What's Bandar been up to?

There're big questions about the big money flushing around Prince Bandar in relation to the BAE thing, but I'm far more curious as to the operational side of it.

His reason for the low profile, according to diplomats, was that he was already in trouble with his boss, King Abdullah, having delivered diplomatic messages to the US that were not exactly in line with the monarch's wishes.

What does that mean? I'm highly suspicious about all of this.

Again, let's step back a couple days,

They (Cheney, Abrams, et al) have, however, suffered a recent setback in what we have described as their “Sunni strategy” to build support from the US’ conservative Sunni Arab allies (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States) for a belligerent approach to Iran. This strategy was based on the Sunni fear of an ascendant Iran and of an Iraq falling into the Iranian sphere as another Shia major oil producer. Abrams worked closely with Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the Saudi National Security Adviser, to push this plan forward. We hear that this has now been shelved at the insistence, we are told, of Saudi King Abdullah. The latter has distanced himself from Bandar who is spending much of his time outside Saudi Arabia at his homes in London and the US.

There's something going on here that I'm not seeing. There's $1 billion that we know about in virtually untraceable money channeled through BAE to Bandar up to 2004. Bandar is doing things in collusion with Iran contra figure Elliot Abrams and Dick Cheney. His current king disapproves of his actions, and Bandar is delivering messages "not exactly in line with the monarch's wishes."

Is that obliquely saying that Bandar is working outside his country's interest? Did all that money end up with Bandar, and if not, where, and to what persons or groups did it go?

A little reminder of history,

He proved of enormous value to the US when he channelled Saudi petrodollars into American-sponsored covert operations, including funding Nicaragua's Contras and the Arab fighters who battled the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (and eventually created the monster of al-Qaeda).

I don't know, but something tells me, something is up. (And it sounds like Bandar is going anywhere but Saudi Arabia right now.)