Source: The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13266-2004Aug18.html?referrer=email

On August 19, 2004 The Washington Post ran an in-depth article on the U.S. investigation into links between terrorism and Saudi-backed charities. The article reported, "The collision of Saudi missionary work and suspicions of terrorist financing in San Diego illustrates the perils and provocations of a multibillion-dollar effort by Saudi Arabia to spread its religion around the world... a campaign to transform what outsiders call 'Wahhabism,' once a marginal and puritanical brand of Islam with few followers outside the Arabian Peninsula, into the dominant doctrine in the Islamic world. The campaign has created a vast infrastructure of both government-supported and private charities that at times has been exploited by violent jihadists -- among them Osama bin Laden. Nearly three years after the devastating Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a number of Saudi-supported Islamic preachers, centers, charities and mosques remain under intense scrutiny. U.S. investigators continue to look into the tangled money trails leading from Saudi Arabia to its embassy in Washington and into dozens of American cities."