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Sleeping with the Devil

How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude

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Sleeping with the Devil

By: Robert Baer
Narrated by: Robertson Dean
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About this listen

 “Saudi Arabia is more and more an irrational state—a place that spawns global terrorism even as it succumbs to an ancient and deeply seated isolationism, a kingdom led by a royal family that can’t get out of the way of its own greed. Is this the fulcrum we want the global economy to balance on?”

In his explosive New York Times bestseller, See No Evil, former CIA operative Robert Baer exposed how Washington politics drastically compromised the CIA’s efforts to fight global terrorism. Now in his powerful new book, Sleeping with the Devil, Baer turns his attention to Saudi Arabia, revealing how our government’s cynical relationship with our Middle Eastern ally and America’ s dependence on Saudi oil make us increasingly vulnerable to economic disaster and put us at risk for further acts of terrorism.

For decades, the United States and Saudi Arabia have been locked in a “harmony of interests.” America counted on the Saudis for cheap oil, political stability in the Middle East, and lucrative business relationships for the United States, while providing a voracious market for the kingdom’ s vast oil reserves. With money and oil flowing freely between Washington and Riyadh, the United States has felt secure in its relationship with the Saudis and the ruling Al Sa’ud family. But the rot at the core of our “friendship” with the Saudis was dramatically revealed when it became apparent that fifteen of the nineteen September 11 hijackers proved to be Saudi citizens.

In Sleeping with the Devil, Baer documents with chilling clarity how our addiction to cheap oil and Saudi petrodollars caused us to turn a blind eye to the Al Sa’ud’s culture of bribery, its abysmal human rights record, and its financial support of fundamentalist Islamic groups that have been directly linked to international acts of terror, including those against the United States. Drawing on his experience as a field operative who was on the ground in the Middle East for much of his twenty years with the agency, as well as the large network of sources he has cultivated in the region and in the U.S. intelligence community, Baer vividly portrays our decades-old relationship with the increasingly dysfunctional and corrupt Al Sa’ud family, the fierce anti-Western sentiment that is sweeping the kingdom, and the desperate link between the two. In hopes of saving its own neck, the royal family has been shoveling money as fast as it can to mosque schools that preach hatred of America and to militant fundamentalist groups—an end game just waiting to play out.

Baer not only reveals the outrageous excesses of a Saudi royal family completely out of touch with the people of its kingdom, he also takes readers on a highly personal search for the deeper roots of modern terrorism, a journey that returns time again and again to Saudi Arabia: to the Wahhabis, the powerful Islamic sect that rules the Saudi street; to the Taliban and al Qaeda, both of which Saudi Arabia helped to underwrite; and to the Muslim Brotherhood, one of the most active and effective terrorist groups in existence, which the Al Sa’ud have sheltered and funded. The money and arms that we send to Saudi Arabia are, in effect, being used to cut our own throat, Baer writes, but America might have only itself to blame. So long as we continue to encourage the highly volatile Saudi state to bank our oil under its sand—and so long as we continue to grab at the Al Sa’ud’s money—we are laying the groundwork for a potential global economic catastrophe.©2003 Robert Baer; (P)2003 Books on Tape, Inc. Corruption & Misconduct Freedom & Security Middle East Political Science Politics & Government War & Crisis World Espionage Iran Saudi Arabia Royalty War

Critic reviews

“Details how an administration known for its vigilance on the international scene routinely and inexplicably spins, caves, and hops for the Saudis.”—The Washington Post

“An unsettling, eye-opening account of our relationship with Saudi Arabia . . . [Baer] gets our attention.”—Boston Herald

“A chilling evaluation of today’s geopolitical situation . . . highly recommended.”—Dallas Morning News

“[Baer] makes a strong case that Saudi Arabia—with skyrocketing birth rates, growing unemployment, a falling per capita income, and a corrupt ruling family draining the public coffers—
is a powder keg waiting to explode.”—Publishers Weekly
All stars
Most relevant
good narration, fascinating story, and a very revealing angle at the origins of today's terror threat.

another superb account from Robert Baer

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Very brave journalism that should be read by everyone in Washington except they probably know all about the story. Frightening to contemplate the author, s theory of the Saudi collapse but we're all to blame

Incredible story

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Highly recommended, I had already read the paperback and got this audiobook to remind myself of all that I had read. This is a totally engrossing account of the american relationship with Saudi Arabia. It is excellently narrated by Robertson Dean.

Fascinating

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Recommended as an colourful introduction to the very questionable long-standing relationship between the US and the Saudis.

No, it’s not an unbiased treatise on the subject (the title immediately alerts us to this fact) for which the author neither denies nor makes excuses for. This is a ‘view from the trenches’ expose by a man whose job it was further America’s interests (the author is ex-CIA) in a region that he felt compelled to go back to and even write a book about long after he had finished drawing government checks for being a G-man.

This is Bauer’s rather self-centred yet jadedly eloquent accounting of what seems to him to have been an ongoing pact with the devil, the other fiendish parties, whose souls where used as collateral in the bargain, being of course, the politicians inhabiting Washington along with anyone who drives up to a pump in a service station. He questions the moral ambiguity of dealing so consult with a country who furnished a majority of the individuals responsible for 9-11 and many other terrorists acts over the last 30 years.

A little dated(published in 2003), still a book worth listening in on.

A Compelling and Contradictory introduction to an ugly world.

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Very informative. Nice admission for the 2 ends of corrupt dealings. I wonder who's is Devil in your mind Mr. Bear

Corruption must have 2 ends to work

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