WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Former Department of Defense adviser Richard Perle criticized Thursday the U.S. government's continued friendship with Saudi Arabia.
He said the friendship was the result of an intelligence failure worse than that concerning the Sept. 11 attacks.
Perle claimed the Saudi Arabian government was no ally of the United States and had allowed terrorism to flourish within its borders.
"It is one of the greatest intelligence failures of the century that the rise of extremist institutions inspired culturally and intellectually by the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia went so unmarked," Perle told a group at the conservative Hudson Institute. "This seems to me a far larger intelligence failure than the failure to anticipate the details of Sept. 11 because it was a huge and highly visible trend over many years."
Perle charged the Saudi royal family with intentionally failing to put a stop to extremism. "The Saudi regime is both responsible and capable of curtailing the activity," he said.
