It’s a great pleasure for me to be with you here today. Although it took about 15 years since I was last here. I can assure you that the last 15 years were like our friends, the Chinese, say: “very interesting times.”  I want to thank President Mack for his kind invitation and for setting up all these efforts here.  I also would like to thank Lawrence [Ramer] for his introduction. But more importantly, to be honest with you, I want to thank you for coming here and I hope it will be worth it for you. 

It is true that I’m a prince, because I was born that way, but also I must tell you I have not worked at all, not one day in my life, to be a prince.  However, I really busted my royal rear end to become a lieutenant colonel in the Saudi Air Force and, although I am proud of my heritage and title, I am just as proud of the service I gave my country now for 37 years, between 17 years in the air force and 20 years in politics.  Some of my old friends in the air force will ask me, “What is better?  Being a fighter pilot or being an ambassador?” and I have not failed consistently to respond that being a fighter pilot beats the hell out of being an ambassador any time.  What I cannot understand is that I used to fly supersonic airplanes and they paid me for it.  So there you are. 

I hope this does not give you an insight of my poor judgment that I would leave such a career to be in this career, but we are going through difficult times and my objective here today is to talk to the American people through its leaders and the media, outside the national media in Washington and New York. I believe sometimes when I’m really depressed in Washington all it takes is a week in California, or Texas, or Oklahoma, or Wyoming where real people exist, and I come back with more faith than when I left Washington.  So, this is almost therapeutic for me.   

My objective today is to discuss the Saudi American relationship and the changes, or lack of them that have taken place since 9/11.  Before 9/11, Saudi Arabia enjoyed bipartisan support in your body politic from President Roosevelt until President Bush, II. Bush I and Bush II showed we are moving in the right direction towards royalty, and you know I am a great supporter of President Bush. I, in my American studies am more inclined to support Alexander Hamilton who wanted to make President George Washington a king.  It took you two hundred years to decide, “O.K., let’s try hereditary and here we are now.”   

We had bipartisan relationships with all leaders of your great country and when we had a crisis usually it was with Congress and, to a much lesser extent, every now and then it was with the Administration. The media depends on what the cycle of news is.  If it’s down we are a great target. If not, they get busy doing something else, but time after time during crises, when we reached out to the American people we got the support we needed—and therefore the influence that translated into whether it was in Congress or the government.   

The most dangerous and evil thing of what happened on 9/11 is that for the first time it has shook the trust between the Saudi people and the American people. It has shaken the trust of the American people in Saudi Arabia in general, and that to me is much more dangerous than disagreeing with Congress or federal agencies or whatever.  So, of course, we take that seriously. After going through the shock and indignation of what happened on 9/11, particularly since 15 of the perpetrators were Saudi, just as people were offended and shocked and, of course, in pain for the innocent people that were lost, we were shocked, indignant and in pain. I think both of us had the same question: “How come?  Why?”  Well, I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the fact that there were 15 Saudis in that group of 19 that attacked the United States of America on 9/11 was a major element of the plan with an objective that they almost achieved, which is to destroy the Saudi-American relationship and, therefore, the American-Muslim-Arab world relationship once and for all. 

But, since we are in Ronald Reagan Land, former President Reagan used to say that facts are stubborn things, and the bad news I have for you today is that we did have some bad things that we overlooked. We, like everybody else, thought it was not possible [for these things] to exist and we took care of it.  The good news is, because we found out some of these bad things, we will make sure, God willing, that they will not happen again and hence we deal with the problem from its roots rather than cosmetically.   

 I said that facts are stubborn things. Saudi Arabia has been beaten over its head for the last two years now and I can contend to you that 90 percent of those attacks were based on myth.  But a myth that is not responded to and the myth that is repeated is a myth that ends up as a fact.  So, what I’m hoping here today is to touch on the broad aspects of these myths and facts. What I truly want to do is to reserve as much time for you to decide what you want to hear from me, rather than me giving you the party line.  So, with your permission I will just hit one or two things and then I would like to open it to questions. 

On September 9 or 10, 2001, the people that Saudi Arabia called “terrorists,” the United States of America and European countries generally called “dissidents.”  On 12 September 2001, the United States and Europe called those same people “terrorists” and asked, “Why aren’t we doing anything about it?”  Now, think about this.  Two days [before 9/11] we told you they are terrorists, and every time we made a move the State Department’s annual report on human rights stated the Saudis were terrible to their dissidents.  Yes, we were terrible to those dissidents but those dissidents were not against you, they were against us, but more important, they were against the most precious thing for us in Saudi Arabia, which is our religion, our faith.  

