US: A year ago, when Maryland's laughably self-regarding Keystone Kop Chief Moose was bungling the Washington sniper investigation and the cable-news shows were full of endless psychological profiles of "white male loners", a few of us columnists entertained the notion that the killer was linked to Islamist terrorism.
The Chicago Sun-Times's Richard Roeper thought this was so absurd that he very kindly apologised to readers on my behalf. "An awful lot of conservatives really, really wanted the snipers to be terrorists," explained Richard, "but they were wrong. I'll say that because they never will."
Even at the time, in the first few days after the arrests (no thanks to Chief Moose, who was still looking for an "angry white loner"), the Roeper position required a certain suspension of disbelief.
John Allen Muhammad was a Muslim, a supporter of al- Qaeda's actions, a man who marked the events of September 11th by changing his name to Muhammad and a man who marked the first anniversary of September 11th by buying the Chevy Caprice subsequently used in the sniper attacks. Coincidence? Of course! It's only a handful of conservative kooks who'd even think otherwise.
Interesting item from the London Evening Standard last week: "Evidence has emerged linking Washington sniper John Allen Muhammad with an Islamic terror group. Muham- mad has been connected to al- Fuqra, a cult devoted to spiritual purification through violence. The group has been linked to British shoe-bomber Richard Reid and the murderers of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan last year."
Hmm. Might be nothing. Might be just another coincidence. Lot of them around at the moment - like that Saudi cabinet minister who coincidentally stayed in the same hotel on the night of September 10th as some of the September 11th terrorists. Just one of those things. But the authorities seem to be taking the links more seriously than when they first surfaced a year ago.
Here's another coincidence: The guy who heads up the organisation that certifies Muslim chaplains for the US military was arrested at Dulles Airport last month and charged with illegally accepting money from Libya. The month before that, the very same Abdurah- man Alamoudi was caught by the British trying to smuggle some $340,000 into Syria.
Think about that for a minute. Ten years ago, at an American military base, at a ceremony to install the first imam in the US armed forces, it was Mr Alamoudi who presented him with his new insignia of a silver crescent star. And the guy's a bagman for terrorists.
What kind of chaplains did Mr Alamoudi's American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council pick out to serve our men and women in uniform? Well, among them was Captain James "Yousef" Yee, recently detained under suspicion of spying at Guantanamo Bay.
Also arrested were two Arabic translators, found with classified documents from the base on their CDs, etc.
Infiltration-wise, that's pretty good. The CIA say sorry, folks, the best we can do with all the gazillions of dollars we get is monitor phone calls from outer space. But the other side has no difficulty getting their boys inside America's most secure military base and principal terrorist detention centre.
The Pentagon, of course, is taking this subversion of its chaplaincy programme seriously. It's currently reviewing all its chaplains.
By "all", I mean not just all the Muslim chaplains, but also all the Catholic, Episcopalian, Jewish ones. After all, it might just be another one of those coincidences that the chaplain detained for spying is Muslim and that the organisations that certified him are Muslim. Best to investigate the Catholics just to be on the safe side.
If the Democrats hadn't decided to sit out the war on terror by frolicking on Planet Bananas for the duration, they could be seriously hammering the administration on this.
Richard Reid, the shoe- bomber, was converted to radical Islamism while in prison by a chaplain who came to Britain under a fast-track immigration programme for imams set up by her majesty's government.
They felt they had a shortage of Muslim chaplains and not knowing much about the business or where to look for 'em felt it easiest to put up a big neon sign at Heathrow saying: "Hey, mullahs, come on down!"
It all seemed to be working well until they noticed that these guys seemed to be the spiritual mentors of a lot of the wackiest terrorists.
So how come, two years after September 11th, groups with terrorist ties are still able to insert their recruiters into America's military bases, prisons and pretty much anywhere else they get a yen to go? It's not difficult to figure out: Wahhabism is the most militant form of Islam, followed by all 19 of the September 11th terrorists and by Osama bin Laden. The Saudis whose state religion is Wahhabism fund the spread of their faith in lavishly endowed schools and mosques all over the world and, as a result, traditionally moderate Muslim populations from the Balkans to South Asia have been dramatically radicalised.
Here's an easy way to make an effective change: Less Wahhabism is in America's interest. More Wahhabism is in the terrorists' interest. So why can't the US introduce a policy whereby, for the duration of the war on terror, no organisation directly funded by the Saudis will be eligible for any formal or informal role with any federal institution? That would also include the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute, whose "adjunct scholar" is one Joseph C Wilson IV.
Remember him? He's the fellow at the centre of the White- House-leaked-the-name-of-my- CIA-wife scandal. The agency sent him to look into the European intelligence stories about Saddam trying to buy uranium in Africa.
He went to Niger, drank mint tea with government flacks and then wrote a big whiney piece in the New York Times after the White House declined to accept his assurances there was nothing going on. He was never an intelligence specialist, he is no longer a "career diplomat", but he is, like so many other retired ambassadors, on the payroll of the Middle East Institute which is to say, on the payroll of the House of Saud. And the Saudis were vehemently opposed to war with Saddam.
Think about that. To investigate Saddam Hussein's attempted acquisition of nuclear material, the United States government sent a man in the pay of the Saudi government.
The Saudis' ambassador's wife in Washington provided financial support to the September 11th hijackers.
Meanwhile, she and her husband, the oleaginous Prince Bandar, have access denied to any other foreigners at any other DC embassy - guests at the President's ranch at Crawford, pals with Colin and Alma Powell and George and Barbara Bush.
Because all that terrorist funding and training and lobbying and spying is all just an unfortunate coincidence, isn't it? After all, the Saudis are our friends. Thank goodness.