Posted on 10/03/2003 1:13:47 PM PDT by quidnunc
State has by no means been acting as a rogue department in dealing with Saudi Arabia, somehow coddling a nation that various White Houses considered hostile. But the lengths to which State goes to pamper the Saudis is something largely carried out of its own volition. There is no better example of this than Visa Express, the program that required all Saudis (including non-citizens) to turn in their visa applications at private Saudi travel agencies, which then sent them in bundles to the embassy in Riyadh or the consulate in Jeddah. Visa Express was entirely of State’s own making; it was conceived of and planned for while Clinton was president, and was officially launched when Bush was in the White House. And in the three months it was operational before September 11, Visa Express let in three of the September 11 terrorists. But State did not shut it down. It took ten months — and tremendous public pressure — before that happened.
From the moment in early 1993 that Mary Ryan became head of Consular Affairs (CA), the division that oversees visa issuance, consulates, and embassies, traditional requirements for visa applicants started getting pared down (discussed in detail in Chapter 8). Partial versions of Visa Express — though not by that name — were implemented in various countries in the mid- to late-1990s. But nowhere in the world had State launched a program whereby all residents, citizens and non-citizens alike, would be expected to submit visa applications to local, private travel agencies. It was a bold — and untested — plan. Yet State chose to try out this ambitious project in a nation that was a known hotbed of al Qaeda extremists. To be fair, most Americans were not thinking about national security in late 2000 and early 2001, but State should have been. That’s its job. Khobar Towers, the U.S. military dormitory, had been attacked by Hezbollah terrorists in 1996, killing nineteen U.S. soldiers, and wounding 372. And State had ample information that al Qaeda was fully operational inside Saudi Arabia. Yet State went ahead in that environment with plans to launch its first nationwide Visa Express program.
Although State vociferously defended Visa Express when it came under intense scrutiny — claiming that it was almost irrelevant that travel agencies had been deputized to collect visa applications (and more, as it turned out) — the truth is that Visa Express was an incredible threat to U.S. border security. State’s official line was that travel agencies did no more than, say, FedEx would in collecting and passing on applications. This was simply not true. According to internal State documents, travel agencies were expected to conduct pre-interviews and ensure compliance. In other words, people with financial incentive to obtain visas for others were helping them fill out the forms. At first blush, this might not sound significant. But the average visa application is approved or refused in two to three minutes, meaning that there are key indicators a consular officer looks for in making his decisions. With a two-page form — one page of which has questions like “Are you a member of a terrorist organization? (Answering ‘yes’ will not necessarily trigger a refusal)” — a travel agent who handles dozens or hundreds of applications daily could easily figure out the red flags that are to be avoided. Armed with that information, it would be relatively easy to help an applicant beat the system. Visa Express also arranged it so that the overwhelming majority of Saudi applicants never came into contact with a U.S. citizen until stepping off the airplane onto American soil.
Apparently oblivious to the glaring security loopholes created by Visa Express, State proudly implemented the program in June 2001. In an e-mail that, in hindsight, is shocking for its gleeful tone, the deputy chief of mission in Riyadh, Thomas P. Furey, wrote to Mary Ryan about Visa Express being a “win-win-win-win” — with nary a mention of security concerns. In the e-mail, Furey notes that the program started with Saudi nationals — whom he amazingly refers to as “clearly approvable” — and then says that Visa Express had been expanded to include non-Saudi citizens one day earlier, on June 25, 2001. Visa Express also resulted in the overwhelming majority of Saudi applicants never coming into contact with visa applicants. “The number of people on the street and coming through the gates should only be fifteen percent of what it was last summer,” Furey wrote.
The four wins Furey boasts about? From his e-mail:
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Perhaps former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) Ned Walker said it best when he told the Washington Post, “Let’s face it, we got a lot of money out of Saudi Arabia.” Walker meant “we” as in the U.S. government, but he easily could have used it to refer to former State Department officials who benefit financially after retirement. Some do it directly — and in public view, because of stringent reporting requirements — while most, including Walker, choose a less noticeable trough.
In researching my new book, Dangerous Diplomacy , I discovered that Saudi cash has created a circle of sympathizers and both direct and indirect lobbyists — which is precisely the intended effect. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador the United States, was quoted in the Washington Post as having said, “If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you’d be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office.”
Among the first former Foggy Bottom officials to work directly for the House of Saud was former assistant secretary for Congressional Affairs Frederick Dutton, starting in 1975. According to a 1995 public filing (mandated for all paid foreign agents), Dutton earns some $200,000 per year. Providing mostly legal services, Dutton also flacks for the House of Saud and even lobbies on the royal family’s behalf from time to time. One of his successors as head of Congressional Affairs, Linwood Holton, also went to work for the Saudis, starting in 1977. Rounding out the current team of retired State officials now directly employed by the Saudis is Peter Thomas Madigan, deputy assistant secretary for Legislative Affairs in the first Bush administration.
