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Dick Morris: Khobar Probe Sacrificed for Oil
Ex-president Bill Clinton didn't press Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to help with the FBI's investigation into the June 1996 Khobar Towers bombing because he feared Abdullah would hike oil prices and hurt his re-election chances, according to former top Clinton advisor Dick Morris. "Clinton was obsessed with gas prices," he recalls, in a column in Tuesday's New York Post. "We would talk about them all the time. Every poll probed the issue and measured the level of popular animosity over their increase and the extent to which Clinton himself was blamed." In the spring of 1996, oil prices began to spike - causing re-election jitters in the Oval Office. Morris recalled that in one-on-one meetings with his boss, Clinton would tell him, "If gas goes down or stays the same, I'll be OK. But if it goes up, I'm cooked."
Story Continues Below "In direct and indirect ways," says Morris, "Clinton sent messages to the Saudi monarchy: If you want to help me, you'll increase oil production and hold down prices." At the time, recalls the former Clinton advisor, he was not aware that Clinton was going easy on the Saudi royal family as they stonewalled FBI requests to interview key witnesses in the Khobar case - an allegation leveled last week by former FBI director Louis Freeh. But looking back, Morris says, it all makes sense. "For Clinton to have picked up the phone and demanded that the Saudis let the FBI question their suspects would have risked annoying them by implying skepticism about their toughness on terrorism. And Clinton could not risk alienating Riyadh." Instead - even as Clinton was publicly vowing to hunt the Khobar killers to the ends of the earth - he was signaling the Saudis, Morris said, that the Khobar probe was not his top priority; gas prices were." Riyadh got the message. Morris noted that "as the summer faded, oil production rose and the price began to level off and then return to normal. Clinton was very relieved."
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Clinton Scandals
Inside Cover Stories
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