The computer at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia chooses random names for topics and operations it deals with. “Deep Blue” is the name given to an aggregate of troubling information received by the agency at the beginning of 1988. The source of most of the reports is the NSA’s monitoring of communications by the Chinese administration and military. According to these, Saudi Arabia was conducting advanced negotiations with China about the acquisition of dozens of surface-to-surface missiles built to carry nuclear weapons.

The intelligence communities of both the US and Israel were totally stunned, as until then they did not know anything about this. Officials from the CIA and the research department of IDF Intelligence sat with a compass and drew the ranges. The missiles that the Saudis planned to buy, CSS-2 as they are called in professional terminology, or Dong-Feng 3 in the Chinese version, have a range of between 2,500 to 3,500 kilometers. Such a range encompasses all of the Middle East, including parts of what was once the USSR, and, of course, all of Israel.

Officials in Israel and the US did not understand why the Saudis, who in public take a moderate and pragmatic diplomatic line, had to buy the missiles, which at the time constituted China’s central nuclear attack force. Concern increased when these reports were added to reports of the great financial support given by Saudi Arabia to the development of the “first Islamic bomb,” as Pakistan’s atomic enterprise was called.

Israeli and American intelligence began a wide-scale campaign with a double purpose: To gather details about the deal, and an attempt to learn what the Saudis were really planning to do with the missiles. The campaign was partially successful. It turned out that 120 missiles were to be acquired, as well as 12 launchers. The Americans were especially surprised when it turned out that the person conducting the dialogue on the part of the Saudis was none other than the State Department favorite, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, the charming ambassador to Washington.

The Saudis paid a fortune for the missiles. The Chinese got the feeling from them that money was no object, and that Prince Bandar would pay any price to get his country into the prestigious club.

They’re Planting the Desert with Missiles

The first CSS-2 missiles arrived in June, 1990, and were deployed in two places south of Riyadh: Most of them in the huge complex built north of the El-Suleil desert, about 500 kilometers from the capital, and a minority of them in El-Jofer, 100 kilometers from the city. The rest of the missiles arrived during the following years.

About two weeks ago, the satellite Iconus, the best civilian photographic satellite in the world, took special photos for Yediot Aharonot over El-Suleil. The photos, which appear here for the first time, prove that over the last few years the Saudis have invested huge resources in the development of a secret military city, “King Khaled.”

In comparison to previously accessible photos of the region, photographed by the French satellite Spot in 1995, the intensive construction in the region, spread over hundreds of square kilometers in the heart of the desert, is clearly recognizable. The Saudis have added missile launching pads, access roads, command headquarters, a huge residential area, a mosque for the engineers and crews, as well as a huge new area, spread over 1400 square kilometers, dotted with numerous bunkers for conventional and non-conventional weapons, with a capacity of more than 60,000 cubic meters. East of El-Suleil, outside of the photographed area, is a Saudi air force base, with two Tornado squadrons.

The huge missile base is made up of a support area and two launching areas, six kilometers apart, and are located in narrow hidden ravines.

In the support area, more than 33 buildings are visible. Eight of them are large enough to store the CSS-2 missiles, which are 24 meters long. The launching areas have a scattering of buildings, and a concrete launching pad.

In each of the two launching areas, an unidentified building can be seen, covered with dust, about 50 meters long, two underground storerooms for the missiles, two large support buildings, and garages.

In comparison to the photos from 1995, a sizable expansion can be seen in the administrative and residential areas. Command headquarters installations, residential areas, a large mosque, a soccer field, a large park, parking lots, etc., can be clearly seen. The take-off area of the local airport was increased to more than three kilometers.

The weapons storage area, spread over more than 1,400 kilometers, is too big to be connected only to a CSS-2 missile base, and apparently has other secret purposes. More than 60 fortified buildings for weapons storage can clearly be identified.

For a long time it was not clear to American intelligence where the Saudis were hiding their missiles. At first they thought that they were to be found at the El Haraj air force base complex, about 50 kilometers south of Riyadh. Only through intelligence information on the ground, and careful monitoring via satellites, led the CIA to the secret military city in El-Suleil. The photos from Iconus were received according to the coordinates located previously by American intelligence.

This updated information, which Israeli and American intelligence has had for a long time, is the cause of no little headache. All this became even more relevant after 9/11, when it became clear that anything, absolutely anything, could happen, and there are those who today regret the docile line Israel adopted towards Saudi Arabia under American pressure. Buying Up Every Adversary and All Opposition

The acquisition of missiles was part of a general Saudi military build-up, which at the beginning of the nineties turned it into the number one buyer of arms among third world countries, after Iraq.

The Washington administration felt betrayed. Only several years after the huge efforts made by President Reagan to approve the sale of AWACS warning planes to the Saudis, this deal suddenly appeared, in contrast to Riyadh’s declared policy, apparently without any practical need.

The angry Americans asked for explanations. The Saudis said that they needed missiles to defend themselves from Iran (which was then considered to be the most serious regional threat), and that they had decided to acquire them from China, after the US refused to sell them F-15s in 1985. In the end they were sold 24 airplanes, but the missile project, said the Saudis, was already underway.

King Fahd made a commitment not to arm the missiles with chemical or nuclear warheads, and not to use them in an initial attack. In order to allay their concerns even more, Saudi Arabia signed a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The king made a commitment not to take part in developing a nuclear bomb, and also promised that after the missiles were in place, all military activity would be stopped in the El-Suleil region.

Fahd, to put it nicely, did not exactly keep his word. The Saudis promised to allow American supervision of the site in El-Suleil, if Washington would promise that Israel would not attack them, but in the end refused to allow visits to the site.

Following the Gulf War, the Saudis became a kind of underdog, and succeeded in directing anger to other places, mainly Iran and Iraq. Even Israel, in conversations with other countries, did not raise the Saudi issue.

In 1990, when the missiles began to arrive in El-Suleil, Israel wanted to arouse a commotion, but the US was satisfied with Fahd’s promises and instructed Israel to keep a low profile. Israel in turn sufficed with registering a protest, which was a drop in the ocean in contrast to the campaigns it led against countries such as Syria and Iraq.

In the case of Saudi Arabia, even when the details of its involvement in the Pakistan nuclear project became clear, even when it was obvious that it was financing terror organizations, even when it was proven without any doubt that the Saudi family was tainted to its roots with corruption and an unstoppable desire to rule, by buying up, in essence, every enemy and all opposition, the US remained silent and compelled Israel to do the same.

September 11 upset the applecart for the Saudis. Many in the US, both within and outside the administration, felt free to express what they had been keeping inside. About four months ago, chief Pentagon strategist Richard Perl said here: In my opinion, the Saudis are not part of the solution, but part of the problem… We had all the reasons to assume that they were grateful that we saved them in the Gulf War, and we were wrong.

This piece ran in Yediot Aharonot on March 27, 2002

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