'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

The Saudi government pays money for this?

Every so often, I get an email from someone called "halah@qorvis.com". Since I vaguely remember that these are press releases from the Saudi Embassy in DC, I usually delete them just as fast as I delete all the other junk that comes into my in-box.

Today, I decided to open it. It contained just under 600 words of totally useless, non-newsworthy garbage. Interesting only faintly, in its capacity as providing a teeny window into what it is that someone at Qorvis Communications Inc., the p.r. agency hired by the Saudi Embassy, thinks it is that people might want to be hearing from the Saudis these days.

I reproduce the email in its entirety (and lightly annotated by yours truly) below.

So after opening the email I decided to refresh myself as to what this deal is that the Qorvis Corporation has with the Saudis. There's a lot of interesting information out there on the topic.

Including this, from the WaPo last December, which says:

The FBI searched three offices of the PR firm Qorvis Communications and delivered subpoenas to a fourth office. Officials confirmed the raids but refused further comment, saying there was an "ongoing investigation." Saudi Arabia is a major Qorvis client; the firm called the investigation a "compliance inquiry" under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Justice Department found that "the Saudi Arabian Embassy paid Qorvis $14.6 million for a six-month period," for such services as distributing material highlighting Saudi Arabia's "commitment in the war against terrorism and to peace in the Middle East."

$14.6 million? That's, um, around $2.43 million a month...

A part of me feels really sorry for the Saudis. They're shelling out $2.43 million a month to this "Qorvis Communications", and they get rubbish like this in response? (See text of press release, below.)

It reminds me of those extremely unfortunate American Indian tribes, newly very rich with casino profits, who have recently been taken majorly for a ride by various Washington DC shysters. Except that the Saudis are not "newly" rich... They've had plenty of time to realize they need to protect themselves from the Gucci-loafered shysters of Washington's K Street.

Look, let's lay aside morality for one small moment, and look at this question purely on technical grounds. Do you know who was the best foreign "operator" in the past quarter-century in Washington DC, in the city's own sleazy terms of influence-peddling, schmoozing, and generally getting ahead?

No question but that it was the late Nizar Hamdoun, who through the 1980s was Iraq's Ambassador to Washington and had the somewhat unenviable task of trying to "sell" Iraq to a generally very hostile crowd there.

Hamdoun, an extremely canny and fairly charming person, knew how to take a bad case and a big budget and make the budget work for him. He courted everyone, right across the political spectrum, with small dinners, semi-open policy round-tables, and plenty of dosh to throw around. I think he even succeeded in persuading Danny Pipes and Laurie Mylroie to go to Baghdad for a "high-level briefing", after which those two came back to DC to advocate for an audacious new pipeline scheme that Saddam was trying to organize.

(The pipeline would have gone down to Aqaba, Jordan, but crucially it was thought to require a guarantee from the Israelis that they wouldn't bomb it before the investors would shell out the money... The appropriately named "Pipes" helped the Iraqis to get Israel's Shimon Peres involved in the scheme. It was 1985. The plan went nowhere-- though intriguingly, a very similar plan is now being peddled once again... Of course, shortly after 1985, both Pipes and Mylroie turned against Saddam in a big, big way. That development had something of the psychology of a major love-affair that all went bitterly wrong...)

Anyway, the man who brought it all together in DC for Saddam's regime in those days was Nizar Hamdoun. And yes, "bringing it all together" certainly also included those visits that Donald Rumsfeld was making to Baghdad at exactly the time that Saddam was busy using chemical weapons against Iranians and Kurds...

Hamdoun died of leukemia a few years ago. But not until after many, many of his high-ranking American friends had intervened to try to get him to high-end doctors in New York, etc.

Yes, he was, from a purely technical point of view, an outstandingly "capable" diplomat.

And now, there are the Saudis...

I invite you to enjoy with me the idiocy, the sheer, breathtaking vacuity, and the near-total nullity that characterize the press release that Qoprvis Communications sent me today:

Text starts:

Saudi Arabia in Focus

Weekly publication of the Information Office of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC

April 12, 2005. So it drops into my mail-box April 15. So why the delay, huh?

TERRORISM

A very important category this, one that the Saudis have evidently decided to focus on.

THREE MOST-WANTED TERRORISTS KILLED

Saudi security forces have killed three more terrorists on the Kingdom’s list of 26 most-wanted that was issued in December 2003, bringing to 23 the total number of killed or captured. Two of them, Saud Homood Obaid Alqotaini Alotaibi (#20) and Kareem Altohami Almojati (#12), were killed during the three-day standoff that began on April 3 in the city of Ar-Rass, in Qasim Province.

A three-day stand-off? (Or more likely, four?) The ability of the armed oppositionists to keep going that long was actually a major embarrassment for the Kingdom. They'd probably have done better not to remind people of how long it took them to regain control...

