Day one of The Huffington Post yesterday, and they’re claiming scoops.

According to the book, which will be released to the public on May 17, based on National Security Agency electronic intercepts, the Saudi Arabian government has in place a nationwide, self-destruction explosive system composed of conventional explosives and dirty bombs strategically placed at the Kingdom’s key oil ports, pipelines, pumping stations, storage tanks, offshore platforms, and backup facilities. If activated, the bombs would destroy the infrastructure of the world’s largest oil supplier, and leave the country a contaminated nuclear wasteland ensuring that the Kingdom’s oil would be unusable to anyone. The NSA file is dubbed internally Petro SE, for petroleum scorched earth.

Back Seat Drivers has a take on it (Saudi’s relying on NSA to spread the word?), as does the large headed Jonathan Schwarz.

Daniel Pipes has more.

If such a system is in place, two implications leap to mind. Should the Saudi monarchy retain its grip on power (which I consider likely), it has created for itself a unique deterrence against invasion. But, should the monarchy be replaced by an Islamic emirate in the spirit of Afghanistan’s Taliban (the main contender for power), this ferociously anti-Western government would have at its disposal a cataclysmic suicide-bomber capacity; with one push of a button, conceivably, it could shake the world order. And it would be well-disposed to doing just that.

Western intelligence services need urgently to do more than listen in on Saudi conversations; they need to find the truth out about those explosives. Should they exist, Western governments need profoundly to reassess their relationships with the kingdom.