17 Saudi Arabian Monarch FAHD BIN ABD AL-AZIZ

Saudi Arabia's King Fahd is one of 45 sons of Ibn-Saud who founded the modern state of Saudi Arabia in 1932. The Bedouin King was the largest single contributor to the contras. Congressional investigators traced a total of $33.6 million that passed throgh Adolfo Calero's FDN bank account. Of that amount, $32 million was received from Saudi Arabia. It was a small price to pay for continued U.S. military support for his regime. Fahd gave many times that amount to the Afghan Mujahadeen, another U.S.-backed anti-communist force.

The man who opened the doors to the Mullah's moolah was General Richard Secord (see card #19). As the head of the Pentagon's foreign military sales program from 1978 to 1981, Secord oversaw the sales of billions of dollars in military equipment to the nations of the Middle East. In 1981, Secord and Oliver North (see card #13) successfully lobbied Congress to support the $8.5 billion sale of AWACS surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia over the stiff objection of the Israeli lobby, thus assuring King Fahd's support of the contras.

King Fahd is the world's second richest monarch, with a personal fortune estimated at $20 billion. The world's wealthiest monarch is the Sultan of Brunei, a tiny oil-rich country near Borneo. Although his personal wealth is estimated at $25 billion, the Sultan gave the contras a mere $10 million.