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USA: Do The Saudis Own Your Congressman?
18 September 2013
On Friday, Sept. 13, an aide to a congressman in the Democratic Party leadership, when presented with the evidence that Saudi Arabia was behind 9/11/2001 and 9/11/2012, and is supporting al-Qaeda in Syria, insisted: "We need the Saudis!" He insisted that the leadership of the Congress would never declassify the 28-page chapter of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 on the involvement of Saudi Arabia because, as he insisted more than once: We need the Saudis! Recent articles have revealed that just as Wall Street has been aggressively lobbying the U.S. Congress in a desperate effort to prevent the passage of legislation to reenact Glass- Steagall, the Saudis in collusion with the Obama White House and CIA head John Brennan, have been directly lobbying the top leadership of the U.S. Congress to support the war aims of Saudi Arabia and its Britsh allies in the Middle East. On Aug. 25, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled "A Veteran Saudi Power Player Works to Build Support to Topple Assad," which documents the role of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan in buying off many of the top leadership of the U.S. Congress. The article reports: "Prince Bandar has been jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime, according to Arab, American, and European officials. Meanwhile, an influential protégé, current Saudi Ambassador to Washington Adel al-Jubeir, is leading a parallel campaign to coax Congress and a reluctant Obama administration to expand the U.S. role in Syria." "The Saudi ambassador, Mr. Jubeir, has long been courting members of Congress who could pressure the administration to get more involved in Syria. He found early support from Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. "He also reached out to centrists, helping set up a rare one-on-one meeting for one of them, then-Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.), with King Abdullah in Riyadh. Mr. Nelson said he told the king that if regional powers pulled together with a common strategy, it would be easier for the U.S. to become a partner. "Mr. Jubeir used his access to policy makers, including the president, to push the message that U.S. inaction would lead to greater Middle East instability down the road, American officials said. "Prince Bandar has largely stayed out of Washington but held meetings with U.S. officials in the region. One was in September 2012. Sens. McCain and Graham, who were in Istanbul, met him in an opulent hotel suite on the banks of the Bosporus. "By late spring, U.S. intelligence agencies saw worrisome signs that Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, in response to the influx of Saudi arms, were ramping up support to Mr. Assad. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee backed arming the rebels, and Mr. Jubeir and Prince Bandar turned their attention to skeptics on the House and Senate intelligence committees. "They arranged a trip for committee leaders to Riyadh, where Prince Bandar laid out the Saudi strategy. It was a reunion of sorts, officials said, with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) warmly scolding Prince Bandar about his smoking." Adam Entous, co-author of the Wall Street Journal article, in an interview with Democracy Now, said the following: "Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir replaced Bandar as the ambassador here, and he is you know, has the kind of access to the circles of power in Washington that few, if any, ambassadors have. He gets meetings with the president. He meets constantly with the top White House advisers, as well as members of Congress. And he sort of used the Saudi playbook from the 1980s in Afghanistan. In the case of Syria, the Saudis identified the core group as being Senators McCain, Senator Graham, and former Senator Lieberman. That was the core group." Also, Wayne Madsen ran a report on his website, September 6-8, 2013, entitled, "Bandar buying political support in U.S. and Europe": "Wayne Madsen Report has learned from multiple intelligence sources in Washington, London, Beirut, and Paris that Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan has paid off key members of the U.S. Senate and House leadership, as well as key ministers of the French government, with "incentive cash" to support an American and French "shock and awe" military strike on not only Syria but Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. "Much of the money Bandar is using to buy off members of Congress and the French National Assembly originates from a $2 billion slush fund amassed by Bandar as a result of bribes paid to him by the British defense firm BAE Systems for a Saudi oil- for-weapons deal made with Britain in the 1980s. "Republican and Democratic members of the Senate and House leadership, including Senators Harry Reid, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Barbara Boxer, and Robert Menendez, as well as House Speaker John Boehner, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers, New York’s Peter King, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, and others have seen their campaign chests grow substantially as a result of Bandar’s financial largesse, according to our multiple sources." |