Most of the Saudi money, though, goes indirectly to former State officials, most commonly by means of think tanks. This approach pays dividends in many ways: Foggy Bottom retirees get to have their cake — without the public realizing they’re eating it — and the Saudis get to have “indirect” lobbyists, who promote the Saudi agenda under the cover of the think tank label. Three organizations in particular are the primary beneficiaries of Saudi petrodollars, and all are populated with former State officials: the Meridian International Center, the Middle East Policy Council, and the Middle East Institute.
-snip-
(Joel Mowbray in Town Hall, October 1, 2003)
To Read This Article Click Here
"They have wonderful senses of humor."
That sentiment was expressed by the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Robin Rafael, after her first face-to-face meeting with the Taliban in 1996 — a session during which, according to an informed source, she sat in a chair with her back facing the radical Islamists. Islamic law, to which the Taliban strictly adhered, forbids any man outside of the immediate family to view a woman’s face. Yet the bizarre encounter did not sour Rafael on the Taliban. As history later showed, Rafael’s “humor” remark was one of a series of mistaken judgments State made about the political movement that was intertwined with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network.
The Taliban, originally pegged in the international press as a movement of fundamentalist religious students, was met with initial warmth by officials at Foggy Bottom. They believed that not only did the Taliban’s capture of Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul in September 1996 bring the promise of “stability,” but it also opened up real possibilities for a massive pipeline that might finally allow the resources of the oil and gas fields of Central Asia to reach world markets. These factors — and an unwillingness to confront an increasingly obvious reality — led State at first to embrace, and later to tolerate, after its true nature had become clear, the radical Islamist movement that harbored bin Laden.
The day after the Taliban captured Kabul, State spokesman Glyn Davies announced that officials at Foggy Bottom found “nothing objectionable” about the new rulers of Afghanistan. Nothing objectionable about the complete subjugation of women and girls, the denial of basic freedoms to all, and barbaric military tactics. Indeed, the brutally repressive movement that swept through most of Afghanistan in barely two years had a friend in State — one that was willing to look the other way while atrocities were committed on a regular basis.
Of course it is easy in hindsight to criticize State for cozying up to the Taliban, but it is clear Foggy Bottom officials should have known better. When the Taliban took Kabul in September 1996, State spokesman Glyn Davies stated, “What we haven’t had an opportunity to do, of course, is get in touch with the Taliban and discuss with them their intentions.” And yet, by its own admission to the Economist a few days later, State had had “ongoing contacts for the past couple of years with the Taliban.” With the Taliban able to achieve in roughly two years what the Soviet Union could not in a decade — uniting virtually all of Afghanistan — the line about the new regime in Kabul being a movement of “religious students” was absurd on its face.
Still, State’s early fawning over the Taliban was, in some respects, understandable. The movement was backed by two nominal U.S. allies — Saudi Arabia and Pakistan — and even the central government ousted by the Taliban initially supported the new mullah militia. When the Taliban moved to seize Khandahar in 1994, sitting Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani (who had been in power since 1992) actually supported its efforts. Khandahar, by all accounts, was a city in chaos. Promising to clean up the city by imposing fundamentalist Islamic law, the Taliban was welcomed by virtually everyone, including the U.S. State Department.
-snip-
(Joel Mowbray in Town Hall, October 1, 2003)
To Read This Article Click Here
As soon as the war in Iraq ended, the transition to a new government began. Despite a clear goal of de-Ba’athification — akin to de-Nazification in Germany after World War II — laid out by President Bush, the State Department had other ideas. Because the Ba’athists had been in control of Iraq for thirty-five years — nearly twenty-five of which were under Saddam Hussein’s leadership — State wanted to phase out senior Ba’ath party officials from the transition government over time.
Considering some of the people at the center of U.S. efforts in Iraq, this belief should not come as a surprise.
The special envoy to Iraq, who coordinated plans for a post-Saddam Iraq until he was officially placed under the command of Paul Bremer in May 2003, was Zalmay Khalilzad — the former Unocal representative who argued for quick acceptance of the Taliban in 1996. (Although he was technically a National Security Council representative in Iraq, State strongly supported his appointment there.) Another key figure in Iraq immediately following the war was Robin Rafael, the former head of the South Asia bureau who originally sought closer ties with the Taliban, even commenting on their “wonderful senses of humor.” Rather than being banned from Foggy Bottom for their track record of extremely questionable judgment, Rafael and Khalilzad were handed two of the top positions in the selection of new leaders for a post-Saddam transition government.
Under Khalilzad’s guidance, several senior Ba’ath party officials were given plum posts in the transitional authority. The new minister of health, Dr. Ali al-Janabi, was formerly the number three official in the health ministry in Saddam’s regime. The State Department gave him a promotion to the top spot, even though he refused to renounce the Ba’ath party. State Department official Stephen Browning actually praised al-Janabi, telling the Associated Press that the new minister of health was a “Ba’ath party member who is not associated with criminal activities.” But others evidently disagreed: after a wave of protests from Iraqi doctors and nurses, al-Janabi resigned a mere ten days after accepting the appointment. Perhaps even more amazing, Rafael personally reinstated as president of Baghdad University Saddam Hussein’s personal physician, Dr. Muhammad al-Rawi. Like Dr. al-Janabi, Dr. al-Rawi was still loyal to Saddam, even refusing after the war to remove a statue of the deposed despot from the school’s grounds.
