Who's Hiding What? Saudi Arabia and the Missing 28 Pages

By Peter C. Valenti

The debate over Saudi Arabian involvement in the al-Qaeda plot leading to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks resurfaced after the July 24 release of a joint House-Senate committee report. While most of the focus of the 900-page report is on the failures of the U.S. intelligence community, of equal interest to politicians and media commentators is material that alludes to the role of foreign governments. In the Arab world, writers have been studying and responding to the American reaction, as well as pondering the impact this report makes on U.S. foreign policy intentions in the region.

The greatest controversy generated by the report is actually over what is not included: 28 pages of deleted material deemed too sensitive for declassification. A variety of congressional leaders, emboldened by the presidential campaign cycle, have criticized this White House secrecy, suggesting that it is shielding Saudi Arabia. The American media followed suit, with prominent newspapers dedicating editorials and front-page coverage to the report.

In response to the media frenzy, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal hastened to the White House on July 29 to meet with President George W. Bush and request that the 28 pages be released. Bush refused to comply, citing the risk to ongoing investigations if the 28 pages were released to the public. Frustration was obviously mounting among Saudi officials: lamented Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Bandar ibn Sultan, "Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide. We can deal with the questions in public, but we cannot respond to blank pages."

Arab journalists and commentators across the spectrum have weighed in on the significance of the congressional report and what it means to U.S.-Saudi relations. Many Saudi writers take a defensive stance, a position they have grown accustomed to since the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet the main thrust of Saudi op-eds and editorials has been an echo of Ambassador Bandar's sentiments. The July 30 editorial in Saudi Arabia's al-Watan reflected a typical sentiment in the greater Arab world: "We say release the pages to the public."

The calls for releasing the full 28 pages are premised on the argument that the Saudi government did not cooperate with al-Qaeda—which, after all, also seeks to topple Saudi Arabia's current rulers.

Furthermore, many Arab writers note that information in the parts of the report that have been publicized is often qualified and based on circumstantial evidence. The assumption is that these qualities extend as well to the unreleased 28 pages. In his Aug. 1 op-ed in al-Watan, Ali Sa'd al-Musa suggested that the U.S. government has no hard evidence of any complicity of Saudi officials with terrorists, and therefore orchestrated a fake "cover-up" of the 28 pages in order to leave the impression that it actually does have evidence. Uthman Mir Ghani cast doubts on the congressional report in his July 30 op-ed in the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat by reminding readers that Washington has made previous intelligence mistakes, in its assessment of Iraq and of Baghdad's links to Sept. 11. Therefore, he argued, no report should be seen as infallible.

Quite a few Arab writers see a hidden hand directing critics of the Kingdom.

The strongest opinion about the 28 pages is found in Talal Salih Banan's July 31 op-ed in the Saudi paper Okaz. He asked, "Is there something pertaining to the American administration that it wants to hide and is embarrassed to make public?"

Despite their belief that much of the material in the 28 pages probably is questionable, however, many writers bemoan the irony that if the pages remain classified it will lend credence to claims by Saudi Arabia's detractors that the Saudi government does have something to hide.

In this regard, quite a few Arab writers see a hidden hand directing these critics of the Kingdom. While neoconservatives often are included, commentators inevitably connect the report to a regional rival vying for Bush's exclusive attention. As Mutasher al-Murshid plainly stated in his Aug. 3 op-ed in al-Riyadh: "I won't hide my suspicions that the contents of the report…are based on obscure information derived from some Zionist writings and sources."

An angry July 31 editorial in al-Watan exclaimed that at the same time two Saudi police officers were killed while capturing terrorists, pro-Israel American congressmen are "reaping the benefits" of the deleted 28 pages by using the opportunity to continue denigrating Saudi Arabia. Both al-Murshid and the al-Watan editorial argued that the hostility of U.S. supporters of Israel is due to Saudi Arabia's strong advocacy of Palestinian rights with the U.S. administration.

A Political Red Herring

Arab writers underscore the political nature of the congressional criticism. The fact that the outspoken senators who are spearheading the criticism of Saudi Arabia—among them New York's Charles E. Schumer (D), Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter (R) and Florida's Bob Graham (D)—have a strong record of advocacy of Israel or are courting Jewish votes in upcoming elections, lends credence to the view that the classified 28 pages are being used as a red herring to malign the long-standing U.S.-Saudi relationship. Writing in the July 30 edition of the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat, Jihad al-Khazin decried this congressional bias with his blatant accusation that "the American Congress is the [Israeli] Knesset by another name…and whereas there are moderates in the Knesset, meaning those members whom we can deal with such as from the Labor Party, Meretz and Shinui, you will not find a comparable percentage in the U.S. Congress, as most members rush to implement the wishes of Jewish lobbyists [even] against the interests of the U.S."

A variety of writers also addressed the issue of Omar al-Bayoumi, the supposed "pivotal link" between the Saudi government and two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The congressional report named Al-Bayoumi as a potential source for intelligence; numerous members of Congress and even a July 29 New York Times editorial jumped to call for Saudi Arabia's compliance in handing over Al-Bayoumi. Writing in al-Watan Aug. 6, Adel Zayd al-Tarifi pointed to Al-Bayoumi as another example of political spin, in part because he already had been interviewed before his return to Saudi Arabia from the U.S. In his al-Watan op-ed, al-Musa argued that it seemed suspicious that U.S. intelligence agencies trumped up Al-Bayoumi, when these very same agencies had released him and sent him back to Saudi Arabia with a plane ticket they had provided.

