By William D. Hartung
The Progressive
April 1, 1996


We were shocked and saddened to hear about the attacks
in Saudi Arabia and the deaths of at least 91 people
there, including ten Americans.

But the fact that one of the targets was a U.S. private
military corporation called Vinnell raises serious
questions about the role of "executive mercenaries," and
corporations who profit from war and instability. This
is the second time in eight years that Vinnell's
operations in Saudi Arabia have been the target of a
terrorist attack. In 1995 a car bomb blasted through an
Army training program Vinnell was involved with. The
following year, Bill Hartung, a Senior Fellow at the
World Policy Institute wrote this article for the
Progressive magazine.

The sanitized version of American foreign policy asserts
that the United States is hard at work promoting
democratic values around the world in the face of
attacks from totalitarian ideologies ranging from
communism during the Cold War to Islamic fundamentalism
today. Every once in a while an incident occurs that
contradicts this reassuring rhetoric by revealing the
secret underside of American policy, which is far more
concerned with propping up pliable regimes that serve
the interests of U.S. multinational corporations than it
is with any meaningful notion of democracy. The November
13, 1995 bombing of the Saudi Arabian National Guard
(SANG) headquarters and an adjacent building housing a
U.S. military training mission is one such incident.

President Clinton tried to paint the bombing as just
another senseless act of terrorism perpetrated by armed
Islamic extremists, but the target was chosen much too
carefully to support that simple explanation. The Saudi
National Guard is a 55,000 man military force whose main
job is to protect the Saudi monarchy from its own
people, using arms from the United States and training
supplied by roughly 750 retired U.S. military and
intelligence personnel employed by the Vinnell
Corporation of Fairfax, Virginia. A January 1996 article
in Jane's Defence Weekly describes the SANG as "a kind
of Praetorian Guard for the House of Saud, the royal
family's defence of last resort against internal
opposition." The November bombing -- which killed five
Americans and wounded thirty more -- was certainly
brutal, but it was far from senseless. As a retired
American military officer familiar with Vinnell's
operations put it,

"I don't think it was an accident that it was that
office that got bombed. If you wanted to make a
political statement about the Saudi regime you'd single
out the National Guard, and if you wanted to make a
statement about American involvement you'd pick the only
American contractor involved in training the guard:
Vinnell."

The story of how an obscure American company ended up
becoming the Saudi monarchy's personal protection
service is a case study in how the United States
government has come to rely on unaccountable private
companies and unrepresentative foreign governments to do
its dirty work on the world stage, short-circuiting
democracy at home and abroad in the process. In the wake
of the Iran/contra scandal and the end of the Cold War,
many observers of U.S. foreign policy have assumed that
this penchant for covert policymaking has been put
aside, but Vinnell's role in Saudi Arabia puts the lie
to that comforting assumption.

To borrow a phrase from one of Vinnell's former
presidents, the company didn't start out as a "spook
outfit" when it was founded in 1931 as a small Los
Angeles area construction company. The firm's early
growth was tied to contracts for the LA freeway system.
Indeed, some of Vinnell's best known projects are
decidedly civilian in character, including work on the
Grand Coulee Dam and the construction of LA's Dodger
Stadium (Brooklyn Dodger fans take note). But by the end
of World War II, the company was already dabbling in
military and intelligence work. Vinnell's first overseas
contract involved shipping supplies to Chinese
Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek as part of his futile
attempt to beat back the revolutionary forces of Mao
Tse-Tung. The company soon embarked on a booming
military construction business in Asia, building
military airfields in Okinawa, Taiwan, Thailand, South
Vietnam, and Pakistan.

Vinnell's Asian adventures served as a springboard for
its emergence as a global company that was more than
willing to do a little intelligence work on the side if
the opportunity presented itself. In his memoir Ropes of
Sand, former CIA operative Wilbur Crane Eveland
describes how he used his Vinnell connection as a cover
during his tours of duty in Africa and the Middle East
in the early 1960s, noting that company founder Albert
Vinnell expressed his willingness to help the agency do
whatever it needed to do (for a fee, of course). Eveland
returned the favor by negotiating contracts for Vinnell
to do construction services on oil fields in Iran and
Libya, bribing the appropriate officials along the way.

