Archive 2003: Conspiracy of Silence - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/12/books/conspiracy-of-silence.html
The theory of ’’Why America Slept,’’ saved for the provocative final chapter of this smart and evocatively written book: the Saudis were in on it.
The basis for this charge, Posner writes, is the C.I.A.’s interrogation of one of America’s biggest catches in the campaign against Al Qaeda — a senior aide to Osama bin Laden named Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002 in western Pakistan by American and Pakistani forces. Relying on two unnamed government sources to provide new information about the intelligence gleaned from the interrogation, Posner writes that C.I.A. interrogators manipulated the injured Zubaydah’s pain medication to wear down his defenses. They tricked him into believing he was in Saudi custody — and were then shocked to hear what a relieved Zubaydah finally had to tell them. He instructed them to call a senior member of the ruling Saudi family, Posner writes, and gave them a phone number from memory. ’’He will tell you what to do,’’ Zubaydah said. He went on to tell his interrogators that bin Laden had struck a deal in the late 1990’s to gain the blessing and support of top Saudi leaders in exchange for assurances that his holy war would spare the Saudi kingdom. This testimony, an American investigator says, was ’’the Rosetta stone of 9/11.’’ Still more intriguing, three of the Saudi leaders whom the prisoner named as allies (including Prince Ahmed bin Salman, probably best known to Americans as the owner of the Kentucky Derby winner War Emblem) wound up dead within a week of one another in three separate incidents; a Pakistani military official also named by Zubaydah was killed seven months later in a plane crash.
The allegations will no doubt provide grist for those eager to link the Saudis to the Sept. 11 attacks. But as with all conspiracy theories — as Posner himself has shown in his past work — there is reason for skepticism. Qaeda prisoners like Zubaydah have become notorious for providing misinformation to their captors, American officials have not rushed to broadcast the information prisoners have given them and the Saudis have vigorously denied any links to bin Laden, despite the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers hailed from the kingdom. (Last month, in fact, Saudi officials asserted that bin Laden intentionally recruited Saudis for the Sept. 11 mission in order to strain relations between the United States and the kingdom.) Still, Posner’s reputation for sober, exhaustive journalism and his access to classified intelligence signal that his theory should not be dismissed out of hand.