Khobar Towers
Shame – Ten Years AfterBy
Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com | June
23, 2006
Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier was stunned when he read the account of
the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that appeared
in my recent book, Countdown
to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with
Iran.
I was writing many
years after the fact, drawing on sources from inside Iranian
intelligence but also on published U.S. government reports.
¬Ý
It was those U.S.
reports that prompted General Schwalier to contact me a few months
ago.
¬Ý
“You paint a
picture of significant government awareness that “Iran was up
to something” in the months prior to the Khobar Towers attack,”
he wrote to me by e-mail. “Unfortunately, I was not part of
that “significant government awareness” circle.”
¬Ý
Why is this not just
important, but critically important today, as we face the double
challenge of intelligence reorganization and an aggressive Iranian
regime, possibly armed with nuclear weapons?
¬Ý
Because Terry Schwalier
was the commander in the field with responsibility for the Khobar
Towers complex. Apparently someone had forgotten to give him the memo
on the threats to his base. Then they covered it up by making
Schwalier take the fall.
¬Ý
In Countdown to
Crisis I cited an “extensive review” of the attack
that cost the lives of 19 U.S. servicemen at Khobar Towers, released
by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on Sept. 12, 1996.
¬Ý
Chaired at the time by
Senator Arlen Specter (R, Pa), the report concluded there was “no
intelligence failure” that led to the Khobar Towers bombing, “but
a failure to use intelligence.” And that failure, Specter
concluded, belonged to Schwalier.
¬Ý
“From April 1995
through the time of the Khobar Towers bombing in June 1996, the
analytic community published more than 100 products on the topic of
terrorism on the Arabian peninsula," the report stated, including
specific intelligence warnings that the Khobar Towers complex was
under surveillance by Iranian intelligence agents and local
surrogates.
¬Ý
The intelligence
reports contained specific warnings of “ongoing Iranian and
radical Islamic fundamentalist groups' attempts to target American
servicemen in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia for terrorist
acts,” the SSIC said.
¬Ý
“By March 1995,”
the report went on, “the Intelligence Community had determined
that Iranian operations in Saudi Arabia were no longer simply
intelligence gathering activities but contained the potential for the
execution of terrorist acts. It had been previously learned that
weapons and explosives had been moved in and stored in apparent
support for these acts.”
¬Ý
Schwalier was informed
of the “potential” of Iranian surveillance shortly after
he arrived in Saudi Arabia in July 1995 to assume command of the
440th
Wing (Provisional) in Saudi Arabia.
¬Ý
But the surveillance
was suspected of being directed from a cell operating out of Jeddah,
and was aimed at Riyadh, he was told by the CIA station chief in the
Saudi capitol. No one ever gave the slightest indication that it was
directed at U.S. flyers in Dhahran or at their living quarters, he
told me.
¬Ý
As to those “more
than 100 products” on terror threats, forget it. No one thought
to put Schwalier into the loop.
¬Ý
At the time, Schwalier’s
pilots were flying daily missions against Iraq. He received daily
threat intelligence – but it was battlefield information, with
a focus on Iraq and their surface-to-air missiles. “Terrorism
simply was not on the radar,” he told me. At least, not until
the November 1995 bombing – later attributed to Sunni
fundamentalists with ties to Osama Bin Ladan – against a Saudi
national guards barracks in Riyadh.
¬Ý
After that, Schwalier
ordered a lock-down at Dhahran –on his own authority, not
because he was warned of a greater threat to Dhahran. He installed
triple jersey barriers – those heavy, concrete blocks that now
adorn the entries to most government buildings in the United States.
At the time, they were relatively rare, and Schwalier still recalls
having to scrounge around to get enough of them to line the perimeter
of the 30-building U.S. section of the Khobar Towers housing
complex.
He put up new fencing, and new, more secure gates – all of it,
without the slightest indication from Washington or from the CIA that
his men faced any particular threat.
¬Ý
“Chairman
Shalikashvili came to Dhahran in May 1996 with his wife,”
Schwalier says. “That’s how safe he felt.”
¬Ý
In April 1996,
Schwalier met with the CIA station chief in Riyadh, who came to brief
him on a recent seizure by the Saudi authorities of a large amount of
explosives coming across the border from Jordan. It was the only
face-to-face meeting they had during Schwalier’s entire stay in
Saudi Arabia.
¬Ý
The CIA man said the
U.S. suspected the explosives were being “transferred” to
Saudi Arabia, or were “passing through” Saudi Arabia, and
that a Saudi “dissident financier” named Osama Bin Laden
was likely involved. But he made no mention of Iran or of any
potential threat to Dhahran.
