FBI Director in Saudi Arabia, Hopes to Speed Bombing Inquiry

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh left Friday for Saudi Arabia in an effort to speed up an investigation into the June bombing of a U.S. military housing complex in which 19 Americans were killed.

Officials said the trip, Freeh’s third since the Dhahran terrorist attack, signaled continuing U.S. displeasure and impatience with the progress of the mainly Saudi-run investigation.

“We hope to get the answers we’ve long sought,” said a Pentagon source who declined to be identified. “We’re eager for information.”

The FBI said in a statement that Freeh’s visit “comes in the context of U.S. support for Saudi efforts to solve this heinous crime” and is being made “at the invitation of the Saudi government.” FBI agents have been in Saudi Arabia and will remain there to work with Saudi law enforcement authorities, officials said.

An FBI official added that the visit “is not a scolding--it’s an effort to get information.” In the June 25 attack, the second against U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia in less than a year, a 5,000-pound truck bomb exploded outside the Khobar Towers housing complex on a Saudi air base in Dhahran. All the casualties were Air Force members.

Saudi security forces have rounded up about 40 Saudi citizens in the case. Saudi government sources said that some of those arrested have confessed and that the evidence points to Iran and possibly Syria as sponsors of the crime.

Some U.S. officials, however, are skeptical about the quality of the Saudi evidence. Confessions may have been extracted by force from some suspects, officials said, and the investigation may also be colored by Saudi Arabia’s desire to assign blame to longtime enemy Iran.

“There’s been no movement in this case for weeks and weeks,” a U.S. intelligence source said.

Defense Secretary William J. Perry plans to confer with Saudi officials next week when he visits the region to spend Thanksgiving with U.S. troops, officials said.

Perry has accepted responsibility for what he called “a tragic failure” by the Pentagon’s leadership to provide better security at the complex.

The department has since taken steps to beef up security at U.S. installations in the Persian Gulf region, has improved intelligence-gathering and has bought more high-technology sensors to detect would-be bombers on the perimeters of its bases.

Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.