Clinton aides battle Freeh over '60 minutes' book

Under strong pressure from former President Bill Clinton's advisers, CBS's ''60 Minutes'' has agreed to read a statement denying an explosive charge being made on Sunday nght's program by former FBI director Louis Freeh, the WASHINGTON POST reports.

In the statement, Samuel ``Sandy'' Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, challenges Freeh's assertion that Clinton failed to press Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to cooperate with an investigation of the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in that country, and used the occasion to ask for a contribution to his presidential library. The Saudis made such a donation last year _ six years after the 1998 meeting.

Berger, who was at the meeting, said: ``The president strongly raised the need for Saudi officials to cooperate with us on the investigation into the attack on Khobar Towers at the time when the FBI was attempting to gain access to the suspects. The president did not raise in any fashion the issue of his library.''

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said he told CBS's Mike Wallace that he had supportive accounts from five other former officials at the meeting, including those briefed about a private conversation between Clinton and Abdullah.

``The fair journalistic question is why they didn't call and get comments for their story from people who were in the room, such as Sandy Berger, and why they took until Friday afternoon to get that done,'' said Lanny Davis, a former White House lawyer, who tried to persuade ''60 Minutes'' producer Jeff Fager to allow him or another Clinton spokesman to appear on Sunday night's segment.

Saudis, Arabs Funneled Millions to President Clinton's Library

By JOSH GERSTEIN
November 22, 2004

LITTLE ROCK, AR - President Clinton’s new $165 million library here was funded in part by gifts of $1 million or more each from the Saudi royal family and three Saudi businessmen.

The governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar and the deputy prime minister of Lebanon all also appear to have donated $1 million or more for the archive and museum that opened last week.

Democrats spent much of the presidential campaign this year accusing President Bush of improperly close ties to Saudi Arabia. The case was made in Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 9/11,” in a bestselling book by Craig Unger titled “House of Bush, House of Saud,” and by the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Kerry.”This administration delayed pressuring the Saudis,” Mr. Kerry said on October 20. “I will insist that the Saudis crack down on charities that funnel funds to terrorists… and on anti-American and anti-Israel hate speech.”The Media Fund, a Democratic group whose president is a former Clinton White House aide, Harold Ickes, spent millions airing television commercials in swing states with scripts such as, “The Saudi royal family…wealthy…powerful…corrupt. And close Bush family friends.”

Perhaps as a result, the Saudi donations to the Clinton library are raising some eyebrows. Mr. Unger said he suspects that the Saudi support may have something to do with a possible presidential bid by Senator Clinton in 2008.

“They want to keep their options open no matter who’s in power and whether that’s four years from now or whatever,” the author said. “Just a few million is nothing to them to keep their options open.”

******

Robert Novak

March 30, 2002

Saudi $ for Clinton

WASHINGTON -- Bill Clinton not only received a $750,000 speaking fee for going to Saudi Arabia in January but came back with a hefty pledge for his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., according to high-ranking Saudis. Estimates range from less than $1 million to $20 million.

A Clinton library spokesman told this column he had heard nothing about this contribution and would not tell us if he had. But Saudi sources say the pledge was made by the royal family, following a similar gift to the elder George Bush's presidential library. The Bush library lists a contribution by the family of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to Washington, among "gifts of $1 million and above."

A footnote: Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz, chairman of the Arab Gulf Fund for the United Nations, attacked Clinton's visit to Saudi Arabia because of the former president's pro-Israeli views. Talal often dissents from the royal family's mainstream.

******

Monday, Nov. 22, 2004 1:47 p.m. EST

Saudis, Arabs Bankrolled Clinton Library

The names of most of the 113,000 donors to Bill Clinton's presidential library remain a closely guarded secret, but a new report claims that the facility was heavily funded by the Saudi royal family and other wealthy Arabs.

According to Monday's New York Sun, the $165 million complex was funded in part by gifts of $1 million or more each from the Saudi royals and three Saudi businessmen.

