PS

He apparently replied that yes, of course, bin Salman knew about the plans for 9/11 and so did some other members of the royal family whose mobile numbers he then also divulged. The FBI was not able to meet with them either. One had a fatal car wreck on the way to bin Salman's funeral. The other promptly died in the desert "of thirst".

These details were given to Gerald Posner by an anonymous source with US intelligence services. When I personally recounted them to Tom Ridge, then head of the Dept. of Homeland Security, he appeared to acknowledge their veracity and said, "Isn't that amazing?" The fingered Saudis were doubtless well travelled and connected to friends in America, not least duplicitous big contributors to George W Bush's campaign like Ken Lay. That there are Americans who knew about the plans for a terrorist attack is also what I hear on the back channels from my high school in Switzerland.

It is now generally understood that the attack of 9/11 served to eliminate Saddam. But he rivaled the other Sunni leaders in the Gulf, certainly not America and not even so much Israel. Bin Laden seems to have engaged the mostly young Saudi hijackers under false pretenses. Saudi is certainly a dangerous place for ambitious young men. It has a capricous and brutal, medieval system of justice supported by a system of education rife with religious indoctrination. The hypocrisy must have been overwhelming to those easily manipulated "martyrs" who bin Laden made fun of in a video released after 9/11. It seems hardly accidental that bin Laden has not been captured or killed. The attack provided a pretext for the removal of Saddam which encouraged investmetn in the Gulf, particularly Dubai, the Arab Vegas. The bin Laden family, the Gulf's leading indigenous contractors, must be secretly thrilled. With much help from America and on the backs of US taxpayers and servicemen, their black sheep has turned out to be the most productive member of the family.