Secret Saudi History Tuesday, August 12 2003 @ 10:17 PM GMT
"I smiled at my own joke, but the clerk's smile disappeared. 'Ask again,' he hissed, 'and I will call security to remove you from the building and have you barred as a security risk ..'"
By Sarah Whalen*
"I'm sorry," the clerk at the U.S. National Archives says: "You can't see the Saudi Arabian documents." I'm surprised. All the National Archive's documents are already reviewed and then declassified or removed. In theory, whatever's there is no longer secret.
Until 9/11.
"It's part of the Patriot Act," the clerk averred, referring to Public Law 107-56, the hastily-passed legislation entitled, "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001."
"The U.S. State Department records you requested are indeed declassified and theoretically available. But they also may contain information that terrorists can use, like names and addresses and information of U.S. citizens." I gave a blank look. "So?" The clerk's brow furrowed with concern. "A terrorist could come into the National Archives and try to steal their
identities or target them for assassination."
I protested: "The documents I seek are over thirty years old and even older." Now the clerk's smile became nothing but teeth, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.
I persisted: "Any person the record concerns will be either quite elderly or already dead."
The clerk's brittle smile remained fixed. "I'm sorry, you can't look at the Saudi records even if they are a hundred years old."
I tried again. "Come on. Who's identity would a terrorist be able to steal from these records? Dwight Eisenhower's? Nixon's or Kissinger's? King Faisel's? They're not easy identities to steal."
Getting no response, I tried again. "Who'd want to be Kissinger, anyway? I guess you could get a good table at Lutece."
I smiled at my own joke, but the clerk's smile disappeared. "Ask again," he hissed, "and I will call security to remove you from the building and have you barred as a security risk."
I was stunned by the clerk's absolute refusal, and stung by his implication that I, a wife, mother, and published researcher and writer, was some kind of horrid criminal. But this is only a taste
of the Patriot Act's damage to the American mind. If the mere desire to research Saudi history is met with stern threats of arrest or detention, imagine what it is like to be a Saudi in America today. Or a Muslim. Or someone from the Middle East.
Arrest would be shameful and inconvenient. I'm due to take my son to the Smithsonian in a few hours to look at dinosaurs, and I teach a law class on Wednesdays. But the true American in me refuses to just walk meekly away.
I'm a U.S. taxpayer, and some of my taxes go to support the Archives building, its surly clerk, and others, all of whom are part of a public trust that uniquely safeguards the records on which the continuation of U.S. democracy ultimately depends. These records belong to me and to all U.S. citizens. They document our common heritage and the individual and collective experiences of our people and nation. A true democracy allows and enables people to inspect for themselves the record of what government has done. The clerk himself knows this because it's on the National Archives' own website.
I smile at the scowling clerk: "Could I please see a supervisor?"
The supervisor appears, as conciliatory as any diplomat, with profuse apologies for the records being withheld. He reiterates the problem of stolen identities and the assassination threats to leaders elderly or already long dead. He then whispers conspiratorily, "Why are you looking at Saudi Arabia, anyway?"
"I'm researching a history of the State Department's positions on Wahhabism," I whisper back.
"Ooooooh, that's soooo interesting!" the supervisor replies. He chats me up: "Are you writing a book or an article? Who publishes your work?"
Now it's my turn to lose my smile. In seven years of research, no one at the Archives has ever been interested in my work. "Why do you want to know?" I ask. The National Archives keeps all records of documents requests by requestor's name and I've produced a passport and other identification for my pass. "Am I on a some kind of list?" An eavesdropping researcher at a nearby desk laughs out loud and replies, "All of us researchers are on some kind of list now, I'm afraid."
The supervisor is unflappable. He chuckles along with the researcher. We again discuss the Patriot Act's requirement that all archival documents be re-screened because of possible identity theft or assassination plots by terrorists. I just chuckle and nod, not wanting to be threatened with arrest again. "I'm sorry you were threatened with arrest," the supervisor adds, "but a lot of people become angry or hysterical when they're told they can't see the documents. We sometimes have to remove them from the building." He is sympathetic. "A lot of people come here with very little money, and it's their one shot." I nod. That certainly describes me.
He thinks: "Perhaps you can find something in the Nixon archives on Saudi Arabia, since those have already been rescreened," the supervisor suggests. I agree. It's something to look at, anyway. But all I find is a strange little set of memos indicating that in his troubled second presidential term, Nixon decided that his valuable time would only be spent with foreign heads of state. Kissinger had suggested that Nixon meet with the Saudi Crown Prince even though King Faisel was the actual head of state. The file consists of a letter from Bebe Rebozo, Nixon's informal advisor, who mentions Adnan Kashoggi's request that the Prince be given an audience, and then a short analysis by the State Department, which favored a meeting. A note is jotted at the bottom of the page by Nixon himself: "Fifteen minutes." One by Kissinger follows/: "Lunch?"
There's nothing else to indicate whether the meeting took place or even what they had for lunch if it did. Riyad to Washington, D.C. is a distant journey. Fifteen minutes and a sandwich seems shockingly austere. I compare it to the hospitable splendor of lunch in the Middle East, an event that both law and custom conspire to create an act of utter humanity for wayfarers, whether friend or foe. I think: How different our societies are; how difficult it will be to learn the truth about each other and ourselves if the documents of our relations are all swept off the shelves.
I leave the Archives and head for the dinosaurs, who presumably no longer present any security risks. I pass through the Archive's security gates uneasily, knowing that my country has lost something important. We're hardly any safer for keeping Saudi history a secret. The 9/11 terrorists committed a horrendous crime, but they did not take away our national security. We have done this to ourselves.
*The Author is a professor at Loyola University School of Law