Funding terrorism

Funding terrorism is the cover story for the December 15, 2003, online issue of U.S. News: "The Saudi Connection. How billions in oil money spawned a global terror network" by David E. Kaplan.

Late in 1998, Kaplan writes, the CIA's Illicit Transactions Group (ITC), "one of those tidy little Washington secrets, a group of unsung heroes whose job is to keep track of smugglers, terrorists, and money launderers," was called upon by the National Security Council "to help them answer a couple of questions: How much money did Osama bin Laden have, and how did he move it around?" Because Osama bin Laden's "al Qaeda terrorists had just destroyed two of America's embassies in East Africa," there was an urgency for the NSC "to find a way to break the organization's back." The NSC formed a task force with ITC "to look at al Qaeda's finances. ... The team soon realized that its most basic assumptions about the source of bin Laden's money--his personal fortune and businesses in Sudan--were wrong. Dead wrong. Al Qaeda, says William Wechsler, the task force director, was 'a constant fundraising machine.' And where did it raise most of those funds? The evidence was indisputable: Saudi Arabia."

The results of months of investigation revealed that "Over the past 25 years, the desert kingdom has been the single greatest force in spreading Islamic fundamentalism, while its huge, unregulated charities funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to jihad groups and al Qaeda cells around the world." What was the source of the funding? Oil.

Read the remainder of the 10-page article.

Related SourceWatch Resources

• Clinton administration anti-terrorism law
• Jundullah
• oil industry
• Oil-for-Food Program
• Post-war Iraq
• War on terrorism

External links

• Alex Alexiev, The missing link in the war on terror: Confronting Saudi subversion, Center for Security Policy, no date.
• The Money Trail, Economist.com, September 21, 2001.
• The House of Saud, S&R News Review, November 8, 2001.
• Scott Peterson, Saudis channel anger into charity, Dawn.com, May 31, 2002.
• Islamic bank defends terror funding claims, BBC/UK, August 23, 2002: "Saudi finance and media group Dallah Al Baraka has vowed to defend itself in a US court against accusations of funding terrorism."
• Justin Raimondo, WAR PARTY DUMPS BUSH? Newsweek's anti-Saudi conspiracy theory is a shot across the bow, antiwar.com, November 27, 2002.
• Anthony H. Cordesman, Saudi Arabia: Opposition, Islamic Extremism, and Terrorism (Final Review), Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 27, 2002.
• Daniel Pipes, What Riyadh Buys, New York Post, December 11, 2002.
• Rebekah E. Reese, Saudi Smokescreen, FrontPageMagazine, December 16, 2002.
• Joel Mowbray, Saudis Behaving Badly. New report to the U.N. details ties that bind the House of Saud and al Qaeda, National Review, December 20, 2002.
• Saudi PR machine greased by millions. Islamic charities to wage big-money battle against 9-11 families' suit, WorldNetDaily, December 31, 2002.
• Kirby Anderson, Saudi Arabia, probe.org, May 2, 2003.
• Saudi Arabia Funding Terrorism? (Interview Transcript of Paula Zahn with Michael Isikoff), CNN.com, July 31, 2003.
• Greg Palast answers the question, "Was the Iraq War a Bush Cartel Effort to Divert Attention from Saudi Arabia, the Home and Chief Financier of bin Laden?", Buzzflash, August 29, 2003.
• Josh Benson, Schumer Target: Assaults Saudis As U.S. Adversary, New York Observer, September 8, 2003.