How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude
By Robert Baer
Three Rivers Press, CA; 238 pp.; 2004
Reviewed by Mark Biskeborn

Baer delivers an intriguing memoir about his glory days as a CIA operative in the Middle East. He writes in an informal style, telling his operations stories like a thriller novelist while overdosed on those dark-green Turkish espressos.

The premise ties his stories together in one neat package: It’s all about the oil. Obviously, were there no oil in the Saudi Peninsula, the have-nothings would have no reason to resent the billionaire princes. The Royal family pays off the radicals to avoid massive revolts. ’Let them eat cake,’ as Marie Antoinette once said. Without these petrol-dollar pay-offs from Royalty, the extremists would have no money to arm and indoctrinate their young. Without petrol-financing, the fundamentalists would have hardly any means to carry out coordinated operations.

• Several factions within Saudi Arabia—the Wahhabis, the Shi’as, the Muslim Brothers, among others—pursue the formable goal to bring down the West—including the Al Sa’ud royalty because of its U.S. alliance.

• The House of Sa’ud is corrupt, decadent, incompetent, and perhaps far beyond redemption after more than forty years of its tyrannie royale , making Louis XIV seem like a nice guy.

• The truth is often a tough pill to swallow. U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has resulted in terrorist attacks like 9/11.
o The White House’s policy to support the Al Sa’ud regime has contributed directly to the various terrorist attacks over the last fifteen years with bombings: starting in 1995 with the National Guard barracks, and less than a year later, al-Khobar, the U.S.S. Cole, the World Trade Tower basement, among others.
o The Petroleum industry has bought up so much of Washington that elected officials don’t see any alternatives to—energy or foreign—policies further than their own wallets fattened by Middle Eastern bribes.

U.S. Officials On the Take

What I didn’t realize until reading this book was how screwed up the U.S. Government is. Taking personal bribes from Al Sa’ud regime: standard business practice.

As Baer writes:

”We all grew up with stories about the fabulous wealth of Arab sheikhs and their viziers. It started to make a difference, though, when the money slopped over into Washington or, rather, San Clemente. In late 1968, days after Richard Nixon won the White House, Khashoggi was one of the first to fly out to congratulate the president-elect…When Khashoggi got up to leave, he ‘forgot’ his briefcase,…stuffed with $1 million in hundreds…A couple days later, and Khashoggi knew the trick had worked: Wahington was for sale. Like original sin, that changed everything…What’s going on here? The way I look at things, it amounts to an indirect, extralegal tax on Americans. Saudi Arabia raises the price of gasoline, then remits a huge percentage to Wahington, but not just to anyone…into pockets of ex-bureaucrats and politicos who keep their mouths shut about the kingdom…it’s plain old influence peddling.”

Money Talks Louder Than Truth

The CIA’s willful blindness went hand in hand with Capitol Hill’s deference to Saudi Arabia, which forged a strategic partnership with the United States during the Cold War. The oil-rich Saudi regime became even more important to U.S. policymakers in 1979 when the Islamic revolution in Shiite Iran overthrew America’s longtime puppet ruler, the Shah.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s coup in Iran drastically changed the country’s oil exports to the U.S. Thus, Saudi Arabia would serve as prime oil supplier as well as a Sunni Muslim bulwark against Shiite radicalism while also matching the United States dollar for dollar to support Afghan mujahedeen. If the Ayatollah Khomeini and his Shiite followers were bad Muslims, then the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia (Sunnis) were the good Muslims, as far as U.S. policymakers were concerned. “The shadow war against Iran had us facing entirely in the wrong direction,” says Baer in his book.

”Covert Saudi Arabian aid to the Taliban [later mutated into al-Qaeda network], which amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars, continued right through the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Still the State Department didn’t protest.”

