By Steve Macko, ENN Editor
A study of the 25 June attack where a terrorist truck bomb at the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia where 19 U.S. airmen were killed and more than 250 others were wounded says that despite warnings of a terrorist threat, the Pentagon failed to take adequate security measures. The report was released on Monday in Washington.
A 40-man Pentagon task force that was headed by retired U.S. Army General Wayne Downing, the former commander of U.S. Special Forces, is highly critical by saying that military leaders failed to provide clear standards, adequate funding and proper attention to protect U.S. forces against what was recognized as a terrorism threat in Saudi Arabia.
Only one person was singled out by name as for bearing some blame. That was U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Terryl "Terry" Schwalier. The report said that Schwalier is said to have failed to heed warnings of a terrorist attack on the Khobar Towers in Dhahran. General Downing said that Schwalier did a reasonable job in increasing security inside of the complex, but did not do enough about security outside the gates. According to the report, Schwalier should have done more to convince the Saudis, who were responsible for security on the outside of the perimeter, to do more towards increasing security.
Downing's report also suggests that high-level inattention to security problems and also contradicts many of the explanations that U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry gave shortly after the bombing in June. This new description of serious security problems is likely to renew Congressional criticism of the Defense Secretary. President Bill Clinton received the report on Monday and called it "unvarnished, blunt and straightforward." The President promised to see through and implement the recommended improvements in security measures.
The President said, "We know we're living in a world in which terrorism is a bigger problem, in which Americans may be the target of terrorists, particularly Americans in Uniform. As we know more about what we can do to protect them, we intend to do everything we can. We're going to aggressively implement the Downing report."
Right after the report was released, Deputy Secretary of Defense John White and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, responded by emphasizing the steps that the Pentagon is taking to improve security and efforts to collect and analyze information on terrorist organizations.
White said, "Americans didn't kill these airmen. Terrorists killed these airmen. And our focus then is on what we can do in order to make sure that we minimize and protect against these kinds of enormous, complicated and sophisticated threats in the future." Downing's report describes the attack quite differently than the way Secretary Perry described to Congress a few months ago.
Among the differences are:
WARNINGS: SecDef Perry said that officials had only, in his words, "fragmentary and inconclusive" intelligence
about a possible terrorist attack.The Downing report cites ten separate suspicious incidents 90 days prior to the attack, as well as other signs that raised concerns. The report said, "While intelligence did not provide the tactical details of date, time, place and exact method of attack on Khobar Towers, a considerable body of information was available that indicated terrorists had the capability and intention to target U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia and that Khobar Towers was a potential target."
Downing, himself, also wrote, "I am concerned that insufficent attention is being given to anti-terrorism measures and force protection. Specifically, the attack with a stand-off bomb was only one of many vulnerabilities which existed at Khobar Towers and other locations visited in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region."
The retired general also said that the use of intelligence provided ample time for actions that could have decreased the severity of the attack. Downing said, "Intelligence did provide warning of the terrorist threat to U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. As a result, those responsible for force protection had both time and motivation to reduce vulnerabilities. However, it was not enough. Tactical details were needed and they could only have been provided by human intelligence."
The team that wrote the report found that U.S. intelligence capabilites in Saudi Arabia "had eroded." It was recommended that the United States "take immediate action to address this significant shortfall" by placing emphasis on more time, people and funds to develop better intelligence capabilites that can improve the forecasting of future terrorist attacks.
Downing suggested that the government "provide our forces with a state-of-the-art sensors, blast protectors, automated entry points and cargo inspection devices." A security command center which would monitor these technical devices should had been in place at the Khobar Towers complex.
BOMB: Secretary Perry described a huge and sophisticated truck bomb that was built beyond what was felt as the
capabilities of known terrorists in Saudi Arabia. The bomb essentially overwhelmed the security measures at Khobar
Towers.Attached to Downing's report was another report by the Defense Special Weapons Agency. This agency usually makes determinations of nuclear bomb blasts. It estimated that the bomb that exploded on 25 June was equivalent to 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of TNT, much larger than the bomb that destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City.
The bomb that exploded at Khobar Towers left a crater 35-feet deep and 85-feet wide. On 27 August, the four man team from Defense Special Weapons Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers test-detonated a 21,000 pound bomb that was packed in a fuel tank trailer in Fort Polk, Louisiana. Based on the results of this test-detonation, the theory that the bomb used at Dhahran was much bigger than the 3,000 to 5,000 pounds that was originally estimated. The team wrote a 300-page report on their findings.
The Defense Special Weapons Agency report said, "The unprecedented use of 20,000 pounds or more of explosives in a terrorist attack has dramatically upped the ante ... a threat of this magnitude places heavy demands on all aspects of security."
At a Monday afternoon briefing at the Pentagon, Downing dismissed the Defense Special Weapons Agence report as "inaccurate." Downing gave as evidence a soldier who was standing only 80 feet away from the bomb that exploded "and survived" with only minor injuries. Downing noted that the security guard who survived the blast suffered punctured eardrums and he also said that the explosion did not blow all the leaves off nearby plants.
Downing said, "There is no way that bomb could have been 20,000 pounds and have that man survive and have the really superficial damage that was done to some of the outlying vehicles and vegetation."
General Shalikashvili, however, stood by the Pentagon's bomb assessment. He said, "To me it's convincing. The bomb that created that kind of a damage, that kind of a crater ... must have been much larger that we even initially anticipated."
Explosives experts that were part of Downing's team estimate that the bomb was 3,000 to 8,000 pounds and only about a quarter of the size of the terrorist truck bomb that was used to kill 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut, Lebanon, on October of 1983.
SAUDI INACTION: Secretary Perry said that military officials had sought to move a security fence that was 100
feet from Khobar Towers to 400 feet for additional protection from an explosion from a bomb. However, Saudi officials
would not permit the moving of the fence.Downing said that in reality U.S. officials wanted to move the fence only 10 to 20 feet for improving observation, not further out for blast protection. U.S. officers said they did ask the Saudis for permission. The Saudis said that they were not asked. Regardless of the case, said the report, the matter should have been raised to U.S. officials at higher levels.
SECURITY MEASURES: Secretary Perry said that 130 security-related improvements had been made at
Khobar Towers before the 25 June attack. These measures were responsible, according to Perry, for saving dozens, if not
hundreds, of lives.Downing says that the security measures were not given a high priority for funding and there are no Defense Department standards for physcial security. Security is pretty much left to the base commander. Air Force Brig-Gen. Schwalier, the commander of the USAF 4404th Wing at Dhahran, apparently deferred a budget request for protective Mylar film for windows to prevent shattering glass. Twleve of the 19 people killed at the Khobar Towers died from flying glass.
Secretary Perry and other top military officials were scheduled to appear before the House National Security Committee on Wednesday.
In a cover letter that was attached to the report that was given to President Clinton, Perry reaffirmed his support for retaining General J.H. Binford Peay III, who is the commands the U.S. Central Command.
Some military commanders, and especially General Schwalier, will be in some hot water in the coming days. General Downing wrote a scathing part in the report that said, "Khobar Towers was identifed to General Schwalier as one of the three highest-priority soft targets in the region." The report noted that Schwalier, however, did not make terrorism a top priority. The report added that Schwalier contends that he "never raised to superiors force protection matters that were beyond his capability to correct."
Later, Downing said that just because a base commander knows how to fly planes, it doesn't mean he knows a great deal about securing a base against terrorist threats. Downing proposes a special Pentagon team that will support base commanders with the know-how about how to improve base security measures.