The FBI has opened new offices and added thousands of agents throughout the Middle East in an effort to foil attacks by Islamic
militants.
Officials said the FBI has opened up legation
offices in such cities as Amman, Cairo, Damascus, Dubai, Muscat and Tel
Aviv. They said the FBI plans to open additional offices in Abu Dhabi,
Muscat, Sanaa and Tunis.
The buildup amounts to a doubling of the FBI presence overseas. Most
of the offices were opened in the Middle East and Persian Gulf, Middle East Newsline reported. In all, the
FBI has 44 offices overseas.
Officials said the decision to increase the FBI presence in the Middle
East was taken after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The investigation
of the bombing, which killed six and injured more than 1,000, pointed to a
conspiracy by Egyptian, Sudanese and Pakistani nationals.
"I determined that to have an effective counter-terrorism program that
protected Americans in their homes and offices, the FBI had to have its
agents in Cairo, Islamabad, Tel Aviv, Ankara, Riyadh, and other critical
locations around the world.," former FBI director Louis Freeh said. "We
opened FBI Legat offices in those countries to strengthen our
counter-terrorism program."
Freeh told the Joint House-Senate Select Intelligence Committee that is
investigating the 2001 Al Qaida suicide attacks that the FBI presence has
increased cooperation with Gulf Arab and other regional states in
counterterrorism. He said the FBI also established offices in Central Asia
to monitor terrorism from Iran.
Officials pointed to close cooperation with security agencies in Jordan,
Saudi Arabia and Yemen. At times, hundreds of FBI agents would be sent to a
specific Arab country to help investigate an Islamic insurgency strike. The
FBI has 11,561 agents.
Freeh said the FBI forged a working relationship with Saudi security
agencies in 1996 in the wake of the Khobar bombing in which 19 U.S. military
personnel were killed. The former FBI director cited Saudi ambassador to the
United States Prince Bandar Bin Sultan for paving the way to establish an
office in the kingdom.
After long negotiations, he said, the Saudis allowed the FBI to
interrogate six Saudi nationals, the first time the kingdom allowed direct
access to its detainees. That national provided key information that would
implicate Iran in the planning, funding and execution of the Khobar attack.
"The direct evidence obtained strongly indicated that the 1996 bombings
were sanctioned, funded and directed by senior officials of the government
of Iran," Freeh said. "The Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps were shown to be culpable for carrying out
the operation. The bombers were trained by Iranians in the Bekaa Valley."