Ever since the many terrorist attacks against U.S. assets in the 1990’s, almost exclusively by Saudi unemployed (educated or not) men, most everyone in the CIA knew that Saudi Arabia teetered on explosive revolt from the have-nothings who resented the Royalty and their U.S. supporters. Nevertheless, Capitol Hill turned a deaf ear to CIA warnings, and, instead, pandered to the needs of Saudi ambassador Bandar bin Sultan.

Baer tells us:

‘While the chief spymasters waited for months to get a face-to-face, all Bandar had to do to see the president was hit the speed dial…Years later, Clinton’s first CIA director, Jim Woolsey, would tell me that then a nut flew a plane into the White House, the joke at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. was that it was Woolsey trying to get into see the president. Incidentally, Woolsey was one of the few CIA directors to come out and tell the truth about the kingdom.”

With Capitol Hill addicted to fast money and cheap oil, federal officials made it a career buster to complain about the bribes, corruption, and twisted foreign policy. Government employees played by the rules or else faced severe career decisions. Only those on the political fringe could dare tell the truth, and the established officials, the reputable Senators, pundits, Congressmen, and lobbyists, dismissed those daredevils as crack-pots and cranks.

Economics

Five incompetent, dysfunctional families own over 60% of the world’s oil reserves. The Al Sa’ud family alone controls over a third of that. The global economy stands at this abyss.

Considering that the U.S. economy depends completely on oil, and that these fossil fuels create the current global warming crisis, it’s mind boggling that Capitol Hill hasn’t banned petroleum as not only obsolete, but extremely dangerous to our existence both in terms of environment and geopolitics.

Baer shows us economic studies that analyze a hypothetical five-dollar-per-barrel rise in the price of oil. Gross domestic product (GDP) in the oil importing countries—U.S. and most European—would decline by at least .3% on an annual basis. Financial markets would slow down. Nations, like Putin’s Russia, with a net export of crude, would grow in wealth—supporting intolerant regimes such as al Sa’ud or Putin’s Russia.

This .3% decline in GDP, though, was based on old scenarios…before 9/11 and, worse yet, before the Bush Administration botched its military adventure into Iraq, which all but shut down a major source of crude.

Any surprise about the current direction of the U.S. economy?

History tells us simple facts: in 1974, during the OPEC embargo, inflation soared to 11%; in 1979-81, inflation reached 13.5%. During those years, the stock market tanked at a loss of 47.7%. Again, in 1980 and 1982, the stock market lost another 27.1% when Iraq and Iran shook oil prices up.

Taking control of Iraq and occupying it, as the Bush Administration once considered an easy task, would give the U.S. economy an enormous shot to its oil addiction. Big oil companies would have made profits even larger than their current all-time historical records of any corporations in any industry. On the flip side, losing control of Iraq, could lead to economic disaster worse than the crippling national debt caused by Bush-Cheney’s petroleum war.

Developing and using existent technology as an alternative to the status-quo oil industry is no longer an option. It’s a necessity, if for no other reason than it’s a limited resource.

The Lobbyists

So what do lobbyists for Big Oil and Saudis have on the president, or the State Department?

Baer writes:

”I’ll start by saying I don’t believe in conspiracies; I don’t think Washington has ever been able to keep a secret. It’s something a lot more subtle and insidious. It’s what I call a consent of silence, or, more politely, deference…It all begins with fast money, a category in which I include cheap oil. Saudi Arabia has lots of money and lots of oil.”

Our elected officials think in the short terms, periods of time defined by their next elections which depend on campaign contributions. They almost never think for the big picture of what’s good for America, its citizens over the long haul. Undoing the status quo of Al Sa’ud and its Big Oil partners would require politicians dedicated to the welfare of the country instead of their own careers.

