cia exposed - robert baer, former cia case officer -- how washington sold our soul for saudi crude...

8/4/2019 CIA Exposed - Robert Baer, Former CIA Case Officer -- How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude Interview

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Robert Baer, Former CIA Case Officer and Author of "Sleeping with the Devil:How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude." - A BuzzFlash Interview

BuzzFlash Interviews

September 12, 2003INTERVIEW ARCHIVESSupport BuzzFlash

Robert Baer, Former CIA Case Officer and Author of "Sleeping with the Devil:How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude."

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEWThink About This: Whenever You Buy a Tank of Saudi Arabian Gas, You are

Helping to Finance Terrorism.Regular BuzzFlash readers know that we have regularly run articles,commentaries and editorials arguing that, in part, the invasion of Iraq was a Bushadministration effort to divert attention from the primary financiers of terrorism --and the source of much of the al-Qaeda leadership -- Saudi Arabia. Of course, therewere other motivating factors for the Bush military action against Iraq, which wehave detailed (see, as examples, The Perfect War and Endgame).But a recent poll indicates that the American public still believes Iraq was behind9/11, even though bin Laden received Saudi, not Iraq financing, and 15 of the 19

hijackers were Saudis. The Bush administration kept -- and keeps -- insinuatingthat Iraq was involved deeply in 9/11, while trying to sweep under the carpet much,much stronger indications of key Saudi involvement in the financing, strategy andimplementation of 9/11.As a result, they have successfully misled Americans about who was reallyresponsible for 9/11.It is within this context that we interviewed Robert Baer, a case officer for theDirectorate of Operations for the Central Intelligence Agency from 1976 to 1997.He worked out of the Middle East.

You may, like BuzzFlash, not agree with all of Baer's remedies, but his insights areinvaluable. And, like BuzzFlash, he believes that the Bush administration is lettingthe country that is the largest financial and religious sect supporter of terrorism getaway with it, while attacking Iraq, which only had the most tangential involvementwith terrorism.His book, "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for SaudiCrude," adds to a growing list of evidence that the Bush administration isconducting a war on terror that is politically calculated.(You can purchase "Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul forSaudi Crude" Here)* * *


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BUZZFLASH: Let me begin by asking you, just to establish your background,

you wrote a book called See No Evil, in which you talked about your career

with the CIA. Can you explain a little bit more about what your background

and areas of responsibility were with the CIA?

ROBERT BAER: I spent 21 years in the CIA as whats called a case officer.That means that I went overseas and served overseas almost all the years I spentwith the CIA, meeting with what we call agents. Those are foreigners who spy forthe CIA. And you write up their reports and send them back to Washington. So Iwas a field officer, in short.BUZZFLASH: In what area? You did serve in Iraq, if I recall, in reading yourbook.BAER: I served in Iraq for awhile. A couple times I was there on a temporarybasis. I was mostly in the Middle East Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and Bosnia as well

as a couple of other countries.BUZZFLASH: So you have extensive experience with the Middle East.BAER: Yes.BUZZFLASH: As a gatherer of what is called "human intelligence."BAER: Yes.BUZZFLASH: Now in reading through the book were going to discuss, SleepingWith the Devil, I noticed there are many thick black bars through it that I assumedwere censored by the CIA. Is that correct?BAER: Yes. They get the manuscript in advance of publishing.

BUZZFLASH: So the CIA basically vets it and approves it, minus whatever theyfeel is necessary to black out or censor.BAER: Yes, they dont mess with the content. They just say: Listen, this is ourstuff. You cant publish it.BUZZFLASH: The books full title is Sleeping With the Devil How WashingtonSold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, and you cover several administrations. The claimsyou make here seem to apply, for the most part, whether theyre Democrat orRepublican. And you, of course, focus on Saudi Arabia. What compelled you towrite the book?BAER: Id always been fascinated by Saudi Arabia. And Id always noticed that ongeneral intelligence reports that are sent around in the field, and in Washington,theres virtually nothing said about Saudi Arabia.Every Arab that I talked to and I know a lot of them kept on talking about thedisputes in the royal family, huge contracts, the Wahhabi's funding Lebanesepolitics. It became clear to me, even though I wasnt seeing much in the CIAtraffic, or State Department, or anywhere else, that this was a key country.So when I got back to Washington in 95 and I stayed there until I resigned fromthe CIA I said, all right, I dont know a whole lot about Saudi Arabia. Whatabout Saudi Arabia? And I got onto the computer and I took a look around, andthere just wasnt anything useful. I mean, you, as a journalist, would have looked at


