WASHINGTON -- Saudi Arabia has told the Obama administration and members of Congress that it will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of American assets held by the kingdom if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible in U.S. courts for any role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The Obama administration has lobbied Congress to block the bill's passage, according to administration officials and congressional aides from both parties, and the Saudi threats have been the subject of intense discussions in recent weeks between lawmakers and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon. The officials have warned senators of diplomatic and economic fallout from the legislation.
Adel al Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, delivered the kingdom's message personally last month during a trip to Washington, telling lawmakers that Saudi Arabia would be forced to sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets in the United States before they could be in danger of being frozen by U.S. courts.
Several outside economists are skeptical that the Saudis will follow through, saying that such a sell-off would be difficult to execute and would end up crippling the kingdom's economy. But the threat is another sign of the escalating tensions between Saudi Arabia and the United States.
The administration, which argues that the legislation would put Americans at legal risk overseas, has been lobbying so intently against the bill that some lawmakers and families of 9/11 victims are infuriated. In their view, the Obama administration has consistently sided with the kingdom and has thwarted their efforts to learn what they believe to be the truth about the role some Saudi officials played in the terrorist plot.
"It's stunning to think that our government would back the Saudis over its own citizens," said Mindy Kleinberg, whose husband died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and who is part of a group of victims' family members pushing for the legislation.
President Barack Obama will arrive in Riyadh on Wednesday for meetings with King Salman and other Saudi officials.
Saudi officials have long denied that the kingdom had any role in the 9/11 plot, and the 9/11 Commission found "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded the organization."
But critics have noted that the commission's narrow wording left open the possibility that less senior officials or parts of the Saudi government could have played a role. Suspicions have lingered, partly because of the conclusions of a 2002 congressional inquiry into the attacks that cited some evidence that Saudi officials living in the United States at the time had a hand in the plot.
Those conclusions, contained in 28 pages of the report, still have not been released publicly.
The dispute comes as bipartisan criticism is growing in Congress about Washington's alliance with Saudi Arabia, for decades a crucial U.S. ally in the Middle East and half of a partnership that once received little scrutiny from lawmakers. Last week, two senators introduced a resolution that would put restrictions on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which have expanded during the Obama administration.
Families of the 9/11 victims have used the courts to try to hold members of the Saudi royal family, Saudi banks and charities liable because of what the plaintiffs charged was Saudi financial support for terrorism. These efforts have largely been stymied, in part because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations some immunity from lawsuits in U.S. courts.
The Senate bill is intended to make clear that the immunity given to foreign nations under the law should not apply in cases where nations are found culpable for terrorist attacks that kill Americans on U.S. soil. If the bill were to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president, it could clear a path for the role of the Saudi government to be examined in the 9/11 lawsuits.
The bill is an anomaly in a Congress fractured by bitter partisanship, especially during an election year. It is sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. It has the support of an unlikely coalition of liberal and conservative senators, including Al Franken, D-Minn., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
"As our nation confronts new and expanding terror networks that are targeting our citizens, stopping the funding source for terrorists becomes even more important," Cornyn said last month.
The alliance with Saudi Arabia has frayed in recent years as the White House has tried to thaw relations with Iran -- Saudi Arabia's bitter enemy -- in the midst of recriminations between U.S. and Saudi officials about the role that both countries should play in the stability of the Middle East.
A Section on 04/17/2016