Rating: 
Summary: With friends like these, who needs enemies?
Review: Welcome to the Magic Kingdom: Saudi Arabia.Former Middle East CIA operative Robert Baer, author of the critically acclaimed memoir 'See No Evil' follows up that work with a brilliant expose at the world's best funded breeding ground for terrorists, our allies (?) The Saudis. " We had hardwired in our brains that the stereotype of young , oil-rich brats screaming at their Filipino servants to take the wrappers off their candy . . .Sept 11 undid that stereotype for me " By 'we' he means CIA and other official Mid-East think tanks. If they were so far off, what did the average American know? The Saudis were our buddies, they had never gone to war against Israel and they probably celebrated the 4th of July with fireworks. . . An image that Baer contends was sold to the American people, because half of Washington was bribed and the other had their heads buried in the sand. ----------------------------------------------------------------- A few items: 1. Osama, as we all know is a Suadi. In fact, to many opposing the royal family (about every Saudi that's not a millionare) he's a national hero. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijakers were Saudi nationals. Ditto for aprox 75% of the al Qaeda prisoners subsequently held at Guantanamo "the worst of the worst." 2. Back in 1996 when Sudan had Osama in custody, The Saudi government declined the offer to have him extradited back home. Reason? He was too popular, let him go. . 3. Saudi citizens blew up the National Guard facility in '95 and the Khobar barracks in '96. Two Saudis and one Egyptian hijacked a plane to Baghdad in 2000. Saudis were almost certainly behind the atttack on the USS Cole as well as hundreds of other terrorists activities prior to 9/11 from Kenya to Chechnya-- and yet, unlike say, an Argentinian or a Frenchman, Saudis did not have to bother to appear at a screening at an American embassy to get to the US. A system called 'Visa Express' took care of it for a fee. In other words, any Saudi travel agent stood in place of the American government. Baer tells us that under this system, Osama himself could have gotten through. 4.The Saudi government has not allowed the FBI or any US agency to question the relatives or associates of the 9/11 hijackers despite repeated requests. 5. The Royal Family is demented. Made up of five extended 'dysfunctional' families presently run by King Fahd's favorite wife, Jawara and her son Abd-al Aziz, or Azuzi ( 'deary' as Mommy calls him ) they spend more money than France on their 'army' --a praetorian palace guard. 6. There is no rule of law, it's a Mafia chieftain's paradise run by deary. Leaders of the world in public beheadings (Riyadh plaza is commonly known as Chop-Chop square) The Royals hedge their bets by supporting universities which are, in fact, ultra fundamentalist Anti American hate camps. 7. Further hedging are shows of piety put on by their muttawa, the public-decency police, which performs the useful function of beating women on the legs and arms if their robes are too short. In March 2002 it blocked the exit of a girl's school on fire because the girls weren't properly covered. Fourteen died. Not unusual in a country which Baer contends is 'the most sexually repressed on earth' Women are kept out of touch with men until the day they marry. A woman cannot drive, Only 5% of them work, if she needs to go anywhere a male relative must chauffer and chaperone her. In desperation, Saudi men have written their cell phones and taped it to cars they are trying to 'sell' in the hope some brazen Saudi girl will call them--even if they risk public stoning. These are the poor, of course as to the rich, it's THE Middle eastern joke that Saudis spend a staggering amount of its GDP on sex--in Europe's red light ditricts. ----------------------------------------------------------------- What is less than amusing is that this 'hedging' with terrorists cannot go on forever. The Royals are bribing the people who would cheerfully execute them. Plus , with the availability of MAJOR weapons of destruction from the former USSR for sale---a point which Baer goes into in the very first chapter, as he talks to a Russian arms dealer who is stationed at a luxury resort in--of all places, Israel, The Royals may meet their end and then it's anyone's guess who will run the country with the essential oil reserves The West needs to function but it's doubtfull it'll be a group of tolerant Ghandi-like pacifists. Baer has done it again. Great research and great reading.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling Reading!
