THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 17, 1996 TAG: 9609170280
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: 128 lines
Haphazard organization and inattentive commanders from the Middle East to the Pentagon helped make U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia vulnerable to the June 25 terrorist attack that killed 19 airmen in Dhahran, an official investigation concluded Monday.
But while accepting the recommendations of a special task force, Defense Secretary William J. Perry did not immediately discipline or reprimand any of the uniformed leaders responsible for protecting American forces in the region.
Indeed, he issued a ringing defense of the overall regional commander, Army Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III.
Possible disciplinary actions against Air Force commanders directly responsible for the Khobar Towers apartment complex were referred to the Air Force for further investigations.
At the White House, President Clinton said the report provided an ``unvarnished, blunt, straight-forward'' assessment of the Khobar attack. He promised ``to do everything we can'' to protect troops in the field.
Perry ordered Peay and other regional military commanders worldwide to review their anti-terrorism arrangements in light of the task force findings. Those commanders also must make quarterly reports to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on any activities under their jurisdiction that fail to meet a new set of standards for ``force protection.''
The review, officials suggested, will include a fresh assessment of the terrorist threat to bases like those scattered across Hampton Roads. Virtually all restrictions on daytime access to the Norfolk Naval Base, the region's largest military installation, were lifted last November.
Leave policies for sailors, soldiers and airmen deployed abroad also will be reviewed, a Pentagon spokesman said. The United Arab Emirates, another Arab state, is the most frequent liberty port for American forces worldwide; a Pentagon spokesman said about 100,000 U.S. troops visit the UAE each year.
Perry ordered Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to oversee the intensified anti-terrorism effort. And Shalikashvili said he has directed the Norfolk-based U.S. Atlantic Command to develop an anti-terrorism training program for all U.S. military personnel.
An Atlantic Command spokesman said force protection ``is central to the planning of everything we do.''
A draft plan for the training program already has been forwarded to Shalikashvili and soon will be circulated down the chain of command for comment, the spokesman added.
The report released Monday, prepared by a task force led by retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing, faulted Peay's U.S. Central Command for failing to set standards for protecting troops in the Middle East.
It also said Central Command leaders headquartered in Tampa, Fla., are too distant from the Middle East to adequately oversee security efforts there.
But in a letter to Clinton, Perry said Peay has ``my strong support. . . He is one of our most experienced combat officers and I can think of no better commander to have in charge of the (Central Command) region.''
The report also suggested that Air Force Brig. Gen. Teryl J. ``Terry'' Schwalier, who was directly responsible for safety at Khobar Towers, was not sufficiently focused on terrorist threats.
The report said Schwalier worked to ensure that terrorists could not get inside the complex but did not ``raise the issue of expanding the perimeter or security outside of the fence with his Saudi counterparts.''
The Pentagon had suggested earlier that Saudi officials stalled American requests to move the security fence to a line some 400 feet from Khobar's Building 131, the target of the attack.
There was some discussion about moving the fence a few feet and clearing away vegetation growing around it, the report said, so that guards atop the building could more closely watch the area. The small movement that was contemplated in those talks would not have significantly reduced the damage of the June 25 attack, the report indicated.
The task force said Schwalier ``never raised to his superiors force protection matters that were beyond his capability to correct.'' And writing a summary of his one-year tenure on the morning before the bombing, Schwalier never mentioned force protection, the report noted.
Meeting with reporters, Downing declined to address questions about the culpability of officials further up the chain of command, including Perry and Shalikashvili. But the report complains of Perry's failure, before Monday, to set standards for force protection.
``I am concerned that insufficient attention is being given to anti-terrorism measures and force protection,'' Downing wrote Perry in a cover letter to the report.
Perry was out of the country when the report was released, having been dispatched to the Middle East over the weekend to round up support for a new round of American action against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
But Deputy Defense Secretary John White tried to deflect questions about whether his boss should have done more to deter the Khobar attack, reminding reporters that ``Americans didn't kill these airmen. Terrorists killed these Americans.''
The task force also found that:
Air Force deployments to the Middle East have been kept too short. Some personnel are sent to the region for as little as two weeks, the report said, hurting ``the continuity and effectiveness of force protection teams.''
A decision to lengthen deployments would have major implications for personnel stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton. Airmen from Langley's 1st Fighter Wing routinely rotate through Saudi Arabia; a contingent assigned to take up residence in Building 131 was en route to Dhahran on the day of the bombing.
U.S. intelligence agencies gave repeated warnings about increased terrorist threats in Saudi Arabia and warned that the Khobar Towers complex was particularly vulnerable. But the military intelligence community ``lacks sufficient in-depth, long-term analysis of trends, intentions and capabilities of terrorists,'' the report asserted.
Security forces assigned to U.S. embassies in the Middle East are insufficient to protect noncombatant American forces in the area.
The United States needs to make better use of new technologies that are available to limit terrorist attacks and the damage they cause. Israel, Britain and France, for example, have developed more effective blast shields than the concrete ``Jersey barriers'' America typically uses. The Jersey barriers are similar to the low walls erected on interstate highways to protect construction areas.
The Khobar Towers bomb probably contained about 5,000 pounds of explosives. U.S. officials have said their anti-terrorism planning focused on dealing with a smaller device, weighing 200 pounds or less, but the report concluded that even a bomb that small would have killed up to 11 troops if set off at the Khobar site.
Shalikashvili asserted Monday that other Pentagon experts now believe the Khobar bomb weighed up to 20,000 pounds. Downing dismissed that suggestion, noting that one airman only 80 feet from the blast site survived the explosion with minor injuries.
``There is no way'' anyone so close could live through the detonation of a 20,000-pound bomb, Downing asserted. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Defense Secretary William J. Perry ordered the chairman of the Joint
Chiefs to oversee an intensified anti-terrorism effort.
KEYWORDS: SAUDI ARABIA BOMBING U.S. AIR FORCE REPORT by CNB