ABU DHABI Ñ Former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al Faisal said Saudi Arabia
and the United States have been sharing information on Al Qaida leader Osama
Bin Laden since 1997. He said Riyad relayed to the CIA all information
collected on Al Qaida.
"As director of general intelligence, I had for some time regarded Osama
Bin Laden as a key intelligence target," Turki told the Riyad-based Arab
News on Wednesday.
"At the instruction of the senior Saudi leadership, I
shared all the intelligence we had collected on Bin Laden and Al Qaida with
the CIA," Turki said. "And in 1997 the Saudi minister of defense, Prince
Sultan, established a joint intelligence committee with the United States to
share information on terrorism in general and on Bin Laden and Al-Qaida in
particular."
Turki served as Saudi intelligence chief from 1973 until several weeks
before the Al Qaida suicide attacks on New York and Washington in September
2001. He was the leading Saudi liasion to U.S.
intelligence, Middle East Newsline reported.
In an unusual first-person account that reviewed U.S.-Saudi security
cooperation, Turki said Saudi Arabia stripped Bin Laden of Saudi citizenship
in 1994 when he was deemed as having embraced terrorism. He said Riyad
rejected a Sudanese offer in 1996 to relay Bin Laden from Khartoum on
condition that he would not be prosecuted [15 out of the 19 Al Qaida suicide hijackers were Saudi
nationals.].
Turki also said Saudi security cooperation with the United States
included an intelligence exchange on Palestinian groups.
He said the intelligence agencies of the two countries worked to combat a
range of insurgency groups in the 1970s and 1980s. This included cooperation
against the Fatah Revolutionary Command, a PLO splinter group, and other
unidentified Palestinian organizations.
"In the 1970s and '80s, the CIA and the [Saudi] GID worked together to
combat communist-inspired terrorist organizations around the world," Turki
said. "We shared information on Abu Nidal and the various Palestinian
groups, as well as the Red Brigades in Italy, the Baader-Meinhof gang in
Germany, the Japanese Red Army and many others that threatened U.S.-Saudi
interests."
In his account, Turki said Saudi Arabia and the United States disagreed
often on Middle East issues. But he said Saudi help was vital in U.S.-led
peace efforts. They included the Egyptian-Israeli interim accords in 1975.
Riyad and Washington also entered into what Turki termed a "joint covert
program" to battle Soviet troops in 1979. He said Saudi-American
collaboration was instrumental in liberating Kuwait and laying the
groundwork for the subsequent Middle East peace conference in 1991.
Turki said that over the last year Saudi Arabia has been implementing a
series of reforms meant to increase monitoring of suspected insurgents. He
said the reforms also include a more open press and rule of law.