The governments of Dubai, Kuwait and Qatar and the deputy prime minister of Lebanon also appear to have donated $1 million or more for the archive and museum that opened last week, the paper said.

News of the Saudi cash infusions confirms a report by columnist Robert Novak, who revealed in 2003 that the Saudis had pledged up to $20 million to help build the Clinton facility.

In January 2002, Clinton traveled to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to speak before a conference of Middle Eastern businessmen organized by the Saudi BinLaden Group, the powerful construction conglomerate run by the family of Osama bin Laden.

Clinton was paid $267,000 for his appearance, according to reports in the Financial Times and Middle Eastern news services.

The Sun used a database at the library that lists 57 donors as "Trustees" - people who gave $1 million or more to help build the facility - to track the Middle Eastern contributions.

Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005 10:10 a.m. EDT

Clinton Foundation Found At Fault

Former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation failed to meet at least six of 19 accountability standards established by the Better Business Bureau.

A report by the watchdog group said the Clinton Foundation lacks policies requiring performance reviews for its chief executive officer and for the foundation as a whole.

Also, the organization’s annual reports and Web site do not contain detailed financial statements or information about the group’s board of directors, the New York Sun reports.

"There are a number of concerns here,” said Bennett Weiner, head of the Better Business Bureau’s charity evaluation service.

"We didn’t get a copy of the audited financial statement.”

He said nonprofit organizations that solicit money on the Internet should post detailed financial reports online.

"One would have hoped to have seen an organization like this, a charity like this, living up to the highest standards of disclosure,” said Marion Fremont-Smith, a senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Nonprofit Organizations.

The foundation, which was established in 1997, has been focused on raising funds to build and endow Clinton’s $165 million presidential library in Arkansas, which opened last November 18.

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said some of the procedures recommended by the bureau, such as program reviews, will be facilitated as the foundation turns greater attention to ongoing projects such as efforts to provide HIV/AIDS drugs, according to the Sun.

The Clinton Foundation’s latest report, released on September 23, showed the organization took in $57.7 million in donations last year, and borrowed nearly $38.5 million to cover expenses related to the library.

Donors to the foundation have included the Saudi Royal Family, the governments of Dubai, Kuwait and Qatar and director Steven Spielberg.

Last year’s borrowings included an unsecured, low-interest $10 million loan from Titanium Acquisition Corporation, a firm connected to entertainment industry executive *Haim Saban, a close friend of Clinton.

* Haim Saban, is the billionaire producer of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He is ranked 78 among The 400 Richest Americans In 2005.

Haim Saban (born March 26, 1944, Alexandria, Egypt) is a television producer who is perhaps best known for bringing the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to the United States of America. He was exiled from his homeland of Egypt because he is Jewish, but later found refuge in Israel. He is also a strong supporter of the United States Democratic Party, and, during the era of soft money, was one of the largest donors to the party. Most other soft-money donors have dropped off the list following the ban on soft money (see campaign finance reform), but Saban adapted to the new fundraising rules and is one of the top bundlers of legal campaign checks as well.

Saban was at one point the CEO of Fox Family Worldwide and remains an influential individual in the Fox organization, although Fox Family Worldwide was eventually sold to Disney.

Saban also worked on music for cartoons like Inspector Gadget, The Get Along Gang, Rainbow Brite, and The Real Ghostbusters

As of August 2003 his Saban Capital Group (which is purely
an investment company: it holds stakes in media owners but doesn't publish or broadcast anything itself) - through its subsidiary - acquired 36 percent of the share capital of ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG. Since then, Saban is the chairman of the corporation. ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG is Germany's largest television corporation comprising four free TV stations and many smaller media sales, production, merchandising etc. companies.

Since May 2005 he has been a contributing blogger at The Huffington Post.

