[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 76 (Wednesday, May 21, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1043-E1044]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           BOMBING IN RIYADH

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. MICHAEL G. OXLEY

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 21, 2003

  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, as the investigation into the horrible 
bombing in Riyadh continues, I would commend to my colleagues' 
attention a column in the Wall Street Journal written by former FBI 
Director Louis Freeh about the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers 
complex in Saudi Arabia. It contains valuable lessons that should be 
applied to the probe of this latest attack. Cooperation between the 
U.S. and Saudi Arabia will be essential, as will the resolve that we 
have seen on the part of President Bush to bring terrorists to justice. 
As the article also demonstrates, the FBI needs our support for its 
critical mission of investigating and preventing terrorism in the U.S. 
and around the world.

              [From the Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2003]

                 American Justice for Our Khobar Heroes

                          (By Louis J. Freeh)

       Responding to last week's terrorist attacks in Riyadh, 
     President Bush declared that ``the United States will find 
     the killers, and they will learn the meaning of American 
     justice.'' This is a president who is serious about fighting 
     and winning the war on terrorism. The liberation of Iraq and 
     the continued effort to bring al Qaeda to justice are all the 
     proof anyone should need.
       On May 1, our commander in chief stood on the flight deck 
     of the USS Abraham Lincoln--where he rightly should stand--
     and reiterated the Bush doctrine: ``Any person involved in 
     committing or planning terrorist attacks against the American 
     people becomes an enemy of this country, and a target of 
     American justice.'' As if in response, Ayatollah Ahmad 
     Jannati, the leader of Iran's powerful Guardian Council, had 
     this to say in a sermon the next day: ``The Iraqi people have 
     reached the conclusion that they have no option but to launch 
     an uprising and resort to martyrdom operations to expel the 
     United States from Iraq.''
       Impervious to the new order against terrorism are the 
     terrorists who maintain their regime in Tehran. While the 
     horrific bombing scenes were still smoldering and littered 
     with their victims in Riyadh, Iranian President Mohammad 
     Khatami received a rousing welcome in Beirut, where he vowed 
     to support ``resistance'' against Israel and called the U.S. 
     occupation of Iraq a ``great mistake'' and a ``dangerous 
     game.'' Meanwhile, Mr. Khatami's atomic-energy chief denied 
     that Iran had a nuclear weapons program but told the U.N. 
     that his country was not willing to submit to tougher 
     inspections.
       Make no mistake, Iran's terrorist leaders are well versed 
     in ``martyrdom operations'' against Americans. Hezbollah, the 
     exclusive terrorist agent of the Islamic Republic of Iran, 
     has killed more Americans than any other group besides al 
     Qaeda. In 1982, Hezbollah carried out the suicide bombing in 
     Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines. In 1985, Hezbollah 
     brutally murdered a young U.S. Navy diver aboard their 
     hijacked TWA Flight 847 in Lebanon and dumped his body on the 
     tarmac. Into the 1990s Hezbollah terrorists kidnapped, 
     tortured and murdered several American military and civilian 
     officers as well as other Westerners.
       On June 25, 1996, Iran again attacked America at Dhahran, 
     Saudi Arabia, exploding a huge truck bomb that devastated 
     Khobar Towers and murdered 19 U.S. airmen as they rested in 
     their dormitory. These young heroes spent every day risking 
     their lives enforcing the no-fly zone over southern Iraq; 
     that is, protecting Iraqi Shiites from their own murderous 
     tyrant. When I visited this horrific scene soon after the 
     attack, I watched dozens of dedicated FBI agents combing 
     through the wreckage in 120-degree heat, reverently 
     handling the human remains of our brave young men. More 
     than 400 of our Air Force men and women were wounded in 
     this well-planned attack, and I was humbled by their 
     courage and spirit. I later met with the families of our 
     lost Khobar heroes and promised that we would do whatever 
     was necessary to bring these terrorists to American 
     justice. The courage and dignity these wonderful families 
     have consistently exemplified has been one of the most 
     powerful experiences of my 26 years of public service.
       The FBI's investigation of the Khobar attack was 
     extraordinarily persistent, indeed relentless. Our fallen 
     heroes and their families deserve nothing less. Working in 
     close cooperation with the White House, State Department, CIA 
     and Department of Defense, I made a series of trips to Saudi 
     Arabia beginning in 1996. FBI agents opened an office in 
     Riyadh and aligned themselves closely with the Mabaheth, the 
     kingdom's antiterrorist police. Over the course of our 
     investigation the evidence became clear that while the attack 
     was staged by Saudi Hezbollah members, the entire operation 
     was planned, funded and coordinated by Iran's security 
     services, the IRGC and MOIS, acting on orders from the 
     highest levels of the regime in Tehran.

