NEW YORK — FBI Director Louis Freeh has given the Bush administration a list of people he believes the United States should indict in the 1996 bombing that killed 19 American servicemen in Saudi Arabia, according to a published report.
Freeh, who announced last week that he will retire in June, recently briefed President Bush on case, The New Yorker reports, and told the magazine that the it is “the only unfinished piece of business that I have.”
The U.S. airmen were killed when a truck bomb exploded outside the Khobar Towers, their military housing complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
Iran initially was believed to have been involved. Saudi Arabia has yet to disclose its findings in an investigation carried out jointly with the FBI.
The report said any indictments are likely to name Iranian government officials.
The president’s national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said Sunday that she could not comment on “legal and judicial matters that are under review at the Justice Department.”
Rice did say on ABC’s “This Week” that “right now, Iran is one of the most active countries in terrorism, for instance, in the Middle East. … Iran has not renounced terrorism. In fact, it promotes it around the world.”
Freeh, who was appointed by President Clinton, sought help from the first President Bush because the FBI director believed the Clinton administration feared risking its Middle East policy by pressing the case too hard, the magazine reported.
Bush, who waged the Gulf War, apparently did intercede with the Saudi royal family to seek greater cooperation from the Saudi government, but it’s not known to what extent.
“I don’t want to get into details of that,” Freeh told The New Yorker.
FBI agents eventually were able to watch and listen as Saudi authorities posed 212 questions from the FBI to eight suspects.
Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security adviser, was quoted as saying, “In every way we were asked to do and ways we were not asked to do we pressed the Saudis. Does that mean we weren’t trying to make some outreach to Iran? No. There are two governments in Iran, and our fundamental policy was to try to support and strengthen the reformists … so there would be no more Khobars.”