This incident resulted in a total of 15 killed, with five arrested and one surrendering. The third, Abdulrahman Mohammad Yazji (#24) was killed in Riyadh in a clash with a security patrol on April 6; a suspect with him was arrested. In all, over the four days, 16 militants were killed and 7 arrested. On April 9 the Interior Ministry published the names and brief bios of 11 of the dead and 3 of those in custody.
[For this list, see the Embassy website, http://www.saudiembassy.net]

That looked like a clickable link there but it did not work. I copy-&-pasted the URL into my browser, went there, and discovered brief bios for 10 not eleven of those killed and three of those arrested. It also said: "To be announced later are the names of the other five suspects killed, the two arrested, and the one who surrendered."

Crown Prince Abdullah and Prince Sultan have both praised the prudence of the security officers in the Ar-Rass incident in giving priority to evacuating residents. There were no fatalities among the security officers, although at least ten were hospitalized. Seized in the Ar-Rass raid were quantities of weapons, explosives, and equipment, incriminating documents and cash.

CROWN PRINCE URGES FIGHT AGAINST DEVIANT IDEAS

Well, this looks interesting. What kind of "deviance" was he talking about, I wonder?

Crown Prince Abdullah has called for measures to combat deviant ideas by carrying out cultural and educational programs that explain the true teachings of Islam and drive home the merits of moderation and tolerance, declaring that there can be no acceptance of any aberration of Islamic principles.

I'm still no clearer what kind of deviance they're talking about. I suspect it isn't sexual-- but who knows?


GOVERNMENT

SHURA COUNCIL EXPANDED TO 150 MEMBERS

Membership of the Consultative Council (Majlis Al-Shura) has been expanded from 120 to 150 in addition to the Chairman Dr. Salih bin Abdullah bin Homaid and Dr. Salih bin Abdullah bin Mansour Al-Malik as Secretary-General. On April 12, King Fahd swore in the members for the Council’s fourth four-year term. At the Council of Ministers meeting on April 11, Crown Prince Abdullah commended the achievements of the Shura Council, saying it has made effective decisions in the best interests of the homeland and its citizens.

And the achievements and decisions of this Consultative Council were.... ? Well, whatever they were, Qorvis Communications is not about to tell us...

ECONOMY

SAUDI STOCK MARKET’S TASI CONTINUES TO BREAK RECORDS

The Saudi stock market recorded an all-time high when the Tadawul All Share Index (TASI) closed on April 7 at 11,694.84 points, a rise of 11.49 percent over the week before. The total value of shares exchanged amounted to over U.S.$22 billion, up $1 billion from last week.

Good, now we get more specific. Money!!! But not a whole lot more specific, I'd say.

SOCIAL

KING FAISAL INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2005 WINNERS HONORED

The awards ceremony for the winners of the 28th annual King Faisal International Prize was held on April 9. This year the prize for Arabic Language and Literature was withheld, none of the entries qualifying. The prize for Service to Islam was jointly awarded to Dr. Ahmad Muhammad Ali, President of the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB), for his achievements in Islamic banking; and to the Al-Hariri Foundation of Lebanon for its promotion of Islamic education and culture.

The prize for Islamic Studies was awarded to Professor Carole Hillenbrand of the University of Edinburgh, for her clarification of misconceptions about the Crusades. The prize for Medicine went to Sir Richard Doll and Sir Richard Peto of the Clinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU) at Oxford University, for their research linking tobacco with various diseases; and that for Science was jointly shared by Professors Federico Capasso and Frank Wilczek of the United States, and Anton Zeilinger of Austria, for their work in the field of physics.

Just physics? No details at all of what kind of physics?

[For details, see King Faisal Foundation website www.kff.com.]

That link did work. It sent me to a very lugubrious website in blurry dark tones of teal. I couldn't find out any more there, either, about the prize-winning work in physics.

* * *

This is distributed by Qorvis Communications, LLC on behalf of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C.

Halah Al-Jubeir
Director
Qorvis Communications

Aha! So that's who the mysterious "Halah" is who's been sending me all these emails... I wonder if she's any relative of Adel al-Jubeir, who's the chief foreign-policy advisor to Crown Prince Abdullah? Nah, that would be nepotism, wouldn't it, and I'm sure the Kingdom doesn't work like that at all...

1201 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
...
halah@qorvis.com

"Communications for Wall Street, K Street and Main Street"

This email may contain confidential and privileged material for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). Any review, use, distribution or disclosure by others is strictly prohibited.

But apparently use by the recipients, like the present use, is just fine... Right, Halah?

And for that packet of nonsense, Qorvis gets paid $2.43 million a month. Amazing, huh? I wonder when the day will come when the Saudi people-- or perhaps, the "people of the Arabian Peninsula", since it does seem a little ridiculous in the modern era to still have an entire country named after just one family--start requiring their government to account for the massively profligate and counter-productive ways the country's huge oil revenues have all been spent? But I ain't holding my breath.