The Atlantic. May 2003 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/the-fall...

"A former CIA operative argues, in an article drawn form his new book, Sleeping With the Devil, that today's Saudi Arabia can't last much longer—and the social and economic fallout of its demise could be calamitous.

Five extended families in the Middle East own about 60 percent of the world's oil.

The Saud family, which rules Saudi Arabia, controls more than a third of that amount.

In the air in Riyadh and Jidda is the conviction that oil money has corrupted the ruling family beyond redemption, even as the general population has grown and gotten poorer; that the country's leaders have failed to protect fellow Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere; and that the House of Saud has let Islam be humiliated—that, in short, the country needs a radical "purification."