In a provocative expos , Swiss TV journalist Lab vi re argues that the real threat to the West from radical Islamic fundamentalism comes not from Iran or Iraq but rather from America's solid allies--Saudi Arabia and neighboring oil monarchies. Based on his four-year investigation, Lab vi re charges that Saudi Arabia is the principal financial backer of extremist Islamist movements around the world. The linchpin in this operation, he states, is Saudi billionaire Osama bin Ladin, trained by the CIA, who recruited, armed and trained in turn Arab volunteers to fight the Soviet army in the Afghanistan war, thereby strengthening the totalitarian Muslim Taliban regime. Bin Ladin, who, according to the author, maintains close ties with the Saudi and Pakistani secret services, now bankrolls terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and abets Islamist extremist movements in Egypt, Yemen, Somalia, South Africa, Algeria and elsewhere. Veterans of the Afghan "holy war" have been implicated in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City and the attempted murder of Egyptian president Mubarak in 1996. In Lab vi re's riveting, often shocking, analysis, the U.S. is an accessory in the rise of Islam, because it manipulates and aids radical Muslim groups in its shortsighted pursuit of its economic interests, especially the energy resources of the Middle East and the oil- and mineral-rich former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Lab vi re shows how radical Islamic fundamentalism spreads its influence on two levels: above board, through investment firms, banks and shell companies, and clandestinely, through a network of drug dealing, weapons smuggling and money laundering. This important book sounds a wake-up call to U.S. policy makers. (May)

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