In The Red Zone

Perhaps the only people more deserving than the Saudi royal family of Shaitan and seven-gated Jahannam are K Street lobbyists in Washington.  When the two groups converge, we can imagine no fitter company spending an eternity forced to eat the devil-headed fruit of the Zaqqum tree.  

First, the Saudis.  According to writer Sherine Bahaa, reporting in the December 23-29 edition of the Egyptian paper Al-Ahram, the bandit state's regional muscle has so diminished that it could not prevent neighboring Bahrain from moving ahead with a free trade agreement that country signed in September with the U.S.  Moreover, Bahaa opines, other states forming the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)--Kuwait, Oman, the UAE and Qatar--"are likely to follow Bahrain's lead and sign their own agreements with Washington."

The Saudis fear competition from their smaller neighbors and argue that in forging separate deals with the U.S., the Gulf nations will "hamper efforts to integrate the group's economies" and undercut the "collective bargaining power of member states."  Indeed, as reported in Beirut's Daily Star, the deal abolishes external tariffs, gives "U.S. goods a foothold inside the Gulf" and also "grants U.S. service industries like banks the status of local firms, a benefit not granted to GCC companies."  The deal is part of a Middle East free trade zone that President Bush envisioned as extending from Morocco to Iran. 

Many observers interpret the U.S. push to organize the GCC outside of Saudi Arabia as further evidence of Washington's unhappiness with the Wahhabi state.  They also note that in 2003, the U.S. moved its Combined Air Operations Center--consisting of 5,000 men and 100 warplanes--from Prince Sultan Airbase to Al Udeid base in Qatar.  The star of Our Friend the Saudis is on the wane. 

Enter the lobbyists.  Last October, Kuwait decided to increase its efforts to obtain a free trade deal by hiring premier Washington rainmaker Patton Boggs.  According to O'Dwyer's PR Daily (reg. req.) the international law firm will receive $22,000 a month to

advise Kuwait about its current image among U.S. policymakers, prepare economic/policy briefing materials and set up meetings with government officials

At the same time, though, Patton Boggs is aiding the Saudis in burnishing their tattered reputation.  In December, 2002, Accuracy in Media reported that Riyadh is paying the law firm $100,000 a month.  To earn that lucre, notes the Center for Public Integrity, PB lobbyists "have met with Congressional staffers on behalf of Saudi interests 62 times in the first half of 2004 alone."  Part of their work has been to help prevent Patricia Roush from retrieving her two daughters whom her Saudi husband kidnapped and took to his homeland in 1986.  In November, 2002, Congressmen Dan Burton, investigating reports by Roush and others of Saudi kidnappings of American children, subpoenaed lobbying records from Patton Boggs, in addition to other two PR firms assisting OFTS, the Gallagher Group and Qorvis Communications.  Qorvis, we should note, is 10 percent owned by Patton Boggs.

According to its website, Washington-based Qorvis "has worked with the world's largest corporations and most important political campaigns."  The blurb omits the four year-old firm's only foreign client:  Saudi Arabia.  According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Saudis paid Qorvis $14,687,782 for the six month period ending September 30, 2002--a record for an amount shelled out by a foreign government to a U.S. p.r. firm.  Part of the money went--according to Patricia Roush--to coaching her two daughters for a television interview and spiriting them to London just as Congressmen Burton traveled to Saudi Arabia. 

But the bulk allegedly financed a series of 30 radio ads purportedly selling Saudi Arabia as our allies in the War on Terror.  But in fact, many of the messages focused on the Palestinian issue, casting the Israelis as "military occupiers"  and promoting Saudi Prince Abdullah's Middle East peace plan.  Paying for the ads was a previously unknown group with connections to OFTS called the Alliance for Peace and Justice, whose address, Seth Gitell of the Boston Phoenix revealed, was identical with Qorvis.  In December, 2002, three founding partner of Qorvis resigned, citing their "deep discomfort in representing the government of Saudi Arabia against accusations that Saudi leaders have turned a blind eye to terrorism."

Qorvis is not the only lobbying firm the Saudis use.  The Center for Public Integrity noted last September that the Kingdom spent $6.6 million over the previous year to hire 11 "lobby shops and public relations firms to plead their case before official Washington."  But Qorvis benefited most from the petro-largesse, raking in $4.5 million from October, 2003 to March, 2004.  Serving its desert masters, the firm has created the website www.aboutsaudiarabia,net to soft-pedal the Kingdom, and in August, 2004 oversaw another radio campaign intended to highlight the 9-11 Commission's findings that the Saudi government was not behind the terrorist attack.

Last December, FBI agents raided Qorvis' offices, taking away computer data and other records involving the firm's role in the 2002 advertising campaign.  According to Newsweek, the feds are investigating whether the Saudis, through Qorvis, attempted to use deceptive means in order to influence American public opinion in favor of Prince Abdullah's peace plan.  More specifically, the government wants to know if Qorvis violated the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act which requires p.r. firms to make full disclosures of foreign-sponsored propaganda in the U.S.  Observes Newsweek's  Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball,

Criminal charges against Qorvis over the ad campaign would be embarrassing for the Saudi Embassy...as well as the Bush White House, which has vigorously portrayed Crown Prince Abdullah’s government as a stalwart ally in the war on terror.

On December 21, the New York Sun reported that in 2002 Patton Boggs' partners, increasingly concerned about the anti-Israeli ads, agreed to sell the firm's stake in Qorvis, but never followed through.  As the paper noted, the partners feared that

any implicit snub of the Saudis might have cost Patton Boggs all of its business in the Arab world.

So law firms, p.r. "shops," the State Department, the White House--all maintain the ficition, sometimes through slick advertising and other media manipulations--that the Saudis are our friends, our indispensable allies whom we dare not alienate.  Meanwhile...

January 4:  the news is just coming over the wire.  The Arab press has identified the homicidal martyr who murdered 22 people in the December 21 Mosul mess hall attack.  His name was Ahmed Said Ahmed al-Ghamdi.  He was a medical student.  He was Saudi Arabian.  His clan, the al-Ghamdis, are no strangers to mass murder.  Three of its members were among the 9-11 hijackers. 

Our friends the Saudis.