"Saudi Arabia is more and more an irrational state--a place that
spawns global terrorism even as it succumbs to an ancient and
deeply seated isolationism, a kingdom led by a royal family that
can't get out of the way of its own greed. Is this the fulcrum we
want the global economy to balance on?"
In his explosive New York Times bestseller, See No Evil, former CIA
operative Robert Baer exposed how Washington politics drastically
compromised the CIA's efforts to fight global terrorism. Now in his
powerful new book, Sleeping with the Devil, Baer turns his
attention to Saudi Arabia, revealing how our government's cynical
relationship with our Middle Eastern ally and America' s dependence
on Saudi oil make us increasingly vulnerable to economic disaster
and put us at risk for further acts of terrorism.
For decades, the United States and Saudi Arabia have been locked in
a "harmony of interests." America counted on the Saudis for cheap
oil, political stability in the Middle East, and lucrative business
relationships for the United States, while providing a voracious
market for the kingdom' s vast oil reserves. With money and oil
flowing freely between Washington and Riyadh, the United States has
felt secure in its relationship with the Saudis and the ruling Al
Sa'ud family. But the rot at the core of our "friendship" with the
Saudis was dramatically revealed when it became apparent that
fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers proved to be Saudi
citizens.
In Sleeping with the Devil, Baer documents with chilling clarity
how our addiction to cheap oil and Saudi petrodollars caused us to
turn a blind eye to the Al Sa'ud's culture of bribery, its abysmal
human rights record, and its financial support of fundamentalist
Islamic groups that have been directly linked to international acts
of terror, including those against the United States. Drawing on
his experience as a field operative who was on the ground in the
Middle East for much of his twenty years with the agency, as well
as the large network of sources he has cultivated in the region and
in the U.S. intelligence community, Baer vividly portrays our
decades-old relationship with the increasingly dysfunctional and
corrupt Al Sa'ud family, the fierce anti-Western sentiment that is
sweeping the kingdom, and the desperate link between the two. In
hopes of saving its own neck, the royal family has been shoveling
money as fast as it can to mosque schools that preach hatred of
America and to militant fundamentalist groups--an end game just
waiting to play out.
Baer not only reveals the outrageous excesses of a Saudi royal
family completely out of touch with the people of its kingdom, he
also takes readers on a highly personal search for the deeper roots
of modern terrorism, a journey that returns time again and again to
Saudi Arabia: to the Wahhabis, the powerful Islamic sect that rules
the Saudi street; to the Taliban and al Qaeda, both of which Saudi
Arabia helped to underwrite; and to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of
the most active and effective terrorist groups in existence, which
the Al Sa'ud have sheltered and funded. The money and arms that we
send to Saudi Arabia are, in effect, being used to cut our own
throat, Baer writes, but America might have only itself to blame.
So long as we continue to encourage the highly volatile Saudi state
to bank our oil under its sand--and so long as we continue to grab
at the Al Sa'ud's money--we are laying the groundwork for a
potential global economic catastrophe.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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