U.S. to Press for Saudi Aid In Tracking Down Suspects

By Alan Sipress and John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 18, 2001; Page A03

The Bush administration will hold urgent talks this week with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister to seek cooperation in the investigation of terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, in which as many as two-thirds of the hijackers may have had links to the Persian Gulf kingdom.

Although 14 of the 19 hijackers had some apparent ties to Saudi Arabia, a number of those men may have stolen the identities of Saudi citizens or used phony Saudi documents. Two of the suicide bombers aboard the first jetliner to crash into the World Trade Center, brothers Waleed M. Alshehri and Wail Alshehri, appear to be the sons of Ahmed Alshehri, a senior Saudi diplomat who served as a second secretary at the Saudi embassy in Washington in the mid-1990s.

Administration officials said yesterday they plan to press the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, for information about the conspiracy after he arrives in Washington tomorrow on a sudden diplomatic mission. They said State Department and White House officials also would ask the kingdom for full cooperation in retaliating against exiled Saudi multimillionaire Osama bin Laden and his militant movement.

"I expect [Saud] will be forthcoming, and I expect he will be coming with a message of support and commitment," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said. "And I know that they are looking at a number of ways in which they can help us, and we will welcome that help and assistance. They are good friends of ours."

Saudi Arabia is the most influential Arab country in the Persian Gulf and was a crucial member of the American-led coalition that defeated Iraq in 1991, providing staging grounds for U.S. military forces that continue to be based there.

But the ultraconservative strain of Islam that forms a central part of Saudi Arabia's national identity has also given rise to both cadres and financial supporters of the world's most militant Muslim movements, most famously bin Laden's organization, known as al Qaeda, Arabic for "the Base."

Powell yesterday delivered the administration's strongest indictment yet of bin Laden. "It is becoming clear with each passing hour, with each passing day, that it is the al Qaeda network that is the prime suspect . . . and all roads lead to the leader of that organization, Osama bin Laden, and his location in Afghanistan," he said.

Powell added, however, that the United States would not be content simply to stop bin Laden himself. "It will not be over until we have gotten into the inside of this organization, inside its decision cycle, inside its planning cycle, inside its execution capability, and until we have neutralized and destroyed it," he said.

U.S. diplomats already have sought to enlist dozens of countries in this effort. Saud is one of many foreign leaders, including officials from France, Russia, China and the European Union, who will be streaming through Washington this week in large part to discuss the U.S. reaction to the terrorist attacks.

To shape that response, the United States is looking for a new level of Saudi cooperation. FBI officials have long complained that the Saudis failed to make good on their public promises of full cooperation in probing two previous attacks. After the 1995 bombing of a Riyadh building in which five Americans died, the suspects were beheaded before U.S. agents could talk to them. FBI officials also complained that they were prevented for years from interrogating suspects in the bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex, in which 19 U.S. airmen died.

Robert Blitzer, a former top FBI counterterrorism official, said U.S.-Saudi ties could be sorely strained if Riyadh does not improve on its previous performance.

"The question is, where will they be for us now? If some number of the hijackers are Saudi nationals, and the Saudi government doesn't help us, or are reluctant, it's potentially a big strain in our political relationship," he said. "It's a problem in particular when you're dealing with an atrocity the likes of which we've never seen."

Because of the number of hijacking suspects linked to the kingdom, the extent of Saudi involvement could also be unprecedented.

Ahmed Alshehri, the former Saudi diplomat in Washington, who is now posted to India, denied to a Washington Post reporter that he was the father of two of the hijackers. But Alshehri was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying he had "no idea" whether his sons were involved in the suicide attacks. "How do I know? We have a half-million Shehris in Saudi Arabia," he said, according to the Globe.

Saudi newspapers have reported that Alshehri is, indeed, the father of two hijackers, and a U.S. expert on Saudi Arabia said yesterday that Alshehri has been estranged for years from his sons. The Saudi Embassy has not responded to repeated requests in recent days for comment about diplomatic efforts or links between Saudi citizens and the hijackings.

Two of the hijackers who commandeered the American Airlines flight that slammed into the Pentagon, Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhamzi, were also Saudi citizens. Last month, the CIA asked federal agents to place them on a "watch list" so they could be stopped at the U.S. border, but the Immigration and Naturalization Service realized they already had entered the country. The FBI failed to locate them before the attack. Authorities in Malaysia had told the CIA that Al-Midhar had been spotted with bin Laden associates involved in the bombing last fall of the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen.

Ahmed Alhaznawi, 20, who helped hijack the jet that crashed in Pennsylvania, entered this country on a Saudi passport, according to an FBI document given to German officials.

"It's interesting bin Laden has been able to either lift so many Saudi ID's, or to recruit so many Saudis, especially people who aren't the kind of poor downtrodden individuals" often associated with suicide attacks, said Gregory Gause, a leading expert on Saudi security issues at the University of Vermont. "It indicates he still has access to the kingdom in a way that troubles the security apparatus there."

Experts said, however, that there is no indication the Saudi government had any role in the bombings. Bin Laden has long called for the overthrow of the Saudi royal family and was stripped of Saudi citizenship in 1994 because of his extremist views.

A number of the hijackers claimed in applications for U.S. pilot licenses and other documents, as well as in casual conversation, that they had worked for Saudi Arabian Airlines, which is owned by the Saudi government. But Saudi officials have denied these claimed ties to the airline, saying the hijackers apparently stole the identities of Saudi citizens or created false biographies.

One example may be the hijacker named Abdulaziz Alomari, who was in the first jet to hit the World Trade Center. In documents filed with the Federal Aviation Administration, he gave an address in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and said his previous employer had been Saudi Flight Ops, which handles maintenance for the Saudi airlines at New York's Kennedy International Airport. But a man with the same name and birth date is alive and well -- and insisting on his innocence -- in Riyadh.

Saudi officials also have denied reports that Hani Hanjour, who was aboard the jet that demolished the Pentagon, had been a Saudi airlines employee. One terrorist who definitely fashioned a false background for himself was Mohamed Atta, who was an Egyptian student in Hamburg, Germany, for years before moving to the United States and apparently helping to lead the attack. Along the way, he had said he was from the United Arab Emirates, and a false Saudi passport in his name was found in luggage left at Boston's Logan International Airport.

Staff writer Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.