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this and said: Its junk. Theres nothing here. And especially nothing that goes deepinto the problems in Saudi Arabia.At the same time, I started running into these assessments of the oil industry, andjust how much damage you could do to the processing facilities, not the pipelines,

if you were a terrorist and wanted to bring the Saudis down. And then 9/11 camealong, and the 15 Saudis that caused it. So I took notes about everything that Idever learned about Saudi Arabia and the government. And I said, this would makea book. I asked myself: Why dont we know more about a country thats so vital tothe United States? And this is my effort at explaining that. Youd get a differentperspective if you asked James Baker about it or an academic.But this is the continuation of my memoir, my gut reaction.BUZZFLASH: We were told, after the Afghanistan war, that indulging in drugs issupporting terrorism. But you also make the claim: Every time we buy a gallon of

gasoline, if the petrol came from Saudi Arabia, the oil was used for the gasoline. Sowere also supporting terrorism.BAER: Well, it is. In the first Gulf war, if Saudi Arabia hadnt been there to pumpthe extra gasoline, and if we had let oil hit $80 or $90 a barrel for a long period oftime, people wouldnt have been buying all these SUVs in the 90s. I mean, SaudiArabia really does balance the market out. Im in California right now, and we usea lot of gasoline. As you drive around this town, its amazing all the SUVs andfour-wheel drives that you see.In any case, we just use a lot of gasoline, and we depend upon it, just as we depend

upon cheap imports from East Asia, from China. All these cheap imports and cheapgasoline, and wood from Brazil, it becomes a dependency.These arent my ideas. I talk to a lot of people about the drug problem, and theysay, well, with dependency, your perceptions change. And I think the best I can tellis thats what has happened. It's as if Saudi Arabia is our boss and is paying us agood salary. It would be difficult to find another job, so we're not going to reallyworry about focusing on what our boss is really doing. We're too dependent.BUZZFLASH: So thats the basis of your claim that through our dependence onSaudi oil, were, in essence, financing terrorism because you do say in your bookthat, over the past decade, Saudi Arabia has transferred half a billion dollars to Al-Qaeda, and at least a hundred million dollars to the Taliban.BAER: Exactly. And its obviously not intentional on the part of consumers;theres no conspiracy in this on this side of the ocean. People in Washington didntsit around and say, let's finance terrorism. But it doesnt really matter. Its thisprocess of what I call slow accrual.BUZZFLASH: Why do the Saudis finance terrorism? From reading your bookelsewhere, we deduce that there are probably two reasons. One is that theyrepaying protection money. You set up the scenario, as you discussed earlier, that ifthey didnt buy off al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, they might be the target ofa plane thats hijacked into their oil processing plants, and that would ruin them for


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years. The second reason is that the Saudis practice what we would view inAmerica as a fundamentalist branch of the Islamic faith that actually becomes abreeding ground for terrorism.BAER: There's a lot that we really dont know. There are a lot of people in the

royal family that sympathize with bin Laden. There are people in the royal familythat feel humiliated by colonialism -- call it what you want -- by the United States,by Israel. And theyre humiliated that they are citizens or subjects of a country thathas never fought a war, and yet spends so much money on defense. Theyrehumiliated that they dont take the Israelis on, because their army is worthless. Andmaybe theyre not humiliated but rather disenfranchised because they can neveradvance up the ranks of the family, and its a very tough culture. They sit aroundand they read the Koran. And they get on these Islamic websites, and they watchAl-Jazeera. And they go to the mosque, and I think theyre believers.

You've got a very fragmented Saudi society. I can only identify a couple of thoseprinces. Theres a senior one named Salman, whom I mention in the book, who hadsome sort of late conversion. But there are other ones. You hear rumors aboutthem, and I didnt dare put them in the book, because Im not sure of theinformation. Then there are the other princes who are Westernized in the sense oftheir tastes: They drink, they like women, they like to spend a lot of money. Theyhave the diamond-studded Rolex watches. They just love money for the power itgives them over other subjects. And they know they have a problem with thefundamentalists. They figure, if I can make gestures toward them, they wont

