If you were in Saudi Arabia when American engineer Paul Johnson was killed on June 18, you could have clicked onto the Internet and seen photos of his severed head. You also could have accessed other sites that promoted holy war against the West.
Here's what you would not have seen: A Web site raising concerns about security in the kingdom.
That's right, Saudi censors blocked the site of British journalist John R. Bradley after he posted letters from foreigners worried about their safety.
That the Saudis considered a journalist's blog more offensive than grisly photos and extremist rantings says a lot about the kingdom today. It also says a lot about Bradley, a fluent Arabic speaker who understands this complex country far better than most outsiders.
I met Bradley two years ago while doing a series on Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. Bradley was then managing editor of the Arab News, an English-language daily published in Jeddah.
Unlike Riyadh, the archconservative capital, Jeddah is a relatively laid back place, partly due to its location on the Red Sea less than 100 miles from Africa. The architecture in the old part of town has a distinctly African feel, and the souks are full of vibrant fabrics, a welcome change from the black veils and cloaklike abayas women shroud themselves with in other parts of the country.
The mutawa, or religious police, are also less evident in Jeddah; I wore no abaya, only a sleeveless dress, as Bradley and I drank cappuccinos at a local Starbucks. (In Riyadh, it would have been unthinkable for a man and a woman who were not related to sit together in public.)
Some critics accused Bradley of being an apologist for the repressive Saudi regime, but that didn't stop Western journalists from going to Jeddah to glean whatever tips and insights he could provide. On my visit, he was generous with his time and knowledge, showing me around the city and pointing out things Saudi officials never would have: a blighted area where kids foraged for food in trash bins and where crime, drugs and prostitution were rampant.
Just a few miles away sat the grandiose seaside palaces of the ruling al Saud family.
Even as an adolescent, Bradley wanted to go to Saudi Arabia - "it was so extraordinarily closed and mysterious" - and a few months before 9/11 he finally got a visa.
"I remember as I drove through north Jeddah on the first day the terrible disappointment," he told me by e-mail last week. "I felt it was just like some big Chicago suburb, so Westernized and modern and all flashing neon lights. Of course, it didn't take me long to realize that, beyond the superficial veneer of modernity, it was anything but Westernized."
In a place where press freedom remains a distant goal, the Arab News was surprisingly liberal. Criticizing Islam or the regime is taboo, but the paper pressed gently for social and political reforms, and even engaged in old-fashioned muckraking: Among other things, it exposed a camp in which foreign workers were housed in 110-degree heat with no air conditioning.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Oxford-educated Bradley was in demand.
"I found myself the only permanent, accredited (Western) journalist in the kingdom that everyone in the world, and especially Americans, wanted to know more about," says Bradley, who began doing stories for Reuters and other media. "It was very frustrating to see all these "experts' on Saudi Arabia ranting on when for the most part they had never even visited the kingdom."
But Saudi officials were angered by some of the stories, including one that questioned whether the mutawa were a source of religious extremism, and another that revealed a plot by three Moroccans to hijack a plane and crash it somewhere in Jeddah.
Last year, a friend summoned Bradley to Starbucks in the middle of the night and warned "that one more article like those and you'll be on the next plane out of here." Bradley decided to leave on his own: Even without the threat, he was constantly at odds with his editor-in-chief over the anti-Semitic tone of certain articles.
"I would spike them and then find they were in the paper anyway the next day."
Today Bradley lives in southeast Asia, where he works for another paper and is writing a book on the kingdom.
During his time there, Bradley became convinced that many so-called Saudi reformers had little real interest in changing the status quo. He also thinks Saudi rulers have "their heads in the sand" when it comes to Islamic extremism and how to deal with it.
Still, Bradley, 34, says his years in Saudi Arabia have been the best in his life and resulted in many friendships. He recently wrote an article "to put things in perspective."
In it, he recalls how one Saudi, discovering Bradley didn't have a way to get back to his hotel, handed over the keys to his own car. Another stranger drove 15 minutes out of his way to take Bradley where he needed to go.
Given Johnson's kidnapping and beheading, Bradley admits he probably would decline a ride these days. But while some Saudis hate foreigners and support Osama bin Laden, he says "there is another side to the life and people there which represents the best Islamic traditions of generosity, kindness and hospitality.
"During the nearly three years that I spent living and traveling throughout Saudi Arabia ... it was that other side that was overwhelmingly in evidence."
