Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

His tantalizing glimpses into the closed world of the kingdom came during his regular trips to Europe and vacations on Cyprus to escape the ferocious high temperature of summer in Riyadh. A contact in the Ministry of Information had revealed details of the increasing anti-Americanism in the country (in 2005, a regime-approved poll showed that 97 percent of the population held a negative view of the United States). Even more disturbing was the growing extent of the penetration of al-Qaeda into Saudi Arabia and how the ruling family had tried to avoid attacks on its members by allowing them to pay substantial sums to the organization—providing the money was used only to attack targets outside the country. The Salesman had provided details of how Saudi petrodollars had financed the September 11 massacre and the attack on the USS Cole . The Salesman’s evidence enabled Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador with close ties to Mossad, to publicly warn: “Saudi Arabia is paying a ransom to be left alone. It does not care who else suffers. It will reap what it is sowing.”

Within the House of Saud, a power struggle had persisted after the death of King Fahd and the appointment of Abdullah to rule over the desert kingdom. He was a half brother of a powerful faction within the royal family. It was comprised of Prince Sultan, the defense minister; Prince Nayef, the interior minister; Prince Turki, director of intelligence and now ambassador to the Court at St. James; and Prince Salman, governor of Riyadh. They were known as the Sudairi after their mother, Hassa bint Ahmad al-Sudairi, the favorite wife of King Ibn Saud, the founder of the kingdom. Abdullah, their half brother, since coming to power had antagonized the Sudairi by his constant rebukes for their profligate spending habits, which were also a cause of smouldering public resentment. This had led to a groundswell of religious fervor among the population, half of whom were under the age of eighteen. This had been compounded by the country’s oil income fluctuations, leading to a decline in living standards. It had been a fertile breeding ground for al-Qaeda to exploit.

Moshe Feinstein had returned to Israel with important information from The Salesman. His ID card allowed him to bypass airport formalities and quickly reach the waiting car and driver. On the windscreen was a sticker bearing the motto of the Israel Tourist Office: two men carrying grapes and a pitcher, a reminder of the time Moses had sent Caleb and his men to seek the Promised Land and to find out if its people possessed poisons or disease-spreading germs that could be used with devastating effect on the Jews who had already endured much on their flight from Pharaoh’s Egypt. Caleb had returned with news that the land, which later became Israel, “flowed with milk and honey.” It was a running joke in Mossad that this was the first—and best—intelligence the country had received.

Thirty minutes later the car arrived at the gates of the Kirya, the headquarters of the Israeli Defense Forces. A sentry checked IDs, a hydraulic barrier was raised, and the car drove a short distance to halt before a featureless concrete building. Inside was the spartan conference room where the Committee of the Heads of Services met. With them was the director of military intelligence, Brigadier General Moshe Ya’alon. Within Israel he was a legend, a former paratrooper in the elite Saynet Maktal, the equivalent of Britain’s SAS, who had served in all those trouble spots in the Middle East where the streets and souks often had no names and where it was kill-or-be-killed. Beside him sat Meir Dagan.

Even allowing for the flat, emotionless tone in which Mossad encouraged its officers to deliver their reports, the men around the conference table could only have been galvanized when Moshe Feinstein revealed what The Salesman had told him. Abdul Qadeer Khan had secretly traveled to Riyadh and had met with Abdullah. The purpose of the meeting had been to activate the ultrasecret agreement on nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, which was designed to provide the House of Saud with nuclear weapons technology in exchange for cheap oil. Mossad had already discovered—through the network of informers its agent, Jamal, ran across Asia—that the pact also called for Pakistan to respond to any nuclear attack from Iran by launching its own nuclear arsenal. The pact had been signed during Abdullah’s visit to Islamabad in 2003. Mossad’s analysts had dismissed the promise to assist Saudi Arabia in such an event as little more than window dressing.

But the presence of Khan in Riyadh had heightened Israel’s fear that if Saudi Arabia developed a nuclear weapons capability, its missiles posed a serious threat to the Jewish state.

Moshe Feinstein’s briefing brought the possibility that much closer. The Salesman had told him that Saudi C-130 military transporters had started to make regular flights from their Dharan military base. It was from there that America had launched its first Iraqi war aerial onslaught on Iraq; the base was totally under the control of Riyadh after U.S. forces had now been pulled out of the country. The giant aircraft made round trips to Lahore and Karachi that had started after Khan’s visit. The Salesman had discovered the aircraft returned with payloads of materials that had come from Pakistan’s uranium enrichment factory at Kahuta.

Some of The Salesman’s information dovetailed with what Mossad knew. In 1987, Saudi Arabia had bought CSS-2 missiles from China. Though their range brought Israel within reach, they were capable only of carrying conventional warheads and would prove no match for Israel’s high-tech defenses. Saudi Arabia’s first serious attempt to enter the nuclear arena was in 1990 when the House of Saud secretly transferred to Saddam Hussein $5 billion to build them a nuclear bomb. The transfer of the money was handled by Tiny Rowland, the London financier who was Saddam’s bagman, hiding his massive fortune in banks around the world; it has remained undiscovered to this day (see chapter 19, “After Saddam,” pp. 397–402). The bomb was never built, and the deal had surfaced only when Mohammed Khilevi, the first secretary at the Saudi mission to the United Nations, had defected in July 1994, taking with him over ten thousand documents that detailed the House of Saud’s attempt to become a nuclear power. The International Atomic Energy Agency sent inspectors to the country to examine its nuclear facilities. They decided the kingdom had neither the technical capability nor the skilled manpower to handle a nuclear weapon.

Nevertheless the discovery of Riyadh’s intentions had created international alarm, especially in Israel. This increased as evidence emerged of Saudi Arabia’s support for jihadist causes in Kashmir, Uzbekistan, and Chechnya that were linked to bin Laden. It was the Saudi link with Kashmir that Mossad had focused on; Riyadh supported the Kashmir insurgents by funneling the funds through Pakistan; tens of millions of dollars were laundered through Islamabad’s central bank. Vast sums were sent by the same route to support the Taliban in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden, already lionized in Riyadh for his fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, remained a heroic figure in the desert kingdom. Too late the House of Saud realized he was its mortal enemy. The September 11 attacks against the United States made the king and his thousands of princes realize the extent of the threat posed by al-Qaeda. With the American withdrawal of its protective military shield, the House of Saud found itself urgently needing a nuclear arsenal. Pakistan, still one of the world’s leading sponsors of terrorism, had the capability of providing the weapons. It became the first port of call for the frightened rulers of the kingdom. The arrival of Abdul Qadeer Khan in Riyadh was further proof of Pakistan’s readiness to satisfy their demands in return for unlimited oil at a bargain price.