The looting and rioting that followed the end of the war, which received considerable attention in the international media, was largely coordinated by Ba’athists. According to several administration officials, significant evidence showed that the Ba’athists were behind much of the criminal unrest as well as the “vandalism” that struck strategic locations, such as the electrical grid.50 When U.S. officials were attempting to repair the grid in the aftermath of the war, the “vandals” repeatedly sabotaged the transformers, something that required a detailed knowledge of the grid, which only the senior Ba’ath party officials who previously maintained and operated the grid would have.
With Ba’athists organizing much of the disorder, the State Department’s bias toward “stability” was actually responsible for destabilizing Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
-snip-
(Joel Mowbray in Town Hall, October 2, 2003)
To Read This Article Click Here
That’s what then–secretary of state George Shultz would tell newly appointed diplomats after they had finished the obligatory grip-and-grin. The guest in his office would look puzzled, and Shultz would instruct him or her, “You have to go over to the globe on my desk and identify your country.” Invariably, the statesman would point to New Zealand or Egypt or some other nation, to which Shultz would reply, “No, point to your country,” reminding him where his true loyalties lie.
“Originally,” Shultz says, “I thought of it as something fun.” But when it took several years for someone actually to spin the globe around and point to the United States, the exercise became a potent — and telling — display of the underlying problem of the State Department. Foggy Bottom’s inverted priorities — believing that the job of the diplomatic corps is to represent a foreign country’s interests in America, not America’s interests in the foreign country — can be seen in any number of examples, from easy visas to child abduction cases.
By its own admission, State lobbied against the rather mild Syria Accountability Act in part because Syria and its neighbors would not like the sanctions bill. The intent might not have been to represent Syria’s interests — State’s standard line is that sanctioning countries hurts “relations” — but the effect is that it did. Saudi Arabia was able to enjoy Visa Express even after September 11 because State believed that ending the program would harm “relations” with the House of Saud. And State does little to help left-behind American parents recover their children abducted to foreign lands because exerting real pressure — in the minds of State officials — would make it more difficult to get other “favors” from the foreign governments.
“I’m sorry.”
Then-U.S. ambassador to Jordan, William Burns, had heard some disturbing news, and he rushed to make an apology. A Jordanian citizen, Ishaq Farhan, had received a visa from the State Department, only to be turned back by U.S. customs officials as he tried to enter the country to give a speech at a conference for the American Muslims for Jerusalem in Santa Clara, California. Burns personally assured Farhan that he was sorry for any inconvenience the incident caused.
Farhan was head of the fundamentalist group Islamic Action Front (IAF) and had possible ties to terrorism. Not sketchy, far-fetched ties, either. A fax threatening possible terrorist action against the United States came from his office fax machine, which is why he was added to the terrorism watch list in 1999 and his visa (issued in 1998) was revoked.
On November 10, 1996, the American embassy in Amman, Jordan, received the following fax from IAF demanding the release of a Hamas leader, Dr. Musa Abu Marzook.
We demand that you immediately release Dr. Musa Abu Marzook and urge you not to hand him over to the Zionist enemy. We warn you that if you do not release Dr. Musa Abu Marzook, and if you hand him over to the Jews, we will turn the ground upside down over your heads in Amman, Jerusalem, and the rest of the Arab countries and you will lament your dead just as we did to you in Lebanon in 1982 when we destroyed the Marine House with a booby-trapped car, and there are plenty of cars in our country. You also still remember the oil tanker with which we blew up your soldiers in Saudi Arabia.
Granted, this might not constitute sufficient evidence for a criminal conviction in a court of law — but then the question of whether someone qualifies for a visa is not one for which the U.S. has to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Since the incident happened in May 2000 — more than a year before September 11 — State still had the power to “correct” matters. The suspected terrorist, who had told the Jordan Times in 1998, “The resistance of the enemy Israel is a right and legitimate jihad holy war,” had his visa reinstated, giving him an open door to come to the United States. -snip-
(Joel Mowbray in Town Hall, October 3, 2003)
To Read This Article Click Here
Does my memory serve me correct? Is she the one who told Iraq that the US would not oppose an invasion of Kuwait? Or was that another woman?
“Originally,” Shultz says, “I thought of it as something fun.” But when it took several years for someone actually to spin the globe around and point to the United States, the exercise became a potent — and telling — display of the underlying problem of the State Department.
The State Department needs to be cleared from the ground up and reset to its original purpose - Representing U.S. interests and its citizenry outside of our borders.
I believe you may be thinking of April Glaspie who was the U.S. ambassadopr to Iraq.
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