Prince Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi Arabian intelligence, has abruptly resigned his post as the Saudi ambassador to D.C., a job he held for a mere fifteen months.Supposedly, he wants to "spend more time with his family." We've heard that one before.
This is not the first time he has suddenly resigned an important post. As some of you will recall, he quit his job as Saudi intelligence chief just before the attack on the World Trade Center.
The Prince was a controversial choice as ambassador, to say the least. According to a number of sources (including Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud), Osama Bin Laden was once Prince Turki's protege.
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
Prince Turki belonged to a mysterious power group called The Safari Club, founded -- according to one account -- by then-DCI George H.W. Bush and Sheikh Kamal Adham, Turki's uncle and predecessor as Saudi intelligence chief. We have looked at this group before. In a public speech, the Prince admitted that this "club" was an off-the-reservation covert action ring, unaccountable to any democratic government:
In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything... In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Iran.This quote appears in Joseph Trento's Prelude to Terror. Trento adds that the Safari Club, through Pakistan, ran the anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan -- which is to say, it created Osama Bin Laden's network. The Club also funded A.Q. Kahn's nuclear hijinks in Pakistan.
Note that Prince Turki made reference to France. This page has an interesting squib connecting the Safari Club with a group called the Pinay Circle, also called Le Cercle Violet, first exposed in the pages of Robin Ramsey's periodical Lobster. (At least, that's where I first learned about Pinay.)
A secret intelligence group that is often named in one breath with the Pinay Circle is the Safari Club. Some people claim this group was the precursor to the Pinay Circle, but this cannot be true. As far as we know, the Safari Club was created in 1976 in Paris by Pinay Circle members Alexandre de Marenches and Kermit Roosevelt. Marenches was head of the French foreign intelligence service SDECE from 1970 to 1981. The Safari Club seemed to have had largely the same role as the Pinay Circle (keeping the communists at bay at all costs) and among its members were the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hoessein of Iraq, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Ashraf Marwan of the Egyptian intelligence, and Kamal Adham of the BCCI scandal). After the Shah was kicked out of Iran documents surfaced revealing the existence of the Club.We thus have two creation myths for this group. Incidentally, the Kermit Roosevelt mentioned here is Teddy's grandson, Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, Jr. (Perhaps this connection explains Karl Rove's T.R. fixation?)
Some observers believe that, back in the 1970s and '80s, the secretive Pinay Circle engineered successful covert actions against such liberal Western leaders as Harold Wilson in the U.K. and Jimmy Carter in the United States. De Marenches, the late head of French intelligence, confessed his participation in the "October Surprise" which unseated Jimmy Carter.
Yikes. I've wandered, haven't I? Back to Prince Turki.
Not long after the 9/11 attacks, a few published reports accused him of materially aiding Osama Bin Laden's terror network. The Prince has always vehemently insisted that he had cut Osama loose some years before. However, this long and fascinating essay by Paul W. Rasche argues that Turki still maintained a relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban:
The Faisal Islamic Bank of Saudi Arabia is the head bank of a number of affiliated Islamic banks under the name across the Islamic world from Egypt to Pakistan to the Emirates and Malaysia. The head of Faisal Islamic Bank of Saudi Arabia is former Saudi intelligence chief, Turki al-Faisal. Faisal Islamic Bank is directly involved in running accounts for bin Laden and his associates, and has been named by Luxembourg banking authorities in this regard.And:
Turki al-Faisal himself maintained ongoing ties with bin Laden even after the latter fled Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990's after imprisonment by order of the King. It was Turki al-Faisal also who persuaded King Fahd to grant diplomatic recognition to the Taliban.Incidentally, the Rasche piece goes on to describe cooperation between Israel and Al Qaeda (!) in the "blood diamond" trade. You might want to read this section as preparation for the new film Blood Diamond, which, I am told, is quite good.
Yes, I know. I've wandered again.
Alas, a post of this sort is necessarily more of a brain dump than a structured essay. Still, if you root and snort through the debris, you might find a few data shards which will help you formulate your own thoughts regarding the Prince's strange decision.
One possibility: The Prince fears that a Democratic Congress will investigate some of the connections mentioned here. This theory presumes that the clueless House intel committee head Silvestre Reyes can extract his cranium from his anus long enough to learn how the world actually operates.
Another possibility: Big Wedding II is a-comin', and the Prince is getting out while the getting's good.
I prefer the first scenario.
3 comments:
Trying to figure out whether the Pinay Circle actually amounts to anything or is just another social club for rich folk has also been a part-time hobby of mine since I first ran into mention of it -- I think at Elitewiki.
If real, it's obviously important. That Elikewiki entry links it to Operation Gladio and claims, "The Cercle has intimate connections with a host of inter-locking right wing outfits including WACL, Heritage Foundation, Western Goals, ISC, Freedom Association, Interdoc, Bilderberg Group, Propaganda Due (P2), Opus Dei, the Moonies and the Jonathan Institute."
It also states:
While there is a strong argument against landmine manufactures themselves plotting against Diana, at the time of her death the production of landmines was still going strong. The Clinton administration had just clinched a £400 million deal to supply an arms package for Bosnian Muslims (Through Honeywell). The French (through the DGSE) had just dried the ink on a $2 billion oil deal with the Iranians and part of the payment was to be a shipment of arms to Bosnia where a very high-profile Princess Diana had recently visited to appeal to the world against the recent carnage and its aftermath. Her very innocence was getting to be a huge embarrassment to several governments. And, perhaps more important, to the machinations of "Le Cercle" An uncontrolled Princess was swanning through their affairs and getting world-wide support. She was a one-woman icon wandering at will through the war zones of the world. She was striking huge chords for international pacifism. And worse, far worse, she was a deep influence on the future king.
Oops, sorry -- this is the Prince Turki al-Faisal thread, not the Diana thread. It gets hard to keep them apart sometimes. My bad. ;-)
"An uncontrolled Princess ..."
It was then UK prime minister ms.Thatcher, I think, who described Diana as a 'loose cannon..' at thetime..
...and of course it goes without saying, but i'll remind readers nonetheless...
that kermit roosevelt, in addition to being teddy's grandson (and fdr's cousin), was also the mastermind and implementor of the cia's operation ajax, which unseated democratically elected iranian president mohammed mossadegh through the initial workings of paid protests and other means of sabotage to install the infamous shah, workings that were clearly so successful they have become de riguer.
Post a Comment