Americans Saudi Arabia

There used to be a rule of thumb at American diplomatic receptions here: If you want 20 Saudis to show up, invite 100. If you want 50, send out 300 invitations. Call them several times to make sure they are coming. Things had a way of not clicking. There was the time they invited a jazz combo to play George Gershwin, and the Saudis complained about "Jew music."

The U.S. investigation of a 1996 terrorist bombing that killed 19 American servicemen in Saudi Arabia has languished due to mutual mistrust, the New York Times has reported. The newspaper said FBI Director Louis J. Freeh has quietly pulled out dozens of agents the agency sent to investigate the truck bombing. The June 1996 blast occurred at the Khobar Towers apartment complex after a fuel truck carrying tons of explosives detonated outside.

King Fahd has good reason to worry these days as Saudi Arabia's era of easy money wanes and the voices of opposition grow. The kingdom is under fire from human rights organizations for carrying out a record 180 beheadings this year. The religious right is growing feistier, and the left is questioning the notion that development is an acceptable alternative to democracy. Shiite riots in nearby Bahrain and a palace coup in Qatar serve as reminders of the vulnerability of monarchies.

Five Americans died and dozens of people were injured Monday when a bomb exploded near a U.S.-run training center for the Saudi Arabian national guard in the Saudi capital, the Pentagon said. It was the deadliest such attack against Americans in the Middle East since the Beirut bombings of 1983.

The United States received threats against its diplomatic and military personnel in Saudi Arabia prior to Monday's deadly bombing but decided not to alter security arrangements because the desert kingdom has been among the world's "safest places," U.S. Ambassador Raymond Mabus said in Riyadh on Wednesday. U.S. intelligence has also been aware for several months that Iranian agents put U.S.

About 1,000 people attended a memorial service Friday for five Americans killed in a bombing that shattered the tranquil life of U.S. expatriates in Saudi Arabia. With the American flag fluttering at half staff, friends and relatives flocked to the sprawling U.S. Embassy compound for the private ceremony in a garden behind high walls. Non-Americans and the media were not allowed to attend.

The way Scott Nelson sees it, it was bad enough for Saudi Arabian police to beat him on the soles of his feet and break his knees while trying to get him to confess to charges they never even explained. But for the U.S. government to side with the torturers in court, that was too much. "When you come back to this country and your own government turns its back on you, the torture continues," said Nelson, a technician from Raleigh, N.C. Nelson is trying to sue the Saudi government for damages.

They came because the weather was warm, the wages were good and the income taxes were negligible. Besides, where else could you work in the exotic desert of Arabia and still drive your station wagon to Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch? But now, the thousands of American contract workers who during the past four decades have built eastern Saudi Arabia's oil-producing region into a replica of Small Town, U.S.A., are thinking about hitting the road in earnest--home, that is.

Four hundred American civilians called the U.S. consul general here Saturday to accept a government offer to evacuate them on military planes from Saudi Arabia's war-jittery Eastern Province. Their departure was voluntary, and most of the province's American community--numbering about 6,500--apparently have decided to weather the war in Saudi Arabia. Washington's offer to fly out the Americans in the kingdom, at their own expense, applied only to those living in the Eastern Province.

CBS News has launched three separate efforts in the search for missing correspondent Bob Simon and his three-man crew, who disappeared somewhere near the Saudi-Kuwaiti border a week ago. Simon's abandoned car was found last Wednesday by Saudi troops. Left behind with the car were the keys, $6,000 in U.S. currency, some Saudi currency, a watch with Saddam Hussein's face on it, some television equipment and a U.S. passport belonging to one of Simon's crew.