Jordan went on to say that he saw the Saudis as being in denial about the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from their country.The Saudis eventually altered their position, he said, after al-Qaida bombed three Western housing compounds in May 2003.
“At that point, Crown Prince Abdullah said to me that he understood that they had a problem, that they would take immediate action to capture or kill the attackers and to treat just as harshly anyone who gave them comfort or aid or even tried to justify what they did,” said the former ambassador.In his new book, Desert Diplomat: Inside Saudi Arabia Following 9/11, Jordan writes that the Palestinian issue was often a “source of Saudi anger directed at me.”“America should be able to resolve this, they told me. After all, the United States was omnipotent. All Washington had to do was snap its fingers and Israel would come to heel, do whatever we commanded it to do,” he says in the book.