The Free Agent : Businessman Defies the State Department, Books Relatives of Hostages on Trip to Iraq

When Mike Saba found himself stranded in Baghdad in early August, he characteristically took things into his own hands.

Saba carefully chose a cabdriver who could speak both Arabic and Turkish--so they could make a run for either Jordan or Turkey, in case one route was blocked. The precaution proved unnecessary; the taxi reached Jordan in eight hours, stopped just once by Iraqi troops.

Cloak-and-dagger missions seem a way of life for Saba, who owns GulfAmerica, a consulting firm in Champaign that provides services to small- and medium-sized companies doing business in the Persian Gulf.

Twelve years ago, similarly quick action by Saba triggered a major U.S. government espionage investigation after he overheard a conversation in a swanky Washington hotel coffee shop and turned in a congressional staffer for allegedly leaking classified data to the Israelis.

Today, Saba has thrust himself into another hot spot.

Assisted by a small group of friends, volunteers, two employees and his wife, Saba has become the nexus in a growing network of families of American hostages held in Iraq and Kuwait since Saddam Hussein’s Aug. 2 invasion of the emirate.

In a four-room office suite behind a Wendy’s hamburger outlet, Saba has all but converted his business into Coming Home, a newly formed nonprofit organization that is rapidly winning the devotion of many hostage families.

At the same time, Saba’s aggressive advocacy is generating increasing enmity within the Bush Administration, which has sought to downplay the plight of the hostages in recent weeks and has discouraged private efforts on their behalf.

The White House fears that uncontrolled contacts between family members and Iraqi officials could play into the hands of Hussein, who is using the hostages as part of an international public relations effort designed to keep the United States and its allies at bay.

Almost immediately upon returning home from Iraq on Aug. 10, Saba incurred the Administration’s wrath by criticizing the State Department for what he called insufficient assistance to Americans stranded in Iraq and Kuwait.

More recently, he has further aggravated Administration officials by working furiously to help arrange a trip to Baghdad scheduled for next week by a dozen hostage relatives--a visit that defies President Bush’s wishes.

Saba’s efforts have so alienated State Department officials that their anger, one source said, “is spilling over toward the families who are going over” on the trip.

But Saba remains undaunted. “Ours is a strictly humanitarian effort,” he said.

Many of the hostage relatives agreed. “It’s really helping me emotionally,” said Kim Edwards, 34, a Carson City, Nev., woman whose husband is still in Baghdad. She is among about a dozen women who plans to leave for Baghdad on Monday to visit their loved ones.

To help the relatives, Saba had been calling airlines in search of inexpensive group rates and a flexible return schedule, gathering relatives’ visa applications, consulting with Iraqi Ambassador Mohammed Mashat in Washington and, above all, talking daily to the hostage relatives in a mass conference call.

“We’re not sponsoring the trip,” Saba explained. “We’re just facilitating it.”

Born in Bismarck, N.D., Saba, 49, is the only son of a Lebanese man and a Swiss woman who owned a corner grocery store in Bismarck.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in education, biology and social studies at Minot State University, Saba joined the Peace Corps, serving in Malaysia and Thailand. Later, he crossed the United States as its training coordinator for programs in Africa.

He earned a master’s degree in cross-cultural and comparative education and a doctorate in education and international relations, both at the University of Illinois. Saba also has worked in educational programs for American Indians in Arizona and North Dakota.

In the mid-1970s, he moved to Washington, serving as executive director of the National Assn. of Arab Americans, a cultural, educational and lobbying organization.

It was in Washington, during breakfast at the Madison Hotel on March 9, 1978, that Saba overheard an intriguing conversation between Stephen Bryen, then a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Israeli military officers.

They were at a table no more than 10 feet away and, Saba said, Bryen was allegedly sharing with the Israelis classified Pentagon information regarding Saudi Arabia.

Alarmed, Saba began intently eavesdropping and taking copious notes. Afterward, he reported the incident to Assistant Atty. Gen. Benjamin Civiletti, touching off a major investigation.

But Bryen denied any wrongdoing, and the probe ended with no official action. Although some Justice Department officials had recommended a grand jury investigation, they were overruled by superiors.

Unsatisfied, Saba pressed his own inquiry, ultimately publishing at his own expense a book on the incident that he described as “a case study of the problems inherent in the current U.S. policy of unquestioning support of Israel,” which he said could threaten world peace. The book’s name: “The Armageddon Network.”

“Saba has a political interest of his own,” said William Quandt, a former National Security Council specialist on the Middle East, who met with Saba at the time.

Saba said he strongly disapproves of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, adding: “Saddam Hussein has to back off and be dealt with--as he is.”

In 1980, Saba returned to North Dakota and campaigned unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, garnering about 35% of the votes in the primary.

He and his wife, Irene, returned to Champaign four years ago and began raising a family. He also has two grown children from a previous marriage.

Their business, GulfAmerica, arranges for delivery in the Persian Gulf of U.S. goods ranging from air-conditioning equipment to soap, pencils, key chains and sporting goods.

The bulk of its income is generated by a large international trade conference that Saba sponsors every other year. The keynote speaker at the most recent conference in 1988 was former President Gerald R. Ford.