Saban is a member of the Board of Trustees at the Brookings Institution. In a NYT interview (Andrew Ross Sorkin, "Schlepping to Moguldom", September 5, 2004) he stated: "In 2002, he pledged $13 million to start a research organization at the Brookings Institution called the Saban Center for Middle East Policy."

The same interview lists this quote: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel".

During the Bill Clinton administration, the entertainment executive served on the President's Export Council, advising the White House on trade issues. He also took an unusual pride in being a top contributor. When Saban learned that another donor had topped his contributions to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee by a quarter-million dollars, he immediately sent the DCCC a check for $250,000, with a $1 bill attached to it. 'I hope this guy doesn't find out,' Saban told The Washington Post. 'He may send another two dollars.'

******

07:29 03/10/2005
Clinton to attend Saban dinner, not Rabin commemorative rally
By Yossi Verter, Haaretz Correspondent

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has been involved - presumably unwittingly - in an ugly power struggle between the heads of the Yitzhak Rabin Center for Israel Studies and representatives of The Saban Center for Middle East Policy, at the Brookings Institution, Washington. The bone of contention was: Where will Clinton spend the night of November 12? Would he attend the mass rally in Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to mark the 10th anniversary of the late prime minister's assassination, or at a fancy dinner with all the country's leaders that is to be held by billionaire Haim Saban in Jerusalem at the same time?

The quarrel between the two organizations ended in a victory for the man with the money: Saban. As a result, the mass rally in Tel Aviv has been rescheduled for November 5, without Clinton as the guest of honor.

The two organizations actually kicked off their contacts in a spirit of cooperation and unity. Saban, a close associate of the Clintons, decided to finance, to the tune of some $600,000, the former president's trip to Israel so that he could participate in the event being organized by The Saban Center. In light of the fact that the Rabin Center is slated to open on November 14, and at the request of Dalia Rabin, the president of the center, Saban arranged for Clinton to arrive in Israel a few days earlier, on November 11, to allow the former president to participate in the official commemoration events - on Mount Herzl, in the Knesset, at the the Rabin Center - all of which are scheduled for November 14.

The date of the mass rally in Rabin Square, as is the case every year, was set for the Saturday night closest to November 4, the date of Rabin's assassination, which this year would be Saturday, November 5. At the same time, the heads of the Saban Center scheduled the dinner in Jerusalem for exactly a week later, on November 12.

All appeared well and good; that is, until a number of the people responsible for organizing the Rabin Square event came up with a brilliant idea, to move the rally to November 12, "steal" Clinton away from the dinner, and thus upgrade the event. The rally organizers thought - and probably correctly so - that Clinton would rather be at the Rabin Square event to fire up the crowd than attend the formal dinner.

Dalia Rabin, however, opposed the idea, as she had already arranged with Saban that the rally would take place on November 5. But Rabin found herself in the minority, and the organizing committee informed Saban of the change in arrangements.

Saban responded harshly, said sources at The Rabin Center, and the two organizations began exchanging harsh words and mutual accusations. According to a source affiliated with The Saban Center, "They [the organizing committee members] wanted to defeat us, but we defeated them."

In the end, The Rabin Center people capitulated, and the rally was moved back to its original date of November 5.

"From the outset, the memorial rally was supposed to take place on November 5," said Moshe Debi, media consultant for The Rabin Center. "Nevertheless, the option of moving the rally to November 12 was indeed examined so as to facilitate the participation of president Clinton. After it emerged that such a move was impossible, it was decided to hold the rally on the original date. The Rabin Center thanks Haim Saban for his assistance in bringing Mr. Clinton to Israel."

Clinton Agency Took on Debts For His Library

By JOSH GERSTEIN
September 26, 2005

President Clinton's charitable foundation went nearly $38.5 million into debt last year to cover the costs of building and endowing the former president's new library in Arkansas, according to a recent financial report.

The borrowing took place despite $57.7 million in donations Mr. Clinton secured in 2004, an increase of 30% from the prior year, the new figures show.