 In our faith, we don’t compromise. Those people used that faith falsely and compromised their religion.  We have taken very, very strong measures against the people who are misquoting what they read in the holy books. But I have to tell you again, with all humility, we didn’t do it to please the United States of America.  We did it to protect our pride, our dignity and our essence.  Our essence is our religion, and that cannot be allowed to be hijacked and misused and abused.   

Think about this.  During the Inquisition, Protestants and Jews used to escape from Spain to go where?  To Morocco.  Why?  Because the Moors were tolerant, respected other religions.  The Islam that was prevailing then is the same Islam that is prevailing now.  Nothing has changed.  People have changed. It is also important to know that there are 1.2 billion Muslims around the world.  You cannot make a judgment about 1.2 billion Muslims around the world based on 15 evil people or 100 or 200. God knows everybody has their own rotten apple.  President Sadat was assassinated by an Egyptian [who was] against peace with Israel.  Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli Jew because he was against peace in the Middle East.  The Irish have been killing each other for 400 years.  But what galvanized all of this, is New York, the center of economic power of the world -- and Washington.   

I must tell you that two months before that attack, George Tenet and other officials, in every meeting I was with them, were going crazy saying, something is coming, something is happening. We know they’re coming, let’s watch out, let’s look for them.  Nobody knew when and where.  Our security service was saying, “We feel it, we get the chatter, they’re coming.”  We just didn’t know where either.  

 But think about it. Can you imagine if the President of the United States of America on 9 September came on national TV and said, “In two days people with paper cutters will high-jack airplanes, attack New York, Washington, and therefore I have decided to issue a war instruction to send three American divisions to Afghanistan to put those bad people out of business.”  People would be calling for his impeachment.  But, of course, the day after people became smarter.   

Two FBI agents were called to meet two students in a flying school. The owner of the school said to them that there were two people who didn’t make sense, they were paying a lot of money for flight training on a simulator but they didn’t want to take off or land, they just wanted to learn how to fly.  If the FBI agents had interrogated them, the maximum they could have done is charge them with being stupid and wasting their money.  More than that you can’t do.  So what looked after 9/11 as so clear, so smart, so obvious, trust me it wasn’t then.  If that was the case in the United States of America, you can be sure that was the case in Saudi Arabia.   

If we shift to oil policy, we have all kinds of tigers in the United States Senate coming out and telling the American people that Saudi Arabia is the cause for the rise of oil and gasoline to the United States of America.  Let’s go back to Ronald Reagan—facts are stubborn things.  The facts do not support that. The facts support that when Venezuela and Nigeria and Iraqi oil were down, Saudi Arabia plugged up the gap.  When these countries came on-line we sold all our contractual deals and we have not been asked for any increase and if we were we would be willing to help [not to mention] our refining capacities where we can get 100 percent. Even if you have the crude you don’t know what to do with it, you want the product. When people also take into account that Europe reduced its support of refined gas and gasoline, that combination caused the problem, not Saudi Arabia.  Now, who’s interested in these details? Even I get bored with these details.  But we felt it was necessary to pass on.   

As far as cooperation, ladies and gentlemen, we have cooperated 100 percent with the United States of America in the fight against terrorism, not for the sake of the United States of America but for the sake of protecting our people.  And the fact that we are America’s friend and the fact that America has more capabilities than we do, we consider a plus and we’re not ashamed of it. Bin Laden or Al Qaeda or people who think like them are not just the only danger.  As Crown Prince Abdullah said, “Anyone who sympathizes or says ‘I disagree with what they did but I understand,’ that’s just as bad” and this is the policy of my country on how we’re going to fight terrorism.   

Now, of course, I bet any of you dollar-to-nothing, next year the State Department report will say “This is human rights violation.”  You’re a big country.  You can enjoy playing games with each other.  We cannot leave this to get out of hand and hurt our own people.   

Financing.  People only remember a year, two years ago, but it was Saudi Arabia that came and banged on the tables in Washington for years saying, “We tracked money supposedly to go to charity but we don’t know where it’s going.  We can track it to Europe, to Switzerland, but once it arrives in America we lose track,” because they tell us, by law, they cannot look into these accounts. Whether we are successful or not is not as important as whether we were against this process or not.  In fact, not only are we not against it we were supporting it.  We were advocating it.   

