For Saudi watchers, some fascinating news has just made its way to The Washington Note.

This is a day packed with interesting stuff. My colleague Flynt Leverett — Senior Fellow and Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New America Foundation — will be paired with Brookings Scholar Kenneth Pollack on The Diane Rehm Show at 11:00 am EST.

This is an alert for a program I will be chairing today with my colleague Michael Lind speaking on the subject: “What Comes Next? American Foreign Policy After Bush.” The event will air LIVE on C-Span from 12:15 pm to 1:45 pm EST. I will be offering my own comments and reactions as well.

Former Congressman and almost presidential candidate Dave McCurdy has just been announced as the new President & CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. How times have changed.

Today, while Flynt Leverett was speaking at a program I was chairing at the New America Foundation, White House spokesman Tony Snow was fielding a question on Flynt Leverett’s charge that the White House was politicizing the “secrets clearing” process and punishing policy critics who had previously worked with classified policy material.

(New America Foundation Middle East and Energy Policy expert Flynt Leverett; photo credit:

My colleague Flynt Leverett will be speaking on the subject, “Dealing with Tehran,” at a New America Foundation/American Strategy Program on Monday, 12:15 pm EST. I will be moderating the meeting and offering comments as well. This meeting is open to the public and RSVPs should go to wu@newamerica.net.

I would rather have Lincoln Chafee on board our team as a Distinguished Scholar at the New America Foundation, but Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies beat us. (We have Gary Hart with us.

(Close aide to Saudi National Security Advisor Bandar bin Sultan, Rihab Massoud) The escalating tension between Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the current Saudi National Security Advisor and former Saudi Ambassador to the United States, and Prince Turki al-Faisal, who only this this week resigned his position as Saudi Ambassador in Washington, is taking some new…

(Steve Clemons and Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Turki al-Faisal) This is bad news. There has been no formal announcement by the Saudi government yet — but sources have reported that HRH Prince Turki al-Faisal has resigned his job as Ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the US.