Word: khobar
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...long-running feud between the FBI and prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington over the investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing case has spilled nastily into public view with a blast from outgoing U.S. Attorney Wilma Lewis at FBI Director Louis Freeh and the Ashcroft Justice Department...
...firmly established. Like their Saudi neighbors, the Yemenis are under strong domestic pressure to avoid being seen as doing the handiwork of the United States, whose Middle East policy has made it the target of considerable Arab anger. In the case of the Saudi investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, that resulted in a quick trial and execution of local suspects without U.S. investigators ever having access to them, leaving the question of that attack's ultimate authorship unresolved. And observers suspect the USS Cole investigation may be destined to go the same...
...Yemeni attitude naturally sets off alarm bells for U.S. law enforcement personnel who recall their deeply frustrating experiences with the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Despite diplomatic pressure from Washington, the Saudis never allowed U.S. personnel access to the suspects they tried and summarily executed for their part in carrying out the truck bomb attack that killed 19 U.S. military personnel. U.S. investigators, however, have been quick to point out that the Yemeni experience has been nothing like the stonewalling by the Saudis; only that it has fallen well short of what has been requested...
...fact is, Pentagon brass have received warnings about the vulnerability of Fifth Fleet warships since at least 1996, following the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. More damaging fallout may emerge from probes into why the Cole was refueling in Aden in the first place. An Administration official said the U.S. was aware of "a general uptick in activity" in the past month among rogue groups hoping to use Arab-Israeli tensions as a justification for mischief. Yemen is a fertile staging ground for such mischief; the country is one of the world's poorest, and the government wields little...
Beyond the sheer number of possible suspects, the investigation may be bedeviled by uncooperative Yemeni authorities. After the Khobar Towers bombing, Saudi police allowed FBI agents neither to examine the physical evidence nor to apprehend suspects, making retaliation against Iran, which Administration officials believe ordered the attack, politically impossible. The signs from the Yemeni government last week were not encouraging. President Ali Abdullah Saleh not only refused to acknowledge that the Cole bombing, and a Thursday-night grenade attack on the British embassy in San'a, might be the work of terrorists; he went so far as to declare, "Yemen...