Posted on 11/08/2005 10:13:16 AM PST by Sabramerican
DIPLO WON'T TESTIFY IN SAUDI PROBE
By NILES LATHEM
WASHINGTON — The State Department abruptly pulled a top official from testifying at a Senate hearing on Saudi links to terrorism today amid a massive lobbying campaign by Saudi agents to discredit the proceedings, The Post has learned.
A State Department spokeswoman confirmed that Alan Misenheimer, the department's director of Arabian Peninsula and Iran Affairs, had bowed out of testifying at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing exploring whether Saudi Arabia was a friend or a foe in the war on terrorism.
Other officials said Misenheimer's appearance was scrapped due to concerns about offending the Saudis ahead of a scheduled trip by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Riyadh.
But the Justice Department has also declined to send a representative to the hearing, leaving Daniel Glaser, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing, as the sole Bush administration representative.
The moves come as Saudi lobbyists step up a campaign to blunt the impact of expected testimony.
The Loeffler Group, the powerful firm hired to lobby for the Saudis, has given senators a 70-page Saudi-friendly position paper, and several paid experts have written op-ed pieces in the Arab media denouncing scheduled witnesses.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
There seems to be an attitude at the State department that they are foreign government's representative with the U.S.
"State Department protecting Saudis" - just the usual daily practice by the Froggy Bottom Defartment for at least the last 32 years. Afraid they might "offend" the oil-rich jihadists!
This hearing was supposed to be on CSPAN3 but when I looked for it on the net, they had something else on. :))
Some foreign governments are more equal then other foreign governments. And then there is that one foreign government that takes care of the officers' retirement plans.
I may be wrong but isn't the State Dept motto engraved somewhere as:
The Saudis are our friends- no matter that they want to kill us.
If we actually have to ask ourselves the question, that should be a very large hint - they are not our friends. Why are we wasting money on this?
Don't the Saudis ever hire anyone unconnected to the administration?
[Quote] "In 1995, a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year,” was Robert D. Kaplan’s The Arabists. It is a fascinating and insightful account of how the State Department of the United States government became, and remains, pro-Arab...."
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