Vinnell's big break in the military/intelligence field
came during the American intervention in Vietnam, when
the company won hundreds of millions of dollars of
business doing everything from building military bases
to repairing armored personnel carriers to running
military warehouses. At the peak of its involvement
Vinnell had 5,000 employees in Vietnam, but not all of
them were engaged in straightforward military
operations. Several retired Army and Marine officers
familiar with Vinnell's work in Vietnam have indicated
that the company ran several "black" (secret) programs.
In a March 1975 interview with the Village Voice, a
Pentagon official described Vinnell as "our own little
mercenary army in Vietnam" and asserted that "we used
them to do things we either didn't have the manpower to
do ourselves, or because of legal problems." The
official indicated that one of Vinnell's jobs was as
"rear security forces," assigned to "clean up" U.S.
military bases in Vietnam during the U.S. withdrawal:
"how they 'cleaned up' was pretty much up to them.... If
we figured an area was certain to be overrun by the VC
[Viet Cong].... they were to demolish everything and
anything."

The last thing that Vinnell nearly demolished in Vietnam
was its own financial viability. The company had
apparently poured all of its resources into the war
effort, and it had very little to fall back on when the
war ended. Vinnell posted losses every year from 1970
through 1974, and in January 1975 the company filed a
reorganization plan with the California Department of
Corporations in which it proposed to sell voting control
in the company to a Lebanese investor for the modest sum
of $500,000. With these dismal financial figures looming
in the background, the firm's February 1975 contract for
$77 million to train the Saudi National Guard brought
Vinnell back from the brink of bankruptcy.

The Vinnell/Saudi training deal drew considerable fire,
both in the press and on Capitol Hill. On February 9,
1975 Peter Arnett filed a piece for the Associated Press
that raised questions about the propriety of a private
U.S. company serving as a hired protection service for
an undemocratic regime. When Maas asked one of Vinnell's
men in Riyadh whether he viewed himself as a mercenary,
the question drew a classic bureaucratic response: "We
are not mercenaries because we are not pulling the
triggers. We train people to pull the triggers. Maybe
that makes us executive mercenaries."

This setup was a bit too blatant even for the more
hawkish members of Congress. Senators Henry ("the
Senator from Boeing") Jackson and Armed Services
Committee Chairman John Stennis of Mississippi demanded
hearings on the contract, which Jackson purported to
find "completely baffling." Meanwhile, a reform-minded
young Congressman from Wisconsin named Les Aspin aired
charges that the $77 million Saudi contract may have
been greased with a $4.5 million payment to middleman
Ghassn Shaker, the very same Lebanese businessman that
Vinnell was trying to give a controlling interest in the
company at a cut rate price. The hearings were held and
Shaker was dissuaded from buying a controlling interest
in Vinnell, but the contract to train the Saudi National
Guard was allowed to stand.

By 1979, when a rebellion rocked the Saudi regime and
opposition forces occupied the Grand Mosque at Mecca,
Vinnell's "executive mercenaries" were called out from
behind the scenes onto the front lines. The Washington
Post reported at the time that in the final stages of
the storming of the mosque, the Saudi princes who were
running the military operation relied on "advice from
the large U.S. military training mission" (including
Vinnell contract employees) and were "in frequent
telephone contact with U.S. officials." Counterspy
magazine further reported that when the initial National
Guard assault failed, Vinnell personnel were brought to
Mecca to "provide the tactical support needed to capture
the Mosque."

During the 1980s, things returned to "normal" in Saudi
Arabia, with strict controls on freedom of expression,
harsh repression of the rights of women, public
beheadings of common criminals, and the maintenance of a
fiercely anti-communist, pro-U.S. foreign policy. (These
same practices continue to this day). Vinnell's role as
the regime's principal security "prop" was barely
discussed in the U.S. media, but the company did figure
indirectly in the biggest intelligence scandal of the
decade, Iran/contra. Lt. Col. Richard Gadd, who went on
to become the chief operations officer for Ollie North
and Richard Secord's private weapons air drop service
for the contras, was hired by Vinnell for his first job
out of the Air Force. According to Steven Emerson's 1988
book Secret Warriors, Gadd's work at Vinnell involved
setting up a private, "black" air transport service
called Sumairco which was to be dedicated solely to
secret U.S. army operations. Gadd left Vinnell after a
few months, taking Sumairco with him. He also used his
brief stopover at Vinnell to get started on two other
"special services" companies, American National
Management and Eagle Aviation Services, which were
secretly involved in such major operations as the 1983
U.S. invasion of Grenada.

