Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid

I asked an American journalist whether he had read the book “House of Bush, House of Saud” by Craig Unger. He said he had not, but he told me that the recent flood of sensational books on Saudi Arabia was a blight on the good name of investigative journalism, and this was probably one of them. In fact, I have not read a single report in a reputable newspaper supporting the stories in this new book on the Sept. 11 events and Saudi-American relations.

The book “House of Bush, House of Saud” attracted me for one single reason. The author targeted a person whom I knew very well, so I am in a position to say the fairy tales about him in the book are utter nonsense.

It is easy to see that Craig Unger has repeated stories fabricated by another author in another fairy tale. He says Prince Ahmed ibn Salman had links with Al-Qaeda. I worked with the late prince for 15 years when he was chairman of the group which published Asharq Al-Awsat Arabic newspaper, and I know for certain that what the book says is absolutely untrue.

It is impossible that we were kept totally in the dark all those years. It was impossible for Prince Ahmed to have had contact with officials of any such terrorist organizations without our knowing about it. How can we convince people who are reading the book of this when they believe what the author says to be both rational and objective?

Luckily the book is full of sensational concocted stories linking the Bush family and the Al-Saud and then Saudi Arabia with Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. The book claims that because of relations between the two ruling families, the American administration closed its eyes to everything. The author, however, conveniently ignores the fact that Al-Qaeda carried out terrorist attacks in the Kingdom two years before Sept. 11.

In his attempt to prove his allegations, the author says the Bush family protected Saudi Arabia and the Saudis to the extent that the administration allowed Saudi princes as well as members of the Bin Laden family to leave the US soon after Sept. 11 without first being questioned. This is incorrect — but how can we reply to a book which has already been published and joined an array of sensational books on the same subject? A number of similar books on Saudi Arabia have been published before. They include “Sleeping With The Devil,” “Why America Slept,” and “Hatred’s Kingdom.”

The United States is the world’s largest market for books, and one-third of all books published in the world are sold there. That means more than 120,000 books published by 60,000 publishing houses. Five publishing houses, however, control the sales of 80 percent of the books. Because of the increasing number of books, the publishing houses give priority to sensational ones, even if they are unsubstantiated fairy tales that create fear among people and offend many others. But what one of the publishers said gives us some hope. “Half of Americans do not read newspapers and half never vote in any presidential election.”