The foundation's president, James L. Rutherford III, said in an interview yesterday that he had always anticipated that opening the $165 million Clinton Presidential Center would push the foundation into the red.

"The borrowing, it was planned because we knew that with a capital campaign that our building expenses and construction expenses would come in before some of the pledges," Mr. Rutherford said. "We still have many pledges that will be coming in and will help provide a financial base for years to come ... and we will certainly continue fund raising."

Mr. Rutherford said he was pleased with last year's tally, which brought the total raised by Mr. Clinton's foundation since 1997 to more than $151 million. "It was a very strong year," said the foundation's president, who is a Little Rock public relations executive and longtime friend of the former president.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center, a sleek glass and steel structure jutting toward the Arkansas River in downtown Little Rock, opened on November 18 with a rain-soaked dedication ceremony that drew Mr. Clinton and scores of other dignitaries including President Bush and his father, President George H.W. Bush.

The new details of the foundation's finances were contained in an annual report sent on Friday to the Internal Revenue Service. Most of the filing is public under federal law. The foundation is not required to disclose the identities of its donors to the public.

When the library opened last year, a computer display in the exhibit halls included information on some, but not all, donors. The Saudi Royal Family and the governments of Dubai, Kuwait, and Qatar all gave $1 million or more. Other major donors included a film director, Steven Spielberg, and a New York labor group, Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union.

After The New York Sun published a report on the donor list, the computer display was shut off. It has not been restored.

According to the new IRS filing, in February 2004, the foundation took out its largest loan for about $26.5 million from Bank of America. The report describes the collateral for the loan as "pledges receivable."

Within weeks of the library's opening, the foundation also borrowed $10 million from Titanium Acquisition Corporation. The obscure Santa Monica, Calif., firm is connected to an entertainment industry executive who is a close friend of Mr. Clinton, Haim Saban, corporate filings show. Efforts to reach Mr. Saban for comment yesterday were not successful.

The unsecured, low-interest loan was repaid earlier this year, Mr. Rutherford said.

At the ceremony in November, Mr. Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, handed the keys to the new presidential center to over the National Archives. However, the relationship between the federal government and the Clinton Foundation remains complicated, Mr. Rutherford said. The portion of the building complex housing official records from Mr. Clinton's presidency will be run by the government, but the main visitor areas remain under the joint control of the foundation and the government.

Another part of the facility is being run by the University of Arkansas.

The tax filing shows a transfer of $43.2 million to the federal government in connection with the opening of the library. Mr. Rutherford said that figure includes a partial interest in the building, as well as an endowment of about $7 million that the foundation was required to provide for future upkeep of the facility.

snip

The foundation, which maintains offices in Little Rock and on 125th Street in Manhattan, had 28 employees last year, according to the new report. The organization's highest-paid employee in 2004 was Mr. Clinton's chief of staff, Margaret Williams, who made $118, 648 before leaving late in the year.

The foundation's new CEO is Bruce Lindsey, an attorney and former White House aide who is a lifelong confidant of Mr. Clinton. A former White House scheduler for Mr. Clinton, Laura Graham, is now the foundation's executive director.

The foundation's new public accounting of its finances was first reported on Saturday by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

http://www.nysun.com/article/20544

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's household income for 2002 included $750,000 in payments from three Arab nations with ties to the 9/11 hijackers, including a $267,000 speaking fee from a group funded by the family of Osama bin Laden, NewsMax.com has learned.

In late January 2002, ex-president Bill Clinton traveled to bin Laden's hometown of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to address a group of Saudi businessmen. He was paid $267,000 for a 40-minute speech, according to a Jan. 25, 2002, report in The Middle East Newsfile, a British-based news service specializing in coverage of the region's business developments.

Contemporaneous reports in London's Financial Times revealed that the audience included representatives of the BinLadin Group, which helped fund the Jeddah forum. The BinLadin Group is a leading Saudi construction company run by relatives of the 9/11 terrorist mastermind. Osama bin Laden grew up in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.

