-Caveat Lector-
New Yorker
Article covers:
- Documentation of how Clinton spurned his promise to
bring the Khobar Towers bombers to justice.
- How Freeh used George H. W. Bush to help him when
the Clinton-Gore adminstration failed. This was
apparently done without the knowledge of the Clinton
White House.
- Freeh's conclusion that Berger was nothing more than
a public relations hack.
- Clinton's reportedly tearful meeting with the Saudi
Crown Prince in which the Lewinsky scandal was
discussed but little was said about breaking the
logjam on the Khobar towers investigation.
- The starkly differing accounts of events by Sandy
Berger as compared with Freeh and Bandar. You decide
which sounds more believable.
- How a suspect/informant backed out of a plea bargain
after obtaining the services of Lewinsky lawyer
Francis Carter (who was suspected of being part of the
Clinton DC lawyer "cabal" during the Lewinsky
scandal).
- Clinton bombs Sudan and Afghanistan as Freeh and FBI
agents arrives in Kenya after requests that it be
delayed until FBI agents were in safer circumstances
including last minute call to Janet Reno. They
(Freeh and FBI) conclude that the reason the bombing
occured when it occurred was because of the Lewinsky
scandal.
New Yorker
May 14, 2001
Pg. 68
Annals Of Politics
Louis Freeh's Last Case
Last week, the F.B.I. chief announced his retirement.
What-and who-hindered him in solving the crime he
cared about most?
By Elsa Walsh
On June 25, 1996, shortly before 10 p.m., three
sentries posted on a rooftop at Khobar Towers, a
high-rise compound that housed the two thousand
American military personnel assigned to the King Abdul
Aziz Airbase, in Saudi Arabia,
noticed a tanker truck pull up to a perimeter fence.
The area had been declared a likely target for a
terrorist attack, and when the sentries saw
two men jump out of the truck into a car and speed
away they recognized the possibility of a bomb. They
desperately tried to evacuate the building, pounding
on the doors of sleeping airmen; four minutes later,
the truck exploded, shearing off the face of Building
131. The explosion was so powerful that it left a
crater eighty-five feet wide and thirty-five feet
deep; the blast could be heard in Bahrain, some
twenty miles away. Nineteen men were killed and about
five hundred were injured. Greater casualties were
avoided only because the bombers had put water in the
tanker, forcing the blast downward.
Louis Freeh, the director of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, was visiting relatives in New Jersey
when he was told about the bombing, and he immediately
dispatched a hundred and twenty-five agents and
employees to Saudi Arabia. (Though the Saudis had
primary legal authority, the F.B.I. is charged with
investigating the deaths of Americans overseas.)
Shortly after returning to Washington, Freeh and
Robert (Bear) Bryant, then his national-security
deputy, boarded an Air Force jet for the
seventeen-hour
flight to Saudi Arabia. It was unusual for F.B.I.
directors to visit crime scenes, but Freeh had become
a familiar sight to agents working on big cases. Since
becoming director, in 1993,he was half-jokingly
referred to as the Bureau's only Presidentially
appointed case agent. Last week, when Freeh announced
that he would retire in June, he pointed out that he
had originally joined the Bureau at the age of
twenty-five, fresh out of law school.
Freeh is a trim five feet nine inches tall. His suits
are off-the-rack, and his dark, graying hair is
typically shorn in a brush cut. He speaks
softly, often dropping his "r"s; his manner is usually
deferential. When he talks about the Khobar
investigation, he tends to be terse, much like any
policeman guarding his knowledge; but he
does talk easily about what he saw at Building 131-how
red paint and red chalk marked the spots where human
remains were scattered, and how everywhere
he looked there seemed to be people on crutches or
with bandages on their heads and arms. When Freeh and
Bryant arrived, both wearing suits, the temperature
was about a hundred and twenty degrees; the Saudis had
laid carpeting along the edge of the site so that
people could watch the agents work. "You couldn't go
to a crime scene like that, as an investigator
or as an American, and not be determined to pursue the
investigation," Freeh told me. In his pocket, Freeh, a
Catholic, had been carrying the worn prayer book
he received as an altar boy; it is something he always
has with him. "I saidmany prayers during that
trip-going, coming, during, and since then," he said.