Review: Given his stature as a former CIA operative working extensively within the Middle East, author Robert Baer uses his unique blend of personal insight and extensive research to illustrate just how dangerous a road we Americans have embarked on by hitching our wagon to the star hovering over the House of Saud. From the opening nightmare scenario of a fragile and exposed oil delivery network that is dangerously vulnerable to terrorist attack to the final considerations of just how intertwined and interminably convoluted the geo-politics among the American government, the international oil concerns, the Saudi royal family, and the radical Islamic fundamentalists such as the Muslim Brotherhood seems to be, this is a book that all of us can profit by reading. What is most rotten within the welter of factors is the Saudi royal family itself, so large, so cumbersome, and so bedeviled by greed and corruption that it is crumbling from within. The fact of this wracking corruption and approaching demise of the House of Saud may well be catastrophic, according to Baer, yet people within the American government are so compromised by the overwhelming flood of money via bribes, payoff, and subsidies that no one dare speak an angry or critical word against the Saudis, even as the royal family provides hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorist front organizations and as it actively supports and promotes the radical anti-western Wahabbi sect within the Kingdom itself. It is a kingdom built on what is proving to be a literal time bomb built of contradictory impulses and interests. Given the fact that Saudi oil provides the lynchpin of world wide petroleum prices, instability within the regime is extremely threatening to economic stability of world markets, and the fall of the House of Saud could well be catastrophic for the west, which depends on relatively cheap and easily available oil for its economy and its very basis of life. Yet the Saudi regime tolerates thievery, ignores prostitution, and both directly and indirectly promotes both radical Muslim fundamentalism and terrorism. For Baer, it is no accident that the bulk of the hijackers involved in the 911 tragedy were dissident Saudis. Nor is it an accident that both the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Quaida are so well financed, since the royal family has been sponsoring their activities for more than a decade. Given this, the stage is set, argues the author, for a potentially catastrophic event, one that might require American military intervention and result in the triggering of an economic meltdown the likes of which have not been seen since the great Depression. Amazingly, though, the American government continues to maintain the idea that the situation is stable, that the Saudis are our friends and allies, and that the Kingdom is moving down the road toward a more egalitarian form of self-government. Unless we adopt a more enlightened policy and work toward the end of protecting American interests for the long term, we are likely to find ourselves on the wrong end of a losing proposition. This is an important and quite informative book, and one I highly recommend. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: Perhaps Time to Wake
Review: Until recently most Americans knew little and cared less about Saudi Arabia. It's a desert and we get a lot of oil there. Then a couple years ago people began paying more attention to what Robert Baer and a few others in the various spy agencies had been saying about Saudi Arabia for many years: no oil is cheap enough to be a good trade-off for what's cooking over there. Cheap oil isn't worth allowing an "ally" to keep half it population (the female half) in the equivalent of apartheid. Cheap oil isn't worth allowing an "ally" to nurture terrorist organizations on its own soil and to send money to them elsewhere. It's not even worth it when the Saudis reciprocate by buying huge amounts of military hardware and commercial aircraft from US companies. There's got to be a change, and Baer tells why. The fact that a book like this is published, albeit with various names blacked out, suggests the wheels are beginning to turn on the Saudi problem, which in many ways is linked to the terrorism problem. Baer follows the by-now familiar path leading from 15 Saudi 9/11 thugs: Al Qaida, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is hosted and protected by the Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam, which is in turn hosted and protected by the Saudi royal family. Unlike many books on the US/Saudi connection, this one doesn't spin off into blame assignment or polemics on solar power and tax policy. Baer stays focussed on the central question: How did we get into the unhealthy and too-close relationship, and just how bad is it? The roots reach back to Franklin Roosevelt. The supply of oil that had been crucial to the war effort Roosevelt saw as vital to America's postwar development, so he made it permanent. After FDR inked a deal with King Ibn Saud aboard a US warship in 1945, every president from both parties continued and expanded the relationship. One problem, as Baer sees it, is that in all their dealings with Ibn Saud and his successors, American presidents made no mention of Ibn Taymiyah, patron saint of the Muslim Brotherhood. That is to say all administrations failed to take seriously the threat of Muslim fanaticism that has always been present in Saudi Arabia. The US government continues to accept, even post 9/11, intelligence access to our "ally" that is so severely restricted as to be non-existent. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, when there was no longer any reason to accept restrictions in order to combat a greater evil, nothing changed. For our part, neither Congress nor any administration compelled the CIA and NSA and others to shift their focus and resources to the Muslim Brotherhood, not even after the assassination of Sadat, nor the first World Trade bombing, nor the Luxor attack in 1997, nor dozens of other less publicized attacks. Now the focus and resources are there, but they can't be deployed at the epicenter of Brotherhood growth, Saudi Arabia. Why? Because the Saudis don't want us there. Why don't they want us there? Because they are doing things that can't be justified by any religion or political ideology. Baer's book and career are proof that 9/11 wasn't the result of an "intelligence failure". He and certain other intelligence agency operatives have long wanted to get more information and take more action against the world's largest terrrorist organization. It was a policy failure of presidents and Congresses, who after the Cold War failed to see the necessity of redirecting the intelligence agencies' resources in general, and of gaining access to Saudi Arabia in particular. One can only hope that books like this will have a stronger influence on policymakers as time goes by.
