Kings and Presidents: Inside the Special Relationship Between Saudi Arabia and America Since FDR

269 Pages·2017·9.972 MB·English

by  Bruce Riedel

Kings and Presidents

Kings
and
Presidents
Saudi Arabia and the United States
since FDR
BRUCE RIEDEL
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2018
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication data are available.
ISBN 978­0­8157­3137­5 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978­0­8157­3138­2 (ebook)
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset in Fournier MT
Composition by Westchester Publishing Ser vices
To Gloria

Contents
Prologue ix
1 FDR and Ibn Saud, 1744 to 1953 1
2 Faisal, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, 1953 to 1975 27
3 Khalid and Car ter, 1975 to 1982 57
4 Fahd, Reagan, and Bush, 1982 to 1992 85
5 Abdallah, Clinton, and Bush, 1993 to 2008 113
6 Obama and Trump, Abdallah and Salman, 2009 to 2017 151
7 Whither Saudi Arabia 181
APPENDIX The Official Rec ord on Saudi Arabia and 9/11 205
Notes 209
Selected Bibliography 229
Index 233

Prologue
It was a bitterly cold day in December 2001. The terrible tragedy of September 11
was still fresh in our minds. The attack on Amer i ca by al Qaeda had stunned
the world. It had also created a crisis in Amer i ca’s relations with its oldest ally in
the Middle East and the Islamic World. Fifteen of the nineteen terrorists were
Saudi citizens and the leader of al Qaeda was another Saudi, Osama bin Laden.
Indeed, bin Laden had wanted to create a crisis between Americans and Saudis
and deliberately chose his countrymen to attack the World Trade Center, the
Pentagon, and the Capitol to damage the relationship.
My wife, Elizabeth, and I w ere g oing to the V irginia residence of the Saudi
ambassador to the United States, His Royal Highness Prince Bandar bin Sultan
bin Abdul Aziz, for lunch. I was leaving the White House a fter almost five
years on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Bill Clinton and
George Bush for another assignment with the Central Intelligence Agency. For
more than a de cade I had worked closely with Prince Bandar, and he wanted
to host us for a farewell lunch. His wife Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the
former king of Saudi Arabia, was joining us.
ix
x Prologue
The son of the late crown prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, Bandar is
a gradu ate of the Royal Air Force College in Cranwell in the United King­
dom. Bandar l ater received additional military training in the United States
and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced
International Studies (as did Elizabeth). King Fahd appointed him defense
attaché to the United States in 1982 and then ambassador in October 1983. He
served in that post until 2005; his twenty­t wo years in office w ere longer than
any other current ambassador, and this made him the dean of the diplomatic
corps in Washington.
His skills as a diplomat, conspirator, and spymaster are legendary. A col­
league of mine called Bandar the “greatest show in Washington” for his ability
to insinuate himself into American decisionmaking and to influence American
foreign policy t oward policies that the Kingdom wanted. He worked with five
American presidents, ten secretaries of state, and eleven national security
advisers during his two de cades as the king’s man in Washington. The king
provided him with his own four­ engine wide­ bodied Airbus 3000, fitted out
with three bedrooms and a lounge so the ambassador could travel quickly and
in comfort around the world.1
Of course Bandar also had his setbacks and detractors. A plane accident
during his Royal Saudi Air Force flying days left him with chronic back pain,
which often led to lengthy rehabilitation absences from his job. He sometimes
exaggerated his ability to influence his boss’s thinking and over­ reached be­
yond his brief. Even his critics admitted, however, that he was a major player
both in Washington and Riyadh.
Our lunch was served in a small room in the residence decorated to re­
member the B attle of Britain, the RAF’s historic victory over the Luftwaffe in
1940 that saved E ngland from Nazi invasion. Much of our lunch was a social
occasion. Over more than a de cade I had spent considerable time with Bandar
at his homes in Amer i ca, E ngland, Switzerland, and in the Saudi kingdom. We
had dined on fine meals at luxury restaurants as well as on McDonald’s Big
Macs, a shared passion, in his residence and at the Saudi embassy. I briefed
him in August 1990 on the Iraqi threat after the invasion of Kuwait, shared
meetings with three presidents and two Saudi monarchs together, and even
stood by him to help explain to his f ather, then Defense Minister Prince Sultan,
why a Saudi conspiracy to divide Yemen had failed. Bandar had sent flowers to