Saudi-Style Games

Saudi Arabian officials deny reports by exiled opposition figures that arrests have been made in the bombing last June 25 that killed 19 American servicemen near the Dhahran air base. The Saudis say only that dozens of people have been questioned. The contrary claim by the Saudi dissidents isn’t necessarily to be believed, since political opponents of authoritarian regimes are not always reliable sources. But neither should the official denials be taken at face value. The Saudis are known for their zeal in trying to manage the flow of information from their country. They will let the world know what they have found out only when they think it’s in their interests to do so.

U.S. officials seem to suggest that they’re not much better informed than anyone else about what the Saudi investigation has so far turned up, and if that’s true--and American officials, for their own reasons, are not above obfuscating in this case either--then it’s a cause for some anxiety. Last month FBI Director Louis Freeh made two trips to Saudi Arabia to plead for more cooperation in sharing information about the bombing. One motivating concern was the Saudi refusal after an earlier bombing that took American lives to let U.S. intelligence agencies question the men who were tried and promptly beheaded for that crime. A chance to question those suspects might have provided important pieces to fit into a larger intelligence puzzle, and perhaps even have helped to avert the June attack.

Defense Secretary William Perry said in a recent interview that there was evidence of an international dimension to the Dhahran attack, with responsibility possibly pointing to Iran. The Saudis, with a large Shiite minority living around their Persian Gulf oil fields, would probably just as soon not see their radical Shiite neighbor implicated in the anti-U.S. bombings. But in this matter Saudi sensitivities are less important than the need to uncover the facts behind the bombings so that an appropriate response can be made. President Clinton has said he expects full cooperation from the Saudis in revealing those facts. He should not only expect but insist on it.