Another Conspiracy Dismissed

The New York Times Book Review correctly dismisses the conspiracy theories woven by Craig Unger's ''House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties.''

There is no doubt that the Saud and Bush familes are close. That comes from working together in the oil patch for the past forty years and from lives lived with meaning -- George Herbert Walker Bush was not only President of the United States, but Ambassador to the United Nations, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Founder and President of Zapata Oil, which later became Pennzoil.

Jonathan Tepperman -- the reviewer -- writes:

"To prove his claim, Unger would have to establish that the Bushes deliberately acted in ways that went against America's national interest. But this he cannot quite manage. Instead, he tries to detail all kinds of other unrelated, nefarious intrigues that the Saudis and Bushes have supposedly engaged in over the years."

Tepperman identifies the real problem:

"The fact is that United States-Saudi relations are ruled by a particularly rigid iron logic, which dictates a fairly constant American policy: support for the royal family and indulgence of its excesses in return for stable oil prices. It's no coincidence that Washington's attitude toward Riyadh has remained essentially static for 50 years now. Or that United States policy changed little during the eight years of the Clinton interregnum -- an inconvenient fact that's hard to square with Unger's thesis (unless he believes that Clinton was on the take, too)."