(H/T – Weasel Zippers via JammieWearingFool)
One of the claims by George Tenet in his kiss-and-tell book that isn’t getting a whole lot of media-web attention outside of MSNBC (I have no idea about any of the networks’ on-air efforts; sorry) is that Al Qaeda tried to assassinate then-Vice President Al Gore back in 1998 with the tacit assistance and approval of some in the government of Saudi Arabia. I’ll let MSNBC explain…
Tenet discloses that in 1998, Saudi officials foiled a plot by Abdel Rahim al-Nashiri to smuggle four Sagger anti-tank missiles from Yemen into Saudi Arabia a week or so before Gore was scheduled to visit the kingdom. But their reluctance to let the United States know what was going on created significant tension between the two nations.
Tenet writes that it was reasonable to have expected the Saudis to pass the information along as soon as possible, but they did not.
After low-level discussions failed to produce a sense of urgency among the Saudis, Tenet flew to Riyadh to meet with Prince Naif, the interior minister and the man in charge of the Saudi secret police.
The rest of the article is also an interesting (in the Chinese sense of the word) read. Of particular note is the 9-year-long attempt by Al Qaeda to acquire nuclear weapons and explode them on American soil. I guess this would be a good time to point out that it was Tenet’s personal assessment that, if absolutely nothing changed from January 2003 (that means, Hans Blix was continuing to run around Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and the joke of sanctions that were in place remained in place), Iraq would be a nuclear power anytime between now and 2009.
