Another take on the Saudi Story. Slow news day? It sure was enough to give the left the "Vapors." "NRO"
August 8, 2002 9:00 a.m.
No-News News
The Saudi policy change that wasn't.
James S. Robbins
When I first read Thomas Ricks's Washington Post piece on the leaked Defense Policy Board briefing on Saudi Arabia, I gave it a shrug. Despite the dramatic impact of Saudi Arabia being described as "the kernel of evil" or that Saudi oil fields should be "targeted" if they do not do our bidding, I was not impressed. After all, many unorthodox ideas are briefed in Washington. There are think tanks churning out briefings in all the agencies that deal with national security, in Defense, State, the White House, the intelligence community, and the private sector. I have heard (and presented) a variety of unconventional ideas over the years, and most of the time these were thought pieces intended to stimulate discussion, not fully formed policy proposals. I figured this Saudi briefing fell in that category, and I did not understand what made it front-page news. I still don't.
Several factors would alert even junior observers of the policy scene that this was not an event to write home about. First, look at the venue. The Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee (its full name, abbreviated DBPAC) is a mechanism that allows the secretary of defense to draw on the expertise of people in the private sector with distinguished national-security backgrounds. The bipartisan group of no more than 30 is uncompensated, and meets about four times per year, when enough members can be assembled. It is not a policymaking body, as the Post article correctly stated, the statute setting it up states explicitly that its "sole function will be advisory." This is an important detail; the difference between "policymaking" and "advisory" is like the difference between "lightning" and "lightning bug." And even though the word "policy" is in the DBPAC's title, it is like the "Roman" in Holy Roman Empire, anyone who is paying attention knows the Romans are really Germans. However, most people outside of the Beltway can't be expected to pick up a nuance like that, and in fact they didn't.
It was also worth noting that the presenter, RAND Corporation senior international analyst Laurent Murawiec, is not (like almost all the formal DPBAC members, including chairman Richard Perle) a government official, not even a U.S. government employee. He is certainly not going to make policy single-handed. In addition, the board's membership roster contains names which, while distinguished, one would not immediately associate with the president's inner circle (e.g., Thomas Foley). So again, one questions why the Post felt this was such an important story, other than its rank sensationalism.
Note that I have no particular quarrel with the reported content of the RAND analysis as an intellectual product. Murawiec is a pretty sharp thinker. NRO readers will appreciate his essay on the foibles of his the intellectual class in his native France ("The Wacky World of French Intellectuals.")
Another reason the briefing got attention was that it was classified, which of course could imply that it contains important secret information. Not having seen the study, I have no idea if this is the case, but I would bet against it. The purpose of presenting briefings such as this in a classified environment has less to do with protecting secrets than it does with promoting robust discussion. Sometimes people explore ideas that they have not fully thought out, or present working drafts of papers not meant to be anything other than notional. This is also why many intra-government fora are held on a "non-attribution" basis, in which the views of participants may be repeated but not associated with any particular person. (For you journalists out there, it's like having an interview "on background.") It is much easier to promote a true intellectual exchange this way, rather than forcing each participant to worry that someone with an agenda to push or an ax to grind might be out there in the audience waiting to pounce. It also requires a degree of maturity and mutual respect among the people involved. Since the Ricks' article, the members of the DPBAC will have to view each other with some suspicion, unless they have an idea who the leaker is. After all, they can't all count on coming out looking heroic, like board member Henry Kissinger.
Invariably the Defense Department was described as "distancing" itself from the briefing, hardly an appropriate noun-verb, since the Pentagon had not associated itself with the views to begin with. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld addressed the question at a town-hall-style meeting with DOD employees August 6. (One could learn a great deal more about the true direction of U.S. defense policy from a careful reading of this transcript than any number of alarmist and speculative stories in the major media.) He wrote the leak off to "somebody who wanted to make themselves feel important," a particularly damning statement considering that the DPBAC members are supposed to be important to begin with. He also noted that no lives were lost, which did not excuse the criminality of the act, but reinforced the notion that whoever made the leak was not really leaking much.
The long term damage? Probably none. The article caused a minor contretemps between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, but the Saudi press reports I have seen on the issue are more measured than much of the American coverage. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faysal, who spoke to Secretary of State Colin Powell about the article, dismissed it as the product of those seeking to drive a wedge between the two countries. Yet, he also announced that U.S. troops may not launch possible future attacks against Iraq from Saudi soil. One can only speculate on the connection. However, it still leaves the question of why the Post ran the article at all, and gave it such prominence. Slow news day? Secretary Rumsfeld said he couldn't imagine why they published it, but he repeated his wife's admonition, "Don, don't forget, you have your job and they have theirs." Very true. But can't they do their job a little better?
James S. Robbins is a national-security analyst & NRO contributor.
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