Rating:
Summary: Money talks, morals walk . . .
Review: A profoundly disturbing and timely book. May it elicit better strategic thinking about America's best interests than has obviously occurred so far. Many thanks to Baer for having the courage to write it.
Baer presents a convincing portrait of the greed of US ruling and corporate circles as well as the spineless behavior of State Dept. bureaucrats, who exhibit their usual unquestioning implementation of any self-defeating US foreign policy as long as it leads to their next promotion. Baer lays out step by step the way that the ruling circles of the US sold out the long-term interests of the US to continue sucking at the Saudi t*t in what is essentially a modernized version of "What's good for GM [Big Oil] is good for the country." Baer outlines how the greed of these Washington in-folks (all the lawyers, the lobbyists, the admin officials, the former Ambassadors) made them ignore the threat of the militant, ignorant Wahhabists to America. Three thousand US citizens died, because the US ruling circles preferred to ignore the Saudi hatred as long as they could share in the Saudi spoils. Now the lower and middle class soldiers are paying in blood to maintain the links between the US's upper classes, the Saudi ruling family, and oil money.
However, all excesses carry the seeds of their own punishment. US business's greed backfired when the Saudi-bred jihadists took down a big, expensive building in Wall Street; and now Big Business's assets, and the security of the whole country, are threatened to their core.
Rating: 
Summary: More opinions than evidence, and still a good eye-opener
Review: I liked "See No Evil" a lot better. I learned a lot from "Sleeping with the Devil", and encourage others to read it as well. Given the lack of evidence to back up some of his assertions, I would suggest getting this from a library, rather than buying it. Or get the paperback. While he gives the reader a LOT to think about, there's a lot more personal anger in this book, which made me wonder about his objectivity. It has a more superficial, hurriedly written feel to it, as if he just sat at a computer and vented, without much editing or background research. Still a valuable read.
Rating: 
Summary: A rant
Review: For some reason, this book opens with a few chapters describing how terrorists could blow up the oilfields in Saudi Arabia. From this opening, the author moves into Paranoid Thinking. In his own, recently-invented brand of Paranoid Thinking, Saudi Arabia is The Devil. There are no shadings here: Saudi Arabia is quite simply evil, and moviegoers can snap their fingers and see Saudi Arabia as Mordor, with the current ruling king as Sauron. This being so, anyone who has ever done business with Saudi Arabia automatically becomes a Devilish Co-conspirator. And so the next chapters follow: anyone who has ever received a nickel from the Saudi Arabians is a Devil! And they are all having dinner with another! It's a bleeping Conspiracy!! Shoot all the rich and famous people, now! Alas, the author allows no space for commonplace (and commonsense) things like the following: the Bechtel Corporation, in San Francisco, is a giant in international construction. It has dozens of major contracts ongoing around the globe. These contracts exist in (I'm making this up) Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Russia, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, and so forth. Now, does this mean that Bechtel is a Devil? Or, more importantly, that anyone sitting on the board of Bechtel is a Devil? Or anyone who has had any sort of association with Bechtel? I hope not! I once wrote some software for Bechtel, and I don't think I am a Devil! I am not suggesting that Saudi Arabia is a country free from any problems -- far from that. But I think we should take a slightly more informed view and isolate the enemy as the nutty, murderous Islamic movement known as Wahhabism. Now, THIS is something truly dangerous. The Wahhabbis have been in bed with the royal family since the get-go. Incredibly, the current government of Saudi Arabia still provides billions of dollars to this truly anti-Islamic Islam, and public schools in Saudi Arabia teach Saudi children to hate people who follow other religions. This sort of "religious education" is going on in Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia -- generously funded by the House of Saud. (!!) But, if you want to understand THIS, you need to read a much more perceptive book called "Hatred's Kingdom." Not this bilge!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting intersection of authors