bother me. And the fundamentalists havent, for the most part.If I were a fundamentalist and I wanted to take Saudi Arabia over, what I would dois Id go after the royal family. I would set off a few car bombs and kill a couple ofthem. Destabilize the country. But for some reason, the royal family has not beenthe victim of terrorism that they claim they have been. You cannot name a singlecase where the fundamentalists killed a Saudi prince. They claim all the time thatthere are all these plots afoot, and theyve stopped them. But all the terrorism hasreally been against the United States and other Western countries, or Westerninterests in Saudi Arabia.That 95 National Guard barracks bombing within Saudi Arabia we dont reallyknow who did that. Could have been bin Laden. And you have the 96 Kobarbarracks bombing. There are a lot of people who say that bin Laden was involvedin the 96 bombing, though theres no proof of it.That brings me to the State Department. Youve got 95, 96, and 98 bombingsthat had a bunch of Saudis. The bombings in Africa [U.S. Embassy in Kenya] andthe Cole [U.S.S. Cole] had a bunch of Saudis involved. And we were hitSeptember 2001, and we still dont have visa interviews for these people. How canyou explain that? If youre a Syrian, you have to wait 30 days. If youre an Iranian,you have to wait 30 days before you get your visa. In Saudi Arabia, you just send


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your passport to the travel agent. It comes back, without an interview, without anysort of check, and you get a visa. And thats what disturbs me.BUZZFLASH: And of course, 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11 were Saudi.BAER: The Saudi hijackers were spending time in these mosques paid for by the

Saudi government. The clerics are essentially government employees that recruitedthese kids. I know why Americans dont have time to think about the Middle East.Its a very complicated place. I certainly dont understand it all that well, but Ivespent 25 years now doing nothing but trying to figure it out.BUZZFLASH: You also mentioned how intertwined business relationships arewith Saudi Arabia. Another point you bring out is that the Saudi Arabians keeppossibly as much as a trillion dollars on deposit in U.S. banks. So how does thatfactor in?BAER: Well, Kissinger set this up in the first oil embargo. He said, listen, fine, you

can raise the price of oil. Youre going to get more money for your oil. But lets bereasonable about this. Take this money and all this profit youre making, and investit in the United States, which is a perfectly good policy, by the way. Buy our arms.Keep your money here. Itll keep our economy floating. We wont go into arecession or a depression because of high oil prices. And were all going to win bythis. And that worked fine.But then that goes back to the dependency. We depend so much on Saudiinvestments in the stock market, in Citibank and other funds. This is not just Saudimoney; its other Arab money too. If we go into a confrontation with the Middle

East, especially with oil prices so high right now, and that money is notrecirculated back in the United States, its going to do some real damage. Or if oneday, they just completely pull their money out. I mean, thats the perfect storm: anoil embargo, the Saudis and others' pulling their money out, and having the price ofoil go up to $70 - $80 a barrel. We would be hurt, badly hurt.BUZZFLASH: Another factor in terms of the relationship that youve described assleeping with the devil, and that you detail in your book, is that the Saudis havevery shrewdly given jobs and consulting contracts to politicians and Americangovernment officials as they leave their government jobs.BAER: I could have sat down and done a list of all my former colleagues from theCIA who ended up on the Saudi Arabian payroll. Some of them are known, likeRay Close. Others have gone public, but there are others that havent. A bunch ofmy colleagues went to work for a public consulting firm where the initial capitalwas paid for by the Saudi embassy to lobby the Hill for the Gulf countries. Aformer member of the National Security Council under Reagan set this up. And itsnot like its a secret. Even Bandar [Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi prince and U.S.ambassador] has said, according to the Washington Post, that if I take care ofpeople coming out of office, the new ones coming in are going to be a lot friendlierto Saudi Arabia once it gets known.BUZZFLASH: And its worked.


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BAER: It works great. Id be really popular in Washington if I could throw arounda couple hundred million dollars every year to law firms and others. Another thingthe royal family does is cultivate the press through public relations firms.By the way, I just heard today The New York Times refused to review my book.

BUZZFLASH: Is that right? And you have no idea why?BAER: Maybe they didnt like my English. Maybe they didnt like that Imentioned one of their reporters in it. I dont know.BUZZFLASH: What about the Wahhabi sect of Islam thats practiced in SaudiArabia?BAER: It is absolutely susceptible to terrorism because its world view is so blackand white and Utopian at the same time. Many Saudis are disgusted with their ownlifestyles now, and they look back to the 18th Century with Abd-al-Wahhab. Andthey say things were better back then when we lived out in the desert. Saudis have

told me, well keep the oil in the ground. You can keep your weapons. Were goingto go back and were going to live in the desert off of camels milk and dates,because thats when life was pure. In the times of Muhammad, we were honorablepeople, and we were warriors, and we were in control of our own destiny.So with that kind of mentality, its very easy to recruit young kids, whether theyremen or women. In Saudi Arabia, its mainly the young boys.And when the Muslim Brotherhood, which is a violent political Islamic faction, leftEgypt and set up in Saudi Arabia, they had a lot of influence on the Saudis.This combination of a Utopian view of the world, plus the Muslim Brothers'

