Pentagon Unaware of Saudi Rebuff on Security

WASHINGTON —  The decision not to allow American commanders to widen the security perimeter around a Dhahran military compound before last week’s truck-bomb explosion was made by a low-level Saudi Arabian official and was not passed on to Pentagon higher-ups, U.S. officials said Monday.

The comments came a day after Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that he will push for Defense Secretary William J. Perry’s resignation if an upcoming hearing by the panel shows that the defense chief deferred to the Saudis unnecessarily.

Specter’s remarks sent top Clinton administration officials scrambling for more details about the Dhahran security negotiations to head off the prospect that Republicans may try to blame President Clinton for the tragedy at the housing complex that left 19 U.S. airmen dead.

On Monday, the officials said preliminary indications were that Air Force Brig. Gen. Terry Schwalier, the U.S. commander at the Dhahran facility, had considered the initial Saudi rebuff to be a routine opening move in continuing negotiations and did not inform his seniors of the rejection.

They said that neither Perry nor Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knew about the Saudi refusal until Saturday--four days after the attack.

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Perry, in Rome on Monday for meetings with Italian defense officials, said that details of the U.S. campaign to tighten security at the base--partly by widening the security perimeter around the compound to 400 feet from 80 feet--would be made public “as soon as the facts become available.”

The revelation that the Saudis rejected a U.S. request for a wider perimeter around the Dhahran barracks has triggered a heated debate in Washington over whether the administration put U.S. troops at risk rather than infringe on the Saudi government’s sovereignty.

A dispute involving the Pentagon’s refusal to send armored vehicles to Somalia in 1993 when U.S. forces were fighting militia groups there contributed to the downfall of then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin, who took the blame for the decision and later resigned.

Congressional Republicans moved to seize on the Saudi controversy. Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced Monday that his panel also plans hearings on the issue.

“News reports indicate that it is possible that this incident could have been prevented, and I believe the Clinton administration owes us a full accounting of the security measures that were in place at the time of the blast,” Thurmond said in a statement.

Schwalier disclosed the Saudis’ rebuff to reporters Saturday after a meeting with Perry, but he did not provide details about the U.S.-Saudi talks, which he said he understood to be in progress when the bomb went off.

Administration officials asserted Monday that the Saudi denial was not unusual because, in line with cultural traditions in the Middle East, the kingdom’s government frequently requires U.S. envoys to broach a proposal several times before considering it seriously.

At the same time, diplomats said that the Saudis occasionally have refused to grant a U.S. request because the royal family has feared it would fuel violence by Islamic dissidents who believe the regime is corrupt and too closely allied with the West.

As a result, for example, it took a major effort by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney to persuade the Saudis to allow the United States to use their country as a staging area during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

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U.S. policymakers in Republican and Democratic administrations alike have pointed out that Washington must pay attention to the domestic problems of the royal family because Saudi Arabia is a major oil supplier to the West.

The United States imports 16% of its foreign-produced crude oil from the Saudi government, and Washington’s European allies rely on Riyadh for 11.5% of their crude oil imports.

Philip K. Verleger, an oil industry analyst for the Charles River Corp., said Monday that while those levels are not massive, cutting off the Saudi supply could send world oil prices soaring and plunge the global economy into a major slump.

Richard Haass, a Middle East policymaker in the Bush administration, said that in this case the Saudis “were clearly reluctant” to widen the perimeter at Dhahran because “they do not like to admit there is a threat . . . and it would highlight the American presence.”

He cautioned, however, that “there is a balance here.” On one hand, he said, “you don’t want to do things . . . that would make them [the Saudis] more vulnerable to internal threats.” Yet U.S. diplomats must “avoid clientitis”--getting too close to the country in which they serve.

Edward P. Djerejian, another former top Bush administration official, said that despite the sluggish pace of talks with the Saudis, officials of that government traditionally have been frank and direct and willing to cooperate.

“We put up with the local customs of countries globally,” Djerejian said.