Posted on 06/12/2004 12:27:40 AM PDT by neverdem
Next Tuesday, a terrorism task force of the Council on Foreign Relations is scheduled to present a highly anticipated report to a Senate committee that commends Saudi Arabia for recent efforts to curtail terrorist financing, but asserts that the kingdom "has not fully implemented its new laws and regulations, and because of that, opportunities for the witting or unwitting financing of terrorism persist."
An early version of the same passage, as read to a reporter by a member of the task force, went further. It stated: "Saudi Arabia has not fully implemented its own laws and regulations and many important questions remain. The Bush administration has done very little to push the implementation of the rules and regulations."
And therein lies an election year tale.
The report's authors are former members of the Clinton administration and are now informally advising Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign, while the leaders of the task force's 19-member steering committee are two prominent Republican businessmen. Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser to President Bush and author of a best-seller criticizing the adminstration's national security practices, is also on the task force.
Although all the members of the task force endorsed the report - which praised the Bush administration's antiterrorism efforts, but said they had not gone far enough - its early draft became so mired in internal conflict over its tone that some members feared that it would never be published.
Mallory Factor, a task force member who later became its vice chairman, initially refused to support the early draft and threatened to write a dissent, according to two people involved with the report. Mr. Factor declined to comment on internal disputes among task force members.
But with the authorization of the task force, Mr. Factor, a major Bush fund-raiser, arranged a recent meeting at the White House with Elliott Abrams and Frances Townsend, two top aides to the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to solicit their input on the report. The officials sharply criticized the draft and asked for changes, two participants in the meeting said, and Mr. Factor came away from the meeting convinced that the White House planned to press the task force to alter the report, according to several people with knowledge of his thinking.
A number of people directly involved with the report say that in fact the White House never interceded, but Mr. Factor, armed with information from his White House meeting, and others on the task force fought for a revision.
It is common for the council, a prominent nonpartisan foreign policy foundation, to seek comment from subjects of its reports, but what distinguished this episode is how highly politicized the editing process became among task force members. It is also a reflection of how fragile and contentious America's relationship with Saudi Arabia remains.
The United States is dependent on Saudi Arabian oil, and the kingdom is a lynchpin in Middle Eastern affairs. It also occupies a pivotal place in the terrorism debate, largely because its charities are suspected of financing radical Islamic groups worldwide. Saudi Arabian bank accounts at the Riggs National Corporation are also at the center of a continuing federal investigation of possible terrorist financing, further straining American relations with the kingdom.
"It is not said openly, but many in the U.S. government believe that Saudi Arabia is currently engaged in a civil war and that U.S. policy should be to ensure that the House of Saud wins that civil war," said William F. Wechsler, co-author of the council report. "The goal of U.S. policy should not only be that the Saudi regime wins that war, but that it fundamentally transforms itself in the process."
Mr. Wechsler, who now works as a business consultant, formerly coordinated efforts to curtail terrorist financing as a National Security Council member in the Clinton administration. His co-author, Lee S. Wolosky, is a lawyer who was an official with the National Security Council in both the Clinton and Bush administrations.
The chairman of the council's task force is Maurice R. Greenberg, chief executive of insurance giant AIG and a big fund-raiser for President Bush.
The report, a follow-up to an influential council study published two years ago, essentially summarizes the publicly known developments in terrorism financing since then. Even after revisions, the report accuses the Bush administration of not using its enforcement powers more readily to shut down suspected terrorist financing networks and of failing to create an efficient bureaucratic structure to combat the problem.
"We tried to make it more factual and take out any innuendo or any blame," Mr. Factor said of the task force's effort to reach consensus. White House and National Security Council spokesmen were unavailable for comment yesterday.
Mr. Factor said the only thing that the White House had asked of the task force was to "make factual changes." He added, "They thought we needed more work, and we did some more work."
Other members of the task force disputed that there was any innuendo in the drafts. They said that their arguments were part of a spirited give and take, but that they had hewed to the facts in their conclusions.
Mr. Factor and Mr. Wolosky are scheduled to speak about their report on Tuesday before the Senate's Governmental Affairs Committee. The committee, headed by Senator Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, is conducting a review of federal efforts to combat terrorist financing.
Aren't those kind of people called "mind-readers"?
Ya don't say! And if you ever wondered what all that black ink and redacted info on the Saudi/terror connection, you'll find plenty of names who have CFR membership...and other connections too. It's who you know.
But the United States is supposed to be encouraging democracy in the Middle East, not the furthering of a despotic regime through rules and regulations protecting that regime.
Power, dollars and oil. Welcome to Arab/USA politics.
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