"The conference was dominated by the Saudis' desire to overcome the pressures of September 11 and strengthen U.S.-Saudi ties," the Times said. "The BinLadin Group, one of the forum's backers, has been battered by its association with Osama."

The Times also noted that the forum's "pro-western businessmen are also some of the kingdom's biggest donors and they give generously to Muslim charities out of religious duty. The U.S. believes some of the contributions were siphoned off by some charities to finance terrorism and it wants better control over donations."

During his January 2002 visit to the region, Clinton also collected nearly a half-million dollars for speeches in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, the Middle East Newsfile said. Investigators probing the backgrounds of several of the 9/11 plotters have uncovered links to both countries.

Some members of the Jeddah forum were mystified over the payments to Mr. Clinton. "How could we invite him to get $750,000 from us and for what? This is a strange situation," Prince Talal ibn Abdul Aziz said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television station. "What use does Clinton have now?" he added.

But it's not clear whether the Saudi royal realized that Mrs. Clinton, who had just been elected to the Senate, was planning her own run for president of the United States before the decade is out.

Clinton's former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, *Wyche Fowler, whose present job is chairman of The Middle East Institute. This institute is heavily supported by the Saudis, who have secretly donated over $1 million to the Clinton Library.

Ambassador *Wyche Fowler, Jr.,
Chairman, Middle East Institute

Ambassador Fowler, a former U.S. Senator (D-Ga.), was ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1996 to 2001. He previously served in the U.S. Senate, 1986-1993, as a member of the Senate Appropriations, Budget, Energy and Agriculture Committees. Fowler was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1977; member of the Ways and Means and Foreign Affairs Committees, the Committee of Intelligence, and the Congressional Arts Caucus. He practiced law in Atlanta for eight years prior to election. Fowler is an expert on Saudi Arabia and Middle East affairs.

Early in spring Fowler interrupted his campaign planning and took his ailing friend Weltner on a trip to Turkey and Iraq, where they explored religious and archaeological sites.

Ambassador Fowler became a forceful proponent of close U.S.-Saudi ties.

Following his stint as ambassador, Fowler joined a number of corporate and academic boards, including those of the Carter Center at Emory University and the Morehouse School of Medicine. He is board chair of the Middle East Institute, a nonprofit research foundation in Washington, D.C., devoted to the mission of increasing knowledge in the United States about the Middle East. He practices law in the nation's capital for the firm of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer, and Murphy and lectures widely around the nation and overseas.

Fowler, who was the kind of appointee the Saudis love, wasted little time after his retirement setting up "consulting contracts with several multinational firms to advise them on business in the Middle East," pulling down fat lecture fees on topics like "Saudi Arabia: America's Strategic Trade Partner in the Middle East," and raising funds for The Middle East Institute, of which he is chairman.

Fowler has been generating headlines such as: "Former Ambassador: Saudis Aren't to Blame" (Charlotte Observer, Nov. 27).

******

Jeff Greenfield, CNN

GREENFIELD: Now Mr. Wyche Fowler, you were there for three or four years. Is Mr. Woolsey [former CIA director James, who had just ripped apart the House of Saud] describing the Saudi Arabia that you knew and lived in?

WYCHE FOWLER, JR., FMR. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO SAUDI ARABIA: Well, in all respect to my friend, the former director of the CIA, I think that one of the problems of these discussions is that he painted them with a pretty broad brush. And there were some exaggerations there that I do not think that the facts would substantiate.

GREENFIELD: Such as?

FOWLER: For one thing, well for one thing, the -- whether or not you agree or disagree with the most conservative form of religion, the Wahabism, it does teach tolerance for Jews and Christians. They are people of the book, known as people of the Koran. The Crown Prince Abdullah, who is the titular ruler of the country now, has spoken out against terrorism. He has preached himself tolerance for Christians and Jews, as he believes is the interpretation that he must adhere to.