advocacy of violence, have made people susceptible to suicide bombing. And its alittle bit different from the Palestinians who live in refugee camps, and who havebeen disenfranchised completely. The Saudis are more privileged, of course. Thebest that I can tell, its just this combination that has been so lethal.BUZZFLASH: Well, what then are we doing? Is Saudi Arabia continuing tofinance Al-Qaeda?BAER: I think they are. I think theyre going to continue to finance Hamas. Smartpeople in the Middle East tell me that there are a lot of Saudis heading into Iraqright now to set up cells to attack American troops. There was an article recentlyabout it I think it was in the Christian Science Monitor. And Bremer has evensaid it. What to do? I offer one solution, which is Syria, 1982, where theyconfronted a fundamentalist problem. And Ive been criticized by people that saythat you cant shell cities like Asad did in 82.BUZZFLASH: Well, he just wiped the town out, didnt he?BAER: Yes. And thats not what Im advocating. Im just saying that one solutionis to outlaw this sort of fundamentalism at the state level, as we would. Forexample, a Christian sect in the United States could not go into a church andadvocate and preach violence, which results in violence.That would be a conspiracy and it's against the law. If those same norms and lawswere applied to these countries, wed be a lot better off. And so I take Syria as an


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example of a country who had a terrible problem, and who pretty much solved it.This doesnt address the question of Syria's support for Hesbollah thekidnappings in the 80s and the terrorism that went on outside Syria. But insideSyria, I just wanted to point out that it is possible to do something about it.

We need the Saudis to get in that same position where they need to be removingthese clerics from the mosque who are advocating righteous murder. We need toget the Saudis to account for the money thats going to the charities, to make sureits going to orphans and widows and not weapons. And we need them as partners.And we have to hold them accountable. They have to tell us who these Saudis werethat were apparently involved in September 11.BUZZFLASH: Well, according to numerous accounts, although its hard to tellhow extensive, the Saudis were allowed to fly members of the royal family andothers out of the United States immediately after September 11th without

questioning, on private Saudi jets. I believe I read one account of a security guard,a retired police officer in Florida, who was asked to accompany a member of ascion of a Saudi family who was at a university in Florida to Lexington, Kentucky,which I believe was a meeting point for many of the departing planes. [BuzzFlashNote: Since this interview was conducted in August, the issue of the Bushadministration allowing bin Laden and Saudi families to leave the U.S.without questioning, within hours after 9/11 when U.S. airspace was closed, hasbeen confirmed.]BAER: Yes.

BUZZFLASH: One of the Florida papers, a mainstream daily, recounted this policeofficer's experience, and how he arrived on the tarmac in Lexington, and there wasa whole fleet of Saudi jets there.BAER: Its crazy. There's a Syrian who's been convicted in Chicago and he has aSaudi wife. The Saudi embassy issued her a passport so was able to flee the U.S.;even though she was part of the case and shouldnt have left. And the Saudis didn'treally let us question Bayyumi [Bayyumi had showed up in San Diego withthousands of dollars and helped settle two Saudi 9/11 hijackers] But it was acontrolled interrogation. You dont get anything out of that.BUZZFLASH: And it took awhile to arrange that.BAER: Two years -- a guy that had met two of the hijackers and helped financetheir stay!BUZZFLASH: And wasnt Bayyumi the guy that the wife of the Saudi ambassadorto the U.S. sent money to?BAER: The wife of the Saudi ambassador claimed that she gave the money tocharities. As it turned out, the money was going into an account under a Jordanianwoman's name. And the Jordanians and the Saudis despise each other. The chancesof a Saudi princess sending money to a Jordanian woman without somebody'srecommendation are highly improbable. But we don't w who made the


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recommendation, because were not getting the answers. Were not holding SaudiArabia accountable.BUZZFLASH: Well, given that Saudi Arabia has 25 percent of the worlds oilreserves? Is that right?

