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Khobar
Towers
By LOUIS J. FREEH
June 23,
2006; Page A10
Ten years
ago this Sunday, acting under direct orders from senior Iranian
government leaders, the Saudi Hezbollah
detonated a 25,000-pound TNT bomb that killed 19 U.S. airmen in their
dormitory at Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The
blast wave destroyed Building 131 and grievously wounded hundreds of
additional Air Force personnel. It also killed an unknown number of
Saudi civilians in a nearby park.
The 19 Americans
murdered were members of the 4404th Wing, who were risking their lives
to enforce the no-fly zone over southern Iraq. This was a U.N.-mandated
mission after the 1991 Gulf War to stop Saddam Hussein from killing his
Shiite people. The Khobar victims, along with the courageous families
and friends who will mourn them this weekend in Washington, deserve our
respect and honor. More importantly, they must be remembered, because
American justice has still been denied.
Although a federal
grand jury handed down indictments in June 2001 -- days before I left as
FBI director and a week before some of the charges against 14 of the
terrorists would have lapsed because of the statute of limitations --
two of the primary leaders of the attack, Ahmed Ibrahim al-Mughassil and
Abdel Hussein Mohamed al-Nasser, are living comfortably in Iran with
about as much to fear from America as Osama bin Laden had prior to Sept.
11 (to wit, U.S. marshals showing up to serve warrants for their
arrests).
Solemn and Personal
The aftermath of the
Khobar bombing is just one example of how successive U.S. governments
have mishandled Iran. On June 25, 1996, President Clinton declared that
"no stone would be left unturned" to find the bombers and bring them to
"justice." Within hours, teams of FBI agents, and forensic and technical
personnel, were en route to Khobar. The president told the Saudis and
the 19 victims' families that I was responsible for the case. This
assignment became very personal and solemn for me, as it meant that I
was the one who dealt directly with the victims' survivors. These
disciplined military families asked only one thing of me and their
country: "Please find out who did this to our sons, husbands, brothers
and fathers and bring them to justice."
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.
In their only bungled
attempt to support the FBI, a letter from the president intended for
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, asking for "help" on the Khobar
case, was sent to the Omanis, who had direct access to Mr. Khatami. This
was done without advising either the FBI or the Saudis who were exposed
in the letter as providing help to the Americans. We only found out
about the letter because it was misdelivered to the Spiritual Leader,
Ayatollah Khamenei, who then publicly denounced the
U.S. This was an embarrassment for the Saudis who had been fully
cooperating with the FBI by providing direct evidence of Iranian
involvement. Both Saudi Prince Bandar and Interior Minister Prince
Nayef, who had put themselves and their government at great risk to help
the FBI, were now undermined by
America's president.
The Clinton
administration was set on "improving" relations with what it mistakenly
perceived to be a moderate Iranian president. But it also wanted to
accrue the political mileage of proclaiming to the world, and to the 19
survivor families, that America was aggressively pursuing the bombers.
When I would tell Mr. Berger that we could close the investigation if it
compromised the president's foreign policy, the answer was always:
"Leave no stone unturned."
* * *
Meanwhile, then
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Mr. Clinton ordered the FBI to
stop photographing and fingerprinting Iranian wrestlers and cultural
delegations entering the U.S. because the Iranians were complaining
about the identification procedure. Of course they were complaining. It
made it more difficult for their MOIS agents and terrorist coordinators
to infiltrate into America. I was overruled by an "angry" president and
Mr. Berger who said the FBI was interfering with their rapprochement
with Iran.
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.
Wrong Message
Sadly, this fits into
a larger pattern of U.S. governments sending the wrong message to
Tehran. Almost 13 years before Iran committed its terrorist act of war
against America at Khobar, it used its surrogates, the Lebanese
Hezbollah, to murder 241 Marines in their Beirut barracks. The U.S.
response to that 1983 outrage was to pull our military forces out of the
region. Such timidity was not lost upon Tehran. As with Beirut, Tehran
once again received loud and clear from the U.S. its consistent message
that there would be no price to pay for its acts of war against America.
As for the 19 dead warriors and their families, their commander in chief
had deserted them, leaving only the FBI to carry on the fight.