So, there are a lot of myths thrown at my country and these myths in large measure are just that – myths.  The facts about shortfalls that we had we’re willing to confess to. But let me tell you something, it’s not more than the failures of your security organizations. We are not here to point fingers at who did or who didn’t do what.  We have an enemy; this enemy is against humanity, civilization, Islam, Christianity, Judaism.  They believe they are the only Islam available and those people in our culture are not new.  We have lived with them from just after the days of the Prophet until now, and some of them really believe that that is the right thing to do.  But history shows time and time and time again that the people and the leadership will confront them.  

But I hope you allow me to say we don’t have a monopoly about bad followers of religion.  Christians are not innocent, Jews are not innocent, Buddhists are not innocent.  If we can agree to respect religions and people practicing that religion I think that will be the smart and unifying process. I’m willing to be supportive of anybody here who attacks a bad Muslim, but I would have nothing to do with anybody who wants to attack Islam.   

So in that context we looked at ourselves. Take our education curriculum.  We found that 85 percent of our education curriculum had absolutely no problem.  We found 10 percent of our education curriculum that was borderline.  Therefore, depending on who teaches, it can be can pushed one way or another. We decided that when you’re in doubt, just take it out and put in something much more clear.  That left us with about five percent that was unacceptable, not to the United States of America, but to us because we believe it directly contradicts the teachings of our God and our Prophet and we took action on it. 

Now, we’re different cultures.  The President drops his dog – it’s headline news everywhere in America.  Then at night it’s analyzed -- did he drop it intentionally?  Was he grabbing its ears?  Did he kick it?  I have no problem with that.  After 20 years, in fact, I enjoy listening to these things.  In Saudi Arabia -- did we catch the five percent who were really doing the bad things, the five percent who were the rotten bad five percent?  Yes.  End of discussion, it’s no more news.  Let’s just get on with our life changes, whoever needs the punishment should get it, whoever repents should be brought back into society.  My point is, we express ourselves differently.   

By the way, this is nothing unique to Saudi.  Before the United States of America officials entered Afghanistan the CIA and the military Special Forces had units inserted there and were operating and so did the British SAS.  Every hour every satellite station having a news break said the Americans sent certain Special Forces, CIA people, into Afghanistan.  Until today, the British have never even conceded that there were SAS officers there.  It’s just a cultural difference.  You all remember Somalia?  When the Marines landed on the beach they were met by a CNN crew.  That is the culture.  Just because we don’t roll with that culture, just because you don’t see us identifying with it, please don’t make the deadly mistake that we are not doing anything.  We are.  What kills us is that the President of the United States of America says, “They are our friends and they cooperate.”  The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Advisor, Director of the CIA, Director of the FBI, Secretary of the Treasury [say it] -- and that’s not news.  A senior official in the FBI said, “The Saudis are not cooperating,” and that is news and you ask yourself sometimes “Who’s running this goddamn government?”  I don’t know, but I know it runs regardless of who’s leading it.  

We are at war, and just because you don’t see airplanes and tanks and missiles being fired makes it no less of a war, and wars have rules.  Take my word for it, there is nothing Saudi Arabia is embarrassed to be made public—nothing. In our anti-terrorist fight before and after 9/11, or in the bad money that goes across the world, and anyone who tells you otherwise, please ask them the Missourian question: “Show me.  Show me the evidence that says the Saudis did this or that.”  We’re willing to answer to it.  I know everything we have done before and after and I know that 99 percent of it we did together.  We’re licking the bad guys together, but I leave this one thought in your mind – when those 19 evil people sat down to make their final plans to attack the United States of America they did not go to Libya or Syria or Lebanon or Saudi Arabia.  They were in London, in Paris, and Munich and Frankfurt.  Think it through.  On 9/11 the headlines in the Washington Times read thousands of Jihadists, they called them, are meeting in a convention to celebrate the 9/11 attack and the martyrs in it.  Please think again with me.  Can you imagine a hundred Saudis in a back street who were caught by CBS saying, “We love bin Laden and we’re glad that what happened to America happened.”  Can you imagine the uproar?  People would be calling for an invasion.  Why?  If it’s bad here, it’s bad there.  If we all agree to fight terrorism together, let’s, and let’s put our money where our mouths are.  But I’m not asking you to go lobby for Tony Blair because he’s a good friend and we all are jumping all over him, but I’m just giving you an example of how one similar event could be reported totally different depending on where you are and who’s doing it.  

At this point, if I may, I would like us to go straight to the questions and go from there.