And though certainly we see that there have been some very bad apples developed in and around Saudi Arabia, in that region, who claim Islam as the reason for their terrorist activities, I won't debate Mr. Woolsey's Nazi example, but I would certainly say that you could not use one or two or even 10 of those and condemn all of Islam or the actions of Saudi Arabia even -- any more than you could condemn all of Christianity for the actions of Timothy McVeigh and some of his fundamentalist characters.

GREENFIELD: But truly, Mr. Ambassador, you saw in your time in Saudi Arabia, some pretty rough stuff on what is after all a state-controlled media. This is not a First Amendment country. I mean, they've done everything from report the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," that notorious czarist forgery about Jews, to some cases blaming the United States for committing some of these terrorist acts on itself. Did you ever raise this with the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, that this was really not helpful?

FOWLER: Well, we had been in discussions, but again, Jeff, and that goes back to your opening piece. There have been, in our urge for them to have a freedom of the press, such as in Qatar now and the famous al Jazeera. You are now having, for the first time, every kind of viewpoint. Well, not every kind in Saudi Arabia, but there is a loosening under what we would call far more freedom of speech.

And many things are said now on television in Arab stations from Egypt to Qatar to Saudi Arabia, that are not checked. And they speak in what we would consider some kind of wild and woolly and non-factual -- do not have the facts to back it up.

GREENFIELD: Ambassador Fowler, in terms of the clout, and I'll be very blunt about that, that the United States has, isn't the royal family situation that namely, that there's a fair amount of discontent among a lot of those folks in Saudi Arabia, doesn't that give the United States, with its military power, a lot more clout to press the Saudis for reform, that might otherwise have thought of, because of the issue of oil?

FOWLER: Well, I think again, Jeff, you're overlooking the fact that the Saudis themselves are seeking both economic reform. And the question whether is it will be coupled with what we in the West would identify as political reform.

On CNN, Dec. 10:

BLITZER: Well, Wyche Fowler, you served in Saudi Arabia. You were the U.S. ambassador most recently. How is it going to play in Saudi Arabia, this [Osama bin Laden confession] videotape, if it's as compelling as the administration says it is?

WYCHE FOWLER, CHAIRMAN, MIDDLE EAST INSTITUTE: Well, I think it would be helpful. I think it would be helpful to the case that ... we are making and that we believe. ... There hadn't been any hatred being spewed out of Saudi Arabia or Egypt for that matter against us. All the hatred has been against bin Laden because he called for the overthrow of the Saudi government.

Dateline MSNBC, Dec. 7:

DATELINE repeatedly asked the Saudi kingdom to discuss its relations with the US, but we received no response. Wyche Fowler, Jr., a former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, says America should be cautious about pushing too hard for democratic reforms.

Mr. WYCHE FOWLER, JR.: I don't think we can dictate to any country who have different cultures and have thousand-year histories of their structure, be it tribal, be it based on the Quran. We can't tell them that American democracy is the only way to govern their land.

Oct. 1, 2003

Joel Mowbray

State employees find second career flacking for House of Saud

The Middle East Institute, officially on the Saudi payroll, receives $200,000 of its annual $1.5 million budget from the Saudi government, and an unknown amount from Saudi individuals - often a meaningless distinction since most of the "individuals" with money to donate are members of the royal family, which constitutes the government.

MEI's chairman is Wyche Fowler, who was ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1996 to 2001, and its president is Ned Walker, who has served as both deputy chief of mission in Riyadh and ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Also at MEI: David Mack, former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and deputy assistant secretary for NEA; Richard Parker, former ambassador to Algeria, Lebanon, and Morocco; William Eagleton, former ambassador to Syria; Joseph C. Wilson, career FSO and former deputy chief of mission in Baghdad; David Ransom, former ambassador to Bahrain and former deputy chief of mission in Yemen, UAE and Syria; and Michael Sterner, former ambassador to UAE and deputy assistant secretary of NEA.