BAER: Yes.BUZZFLASH: And given that they have on deposit nearly a trillion dollars in theUnited States, and given all the intermingled business relationships, and the factthat they buy planes from Boeing, and the Carlyle Group is intertwined with them,what pressure could be put on them? What leverage does the United States have toactually get them to really crack down on the terrorist roots of many of the acts ofterrorism?BAER: Well, you hit the nail on the head. We dont have a lot of pressure pointsbecause were so dependent on this oil. You could get rough with these people, but

the problem is: Would the regime fall? As much as I despise Al Sa'ud, I wouldntwant the regime to fall, for our benefit. It could lead to chaos. And I think thats theproblem Bush has: What do you do with these people that are clearly hidingsomething from 9/11, and have just said were not going to cooperate?The Interior Minister said that 9/11 is a Zionist conspiracy. He said the Saudis hadnothing to do with it. He stiffed Freeh [Louis Freeh, former FBI director] when hewent out there in 96 just refused to see him. I dont care what Freeh says now.He refused to see him, and no one did anything. The Saudis, and their arrogance,have gotten away with this for a long time because they think they have enough

money to buy people off.Their attitude is: You dont want to buy our oil, dont buy it. Well sell someplaceelse. And what would happen if they did impose another embargo?Do we invade? I offer that possibility at the end of my book, but thats if nothingelse works. If the place is ready to go down, you have to consider it.It wouldn't be an Iraq-like invasion with the stated goal of imposing democracy.An invasion of Saudi Arabia would be to save our economy.BUZZFLASH: Youre very skeptical in your book on the possibility of imposingdemocracy in the Middle East.BAER: I look at Iraq today. Yesterday, you had the Turkmen killing the Kurds.You had the Shi'a Muslims blowing each other up in Najef. I wouldn't even knowwhere to begin to impose democracy on these countries.In order for a democracy to be established in a country, there has to be anintellectual tradition of democracy within the country. There needs to be someprior rule of law. For example, the Weimar Republic had a democratic rule of lawin the 30s that laid the foundation for the post-World War II occupation. And theRussians had sort of a democracy in the early 1900's even though theyre not doingvery well now.Its really hard to get people in countries like Iraq to understand what youretalking about [when you talk about democracy], when theyre so tied up in religion


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and the rule of God. In Saudi Arabia, the rule of law is whatever the prince thatcomes along says; that's the system of justice. I think we can offer by exampledemocracy in adjoining countries, but at the end of the day, we really cant imposeit.

BUZZFLASH: Also, you point out that if you offered democracy, thefundamentalists might win.BAER: Ive seen conversations weve had with the Saudi government why theydidnt want to arrest bin Laden in 96. They were very frank. They said: Listen, wecan arrest this guy and put him in jail. There would be a national uprising insupport of him.So, I think that Iraq should find its own way to democracy. We should set theexample wherever we can. If the Palestinian-Israeli thing ever gets solved itprobably never will in our lifetime there would be a sort of working democracy

with the Palestinians or the Jordanians. Democracy has to be created from withinthe country; they just wont accept it from the United States.BUZZFLASH: You mentioned Asad earlier, and what he did to the MuslimBrotherhood just annihilated the town that was the center for the uprising againsthim. Asad and Saddam Hussein were similar. Both were ruthless tyrants withcomparatively secular versions of Islam in their countries. The Saudis werefinancing people who were actually opposed to Asad. Theres a kind of irony here.We overthrew a country that despite how cruel Saddam Hussein was, he was notone to aggressively foster terrorism within Iraq. And yet you have the Saudis, who

are our closest friends and who do finance terrorism, as you point out, to the tuneof a billion dollars over the last decade. It seems like everythings upside down.BAER: Well, I think it is. I think its pretty clear now that Saddam was notsupporting bin Laden to any degree that we can establish. And now suddenly thisweek, weve got bin Laden claiming the U.N. bombing in Iraq.So we have created a terrorist state where we didnt have one before. Are we worseoff with the terrorist state in Iraq now, or with Saddam before, who was out of hismind and could attack a country like Saudi Arabia? Who knows what he was goingto do next. Were facing two evils here. Im frankly more scared of thefundamentalists than I was of Saddam.BUZZFLASH: Many commentators, including yourself, say the CIA over theyears started to depend less on people like you and more on electronic intelligenceand technology to do the spying. And yet you were the nitty-gritty humanintelligence type of operative. You got to know the Middle East pretty well. Isthere black and white there, or just shades of gray?BAER: Shades of gray. You know, on the intelligence thing, you really need it all.You need the human intelligence. You need electronic intelligence.And you need good analysis. You need people that know the area and spend theirlives following it. And you need satellite photography as well. So those are the fourthings you need. And then you need governments. You know, thats really even a


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fifth thing. Its very important. Other governments helping you on the ground what we really need in Iraq is a government to tell us whats happening there,which were lacking.But the problem in the United States is we dont do well with foreign countries. So

many Americans came here and they just dont want to know about what ishappening in their home countries. Im out here in California, and nationalsecurity? -- they dont want to hear it. They dont want to know anything about it.They want to know about the movies.They want to know about the dot-coms coming back. They want to know about thelatest diet book. So when we get into a war like Iraq, I dont really think Americansknow what the potential consequences are. And it's the same in the CIA and theState Department. You get more and more Americans that dont spend much timeoverseas certainly not in the Middle East.

