Seymour M. Hersh
THE NEW YORKER
“The American military response has triggered alarm in the international oil community and among intelligence officials who have been briefed on a still secret C.I.A. study, put together in the mid-eighties, of the vulnerability of the Saudi fields to terrorist attack. The report was “so sensitive,” a former C.I.A. officer told me, “that it was put on typed paper,” and not into the agency’s computer system, meaning that distribution was limited to a select few. According to someone who saw the report, it concluded that with only a small amount of explosives terrorists could take the oil fields off line for two years.
“The concerns, both in America and in Saudi Arabia, about the security of the fields have become more urgent than ever since September 11th. A former high-level intelligence official depicted the Saudi rulers as nervously “sitting on a keg of dynamite”–that is, the oil reserves. “They’re petrified that somebody’s going to light the fuse.”
“The United States is hostage to the stability of the Saudi system,” a prominent Middle Eastern oil man, who did not wish to be cited by name, told me in a recent interview. “It’s time to start facing the truth. The war was declared by bin Laden, but there are thousands of bin Ladens. They are setting the game–the agenda. It’s a new form of war. This fabulous military machine you have is completely useless.” The oil man, who has worked closely with the Saudi leadership for three decades, added, “People like me have been deceiving you. We talk about how you don’t understand Islam, but it’s a vanilla analysis. We try to please you, but we’ve been aggrieved for years.”
The Saudi regime “will explode in time,” he said. “It has been playing a delicate game.” As for the terrorists responsible for the September 11th attacks, he said, “Now they decide the timing. If they do a similar operation in Saudi Arabia, the price of oil will go up to one hundred dollars a barrel”–more than four times what it is today.