Khobar TowersShame – Ten Years AfterByKenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com | June23, 2006



Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier was stunned when he read the account ofthe June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that appearedin my recent book,
Countdownto Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown withIran.

I was writing manyyears after the fact, drawing on sources from inside Iranianintelligence but also on published U.S. government reports.
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It was those U.S.reports that prompted General Schwalier to contact me a few monthsago.
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“You paint apicture of significant government awareness that “Iran was upto something” in the months prior to the Khobar Towers attack,”he wrote to me by e-mail. “Unfortunately, I was not part ofthat “significant government awareness” circle.”
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Why is this not justimportant, but critically important today, as we face the doublechallenge of intelligence reorganization and an aggressive Iranianregime, possibly armed with nuclear weapons?
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Because Terry Schwalierwas the commander in the field with responsibility for the KhobarTowers complex. Apparently someone had forgotten to give him the memoon the threats to his base. Then they covered it up by makingSchwalier take the fall.
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In Countdown toCrisis I cited an “extensive review” of the attackthat cost the lives of 19 U.S. servicemen at Khobar Towers, releasedby the Senate Select Intelligence Committee on Sept. 12, 1996.
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Chaired at the time bySenator Arlen Specter (R, Pa), the report concluded there was “nointelligence failure” that led to the Khobar Towers bombing, “buta failure to use intelligence.” And that failure, Specterconcluded, belonged to Schwalier.
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“From April 1995through the time of the Khobar Towers bombing in June 1996, theanalytic community published more than 100 products on the topic ofterrorism on the Arabian peninsula," the report stated, includingspecific intelligence warnings that the Khobar Towers complex wasunder surveillance by Iranian intelligence agents and localsurrogates.
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The intelligencereports contained specific warnings of “ongoing Iranian andradical Islamic fundamentalist groups' attempts to target Americanservicemen in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia for terroristacts,” the SSIC said.
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“By March 1995,”the report went on, “the Intelligence Community had determinedthat Iranian operations in Saudi Arabia were no longer simplyintelligence gathering activities but contained the potential for theexecution of terrorist acts. It had been previously learned thatweapons and explosives had been moved in and stored in apparentsupport for these acts.”
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Schwalier was informedof the “potential” of Iranian surveillance shortly afterhe arrived in Saudi Arabia in July 1995 to assume command of the440thWing (Provisional) in Saudi Arabia.
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But the surveillancewas 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 theSaudi capitol. No one ever gave the slightest indication that it wasdirected at U.S. flyers in Dhahran or at their living quarters, hetold me.
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As to those “morethan 100 products” on terror threats, forget it. No one thoughtto put Schwalier into the loop.
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At the time, Schwalier’spilots were flying daily missions against Iraq. He received dailythreat intelligence – but it was battlefield information, witha focus on Iraq and their surface-to-air missiles. “Terrorismsimply was not on the radar,” he told me. At least, not untilthe November 1995 bombing – later attributed to Sunnifundamentalists with ties to Osama Bin Ladan – against a Saudinational guards barracks in Riyadh.
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After that, Schwalierordered a lock-down at Dhahran –on his own authority, notbecause he was warned of a greater threat to Dhahran. He installedtriple jersey barriers – those heavy, concrete blocks that nowadorn the entries to most government buildings in the United States.At the time, they were relatively rare, and Schwalier still recallshaving to scrounge around to get enough of them to line the perimeterof the 30-building U.S. section of the Khobar Towers housingcomplex.
He put up new fencing, and new, more secure gates – all of it,without the slightest indication from Washington or from the CIA thathis men faced any particular threat.
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“ChairmanShalikashvili came to Dhahran in May 1996 with his wife,”Schwalier says. “That’s how safe he felt.”
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In April 1996,Schwalier met with the CIA station chief in Riyadh, who came to briefhim on a recent seizure by the Saudi authorities of a large amount ofexplosives coming across the border from Jordan. It was the onlyface-to-face meeting they had during Schwalier’s entire stay inSaudi Arabia.
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The CIA man said theU.S. suspected the explosives were being “transferred” toSaudi Arabia, or were “passing through” Saudi Arabia, andthat a Saudi “dissident financier” named Osama Bin Ladenwas likely involved. But he made no mention of Iran or of anypotential threat to Dhahran.
