenwich Associates, a financial
consulting company, said the relationship between the Saudis and the United
States needs a major overhaul.

"Our basic foreign policy with Saudi Arabia for decades, in both the
Democratic and Republican administrations, has been relatively consistent:
If Saudi Arabia is willing to be a responsible party regarding oil and
regional security issues, then the United States will be its de facto
military ally and will not raise any questions about its internal dealings."

Sept. 11 showed that this policy is obsolete, he said. "Their domestic
problems became a threat to U.S. national security when 3,000 people died."

Wechsler said the Saudis don't have to become "our enemy. We could treat
Saudi Arabia the same way we treat other large, incredibly important
relationships around the world that cannot easily be described as ally or
enemy, such as those we have with Russia and China."

The bombing attacks by al-Qaida in May in Saudi Arabia, which killed 34
people, may have shaken the Saudis into action.

"Everything I'm told is that the Saudis heard that wake-up call," Wechsler
said. "That's great. Now the next step comes. There needs to be a seismic
shift in laws, regulations and culture, and that takes time."


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