Yet Another Saudi Connection

By Ed Magnuson

Sam Bamieh, the owner of an export business in San Mateo, Calif., is more familiar than he would like to be with the Saudi royal household. A naturalized American who was born and raised in Palestine and had long maintained close ties to the royal family, Bamieh, 48, says that aides of King Fahd held him hostage for four months in Saudi Arabia last year. As Bamieh tells it, his captors threatened to behead him unless he stopped claiming that a member of the family owed him $1.4 million from a business deal gone sour.

Bamieh, understandably, complied with the request. But he filed a $58 million damage suit against the royal aides after his return to the U.S. In addition, Bamieh has told congressional investigators that the Saudi government made a secret deal with the Reagan Administration in 1981 to fund rebel "freedom fighters" in exchange for the right to purchase sophisticated AWACS radar planes.

Bamieh will detail his claims next week to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, which is looking into covert U.S. aid to the pro- Western guerrillas fighting Angola's Marxist government. The Clark amendment, passed in 1976 and in effect until August 1985, made it illegal for the U.S. to assist the rebels, known as UNITA. Congressional investigators suspect that the Reagan Administration used its Saudi connection to support UNITA, just as it later used the Saudis to help get around the Boland amendment, which banned U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan contras.

Bamieh told TIME last week that Fahd described the Saudi connection to him during a visit to Jidda in late 1981, shortly after the Senate had approved the controversial sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. Fahd told Bamieh that the deal had run into trouble in a dispute over the degree of U.S. participation in operating the AWACS' sensitive electronic gear. Fahd said the deadlock was broken only when the Saudis acceded to U.S. requests to fund anti-Communist movements. "Where?" Bamieh asked.

"They'll tell us," Fahd replied. "We don't have to do it right away."

In October 1983, Ali Ben Mussallam, a former Saudi intelligence officer then serving as Fahd's emissary to Morocco, told Bamieh that the Saudis had given Morocco $50 million to help train the UNITA troops. Shortly afterward Saudi Prince Bandar asked Bamieh to help arrange shipments of military and other supplies to the rebels through Morocco and Zaire. Bamieh declined, claiming that this was too dangerous. In February 1984, at a meeting in Cannes, Bandar once again tried to get Bamieh interested in providing supplies to both Angola and the contras. But once again he begged off.

Although the Saudis have denied aiding UNITA or the contras, their contributions to the Nicaraguan rebels are well established. Former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane told the Iran-contra committees that Saudi Arabia had funneled $32 million to them over two years. In 1982 UNITA Leader Jonas Savimbi also hinted that he was receiving covert U.S. assistance despite the congressional ban. If this was arranged in a secret deal with Saudi Arabia, contends Democratic Congressman Howard Wolpe, chairman of the Africa subcommittee, "it would be a clear violation of the Clark amendment."

With reporting by Jay Peterzell/Washington