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In a new book, Why America Slept, author Gerald Posner quotes U.S. officials as saying a key al-Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, Abu Zubaydah, told his interrogators that al-Qaeda had an explicit deal with the Saudi royals to desist from violence in the kingdom in exchange for Saudi financing. Abu Zubaydah is said to have claimed that bin Laden told him he had made the deal in 1991 with Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the longtime Saudi intelligence chief. Posner writes that Abu Zubaydah claimed to have attended several meetings with Turki and bin Laden in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Turki denied all the charges in an interview with TIME last week, calling them "a total fabrication" and noting they were based solely on unnamed sources. He acknowledges meeting bin Laden five times in connection with Saudi support for the Afghan rebels fighting Soviet occupation in the 1980s but says their last meeting was in 1989 or early 1990. And he says he has never laid eyes on Abu Zubaydah.
Whatever al-Qaeda's reasons, it had refrained from attacking within the kingdom until May 12. After the bombings that day, "the scales fell from the eyes of the Saudis," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has said. Says a U.S. official: "Now they are taking on the militant subculture head on." In his strongest denunciation so far of Islamic extremism, Prince Abdullah, in a televised address last month, described the battle against "deviant and misguided" terrorists as a "conflict between the power of good and the power of evil" in which "there is no room for neutrality nor for hesitancy." Three days later, his words were echoed by Saudi Arabia's highest religious body, the 17-member Council of Senior Islamic Scholars. That was no great surprise; like all institutions in Saudi Arabia, the council has little independence. But it was notable that the group characterized acts of terrorism as "have nothing to do with jihad."
THE PARTNERSHIP: A SECRET SOCIETY BEGINS TO OPEN UP
How various American officials assess the Saudi counterterrorism efforts depends on what grading scale they use. Darker judgments come from those who compare Saudi Arabia unfavorably with other American allies. Kinder pronouncements are made by those whose expectations are tempered by the reality that this is a country named for a family. Another factor is the assessor's rank; top-level officials commenting on the record tend to be more generous than hands-on investigators speaking privately. Armitage has said that since May 12, "cooperation on things that are internal to Saudi Arabia has been magnificent." On the other hand, a top Administration counterterrorism official told TIME he has "significant concerns" about the level of assistance from Riyadh.