The Khobar bombing
case was eventually indicted in 2001, thanks to the personal leadership
of President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. But
justice has been a long time coming. Only so much can be done, after
all, with arrest warrants and judicial process. Bin Laden and his two
separate pre-9/11 arrest warrants are a case in point.
Still, many stones
remain unturned. It remains to be seen whether the Khobar case and its
fugitives will make it onto the list of America's demands in "talks"
with the Iranians. Or will we ultimately ignore justice and buy a
separate peace with our enemy?
Mr. Freeh was
FBI director from 1993-2001.
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Judge Dismisses
Khobar Towers Case Against Iran
Kenneth R.
Timmerman - NewsMax.com
Friday,
June 9, 2006
WASHINGTON -- A magistrate judge in the District Court of Washington,
D.C. has dismissed a lawsuit by the survivors and families of victims of
the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that
sought millions of dollars in damages against the government of the
Islamic Republic of Iran.
In an opinion handed down June 6, 2006, Judge Deborah A. Robinson
asserted that the plaintiffs "offered no evidence regarding the action
of any official, employee or agent" or the Iranian regime, its
intelligence ministry (MOIS), or the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps,
IRGC.
The opinion comes at a delicate time in U.S.-Iranian relations, just
a European negotiator, Javier Solana, was in Tehran to present a joint
U.S.-European offer to the Iranian regime, aimed at getting Iran to halt
its nuclear weapons program.
An advocate for the victims, Michael Engelberg, told Newsmax he
believes the State Department intervened to get the case dismissed as a
sop to the Iranian regime.
"This is more than coincidental," he said. "The timing of this, just
as Solana goes to Tehran, makes me feel uncomfortable."
In her 45-page ruling, Judge Robinson rejected testimony presented by
former FBI Director Louis Freeh and his deputy, Dale Watson, on grounds
that they "confined their testimony regarding the involvement of the
government of Iran in the bombing of Khobar Towers to their opinions –
in the words of Mr. Watson – ‘as private citizen[s].'"
However, trial transcript of the Dec. 18, 2003 hearing at which Freeh
and Watson testified shows clearly that both sought to describe the FBI
investigation into the bombing, but that Judge Robinson actively
thwarted their testimony.
At one point, lawyers for the victims asked Freeh, "Did the FBI learn
of the involvement of any foreign government in the attack?" Judge
Robinson struck the question, and insisted on directing the questioning
herself after that.
Freeh went on to testify that six suspects, arrested by the Saudi
authorities and interviewed by the FBI – including by him personally –
"admitted to us that they were members of Saudi Hezbzollah . . . They
implicated several Iranian officials in funding and planning the
attack."
Freeh named Iranian government officials who organized the attack,
provided funds, and assisted in the logistics of preparing the bomb.
"My own conclusion was that the [Khobar Towers] attack was planned,
funded and sponsored by the senior leadership of the Government of
Iran," he said. "All the training and the funding was done by the IRGC
with support from senior leaders of the Government of Iran."
But Judge Robinson found that evidence from the former FBI Director
uncompelling.
At key points during the hearing, the Judge called the court into
recess, disappeared into her chambers, then re-emerged to read out long
lists of questions, apparently dictated to her by others, that sought to
impeach the testimony of both Freeh and Watson.
A long-time observer of the DC District court who himself has tried
terrorism cases repeatedly called Judge Robinson's courtroom behavior
"disingenuous," "out of line," and "in violation of federal rules of
evidence."
Michael Engelberg, whose American Center for Civil Justice sponsors
lawsuits on behalf of victims of state-sponsored terrorist attacks, said
he suspected the judge was having "ex-parte communications" during the
recess, and was calling State Department lawyers for instructions.
Ex-parte communications by judges with the executive branch are
normally barred under the Constitution.
However, State Department attorneys who submitted an amicus curiae
brief to the court that supported the position of the Iranian
Government, told a reporter they had only done so "because the Court
explicitly asked us to intervene."
"It's outrageous for the United States government to make an
appearance in court to defend the government of the Islamic Republic of
Iran," Engelberg said.
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