Consultants representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have been spotted making the rounds on Capitol Hill and passing around literature to promote the country’s record fighting terrorism.
The lobbying push comes amid renewed scrutiny over the Saudi government’s role in the 9/11 terror attacks, and whether the country can be sued by families of the victims.
“The effort here is to display how the Saudis are working lockstep with the US on the financial, operational and ideological fronts in countering extremism and fighting terror,” one lobbyist told The Hill. They claimed that critics of Saudi Arabia have descended into “conspiracy theory territory.”
The documents being circulated to lawmakers’ offices at the behest of the Saudi Kingdom include an analysis of the classified 28 pages of the congressional 9/11 inquiry. The secret section reportedly implicates members of Saudi society in planning the attacks, but the literature prepared by lobbyists attempts to refute the charges, by claiming investigators came up empty handed during their probe of Saudi ties.
Paid consultants are also circulating on Capitol Hill a 104-page report touting Saudi Arabia’s record in countering terrorism.
The flurry of activity comes a week after the Senate unanimously passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). The proposal would open up US courts for American victims of terror to sue nations found to be responsible for attacks.
A companion bill in the House is currently under consideration in the Judiciary Committee. The White House has threatened to veto the legislation.
Foreign countries that aren’t considered by the US government to be state sponsors of terror currently enjoy considerable sovereign immunity, in litigation involving allegations of support for violent militancy.
Evidence of Saudi involvement of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon may be gleaned from the classified 28 pages of the 9/11 report, should they ever be released to the public. The Obama administration claims the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is currently working on a declassification review.
Appearing on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal Tuesday morning, Rep. Rick Nolan (D-Minn.) said that he’s read the classified portion of the report and that “it’s not hyperbole, it’s factual.”
“I wish I could talk about it,” he said. “I know who did the financing and who sent the money and what their bank accounts were and what they sent.”
Rep. Nolan added that “we went to war on some very erroneous and mistaken notions.”
Last week, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) made similar comments about the contents of the 28 pages, stating that they should be released so that victims can “discover the chain of culpability or liability.”
“It may damage our relations with other countries—so be it, the truth needs to get out,” Rep. Massie added.
A Foreign Affairs Subcommittee is slated to hold a hearing on Tuesday afternoon examining the US-Saudi counterterror relationship. The panel’s chairman, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) said he wants to focus the proceedings on lingering questions from the September 2001 terror attacks.
“We will have a hearing and find out one way or the other if the Saudi government — members of the Saudi government — helped in any way in the 9/11 attack,” he said in an interview last week at the Center for Security Policy.
“I’m not saying they did, but we’re going to find out — and also whether the Saudi government has had any relationship with terrorist financing since then,” Poe added.
