Why Cover for Saudi Arabia?

Christopher A. Preble

Security, Saudi Arabia

The "28 pages" controversy is only the latest refusal to speak honestly with the public about our less pleasant friends.

President Obama reportedly “cleared the air” with Saudi officials during his visit to the Kingdom earlier this week. We should all ask when he’ll do the same with the American people.

I’m speaking, of course, about the Obama administration’s refusal to declassify the infamous twenty-eight pages from a 2002 joint congressional inquiry into intelligence failures surrounding the September 11 attacks. The Bush administration redacted the pages before release—allegedly “for reasons of national security”—and its successor has so far concurred with this decision. Many of those who have seen the concealed passages have called for them to be released to the public, including the two cochairs of the joint congressional inquiry, former Florida Senator Bob Graham and former Congressman Porter Goss.

Goss—who served as CIA director after his tenure in Congress, and who worked in the Agency’s Directorate of Operations, the clandestine service, for over ten years—understands the importance of keeping secrets. We can therefore speculate that the blacked-out pages are not concealing sensitive sources and methods, otherwise Goss wouldn’t favor their release. Rather, the twenty-eight pages seem emblematic of a broader problem in U.S. foreign policy: namely, the inability and/or unwillingness of U.S. government officials to speak honestly with the American people about the nature of the governments and individuals with whom they choose to cooperate.

There is a rather long-running tradition of U.S. presidents engaging in subterfuge, misdirection and/or outright deception about such matters. And some of these associations with undemocratic, shady and/or brutal leaders might have been justifiable under the circumstances. During World War II, for example, President Roosevelt referred to Joseph Stalin as gentle “Uncle Joe” to polish the Soviet leader’s public persona in the United States.