Wednesday, July 30, 2003

If the U.S. Congress thought it was doing Saudi Arabia a favor by deleting information about that country from a congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks, it was mistaken. The removal of that information from the published results of the congressional investigation of pre-9/11 intelligence failures has set off a round of Saudi-bashing that risks clouding the reality of U.S. relations with that country.

Yesterday President Bush indicated that he would not use his authority to declassify the information deleted from the report, which apparently included discussion of the role of Saudis in the affair. He should reconsider.

Several members of Congress have seen this material, and some journalists have seen it. Given the importance to Americans of what went wrong Sept. 11, the guiding principles cannot be protecting Saudi feelings, protecting intelligence sources (which can't have been all that good anyway), or protecting the reputations of U.S. governmental figures.

Then there is the politically sensitive fact that America's president and vice president have a background in the oil industry. The Bush administration is still seeking to move judicial heaven and earth to keep secret the names of those who met with Vice President Cheney to develop the administration's energy policy. Given that background, it is important to dispel suspicions of a pro-Saudi cover-up.

That said, U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia are both extremely important and extremely sensitive. Part of the sensitivity lies in that country's importance in the oil world. Another part lies in the critical leadership role that Saudi Arabia, as protector of Islam's holy places and a wealthy Arab nation, plays in the Muslim world and in the Arab-Israeli peace process.

The fundamentals of continuing U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia are as follows. Saudi Arabia has the largest oil reserves and was the largest oil producer in the world last year. The United States is the world's largest oil consumer. At crucial times in the economic history of recent decades, Saudi Arabia has intervened decisively in the market to increase or decrease production to stabilize energy prices worldwide.

Saudi Arabia is able to be an important player in the successful implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian "road map" for peace, which President Bush has embraced as the way to resolution of that 55-year-old conflict. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah intervened personally in the negotiating process last year using his personal influence and Saudi wealth to break a logjam on the Arab side of the negotiations.

There is widespread suspicion that some Saudis -- perhaps even some individuals within Saudi Arabia's ruling hierarchy or even its government -- provided support to the Sept. 11 terrorists and withheld information that could have been useful to U.S. intelligence. That issue cannot be evaded.

Yet that is no reason for Americans to trash U.S. relations with a country that is as important to the United States as Saudi Arabia is. And, in the "glass houses" department, would the United States like some other country to base its relations with America on the acts of some Americans, inside and outside government?

The American people are entitled to an unblinking look at what Saudis did or did not do with respect to the Sept. 11 attack. But in demanding that accounting, they must not lose sight of the continuing value to the United States of good political and economic relations with Saudi Arabia.

E-mail this story   Print this story