Saudi PR machine
greased by millions
Islamic charities to wage big-money battle against 9-11 families' suit
December 31, 2002
Oil-rich Saudis are spending millions to fend off accusations the kingdom sponsors terrorism, both in court and in the court of public opinion.
Six Saudi Islamic charities have decided to contest the $200 trillion lawsuit filed by relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, allocating $1 million to cover initial costs, reports Riyad-based Arab News.
This announcement comes amid reports that the kingdom is breaking records with its public-relations spending in America, forking out $15 million in a six-month period this year alone.
The charities were named along with the Saudi royal family and other wealthy Saudis accused of funding terrorism in a lawsuit filed last April. More recently, U.S. authorities launched a probe of payments made by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Saudi envoy Prince Bandar, that wound up in the hands of two 9-11 hijackers.
Federal authorities, separately, have been investigating whether the Saar Foundation, which is connected to the Saudi royal family, and other Saudi groups have been laundering money to Islamic terrorist groups through U.S.-based Muslim charities. Some 80 such charities, many of them headquartered in the Washington area, received federal subpoenas for financial records.
The charity organizations named in the lawsuit met last week in Jeddah under the chairmanship of Abdullah Al-Turki, secretary-general of the Muslim World League, to map out their defense strategy. Saudi lawyer Dr. Basim Abdullah Alam will meet next week with a team of American lawyers in Europe to discuss the case.
"We will be presenting our case to the world. We are looking for fairness and justice, and if it's available in U.S. courts we will prevail," Alam told Arab News. He described his role in the case as a "duty."
"I feel it's a calling ... because I will be defending the whole existence of our life, the pride of our country and people, and mostly our religion. I feel it's a combination of dual benefits, here on earth and in the life after," he said.
As WorldNetDaily reported, Sept. 11 families seek to further document the claim that certain Saudis and Saudi-backed organizations knowingly supported the Taliban and al-Qaida. Their case will rest on the legal theory that those who knowingly fund terrorist organizations are liable for the damage done by those groups.
Families of September 11 Inc., a Washington-based group representing more than 800 deceased and surviving victims of the terror and anthrax attacks, reports the plaintiffs hired Washington gumshoe Terry Lenzner, head of Investigative Group International Inc., to probe alleged Saudi financial ties to terrorist groups. Lenzner, a former federal prosecutor and Watergate lawyer, gained more recent notoriety for working with political adviser James Carville to investigate President Clinton's enemies.
Washington legal scholar Allan Gerson has agreed to help the Sept. 11 families develop their suit against the Saudis, as he did for Pan Am Flight 103 victims in their case against Libya. Charleston, S.C., lawyer Ron Motley leads the legal team, which includes Washington lawyers Harry Huge and Tom Devine.
"It's no coincidence that 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi nationals," said Families of September 11 spokesman Stephen Push, whose wife was murdered aboard the plane that hit the Pentagon.
WorldNetDaily reported the Saudis recently launched a major public relations offensive to deflect such accusations.
"There is responsibility to go around for everyone. If you look at Sept. 11, it was conceived in Afghanistan, it was planned in Germany, it was funded in Dubai, it was executed in America and they used Saudis," declared Adel al-Jubeir, foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah at a press conference in Washington. "We believe that our country has been unfairly maligned," he said.
Al-Jubeir stressed Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are "partners" in the war on terror and maintain a close working relationship that the Saudis have proposed to expand. He announced 33 accounts belonging to three individuals and one institution were closed due to suspected ties to terrorists and that the Saudi government was looking at more individuals and entities.
He also said the Saudi government has questioned over 2,000 people, currently holds more than 100 in detention, extradited 16 people from Iran to Saudi Arabia, and broke up an al-Qaida cell run by a Sudanese that was behind an attempt to use a shoulder-launched missile at Prince Sultan Air Base.
Over the weekend, Saudi officials reportedly relented on the issue of allowing the U.S. to use its air bases as a launching pad for any military campaign against Iraq.
Saudi Arabia is sparing no cost to mount its public charm offensive. The New York Sun reports the kingdom forked over $14.6 million to Qorvis Communications during one six-month period this year. The amount eclipses the previous record for a foreign agent of $14.2 million set more than a decade ago by a front group called Citizens for a Free Kuwait, as it tried to drum up support for the Gulf War.
"That number is jaw-dropping," the executive director for the Center for Public Integrity, Charles Lewis, told the Sun. "That's an astonishing amount of money for not just any foreign agent, but for any PR firm to receive anywhere under any context."
The Saudi front group is known as Alliance for Peace and Justice, according to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, who first reported the PR financing.
O'Dwyer's examination of the Qorvis filings with the federal government shows it was paid by the Alliance in part with a $679,000 "bridge loan" received through the Saudi Embassy in America. The group's permanent funding comes from the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry's Committee for the Development of International Trade in Riyadh.
The largest expenses were for a series of television advertisements that ran in the spring, seeking to reassure Americans that Saudi Arabia was an ally in the war on terror. Qorvis not only helped produce the advertisements, but also arranged interviews between Saudi spokesman Al-Jubeir and media heavyweights at network news and national newspaper outlets.
The money invested isn't paying off, according to executive director of the Saudi Institute, Ali Al-Ahmed who said American opinion of the Saudis has worsened.
"They’re getting nothing. It’s burning money," he said. "We have a saying in Saudi Arabia: You can't cover the sun with a shroud," the Sun quotes Al-Ahmed as saying.
Pat Roush, who has been fighting to bring her two abducted American daughters back from Saudi Arabia slammed the Saudi PR campaign as a gross misuse of money.
"Instead of obfuscating the truth with disinformation and lies, why don’t they just return American citizens to America and let them decide where they want to live?" she said.
As WND reported, Roush's ex-husband and the father of their children – Khalid al-Gheshayan – defied a court order and abducted Alia and Aisha al-Gheshayan, then 7 and 3 respectively, from Roush's suburban Chicago home in 1986.
Al-Gheshayan took the girls back to Saudi Arabia, where women have substantially fewer rights, and has prevented them from leaving. Both girls expressed a desire to return to the U.S., Roush said, but repeatedly have been denied visas and passports by the Saudi government, even though they are considered American citizens allegedly being held against their will.
Roush recently went up against a collection of lawyers representing Saudi Arabia in a hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which is looking into the matter.
The Sun reports the size of the Saudi account at Qorvis has taken a toll. Earlier this month, three Qorvis founders left the firm to take jobs elsewhere. Publicly, they said the Saudi account had nothing to do with their departure, but friends and associates reportedly said they had grown increasingly disturbed by the work the firm was doing.
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