As Baer writes:

“there’d be a call from a lobbyist, maybe one of the president’s old political chums. ‘Mr. President,’ the lobbyist would purr into the phone. ‘We really must keep a better eye on those cowboys out at Langley. You know we have this big Boeing deal coming up, and if Bandar [ambassador of Saud Arabia]…’”

Gilded Age Redux

Petroleum generates the highest profits of all industries in human history. Exxon/Mobile proved this just last year. The chaos in Iraq destabilizes most of the Middle East such that the price of oil jumped. Profits rise proportionally. Huge numbers of consumers depend on a handful of oil suppliers. This imbalance in supply and demand creates extremely wealthy individuals: the Arab families who took possession of the oil fields and the Western barons of industry involved in the contracts.

In addition to the few Big Oil companies, defense and construction also derive huge profits from the oil oligarchs. The Saudis buy high-tech defense systems to protect their assets from the have-nothings eager to touch some of the treasures. The later include all sorts of groups, including religious zealots and terrorists.

As Baer points out in the first pages of his book, the non-Royal Saudis form the most numerous militants against both the Royalty and its U.S. partners. Like the al Sa’ud family, only a few exclusive families in the Middle East own the lion’s share of the world’s oil. Extreme, unlimited wealth creates resentments and hatred.

Fortunately for the U.S. economy, al Sa’ud seems to enjoy doing business with American companies. In 1997, Saudi Aramco set up a joint venture with Texaco, Inc., later joined by Shell Oil, to refine roughly eight hundred thousand barrels of Saudi crude a day. Later these companies created Motiva Enterprises, one of the largest oil-refining and marketing firms in the U.S. AT&T, Lucent, and others joined in to form one of the largest holdings in the world. These economic structures exaggerate the tycoons and barons of the (19th century) Gilded Age.

In 1943 Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to shake hands with Saudi Royalty. Since then the arrangement has always hinged on interdependence between the Royalty and the U.S. government cooperating with U.S. big business. The U.S. provides military protection to the Saud regime in exchange for reliable flow of crude.

Other companies like the Carlyle Group never miss an opportunity to make money from the phenomenal, almost criminal, profits of the petroleum oligopoly. Former U.S. officials play the prominent management roles in Carlyle. People like James Baker, Bush I, Frank Carlucci, Dick Cheney, Kissinger, Colon Powell, among other White House stars, rank in millions upon millions of dollars mostly by peddling the influence once gained from their government work.

Carlyle also makes substantial fortunes by simply buying up small defense contractors and flipping them to defense giants like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and TRW –major weapons providers to the Saudis. And when a war happens to break out, well…gentlemen like these industry leaders rake in extra bonuses. Might we call these blood bonuses?

“Bandar’s [former Saudi ambassador] convoy, his sprawling house, his special access, the no-limits lifestyle: They were all a constant reminder of the way Washington really ran. Forget the crap about democracy, about the capital of the free world. Washington was a company town, and Bandar had a seat on the board. If you wanted to move into even the outer reaches of his orbit, you had damn well better play by his rules.

Unfortunately for the U.S. economy, the huge attraction to the money sources in Saudi sands places America, and similar oil importers, in a precarious situation. The leaders of our country, powerful money brokers, profit so easily from petroleum, they scarce flinch an eye on developing alternative means of energy.

The industries that create renewable energy do not form the exclusively huge profits of the oligopolistic oil industry. They form smaller groups of efficient competitive industries (solar, wind, ethanol, etc). The opportunities and the incentives to develop these alternatives hardly motivate the extremely powerful oil tycoons and barons of our Petrol Gilded Age.

Shaky Kingdom

In the space of about twenty pages, Baer summarizes the history of how the willful Muhammad ibn Saud coerced diverse nomadic tribes on the Arabian Peninsula into a kingdom, albeit never as unified as the Saudis try to portray it. Baer pieces this history together with three legs to what he views as a wobbly kingdom:

First, in the early 18th century, Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab wondered the sandy wilderness, preaching his call to all Muslims to make Islam pure again by returning to its original form based only on the Koran and the Sunna, the dogma, a detailed code of behavior based on the life of the prophet Muhammad.