[[Page E1044]]

       In order to return an indictment and bring these terrorists 
     to American justice, it became essential that FBI agents be 
     permitted to interview several of the participating Hezbollah 
     terrorists who were detained in Saudi Arabia. The purpose of 
     the interviews was to confirm--with usable, co-conspirator 
     testimonial evidence--the Iranian complicity that Saudi 
     Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan and the Mabaheth had 
     already relayed to us. (For the record, the FBI's 
     investigation only succeeded because of the real cooperation 
     provided by Prince Bandar and our colleagues in the 
     Mabaheth.) FBI agents had never before been permitted to 
     interview first-hand Saudis detained in the kingdom.
       Unfortunately, the White House was unable or unwilling to 
     help the FBI gain access to these critical witnesses. The 
     only direction from the Clinton administration regarding Iran 
     was to order the FBI to stop photographing and fingerprinting 
     official Iranian delegations entering the U.S. because it was 
     adversely impacting our ``relationship'' with Tehran. We had 
     argued that the MOIS was using these groups to infiltrate its 
     agents into the U.S.
       After months of inaction, I finally turned to the former 
     President Bush, who immediately interceded with Crown Prince 
     Abdullah on the FBI's behalf. Mr. Bush personally asked the 
     Saudis to let the FBI do one-on-one interviews of the 
     detained Khobar bombers. The Saudis immediately acceded. 
     After Mr. Bush's Saturday meeting with the Crown Prince in 
     Washington, Ambassador Wyche Fowler, Dale Watson, the FBI's 
     excellent counterterrorism chief, and I were summoned to a 
     Monday meeting where the crown prince directed that the FBI 
     be given direct access to the Saudi detainees. This was the 
     investigative breakthrough for which we had been waiting for 
     several years.
       Mr. Bush typically disclaimed any credit for his critical 
     intervention but he earned the gratitude of many FBI agents 
     and the Khobar families. I quickly dispatched the FBI case 
     agents back to Saudi Arabia, where they interviewed, one-on-
     one, six of the Hezbollah members who actually carried out 
     the attack. All of them directly implicated the IRGC, MOIS 
     and senior Iranian government officials in the planning and 
     execution of this attack. Armed with this evidence, the FBI 
     recommended a criminal indictment that would identify Iran as 
     the sponsor of the Khobar bombing. Finding a problem for 
     every solution, the Clinton administration refused to support 
     a prosecution.
       The prosecution and criminal indictment for these murders 
     had to wait for a new administration. In February 2001, 
     working with exactly the same evidence but with a talented 
     new prosecutor, James B. Comey Jr. (now U.S. attorney for the 
     Southern District of New York), Attorney General John 
     Ashcroft's personal intervention, and White House support, 
     the case was presented to a grand jury. On June 21, 2001, 
     only four days before some of the terrorist charges would 
     have become barred by the five-year statute of limitations, 
     the grand jury indicted 13 Hezbollah terrorists for the 
     Khobar attack and identified Iran as the sponsor.
       Nonetheless, the terrorists who murdered 19 U.S. airmen and 
     wounded hundreds more have yet to be brought to American 
     justice. Whenever U.S. diplomats hold talks with 
     representatives of Iran's Islamic government, Khobar Towers 
     should be the top item on their agenda. The arrest and 
     turnover to U.S. authorities of Ahman Ibrahim Al-Mughassil 
     and Ali Saed bin Ali Al-Houri, two of the indicted Hezbollah 
     leaders of the Khobar attack believed to be in Iran, should 
     be part of any ``normalization'' discussion. Furthermore, 
     access and accountability by IRGC, MOIS and other senior 
     Iranian government leaders for their complicity in the attack 
     should be nonnegotiable.
       Before his appointment as the top U.S. administrator in 
     Iraq, L. Paul Bremer chaired the National Commission on 
     Terrorism, which studied the Khobar attack. The commission 
     concluded that ``Iran remains the most active state supporter 
     of terrorism. . . . The IRBC and MOIS have continued to be 
     involved in the planning and execution of terrorist acts. 
     They also provide funding, training, weapons, logistical 
     resources, and guidance to a variety of terrorist groups, 
     including Hezbollah, Hamas, PIJ, and PFLP-GC.'' The 
     commission noted that ``in October 1999, President Clinton 
     officially requested cooperation [a letter delivered through 
     a third-party government] from Iran in the investigation [of 
     the Khobar bombing]. Thus far, Iran has not responded. 
     International pressure in the Pan Am 103 case ultimately 
     succeeded in getting some degree of cooperation from Libya. 
     The United States government has not sought similar 
     multilateral action to bring pressure on Iran to cooperate in 
     the Khobar Towers bombing investigation.''
       One of my last official acts as FBI director was to attend 
     a memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery with the 19 
     stoic Air Force families with whom I had become very close. 
     They all came to my office to thank the FBI for keeping faith 
     with them and presented me with a signed plaque. It will 
     always be for me the most cherished honor of my public 
     service.
       Yesterday the White House reiterated Defense Secretary 
     Donald Rumsfeld's recent statement that al Qaeda leaders are 
     now conducting their operations from Iran. The time to bring 
     that pressure to bear is right now, with Ambassador Bremer 
     and our armed forces bringing democracy and justice to the 
     Iraqi people next door. This time the United States should 
     not just send Tehran a letter. American justice for our 19 
     Khobar heroes is long overdue.

                          ____________________