If you hadn’t heard, the Senate unanimously passed a landmark bill recently that will at last allow U.S. citizens who were victims or whose family members were victims of terrorism to sue foreign governments if such governments were sponsors of terrorism.
The bill, co-sponsored by Senator John Cornyn (R.-Texas), has been a long time coming and is especially timely in light of the controversy over the so-called “missing 28 pages” of the 2002 9/11 Commission Report. The information contained in the pages reportedly lays much of the blame for the 9/11 terror attacks at the feet of officials of the Saudi Arabian government.
If the bill becomes law, it will allow 9/11 victims and their families to sue the Saudi government based on information both in the 28 pages and in other reports that have been previously released. Such information purportedly includes documentation of complicity and financing for some of the 9/11 hijackers (15 of whom were Saudi citizens) at high levels of the Saudi Arabia government and even perhaps from the Saudi royal family.
Preliminary reports are that the previously classified 28 pages will be released soon after being thoroughly vetted by American intelligence services. But even if the 28 pages are ultimately not disclosed, the laws as they stand currently are cold comfort to those who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks, as they bar lawsuits against foreign governments over terrorist acts.
Just as upsetting as President George W. Bush’s notorious decision to assist members of the bin Laden family in being spirited out of the country in the wake of the terror attacks is the fact that President Obama currently stands in opposition to the Senate bill and has threatened to veto it.
“It’s difficult to imagine the president signing this legislation,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said last week when questioned by reporters. Earnest cited national security concerns that might, in theory, ensnare the American government in similar lawsuits from foreign regimes over U.S. military action.
The fact of the matter, however, is that Obama just returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia where he sought to reassure King Salman over the U.S.’s infamous nuclear deal with the kingdom’s arch-enemy, Iran. Salman disrespected the president by not greeting him personally at the airport as he did with other arriving foreign dignitaries.
The kingdom also communicated through representatives in Geneva that if the current bill passed by the Senate becomes law, Saudi Arabia may divest itself of up to $750 billion dollars worth of American investments and debt in order to prevent possible freezing of those assets as a result of lawsuits filed by terror victims and their families.
While it’s unknown if the Saudi threat is to be taken seriously, the prospect of such moves has some on Wall Street wringing their hands. Many analysts say it would be extremely unlikely the kingdom would liquidate assets on a large scale quickly and that such a decision could almost certainly cost them significantly.
Senator Cornyn called the Saudi communiqué a “hollow threat,” saying that “they’re not going to suffer a huge financial loss in order to make a point.”
It’s impossible to say what else was communicated to Obama on his visit, but the fact that he’s in opposition to the current bill may give more than a hint about where his interests lie.
Indeed, if you look at the Saudi connections to Washington, particularly to higher-ups in the Obama administration and to the Clintons — both Bill and Hillary — you can see a web of patronage, personal relationships and lobbying that stretches back decades.
This is despite the fact that Wahhabist Saudi Arabia is one of the worst offenders in terms of women’s and human rights, according to the very same State Department that Hillary Clinton previously headed.
Hillary Clinton’s closest personal aide, Huma Abedin, grew up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and her mother is still employed there. Bill Clinton went to Georgetown University with the current head of the Saudi intelligence service.
Both Clintons know Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former longtime Saudi ambassador to the U.S., whose wife, Princess Haifa, had financial ties to Saudi businessmen who provided funds for at least two of the 9/11 hijackers.
It’s also a fact that Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s current campaign manager Jon Podesta, runs a lobbying and public relations firm, The Podesta Group, that has been retained by the Saudi Arabian government at a rate of $140,000 per month for consulting services.
The Podesta Group is only one of at least eight such firms that are in the employ of the Saudi kingdom in Washington. Six of them were hired in the last year, perhaps due to fallout from the aforementioned pages of the 9/11 Report and also in the wake of the Iranian nuclear deal.
The Podesta Group and lobbying firm The BGR Group both work for the Saudi Royal Court, a part of the kingdom’s official government. Most of the other firms work for the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington while large public relations firm Edelman works for the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority.
Records show that law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman has recently advised the Saudis on Obama’s Iranian dealings, possibly tied to information he shared with the kingdom on his most recent trip. The firm also has provided other legal counseling to the Saudis in the past.
Mammoth global law firm DLA Piper currently receives $50,000 per month from the kingdom and has communicated hundreds of times in the last eight months with top U.S. congressional staffers on the country’s behalf regarding “national security interests.”
The law firm Hogan Lovells, which has at least one former congressman on its payroll for the Saudi account, arranged meetings between Saudi representatives and Senator Dick Durban (D-Ill.) as well as Congressmen Eliot Engel (D.-N.Y.) and Ed Royce (R.-Calif.) to discuss “Middle East regional security, counterterrorism, Iran sanctions, and related issues.”
MSL Group, a consulting and PR firm, took more than $7.9 million from the kingdom last year and has worked for the government since 2002. Recently, it has been working to put a positive spin on the Saudis’ military engagement in Yemen, which has been a humanitarian disaster according to myriad media reports.
The firm also has as a client Saudi Aramco, the national Saudi Arabian oil company. Last September, the latter firm paid almost $1 million to host a Washington event coinciding with the visit of Saudi King Salman.
If Obama does indeed issue a veto of the Senate bill, there’s enough support in the chamber to override it, so at this point, all that likely remains for the bill to become law is some negotiation with Representatives in the U.S. House.
As far as the declassification of the Commission Report’s excluded 28 pages, Congressman Walter Jones (R.-N.C.) pressed Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to release the information so that many of the 9/11 families can have closure and/or possibly take legal action if it’s warranted.
Clapper has promised to send his final recommendation to President Obama shortly, taking into account noted opposition to the pages’ release from CIA Director John Brennan.
“I felt like [Clapper] feels that the families and the American people have a right [to see the pages],” Jones said. “But he didn’t say it. I have to be true about that.”
Jones is optimistic, however, stating that he and other members of Congress “felt very encouraged that [Clapper] is a very fair man, fair-minded man of integrity, who I think fully understands what we’re trying to do.”
Clapper’s recommendation will go into a pool with other advisories from people in the diplomatic and intelligence communities, and President Obama has said he will make a final decision on the matter in June.
According to Senator Lindsey Graham (R.-S.C.), Obama may send the matter back to Congress. “I hope [this] is not just another stalling tactic,” Graham related to a Florida newspaper.
Whether Graham’s suspicions are correct will likely be confirmed over the summer. In the meantime, look to the newspapers for possible proclamations and/or mea culpas from the Saudis.