Review: I highly recommend reading this book along with Craig Ungar's "House of Bush, House of Saud". It's beyond the ability of most of us to ever be privy to the workings of either corporate political dealings, international alliances, or high stakes politics in this or any country. So to have just two books such as these arrive within the same year is a fascinating glimpse into all of those realms. Under Reagan the U.S. made a fateful decision to forsake human intelligence gathering capability for technological methods of knowing our enemies, and we are paying a heavy price for that now. Get Baer's from-the-ground-up perspective and then read Ungar's historical biography of the intertwined fates and fortunes of two powerful families, the Bushes and the Sauds. Without demonizing anyone it's just so sad to see how the morals-free zone of business as usual-good for me, good for you has taken us down a path to hatred and bloodshed. These books will give you a large framework for understanding how we got there, and two books isn't much to invest to gain that understanding.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent, well-supported and frightening read.
Review: A seemingly fact-based narrative of the history and possible future(s) of our relationship with Saudi Arabia. Baer claims to have been a case officer in the Directorate of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1976 to 1997.
His description of the fragility of the Kingdom and the development of our relationship is, in a word, frightening.
Baer traces the history of the relationship with a non-partisan eye, which is refreshing. He details how Saudi Arabia has literally bought its way into the United States government and that nation's business, political and civic leadership over seven decades. Not only are the usual suspects on the Kingdom's payrolls, but many other names that may strike the reader as surprising. If what Baer says is true, it is surprising in a way to see what - and who - money will buy.
More disturbing is Baer's description of the Royal House of Saud, its extravagence and corruption - which Baer asserts leaves the Royal Family and the United States sitting on a powder keg with a short fuse.
Like ostriches, the Saudi Royals have attempted buying or killing off internal dissidents. Baer paints a bleak picture of how just a few targeted terrorist attacks could seriously damage the economies of the United States and nearly all other industrialized nations. His account of how a takeover by Islamic elements of the Saudi nation and its oil reserves could have calamitous results.
Baer, whatever his actual background, has done a credible job here of describing a very difficult situation. I consider it "must reading" for any citizen who considers themself well-informed. It is, unfortunately, reading tomorrow's headlines today. Jerry
Rating:
Summary: Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Sa
Review: Baer (See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism) here argues that to secure access to vital oil supplies, the United States has blindly helped the corrupt Saudi government at the cost of American finances, values, and other interests. In return, Saudis have helped finance terrorism and destabilize the region. The Saudi oil industry is extremely vulnerable to attack, asserts Baer, and the Saudi people are seething with discontent, making them ripe to follow religious fundamentalists. Baer goes on to say that American agencies are hindered in their security efforts by the big corporations, which have lucrative Saudi contracts and carry a lot of clout in Washington. In the end, Baer, a disgruntled veteran of CIA operations in the Middle East, feels that to protect the oil and to prevent the country from dissolving into chaos, which would be exploited by Islamic extremists, perhaps an American invasion will be necessary. Readers may also be interested in Doug Bandow's less alarmist Befriending Saudi Princes: A High Price for a Dubious Alliance and John Peterson's Saudi Arabia and the Illusion of Security. Suitable for all libraries
Rating:
Summary: Well crafted and very thorough
Review: This is the second of Mr. Baer's books I have read - both books are equally fascinating. Unfortunately, his research and field experience demonstrates that we, as a nation, are truly unaware and unprepared for the upcoming clash of cultures, indeed of civilizations. It demonstrates are basic failure to gain intelligence, and to actually apply said intelligence "intelligently". We would rather rely on techno toys and nebulous political agreements than solid evidence and above board negotiations. One day, as Mr. Baer demonstrates so well, we will become crippled as an economy and as a nation because of our failure to understand our real place in the world.
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