Wahhab called everyone to return to his idealized tenth century version of Islam. Any other interpretations amounted to bida, abominable innovations from the true faith. His preaching was not popular in Basra and local authorities asked him to move on down the road.

He returned to Al Uyaynah, his birthplace, not far from Riyadh. Again, his preaching of intolerance to diverse beliefs prompted the tribal leader, ibn Muammar, to send him off to another patch of sand. Wahhab walked forty miles down the Wadi Hanifah dirt road to Dariya, now the sprawling modern capital, Riyadh. There, he met Muhammad ibn Saud, whose descendants waged war across the peninsula, sacking cities for two centuries.

Second, with the help of the Ikwahn—the brethren of the Wahhab tribe—ibn Saud massacred over five thousand Shiia and seized the sacred cities of Mecca and Medina. The Shiia never forgave the Sunnis for this travesty. Allied with the Wahhabis, ibn Saud battled the infidels, the polytheists, and humbled the idolaters, and expelled the foreign opportunists.

Ibn Saud used the strict version of Islam as solid political force in unifying an otherwise unruly mosaic of nomadic tribes. He named the Arab peninsula after his family. He established Wahhabi Islam as the state religion, and struggle to maintain his monarchy until the moment when Western geologists informed him of the oil reserves beneath his kingdom’s dunes.

Third and final leg to this teetering kingdom, American corporate masters turned Saud’s oil into the wealth that fortified his power as king. The medieval theocracy became a modernized society overnight.

With the U.S., the Saudis had protection against…and all the other intrigue and danger of the Arab world. With the Saudis, the U.S. broke European hegemony in the Middle East and set up a bulwark against communist influence in the area.

After the Wahhabi-styled Taliban triumphed over the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the impulse toward jihad began to wind its way around everything. Ironically, the use of Arab “freedom fighters” and the Taliban in the crusade against the Soviets made great press for Wahhabis and their more modern and aggressive Muslim Bothers.

Muslim Brotherhood

Hassan al-Banna founded this organization to purify Islam and rid Egypt of foreign influences, all of which sounds like a modern repeat of Wahhab in the 18th century. In 1948 the Brothers assassinated the Egyptian prime minister. The government responded by killing al-Banna, thus cutting off the snake’s head. The Brothers reacted in a more zealous determination. Al-Banna’s successors attempted to assassinate Egyptian president Nasser in 1954. Nasser responded by shutting down the Muslim Brotherhood altogether, driving it underground and into exile.

The Brotherhood went underground and, after trying to survive in the Syrian underground, they found homes elsewhere such as Germany, Tunisia, Sudan and the most hospitable Saudi Arabia, thanks mainly to the like-minded Wahhabis.

Baer points out that until the 9/11 attack, the CIA knew nothing about the Muslim Brotherhood. He writes,

“In fairness, it wasn’t all the CIA’s fault. Until September 11, there wasn’t a president who cared whether Langley spied on the Brothers. During the cold war, presidents lost sleep worrying about the Soviet Union and its nukes…Basically, the CIA existed, and always had, to spy on the Soviet Union…If the CIA had spied on the Brothers, that would only end up exposing them for what they were—mass murderers who, if you gave them any thought at all, could be counted on to turn against us one day. If Tom Twetten or any other CIA officer in the Middle East were somehow to turn over a rock and tattle to Washington[about bad news in Saudi Arabia], his next job would be running the basement candy stand at Langley,…Today there’s even a name for these places where the real truths (as opposed to the convenient ones) reside: the Arab basement.”

Baer corrects the commonly held assumption about 9/11’s attackers. The Muslim Brotherhood orchestrated and carried out that operation, among others, not al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda received the “credit” for the infamous disaster but only thanks to Osama bin Laden’s publicity machine.

The Muslim Brotherhood carried out the 9/11 attack. In the same way the U.S. had used them to do its dirty work, such as assassinations in Yemen, Afghanistan and elsewhere. “Only now we had become their dirty work, and Saudi Arabia their home.”

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