That someone like Gadd would use Vinnell as his
transition from serving in the armed forces to joining
the netherworld of private companies involved in covert
operations on behalf of the U.S. government is not
surprising. Although Vinnell is one of literally
hundreds of companies that do work for the CIA and
military intelligence agencies, its strong ties to Saudi
Arabia and its experience in military training and
logistics make it a central players in this still
burgeoning field.

Today, the biggest question regarding Vinnell's ongoing
operations is the same one that was posed twenty years
ago: why is a U.S. company using retired U.S. military
and intelligence personnel to defend a corrupt monarchy
in Saudi Arabia? It's obvious what's in it for the
monarchy: protection from rebels and democrats who might
want to change the kingdom's form of government. On this
front, Vinnell must be busier than ever: Human Rights
Watch reported that in 1994, "Saudi Arabia witnessed the
largest roundup in recent history of opposition
activists and a new low in the dismal human rights
record of the Kingdom." The organization's report for
1995 cited "further deterioration in human rights
observance," including a harsh crackdown on peaceful
Islamist organizations. Political parties and
demonstrations are outlawed, there is no independent
free press, and there has been a systematic crackdown on
peaceful Islamic dissenters.

The lengths to which the Saudi regime will go to prevent
critical information from reaching its subjects were
underscored in January of 1996 when Saudi officials
tried to get Britain to deport Mohammed al-Mas'ari,
whose Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights has
been faxing critical reports about the Riyadh government
to contacts within Saudi Arabia from its offices in
London. The none to subtle message conveyed to
Conservative Prime Minister John Major's government was
that if Mas'ari was allowed to continue operating from
Britain, Britain's future arms sales and other
commercial contracts with Saudi Arabia might suffer.
While Mas'ari's democratic credentials have been
questioned in some U.S. media assessments of the case,
his message is clear enough -- he told the New York
Times in late January that "The Saudi regime is a mafia
that has enormous wealth under its control and doesn't
want to give it up. We want to have an elected,
accountable government with a real rule of law and an
independent judiciary."

The Saudi government obviously feels threatened enough
by statements of this sort to make Mr. Mas'ari's
presence in London into an international incident.
Supporters of Mr. Mas'ari's organization operating
within Saudi Arabia are treated even more harshly. On
August 11, 1995, the Saudi government beheaded Abdalla
al-Hudhaif, a supporter of CDLR who was convicted by a
secret tribunal of offenses ranging from firearms
possession to distributing critical leaflets to
allegedly throwing acid at a security officer. Human
Rights Watch notes that this last allegation against Mr.
al-Haif is the only violent incident alleged against the
peaceful Islamist opposition in Saudi Arabia during the
government's ongoing crackdown on their activities. With
peaceful means of expressing disagreement with the
current Saudi ruling circle so systematically blocked,
violent outbursts like the bombing of the Saudi National
Guard headquarters are more likely to occur, and to be
met in turn by violent repression by Saudi Arabia's
Vinnell-trained internal security forces.

As for Vinnell and its employees, their main interest in
Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly the money. A retired Marine
officer who did five years with Vinnell in Saudi Arabia
reports that he was able to save up several hundred
thousand dollars to buy a retirement home in cash. An
official familiar with the work of another U.S. firm
that recently got a contract to train the Saudi Navy
says that employees at the firm "feel like they've died
and gone to heaven, because the Saudis will never run
out of money." The myth of Saudi Arabia as a bottomless
source of cash has worn thin lately as tens of billions
of weapons purchases from the United States plus the
cost of the 1991 Gulf War have driven the Saudi budget
into deficit for the first time ever, but Vinnell's
contract is safe as long as the current Saudi ruling
clique stays in power (it was recently renewed through
1998). If anything, Vinnell's fortunes may improve in
the short-term, now that King Fahd has stepped aside for
health reasons, leaving the reins of government in the
hands of his brother, Crown Prince Abdullah ibn
Abdulaziz, who also happens to run the National Guard.
Jane's Defense Weekly has speculated that the guard may
be built up even faster now as a way of enhancing Crown
Prince Abdullah's personal power base, which will no
doubt mean bigger contracts for Vinnell as well.

But is what's good for the Saudi monarchy and its chosen
protection service good for the people of the United
States or Saudi Arabia? The short answer is no, but the
U.S. government has exerted considerable energy trying
to convince us that we're all in this mess together and
that Americans have no choice but to support the Saudi
monarchy.