It was the final preparations for the 1990 conference that took Saba to the gulf region in mid-July.

Even before he left the United States, the Iraqis were building up troops near the Kuwaiti border. Once in neighboring Bahrain, Saba sought assurances from the U.S. embassies there and in Baghdad that it was still prudent to visit Iraq.

U.S. officials told him there was “absolutely no reason” not to go to Baghdad, Saba said.

But when he ran into Bob Vinton, a business acquaintance, at the Baghdad Sheraton Hotel, Vinton’s greeting was less than reassuring: “Mike, you’ve just arrived in Indiana Jones country.”

Still, Saba had a productive two days in Baghdad. More than 50 American and Iraqi businessmen signed up for the 1990 conference, which was scheduled for October in Bahrain.

Saba was to have left Baghdad around midday on Aug. 2, but early that morning Iraq launched its massive invasion. The airport was closed.

Saba, like hundreds of other Americans in Iraq, was stuck. Many began meeting daily at the U.S. Embassy for evening briefings. At the first session Aug. 2, those who had not already done so were asked to fill out registration cards. The next day, they had to do it all over again; embassy personnel had lost the initial batch.

“Most of the American community became very dissatisfied with the lack of information being provided by the embassy,” Saba recalled. “The embassy personnel, as individuals, were working very hard. But they seemed to have no procedures for dealing with such a crisis situation.”

Five days after the invasion, as the safety of Americans in Baghdad seemed increasingly precarious, Saba and a friend decided to make a break for it. There were reports circulating in Baghdad of Westerners escaping by land to Jordan and Turkey. But when Saba asked embassy personnel to verify the reports by traveling to the borders, they refused.

In Champaign, meanwhile, Irene Saba was worried about her husband, who “kept getting lost in the State Department’s computer.”

“The most telling example of frustration with (U.S. officials) was the fact that on Aug. 8, after I called my wife from Amman to tell her that I was out of Iraq, she received a call to update her on my status--that I was fine and at the Sheraton Hotel in Baghdad,” Saba said. This occurred after Irene had called the State Department’s Persian Gulf task force to inform it of her husband’s escape.

Saba returned home on a Friday and spent virtually the entire weekend telephoning the relatives of Americans he had met in Baghdad. “I realized right away the necessity to do more than make a few calls and say my responsibility was over,” he said.

Thus, he formed Coming Home. His goal was to create a network among hostage families to share information and to advocate that all nations adhere to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The accord provides for certain rights regarding the status and treatment of detained nationals, such as visits by the International Red Cross.

Saba also helped promote passage of a bill by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) making American hostages and their families eligible for federal pay of up to $24,000 and for health benefits if they have lost their source of income.

Since then, he has appeared on any number of television talk shows, and Coming Home has received thousands of letters and countless telephone calls. But except for some local corporate donations--communications equipment, extra office space and some furniture--financial support has been meager.

One major exception is U.S. Sprint, which has provided free conference calls to the hostage families. At any time, a relative from anywhere in the United States can call the toll-free number and talk to whoever else is on the line.

It is during daily, prearranged conference calls that the details of the impending visit to Baghdad are being worked out.

Saba said his efforts on behalf of the hostage families have cost $10,000 to $15,000, largely in mass mailings of newsletters and other materials, telephone expenses before Sprint came along, and staff time. At the same time, Coming Home has received financial donations of about $4,000.

Saba has scheduled a Dec. 7 fund-raiser in Champaign in hopes of raising $5,000 to $10,000. “Otherwise, we may not be able to go on much longer,” he said.

Local businesses, including a billboard company and radio stations, are donating their services to publicize the event.

“My business has been tremendously affected by this,” said Saba, whose GulfAmerica conferences have generated up to $200 million in business. He is trying to reschedule the canceled October meeting, perhaps in Los Angeles in February.

As a businessman, he conceded, he has a vested interest in seeing stability return to the Persian Gulf--”no question.”

In the meantime, he said, he is committed to assisting the hostage families.

On Friday, Saba has arranged for a Washington conference called “Responding to the Invasion of Kuwait,” in hopes of better coordinating the efforts of the private organizations seeking to help, such as the American Red Cross and the National Organization for Victims Assistance. Most of the hostage relatives who plan to go to Iraq will attend the meeting.

“We’ve been very careful from the outset that Coming Home is a purely humanitarian effort, with no political agenda,” said Francis A. Boyle, a University of Illinois international law professor and a Coming Home board member. “The State Department, on the other hand, has another agenda: It supports the Bush Administration’s policies.”

State Department officials declined to be drawn into a public debate with Saba. “We don’t want to come across as being adversarial against any U.S. citizen,” said one official, asking for anonymity.

He and others, however, noted that the task force has assigned a caseworker to each hostage family, with whom the worker stays in regular contact, and that the task force has made thousands of calls to hostage families.

But while many hostage families praise the workers for their diligence, they complain that the State Department rarely has any useful information to pass on. “They mean well,” said one hostage relative. “But they’re just not as helpful as Coming Home has been.”

A congressional staffer, who has worked closely with both Saba and senior State Department officials, added: “They have slightly different agendas. But it doesn’t mean either one’s not doing good work.”