Myth that Saudis are “helping us with the war on terror” proven false in 1996 by John Brennan, then CIA chief in Riyadh. Brennan ordered US personnel to stop asking for information about terrorists, it’s “upsetting the Saudis”-Harpers, Jan. 2016

The myth that “US needs Saudis to help fight war on terror,” proven false by John Brennan: 

Jan. 2016, “A Special Relationship: The United States is teaming up with Al Qaeda, again,” Harpers, Andrew Cockburn 

“In 1996, the CIA set up a special unit to track down bin Laden, led by the counterterrorism expert Michael Scheuer. Now settled in Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda chief had at least theoretically fallen out with the Saudi regime that once supported him and other anti-Soviet jihadis. Nevertheless, bin Laden seemed to have maintained links with his homeland — and some in the CIA were sensitive to that fact. When I interviewed Scheuer in 2014 for my book Kill Chain, he told me that one of his first requests to the Saudis was for routine information about his quarry: birth certificate, financial records, and so forth. There was no response. Repeated requests produced nothing. Ultimately, a message arrived from the CIA station chief in Riyadh, John Brennan, who ordered the requests to stop — they were “upsetting the Saudis.””…Jan. 2016, “A Special Relationship: The United States is teaming up with Al Qaeda, again,” Harpers, Andrew Cockburn




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