It's true that the Saudi regime provides a wide array of
economic and political services to the U.S. government
and U.S. corporations, but most of these services have
little to do with promoting either democracy or
prosperity for the citizens of the United States or
Saudi Arabia. The Saudis provide access to their oil
resources to U.S. firms on extremely favorable terms,
and adjust their pricing policies within OPEC in ways
that support U.S. interests. For years, a significant
portion of Saudi "petrodollar" revenues have been
invested in U.S. government bonds, helping ease the
burden of the growing U.S. budget deficit (the tradeoff
is that taxpayers have been asked to spend hundreds of
billions of dollars to build a U.S. military force that
can get to the Middle East on short notice to defend
regimes such as the Saudi monarchy from threats from
without or within).

In the realm of secret wheeling and dealing, the Saudis
have not shied from putting up money for joint covert
operations with the U.S., from arming the Afghan rebels
to providing funds to Oliver North's Iran/contra
"enterprise." According to the Washington Post, the
latest U.S.-Saudi joint venture has been a secret
initiative to provide over $300 million for covert
weapons supplies to the Bosnian government during the
period of the UN embargo on that nation. Although
Clinton Administration officials have denied involvement
in this scheme, it would be consistent with other U.S.
actions of the past several years, such as looking the
other way as planeloads of weapons were dropped in the
area. What is certain is that Saudi Arabia will be
approached about providing funds to train Bosnian Muslim
forces in the context of the current NATO intervention
to police the Dayton accords. A source with contacts
within the Vinnell Corporation has indicated that the
State Department has encouraged Vinnell to bid on the
contract to train the Bosnian forces. Vinnell's parent
company, BDM, which bought the firm in 1993 to expand
its market niche in military training services, already
has a contract to provide 500 translators for NATO
peacekeeping forces in Bosnia.

The Cold War is over, and the culture of deception and
covert dealing represented by the Vinnell Corporation's
role in Saudi Arabia should be brought to and end with
it. Nothing of value can come from sustaining the
secretive network of companies and relationships that
has fueled scandal after scandal and cost thousands of
innocent lives. Even advocates of a U.S. military role
in Bosnia have to take pause at the recent revelations
of covert activities on the part of the U.S. and its
ally, Saudi Arabia, in arming Bosnian forces. If true,
the secret violation of the arms embargo on Bosnia will
take its place alongside a long line of examples of U.S.
government hypocrisy, from the secret arming of Iran and
Iraq in the 1980s to the cover-up of the U.S. role in
the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans by
Pentagon backed military forces and CIA-backed death
squads from the 1960s through the 1990s. The common
thread uniting these operations is the use of private
companies and shadowy intelligence operatives to subvert
the publicly stated objectives of U.S. policy,
undermining democratic accountability in the process.

The policy of using Vinnell trainers and U.S. arms
supplies to keep the Saudi monarchy in power can not be
sustained indefinitely. For one thing, the money's
running out. The lavish social programs that have been
used to buy off dissent are being cut sharply to make
room for continuing expenditures on advanced American,
French, and British weaponry. A number of security
analysts are beginning the speak of Saudi Arabia as the
"next Iran," -- a top-heavy, corrupt monarchy that is in
danger of being overthrown by its own people if it fails
to implement major reforms soon. And as one confidential
financial advisor to the Saudis told the New York Times,
the U.S. policy of pushing weapons and military
solutions over democratization and social reform may be
the greatest single threat to the survival of the House
of Saud:

"People think we have this great gold mine in Saudi
Arabia . . . I don't think the U.S. government realizes
what it is doing by shoving weapons down the Saudi's
throats. They're forgetting that what they're doing is
creating instability in Saudi Arabia. That could be the
greatest risk to Saudi security."

The people of Saudi Arabia will eventually demand and
receive a measure of input into how their government is
run and how their resources are utilized. Whether that
change comes about through a revolution led by Islamic
fundamentalists or an evolution towards democracy will
depend in significant part on whether U.S. policy
continues to back the monarchy to the hilt or press for
a political opening that allows for peaceful change.

If the Saudi monarchy is overthrown, will Vinnell be put
in charge of "cleaning up" all the sensitive U.S.-built
military and intelligence facilities in Saudi Arabia as
it was during the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam? Or will
the American public head off that day by demanding that
our government get out of the dictator protection racket
and allow the possibility of genuine democratic
development in Saudi Arabia?

William D. Hartung is a Senior Fellow at the World
Policy Institute at the New School for Social Research
in New York City and the author of And Weapons for All
(HarperCollins, 1995).