U.S. military commanders underestimated the terrorist threat in Saudi Arabia and were slow to improve security measures before the fatal June 25 bombing in Dhahran, Defense Secretary William Perry said Tuesday.
He told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing into the bombing that killed 19 U.S. airmen that officials were misled by intelligence reports and a smaller-scale attack on U.S. troops in a National Guard facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last November."Why, in the face of serious concern about force protection and extensive measures to improve force protection, did the Khobar Towers tragedy occur?" said Perry, referring to the Dhahran apartment complex where thousands of U.S. service members live.
"First of all, the security measures we introduced after the bombing of the Saudi National Guard facility were focused on a threat less powerful than actually occurred," he said. "Secondly . . . our local commanders, for a variety of reasons, had not completed some of the measures that were prescribed and which they agreed needed to be done."
Perry described the voluminous intelligence on terrorism in the Persian Gulf as "spotty and inconclusive," leaving military commanders with a difficult task in knowing what to plan for.
Two top military commanders accompanying Perry painted a grim picture of the terrorism threat in the Persian Gulf. They said it would not go away and that terrorists would always look for the weak point in the security protecting U.S. forces. All three defended the "vital" U.S. mission in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.
"We must face one hard fact: we will have more terrorist incidents," said Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Gen. Binford Peay III, the four-star Army general who heads the U.S. Central Command, the headquarters based in Tampa, Fla., that is responsible for Saudi Arabia, defended his own actions and those of his subordinates in the months leading up to the June attack.
Intelligence information available at Central Command headquarters was fully shared with commanders in Saudi Arabia, Peay said. A review of the intelligence surrounding the Khobar Towers complex "reveals an increase in suspected surveillance but no clear indication of an impending major terrorist attack," he said.