Freeh noted in his retirement statement that during
his tenure the Bureau has more than doubled its
overseas presence-with new offices in cities
from Moscow to Cairo. But the F.B.I. has had problems
abroad, because most foreign police have never worked
with the Bureau. The problems were especially acute
with the Saudis, who had previously been reluctant to
share evidence. Nearly a month before the bombing, the
Saudis had beheaded several suspects who were being
held in connection with the 1995 bombing of an
American-run military compound in Riyadh-executing
them before the F.B.I., despite entreaties, had had a
chance to interview them. After the Khobar bombing,
the Saudis quickly rounded up suspects, most of them
Saudi Shiites.
But the Khobar operation looked too sophisticated to
be the work of an isolated group of dissidents. Many
of the Saudis in custody were affiliated with the
Saudi Hezbollah, an offshoot of the Iranian-sponsored
organization Hezbollah, based in Lebanon and thought
to be responsible for terrorist acts. With F.B.I.
help, the Saudis were able to identify the truck
chassis used in the bombing and trace it to the
purchaser, who acknowledged being part of a cell
trained by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Another piece of evidence had emerged months before
the bombing, when an alert Saudi border agent noticed
something suspicious about a car coming from Jordan-it
was too close to the ground-and discovered that it was
packed with explosives. The driver admitted that he
was also part of the same loosely linked series of
"cluster cells." After interrogating the
driver, the Saudis picked up about a dozen other cell
members, and over the next few months the men in
custody described a broad plan, directed and funded
by a top official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,
to target sites in Saudi Arabia. "We were picking up
information that there was a plot to eventually
target U.S. facilities in key locations at various
places, and this was just one piece of it," said
William Esposito, who was then the deputy F.B.I.
director. When the blast went off at Khobar Towers,
the detainees provided additional names and
information.
President Clinton had publicly promised to punish
those involved, vowing "to make sure those responsible
are brought to justice." Almost from the
start, however, the F.B.I. team in Saudi Arabia
complained about a lack of access to key Saudi
evidence. In response, Freeh pushed the National
Security Council and the State Department to impress
upon the Saudis the importance of the investigation.
Samuel R. (Sandy) Berger, who became the Clinton
Administration's national-security adviser, told me
that Clinton wrote to King Fahd and met with Fahd's
half brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, in New York,
personally urging them to coöperate. The Secretaries
of Defense and State, Berger added, made personal
appeals to the Saudi hierarchy.
Over the next few months, Freeh travelled twice more
to Saudi Arabia. "Louis would go over there and try to
negotiate for them to show us the evidence,"
Esposito said. "And then, at the highest levels, they
would agree to it. Andthen . . . it wouldn't happen,
so Louis would have to make another trip."
But Freeh also heard from his Saudi counterparts that
there had been little followup to the Administration's
statements; as a result, a mixed signal was being sent
about the seriousness of United States resolve. Freeh
came to believe that the Clinton Administration feared
jeopardizing its strategic relationships in the Middle
East by pressing too hard; in fact, by the
end of the Clinton era, Freeh had become so
mistrustful of Clinton that, although he believed that
he had developed enough evidence to seek
indictments against the masterminds behind the attack,
not just the front-line suspects, he decided to wait
for a new Administration. The matter is unusually
sensitive, because any indictments are likely to name
Iranian government officials, especially those with
ties to Iranian intelligence, commonly believed to be
the source of terrorist activities.
According to those who have worked closely with Freeh,
the Khobar barracks bombing became a case into which
he poured not only enormous investigative
resources but also his soul. As I delved into his
life, I kept hearing whispers about what one person
called his almost "theological" pursuit of the
bombing, and up until the announcement of his
retirement it remained in many ways his most important
case-and the one most hidden from public view.
"With Khobar, you can see all of Louis's values right
on his sleeve," George Tenet, the director of the
C.I.A., told me. The secrecy surrounding the
case has been such that Dale Watson, the F.B.I.'s
chief of counter-terrorism, once said, "It's a killing
offense around here to talk about it."
Freeh recently briefed President George W. Bush on the
attack, and gave the Administration a list of people
whom he thinks the United States should indict. The
Administration's handling of the case may be one of
its most important foreign-policy tests. "The only
unfinished piece of business that I have is the one
you're writing about," Freeh told me late last week.
End Pt I
=================================================================
Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF:
*Michael Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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