Its harder for them to go up the learning curve on these countries. It certainly wasfor me.BUZZFLASH: Youre in a small group of people that has had much contact withthe darker side of terrorism, and youve had personal relationships that gave you aninsight. The motivations for terrorism are multi-faceted.But weve been constantly perplexed by what one does about suicide bombers. Ifyouve got the people who participate in 9/11 or Palestinians who blow themselvesup on Israeli buses, you cant punish them. You have no leverage to say: If you dothat, youre going to lose your life, because the mission itself involves their

commitment to lose their lives by their own will. How does one gain an edge onthat? And is there any way psychologically to gain that? Or is it purely a militaryfunction?BAER: I think its more political. I think that the sooner we stop interfering in theMiddle East, the more likely we'll be able to exact a truce with terrorism.By going into Afghanistan, that was really acceptable to most Muslims, becausewed been attacked. They understand that. But going into Iraq will certainly irritatemore people and add credence to bin Laden-type ideologies and zealots. We haveto get together with the Europeans and solve this Israeli-Palestinian deal. And if itsbuilding a wall between the Palestinians and the Israelis, fine lets do it. We needto identify a leadership among the Palestinians that speak for 90 percent of them,for instance, and get a settlement. Even if we need to buy it, its really importantthat we do that because theyve got such rotten systems in the Middle East that alltheyre really allowed to think about are the Palestinian problems.They cant complain against their own governments. They cant overthrow them.They cant go into elections. So the governments, whether theyre Saudi orJordanian or Lebanese, focus on Israel as the main misery in their lives. Of course,what do Palestinians have to do with the Saudis?Nothing, other than they share a religion.


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But we dont care about the Christians in Rawanda as Christians. So its a littlehard for Americans to understand this. And if we could remove that irritant of thePalestinian problem, that would be a start. We need to wean ourselves from MiddleEastern oil with alternative fuels, with conservation, with better use of our own

fuels, however you do that Im not a specialist in that and just get out of thatsystem because it so corrosive.We cant do it with a military force. Its really sad that our military is up againstthis guerilla warfare in Iraq. And if they become the subject of terrorists and carbombs, its unfortunate for us, because were going to do some damage to aninstitution thats very important in the United States.BUZZFLASH: Meaning the military.BAER: Yes, and ultimately we cant do it. We cant expect some private fromIndiana to be out in the streets of Baghdad collecting intelligence on who these

people are, what theyre doing, or even making raids. Because heyre knockingdown peoples doors, and they have no idea who they are.The informations hard to come by in that country, and there are a lot offabricators. And youre asking these soldiers to be policemen, which they cant doat the end of the day.BUZZFLASH: Do you think the Saudi royal family and their role is in danger ofimploding? Are they less secure, more secure, than they were 10 years ago? Whatsthe outlook for their rule?BAER: I think theyre more insecure, and Im basing this on anecdotal nformation.

The Crown Prince, 10 days ago, I think it was, said that heyre in the middle of adecisive battle and it wasnt very clear what he meant and that the outcome isunknown. For a Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia to acknowledge that the royalfamily or the governments in a battle with its own citizens is unprecedented. It'snever happened before.Even when Islamic Fundamentalists took over the Mecca mosque many years ago,it was never construed as a battle between the people and the royal family.So for the first time, a Saudi leader has acknowledged they're having some realproblems. I certainly would be reluctant to give you a timeline when hey fall. Thereare so many factors involved. If they continue to get a ot of money for their oil,they can maintain the welfare system for a ong time.Another factor is going to be Iraq because there was a poll saying that a majority ofAmericans think we should get out of Iraq. If we get out of Iraq and leave a messthere, sort of like Somalia, will it spread to Saudi Arabia? Its a big desert out thereand they have a lot of weapons. Who knows? Its the Middle East. Anything canhappen there. And thats what scares me. I wrote an editorial on Sunday for theWashington Post saying we cant get out now. And Im one that doesntparticularly like foreign engagements. So I dont know. These are worrying times.

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