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“The stationchief’s analysis was that ‘the primary threat was Riyadhbut other areas were possibilities as well,’” Schwaliersaid. “When I asked what else I should be doing in light ofthis new input, the station chief response was (I remember it well), ‘justkeep doing what you are doing&’
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“Contrary to whatthe intelligence community may have suggested, I was never advised ofa specific terrorist threat to Khobar Towers,” Schwalier toldme.
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On his own initiative,Schwalier had posted roof top guards at the housing complex severalmonths before the attack. Khobar Towers was the only U.S. militaryhousing in Saudi Arabia to have such tight security.
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Those guards managed toclear half of the building in the three to five minutes between thetime they first saw a suspicious truck ram into the rear gate and theexplosion. Without Schwalier’s foresight, and their alertreaction, the death toll would undoubtedly have been much higher.
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As often happens inWashington, Schwalier was not rewarded for his actions, but punished.A hasty investigation, chaired by General Wayne A. Downing, a retiredArmy officer and former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command,blasted Schwalier for having failed to “adequately protect hisforces from a terrorist attack.”
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But Downing neverinterviewed key witnesses. And his report was factually wrong on atleast one key point: the size of the bomb. Downing said it was “mostlikely 5,000 pounds,” whereas subsequent reports –including one from an FBI forensics team -¬Ý concluded itwas at least four times that size.
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“Comparable to20,000 pounds of TNT, the [Khobar towers] bomb was estimatedto be larger than the one that destroyed the federal building inOklahoma City a year before, and more than twice as powerful as the1983 bomb used at the Marine barracks in Beirut,” the FBIconcluded in a statement on June 21, 2001.
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Although Congress hadapproved Schwalier’s promotion to Major General shortly beforethe Khobar Towers attack, Senator Specter immediately placed it onhold.
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Following the Downingreport, the U.S. Air Force conducted two extensive inquiries into thecauses of the attack, both of which concluded that Schwalier was notat fault.
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“The goal postschanged after a few weeks,” Schwalier says. “That’swhen they decided to go after me.”
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When Lt. Gen JamesRecord, who conducted the second Air Force investigation, found thatSchwalier had done all that could have been expected as commander toprotect his men, Secretary of Defense William Perry put a gag orderon his report.
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“The report wasscheduled to be released on Dec. 10,. 1996, but shortly before thepress conference the SecDef said ‘cease and desist,’”Schwalier said.
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On July 31, 1997, Perry’ssuccessor, William Cohen, declared that Schwalier “could andshould have done more” to protect his men, and announced thathis promotion was cancelled. Asked by the press if Schwalier wasbeing made a scapegoat, Cohen replied testily:” He’s notbeing made a scapegoat. He is being held accountable.”
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Air Force commandingGeneral Ronald R. Fogleman was so outraged at Cohen’s behaviorthat he resigned in protest, as did Schwalier.
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After leaving the AirForce, Schwalier moved to Whidbey Island, Washington, lectured, andtook college credits to become a public school teacher. In 2000, hejoined Lockheed Martin as vice president for Business Development inRiyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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Following the September11 attacks on America, a number of Pentagon top brass convincedSecretary of the Air Force James Roche to take a fresh look atSchwalier’s demotion.
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In a lengthy account ofthese efforts that appeared recently in Air Force Magazine, RebeccaGrant wrote that Roche was “especially bothered by what heviewed as the double standard of the previous five years.”
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No one at the StateDepartment had been held responsible for the 1998 bombings of twoU.S. embassies in Africa. And after 9/11, no one accused DonaldRumsfeld of having failed to protect Pentagon employees from the alQaeda strike., Grant noted.
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The reason Rumsfeld wasnot held responsible, Roche told Air Force magazine, was because “heisn’t responsible.” Blaming an individual for notstopping an act of war “would be ludicrous,” Grantconcluded in her article.
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Roche’s effortsto get Terry Schwalier’s promotion to Major General reinstatedwas ultimately frustrated by Defense Department lawyers. Roche saidthat continuing to blame Schwalier for Khobar Towers, even after9/11, was “worse than a double standard.”
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Congress should restoreTerry Schwalier’s second star, in tribute to his dedication tohis men, and in acknowledgement of yet another incredible screw-up byour intelligence community.
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And for the indignitythey caused him and for the shame they surely do not feel, SenatorSpecter and former Defense Secretary William Cohen – who iscashing in on his contacts as a Washington, DC defense consultant –should dip into their own pockets to restore Maj. Gen. TerrySchwalier’s ten years of docked retirement pay.
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