Khobar Towers Bombing - Aftermath

Aftermath

The bombing of Khobar Towers, according to the Saudi government, was carried out by “Saudi Islamic militants, including many veterans of the Afghan War.” One US official claimed that “it now seems it was not an isolated case. There is an organization of violent opponents whose members are loosely connected, organized in semi-independent cells like other violent fundamentalist movements in the Arab World.”

After the bombings at Khobar Towers, the US military and intelligence community came under heavy criticism for their lack of preparation and foresight for what was considered an intelligence failure. There were "significant shortcomings in planning, intelligence, and basic security left American forces in Saudi Arabia vulnerable."

Numerous warnings had been made available to the intelligence community and military command, and up to “ten incidences reported suggesting that the Khobar Towers are under surveillance” from April to June, 1996. These warnings came both before and after the beheadings of 4 Saudi nationals after their publicly confessed role in the November 1995 attacks in Riyadh. Clinton Administration officials admit that they “received a wave of threats against Americans and American installations in Saudi Arabia” in the weeks leading up to the attack, “but failed to prepare adequately for a bomb the size that killed 19 American military personnel." Threats were also downplayed by the Saudis when Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, who characterized acts carried out by Saudi Islamists in 1995 as “boyish” and that the “Kingdom is not influenced by threats”. As Senator Arlen Specter said, “There was no intelligence failure...there had been more than 100 intelligence reports on alerts of a general nature and very specific reports” about the threat to the Khobar Towers complex during a Senate intelligence committee meeting.

The CIA was blamed for misjudging the bomb-making capabilities of Saudi militants, thinking the bomb could not exceed 200 pounds like the one used in the November 1995 bombings in Riyadh. The bomb that detonated at Khobar was about 5,000 pounds according to official US government estimates. American commanders were also blamed, as they had not taken all of the precautions advised by the Pentagon, including covering the windows with plastic coating to prevent shrapnel, as "the project was deemed too costly."

The main security concern at the Khobar Towers compound before the bombing was to prevent a vehicle from entering the compound itself as in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing. The Pentagon's report from that incident suggested, like the Khobar report, that even a Beirut-sized bomb would have still caused significant damage from as far as 300 feet away. Officials concluded that bomb size was less important than effective proximity for producing catastrophic results.

After the blast, an assessment crew consisting of the CIA, FBI, DSS, and US Air Force investigators was dispersed to assess the risk to other security compounds in Saudi Arabia, and to offer suggestions for the Khobar Towers complex. It was suggested that Mylar tape be used to coat the windows for a barrier, but the cost, about $4.5 million, was considered prohibitive. It was also suggested that the perimeter be expanded to at least 500 feet to save servicemen from flying glass.

US and Coalition military operations at Khobar and Dhahran were subsequently relocated to Prince Sultan Air Base, a remote and highly secure Royal Saudi Air Force installation near Al-Kharj in central Saudi Arabia, approximately 70 miles from Riyadh. United States, United Kingdom and French military operations would continue at Prince Sultan until late 2003, when French forces withdrew and US and UK operations shifted to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.