Khobar Towers

Ten years ago, on June 25, 1966, terrorists exploded a huge bomb outside the Khobar Towers U.S. Air Force barracks in Dhahran, Saudia Arabia. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed, along with one Saudi. Then-President Clinton said “no stone would be left unturned” in the effort to bring terrorists to justice.

Louis Freeh — the head of the FBI, appointed by Clinton — was given the job of finding the perpetrators and bringing them to justice. Mr. Freeh took that responsibility very personally, and today in an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal, unfortunately behind the subscription wall, he tells some of the infuriating details of how his investigation was obstructed — not by the Saudis, but by Americans. It serves as a detailed reminder of why we just cannot trust U.S. security to unserious liberal politicians.

I’m going to talk about a few points from Mr. Freeh’s piece, but if you can, please read the whole thing.

It soon became clear that Mr. Clinton and his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, had no interest in confronting the fact that Iran had blown up the Towers. This is astounding, considering that the Saudi Security Service had arrested six of the bombers after the attack. As FBI agents sifted through the remains of Building 131 in 115-degree heat, the bombers admitted they had been trained by the Iranian external security service (IRGC) in the Beka Valley, and received their passports at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, along with $250,000 cash for the operation from IRGC Gen. Ahmad Sharifi.

We later learned that senior members of the Iranian government, including Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and the Spiritual Leader’s office had selected Khobar as their target and commissioned the Saudi Hezbollah to carry out the operation. The Saudi police told us that FBI agents had to interview the bombers in custody in order to make our case. To make this happen, however, the U.S. president would need to personally make a request to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.

So for 30 months, I wrote and rewrote the same set of simple talking points for the president, Mr. Berger, and others to press the FBI’s request to go inside a Saudi prison and interview the Khobar bombers. And for 30 months nothing happened. The Saudis reported back to us that the president and Mr. Berger would either fail to raise the matter with the crown prince or raise it without making any request. On one such occasion, our commander in chief instead hit up Prince Abdullah for a contribution to his library. Mr. Berger never once, in the course of the five-year investigation which coincided with his tenure, even asked how the investigation was going.

Mr. Freeh’s contempt for Sandy Berger and President Clinton are clear. Who can blame him? The man who appointed him and gave him this solemn responsibility behaved in an appalling, even traitorous, fashion. And if you think the trusty sidekick (Sandy “papers in my pants” Berger) sounds bad above, consider this:

Finally, frustrated in my attempts to execute Mr. Clinton’s “leave no stone unturned” order, I called former President George H.W. Bush. I had learned that he was about to meet Prince Abdullah on another matter. After fully briefing Mr. Bush on the impasse and faxing him the talking points that I had now been working on for over two years, he personally asked the crown prince to allow FBI agents to interview the detained bombers.

After his Saturday meeting with now-King Abdullah, Mr. Bush called me to say that he made the request, and that the Saudis would be calling me. A few hours later, Prince Bandar asked me to come out to McLean, Va. on Monday to see Prince Abdullah. When I met him with Wyche Fowler, our Saudi ambassador, and FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson, the crown prince was holding my talking points. He told me Mr. Bush had made the request for the FBI, which he granted, and told Prince Bandar to instruct Nayef to arrange for FBI agents to interview the prisoners.

Several weeks later, agents interviewed the co-conspirators. For the first time since the 1996 attack, we obtained direct evidence of Iran’s complicity. What Mr. Clinton failed to do for three years was accomplished in minutes by his predecessor. This was the breakthrough we had been waiting for, and the attorney general and I immediately went to Mr. Berger with news of the Saudi prison interviews.

Upon being advised that our investigation now had proof that Iran blew up Khobar Towers, Mr. Berger’s astounding response was: “Who knows about this?” His next, and wrong, comment was: “That’s just hearsay.” When I explained that under the Rules of Federal Evidence the detainees' comments were indeed more than “hearsay,” for the first time ever he became interested — and alarmed — about the case. But this interest translated into nothing more than Washington “damage control” meetings held out of the fear that Congress, and ordinary Americans, would find out that Iran murdered our soldiers. After those meetings, neither the president, nor anyone else in the administration, was heard from again about Khobar.

Are you infuriated yet?

When reading a piece of our recent history like this, I often reflect on how it relates to our current situation with the war on terror; the conflict of civilizations between Western secular liberalism and radical Islam. The actions of unserious politicians like Clinton (and his minions) were clearly harmful to us. Their tepid reaction to Khobar Towers, and their reflexive “realpolitik” avoidance of an Iran confrontation, could do nothing but encourage the radicals — as, with hindsight, it obviously has. It’s Chamberlainesque appeasement all over again.

It’s also arguably traitorous. The man who swore he would uphold and protect the Constitution, the man who was our Commander-in-Chief (and I’m disgusted as I write that) — betrayed all of us with his actions. Most of all he betrayed the memory and families of those 19 servicemen killed at Khobar Towers.

And of course this is but one example of Clinton’s betrayal, and not even an extraordinary example. However, I think it is counter-productive to focus on Clinton, as he will not be in a position to betray us like that again (unless the world is so stupid as to allow him to become the Secretary-General of the U.N., an often-mentioned idea in liberal circles). Instead we should focus on how such a dangerously unserious politician came to hold the office of chief executive, and endeavour to avoid those mechanisms in the future.

In todays American politics, if we restrict the discussion to those politicians who actually have some hope of coming to power, the dangerously unserious ones (e.g., Pelosi, Dean, Reid, Kennedy, McCain, Schumer, McKinney, etc.) are concentrated in the Democratic Party. There are some Democrats (most notably Lieberman) who stand out for their seriousness, and there are many Republicans whose politics I have major disagreements with but who are at least serious about the war on terror (e.g., Frist, Hastert, Hunter, etc.).

Personally, I’ve arrived at a mental position that I never thought I would — where I can point to a single issue (defense, including the war on terror) and say “I don’t care how a politican addresses anything else but this.” If they’re serious (in the philosophical sense) about defense and the war on terror, I’ll support them. Even if they want to wall up the border. Even if they’re pro-abortion. Even if they’re pro-union.

Even if.