The money, the favors, and State's affinity for Saudi elites over the decades have all helped contribute to the "special relationship" between State and the House of Saud. Notes Hudson Institute senior fellow Laurent Murawiec, "This is a relationship that has been cemented by 40 years of money, power and political favors that goes much deeper than most people realize."

snip

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.

http://tinyurl.com/7p2sx

Their Men in Riyadh: Ex-U.S. ambassadors who stick with the Saudis

National Review, June 17, 2002 by Rod Dreher

It's good to be the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia -- or, more precisely, it's good to have been Washington's man in Riyadh. No other posting pays such rich dividends once one has left it, provided one is willing to become a public and private advocate of Saudi interests.

The number of ex-U.S. ambassadors to Riyadh who now push a pro-Saudi line is startling. Walter L. Cutler runs the Meridian International Center, which has been heavily supported by the Saudis. Richard Murphy wields influence as a pro-Saudi voice at the Council on Foreign Relations. Chas W. Freeman Jr. now runs the robustly pro-Arab Middle East Policy Council, and heads a firm that sets up joint international business ventures. And lower-level diplomats with Riyadh experience on their resumes can be found throughout U.S. foreign-policy circles.

Prince Bandar, the colorful Saudi ambassador to the United States, makes no bones about how it works. The Washington Post has quoted Bandar as observing, "If the reputation 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."

Not everyone feels all warm and fuzzy about this. "I think it's a disgrace," says Richard Perle, the former Reagan administration official. "They're the people who appear on television, they write op-ed pieces. The Saudis are a major source of the problem we face with terrorism. That would be far more obvious to people if it weren't for this community of former diplomats effectively working for this foreign government."

snip

An academic passion for sunny Araby hardly accounts for someone like Wyche Fowler, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Georgia who was dispatched as ambassador to Riyadh in President Clinton's second term. Fowler, a wily country boy who used to campaign on his rural background, seems to have had a good ol' time in King Fahd's court. "[The Saudis] are intelligent and quick," Fowler said in a recent interview, "and I enjoyed spending many hours drinking tea in the desert with them late into the night. They want to tell you about their family, and want to hear about yours. They would tell me a story about their father raising camels, and I would tell them one about my father raising cows."

When Fowler returned from Saudi Arabia, he landed several consulting contracts with international firms doing business in the region, and accepted the chairmanship of the Middle East Institute. This is a think- tank funded chiefly by Arab corporations and American corporations with significant business dealings in Arab countries. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah is listed among a handful of "benefactors" on the institute's most recent donor list. And lately, Fowler has emerged as one of the most visible pro-Saudi spokesmen in the media. He has let fly with observations of the sort guaranteed to make Prince Bandar smile.

In an October 3 NewsHour appearance, Fowler was questioned about the Saudis' reluctance to let the U.S. military use its own bases in the kingdom for an attack on al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "Well, I think I can endorse that the cooperation by the Saudis with the United States could not be any closer," responded the ex-ambassador. Yet Fowler arrived in Riyadh immediately after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and he should know as well as anybody how the Saudis stonewalled U.S. investigators trying to figure out who killed all those American servicemen.

snip

The Middle East expert Daniel Pipes confirms that old Riyadh hands can exploit their contacts to make a small fortune as business consultants. "I don't know of any other posting that works so consistently for turning diplomats into middlemen," Pipes says. "It's very corrupting on ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, because they know what they're headed for, and they don't want to spoil it. It's hard to be confident that our diplomats are representing us."

snip

Especially when the ambassador spends his time not keeping an eye on terror links, or trying to help fellow Americans abused by the Saudi system, but luxuriating in the desert drinking tea and talking about kinfolk with fellow livestock-lovin' rustics who happen to be -- gol-lee! -- royalty. "I made friends for life there," Fowler has said of Saudi Arabia. Exactly: That's the problem.

http://tinyurl.com/bmzkn

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