- ABU DHABI - 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.
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- "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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- 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.].
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- Turki also said Saudi security cooperation with the United
States included an intelligence exchange on Palestinian groups.
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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