Saudi Arabia continues to spend large sums of money promoting an image of friendliness to the United States. Here’s an example; a site that showed up in our referrer log today for some reason (they’re watching us): Saudi Arabia United States Relations.

The problem, though, is that for the past 3 decades, while we weren’t watching them, they’ve spent an unbelievable amount ($70 billion) to infiltrate our society to a very scary degree: Saudi-financed Wahabi crusade tied to U.S. sleeper cell network.

Administration officials said the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community has linked the threat from Al Qaida to Saudi financing of Wahabi institutions that promote an anti-West ideology.

Larry Mefford, assistant director of the FBI counterterrorism division, yesterday told a Senate subcommittee on terrorism that the FBI has launched an effort to uncover and capture Al Qaida sleeper cells in 40 states. He said the sleeper cells could contain those who helped Al Qaida in the September 2001 suicide attacks.

Treasury Department general counsel David Aufhauser, who has negotiated extensively with Riyad, said Saudi Arabia has become the epicenter of financing for Al Qaida and related movements. Aufhauser said Saudi Arabia’s efforts to disseminate its Wahabi doctrine comprise a “very important factor to be taken into account when discussing terrorist financing.”

“It needs to be dealt with,” Aufhauser told the Senate subcommittee on terrorism.

“The problem we are looking at today is the state-sponsored doctrine and funding of an extremist ideology that provides the recruiting grounds, support infrastructure and monetary lifeblood to today’s international terrorists,” subcommittee chairman Sen. Jon Kyl said. …

Saudi Arabia has launched several campaigns to persuade Americans that the kingdom does not support Al Qaida and has cooperated in the U.S.-led war against Islamic insurgents. The Saudi embassy in Washington has held several news conferences in which government spokespeople asserted that more than 1,000 Saudi clerics suspected of being Al Qaida loyalists have been dismissed. [Do I have to say it? Bullshit.—ed.]

The Senate Judiciary Committee panel heard testimony from experts and warnings from senators that the administration has not addressed the threat of Saudi dissemination of Wahabi doctrine in the United States. Committee members said the Saudi effort includes the construction of hundreds of mosques and the indoctrination of U.S. soldiers, particularly Muslim chaplains.

“The Wahabi presence in the United States is a foreboding one that has potentially harmful and far-reaching consequences for our nation’s mosques, schools, prisons and even our military,” Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said. “My fear is, if we don’t wake up and take action now, those influenced by Wahabism’s extremist ideology will harm us in as of yet unimaginable ways.”

The focus of the Saudi efforts to spread Wahabi doctrine was the Al Haramain Foundation which until earlier this year had a network throughout Asia, Africa and Europe. The United States has deemed Al Haramain a financier of Al Qaida and ordered the foundation’s assets frozen.

The committee heard testimony, much of it contained in U.S. government reports, that disclosed the huge Saudi investment in disseminating Wahabi doctrine, including control of most national Muslim organizations in the United States. Alex Alexiev, a researcher at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, said Riyad spent $70 billion from 1975 to 2002 in Islamic projects around the world.