Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar
Why Washington's smoothest diplomat is falling from favor.
By David Plotz
Updated Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2001, at 7:51 PM PT
Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, grandson to one king, nephew to four others, would like Americans to remember something. It was not so long ago that he met privately with President Bush, their conversation deciding the course of the war in the Middle East. That he had a direct line to Dick Cheney. That Colin Powell was in his back pocket. That American newspapers chronicled his machinations in breathless, Bandar-kissing articles, the inside dope leaked by the ambassador himself. That he was hailed as the Talleyrand of the desert, the essential figure in the United States' most critical alliance in the world's most important region.
But that President Bush is retired. The Gulf War is over. Cheney and Powell aren't waiting for his calls. And it's hard to decide which is disintegrating faster, Saudi Arabia's reputation in Washington or Bandar's.
For the first time in decades, U.S.-Saudi relations have turned poisonous in public. In this week's New Yorker, Seymour Hersh portrays Bandar as out of favor with Saudi Arabia's ruler Crown Prince Abdullah and accuses the ambassador of corruption, in particular helping himself to megacommissions on arms deals. William Safire is hammering Bandar on the New York Times' op-ed page. Relying on leaks from American officials, the Times and Los Angeles Times have scalded Saudi Arabia in recent articles. Saudi Arabia, they say, is refusing to freeze assets connected to Osama Bin Laden, blocking investigation of Saudi hijackers, and denying the United States use of military bases for staging strikes against Afghanistan. On Sunday, the New York Times piled on with a brutal editorial lambasting the Saudis for funding Islamic extremists and tacitly condoning terrorism.
Why are Bandar and his country tumbling? Why has Washington finally turned on the necessary man?
Bandar, who cultivates a reputation as the Saudi Gatsby, is as close to self-made as a zillionaire prince can be. Born in 1949, Bandar was the illegitimate child of Prince Sultan and a servant. Bandar's father—who's been the kingdom's defense minister since the early '60s—scarcely acknowledged the boy, but his grandmother, the widow of King Abdulaziz, recognized his spark and protected him. Bandar was charming, smart, desperate for acceptance, and greedy for power. As a young man he won over his uncle King Fahd with his salesman's bonhomie.
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http://slate.msn.com/id/2057214/