¬Ý
“The station
chief’s analysis was that ‘the primary threat was Riyadh
but other areas were possibilities as well,’” Schwalier
said. “When I asked what else I should be doing in light of
this new input, the station chief response was (I remember it well), ‘just
keep doing what you are doing&’
¬Ý
“Contrary to what
the intelligence community may have suggested, I was never advised of
a specific terrorist threat to Khobar Towers,” Schwalier told
me.
¬Ý
On his own initiative,
Schwalier had posted roof top guards at the housing complex several
months before the attack. Khobar Towers was the only U.S. military
housing in Saudi Arabia to have such tight security.
¬Ý
Those guards managed to
clear half of the building in the three to five minutes between the
time they first saw a suspicious truck ram into the rear gate and the
explosion. Without Schwalier’s foresight, and their alert
reaction, the death toll would undoubtedly have been much higher.
¬Ý
As often happens in
Washington, Schwalier was not rewarded for his actions, but punished.
A hasty investigation, chaired by General Wayne A. Downing, a retired
Army officer and former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command,
blasted Schwalier for having failed to “adequately protect his
forces from a terrorist attack.”
¬Ý
But Downing never
interviewed key witnesses. And his report was factually wrong on at
least one key point: the size of the bomb. Downing said it was “most
likely 5,000 pounds,” whereas subsequent reports –
including one from an FBI forensics team -¬Ý concluded it
was at least four times that size.
¬Ý
“Comparable to
20,000 pounds of TNT, the [Khobar towers] bomb was estimated
to be larger than the one that destroyed the federal building in
Oklahoma City a year before, and more than twice as powerful as the
1983 bomb used at the Marine barracks in Beirut,” the FBI
concluded in a statement on June 21, 2001.
¬Ý
Although Congress had
approved Schwalier’s promotion to Major General shortly before
the Khobar Towers attack, Senator Specter immediately placed it on
hold.
¬Ý
Following the Downing
report, the U.S. Air Force conducted two extensive inquiries into the
causes of the attack, both of which concluded that Schwalier was not
at fault.
¬Ý
“The goal posts
changed after a few weeks,” Schwalier says. “That’s
when they decided to go after me.”
¬Ý
When Lt. Gen James
Record, who conducted the second Air Force investigation, found that
Schwalier had done all that could have been expected as commander to
protect his men, Secretary of Defense William Perry put a gag order
on his report.
¬Ý
“The report was
scheduled to be released on Dec. 10,. 1996, but shortly before the
press conference the SecDef said ‘cease and desist,’”
Schwalier said.
¬Ý
On July 31, 1997, Perry’s
successor, William Cohen, declared that Schwalier “could and
should have done more” to protect his men, and announced that
his promotion was cancelled. Asked by the press if Schwalier was
being made a scapegoat, Cohen replied testily:” He’s not
being made a scapegoat. He is being held accountable.”
¬Ý
Air Force commanding
General Ronald R. Fogleman was so outraged at Cohen’s behavior
that he resigned in protest, as did Schwalier.
¬Ý
After leaving the Air
Force, Schwalier moved to Whidbey Island, Washington, lectured, and
took college credits to become a public school teacher. In 2000, he
joined Lockheed Martin as vice president for Business Development in
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
¬Ý
Following the September
11 attacks on America, a number of Pentagon top brass convinced
Secretary of the Air Force James Roche to take a fresh look at
Schwalier’s demotion.
¬Ý
In a lengthy account of
these efforts that appeared recently in Air Force Magazine, Rebecca
Grant wrote that Roche was “especially bothered by what he
viewed as the double standard of the previous five years.”
¬Ý
No one at the State
Department had been held responsible for the 1998 bombings of two
U.S. embassies in Africa. And after 9/11, no one accused Donald
Rumsfeld of having failed to protect Pentagon employees from the al
Qaeda strike., Grant noted.
¬Ý
The reason Rumsfeld was
not held responsible, Roche told Air Force magazine, was because “he
isn’t responsible.” Blaming an individual for not
stopping an act of war “would be ludicrous,” Grant
concluded in her article.
¬Ý
Roche’s efforts
to get Terry Schwalier’s promotion to Major General reinstated
was ultimately frustrated by Defense Department lawyers. Roche said
that continuing to blame Schwalier for Khobar Towers, even after
9/11, was “worse than a double standard.”
¬Ý
Congress should restore
Terry Schwalier’s second star, in tribute to his dedication to
his men, and in acknowledgement of yet another incredible screw-up by
our intelligence community.
¬Ý
And for the indignity
they caused him and for the shame they surely do not feel, Senator
Specter and former Defense Secretary William Cohen – who is
cashing in on his contacts as a Washington, DC defense consultant –
should dip into their own pockets to restore Maj. Gen. Terry
Schwalier’s ten years of docked retirement pay.
¬Ý
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