Despite all the questions swirling around renewed U.S. attention on Al-Bayoumi, however, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal immediately complied with the White House request to interview Al-Bayoumi in Saudi Arabia. Current speculation is that Al-Bayoumi was an informant for Saudi counter-intelligence.

As Banan further suggested in both his July 30 and 31 op-eds in Okaz, the continued refusal by the White House to declassify the 28 pages is a means to place pressure on Saudi Arabia for internal reform and to win concessions on its foreign policy initiatives, probably to the benefit of Israel. An editorial in the Palestinian al-Quds al-Arabi of Aug. 4 argued that related internal rifts in Saudi society are both causing pressures on the government and being exploited by the U.S. According to the editorial, corruption, poverty and selective development of certain regions of the country have led to greater dissatisfaction with the Saudi royal family, fueling radicalism as well as making the Kingdom continually beholden to the U.S. to help maintain stability.

Additionally, in order to change the image of Saudi Arabia fostered by controversies such as the congressional report, and to offset some dissent, the Saudi royal family is even more willing to comply with U.S. requests for intelligence cooperation, as well as making internal political concessions. A July 29 al-Quds al-Arabi editorial suggested that perhaps the pressure resulting from the report was intended to get Saudi Arabia more compliant with the U.S.-led effort in Iraq.

Some writers, however, also turn their gaze inward. In particular, the lack of government controls over monetary flows and charitable donations prior to Sept. 11 is seen as problematic. Ghani elucidated this position in his Asharq al-Awsat op-ed: "Without a doubt, mistakes have been made [in financial institutions]…and in the manner of allowing Saudi youth to head off to battlefields in foreign countries, and in the lack of preventing incendiary rhetoric…however, all of this does not in any way amount to organized [government] involvement or encouragement of acts of terrorism."

Ghani attacked the oft-used headline in American newspapers, "Saudi involvement," by arguing that even evidence of individuals knowingly contributing to terrorist organizations does not translate into Saudi governmental support of such groups. As the al-Watan editorial of July 31 averred, the very fact that al-Qaeda's primary target has been the Saudi royal family means that, for the majority of cases of donations to terrorist fronts in the guise of charities, the donor would never have intended or known that the money was being used for terrorist purposes.

Shamlan Yusuf al-Isa explained how some terrorists operated under the radar in his July 27 op-ed in the Kuwaiti political daily Alseyassah. "It is not possible to avoid the truth that the terrorists benefit from the misadministration and absence of real [financial] controls by government bureaus," he wrote. "Indeed we discovered in Kuwait that a lot of those who volunteered for jihad actions in Bosnia, Chechnya or Afghanistan were taking vacations from their office jobs [and] still drawing their salaries." Al-Isa concluded by calling for complete transparency in the accounts of government expenditures and the funds of charitable organizations.

Argued Al-Tarifi in his al-Watan op-ed, "the issue of [rectifying] the funding of terrorism is dependent on a number of necessary supervisory controls over finances; money transfers were happening prior to Sept. 11 even in the U.S. itself before such problems were detected in other countries such as Saudi Arabia. And terrorist organizations benefited from charity activities in Saudi Arabia…under a curtain of misrepresentation [of themselves]."

As al-Tarifi summarized, if a country with very efficient administrative and security institutions such as the U.S. couldn't detect terrorist activities before the events of Sept. 11, then Saudi Arabia had no hope of doing so.

Impressive Strides

To counter American charges of Saudi complacency or benign neglect of terrorists, numerous Saudi writers pointed to the impressive strides the Saudi government has made cracking down on terrorists. Even the London-based Palestinian paper al-Quds al-Arabi, which often includes articles critical of Saudi policies, published a long op-ed by Said Shihabi on Aug. 8 citing the impressive number of captured militants and changes made to institutions in such fields as banking and education. Indeed, during his White House meeting with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, President Bush acknowledged the numerous Saudi contributions to the war on terrorism. This was reaffirmed in subsequent statements by White House officials such as National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton in an interview with the Saudi newspaper Okaz.

Finally, as al-Tarifi pointed out, the importance of this latest crisis in U.S.-Saudi relations over the missing 28 pages is that it is a matter of "reputation." Even if Saudi officials continue to maintain close ties with the White House and those government officials not politically motivated, he argued, Saudi Arabians are losing in the realm of American public opinion, and they need to reach out more and "explain themselves" better. Ahmad Ayal Faqihi refers to this in his Aug. 5 op-ed in Okaz as a "condition of misunderstanding" which could be improved on the Saudi side if there were a greater number of Saudi scholars who better understand U.S. politics, society and the dynamics of its relationship with Saudi Arabia. Without a better mutual understanding, he predicted a continuation of a dizzying spiral of recriminations.

Finally, there is no doubt among Arab writers that, as further revelations about Sept. 11 intelligence failures come to light, Saudi Arabia will continue to be used as a convenient political scapegoat.

Peter C. Valenti teaches Near Eastern Civilization at New York University, and works as a translator and contributing editor for the World Press Review.