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Vinnell and the House of
Saud
By Ian Urbina
Few people
had ever heard of the Vinnell corporation before the
recent bombings in Riyadh. The company, which is a
subsidiary of Northrop Grumman of the US, has always
kept a low profile, remaining behind the scenes
throughout many of the most controversial chapters of US
foreign policy over the past 70 years.
However,
for members of the Saudi royal family, Vinnell is well
known since in many ways the company represents the last
line of defense between the crown and those that might
seek to bring it down. And now the spotlight has fallen
on Vinnell as the residential compound and the offices
its used were hit, with nine of its employees killed, in
the suicide attacks on Monday.
Founded in 1931,
the Vinnell corporation was as a small contracting firm
with one of its first projects being on the Los Angeles
city highway system. Other lucrative contracts soon
followed, but all were "decidedly civilian", according
to William D Hartung, senior fellow of the World Policy
Forum, who has tracked the company since 1995.
By the end of World War II, the company entered
the overseas transport business, initially shipping food
and equipment to the Chinese Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek
in hopes of helping the US administration to roll back
the red forces of Mao Zedong. Gradually, Vinnell
expanded into the military construction business and it
took a major role in building military airfields in
Okinawa, Taiwan, Thailand, South Vietnam and Pakistan.
The war in Vietnam provided Vinnell with
boundless opportunities and it won numerous
million-dollar contracts, dispersing over 4,000
personnel to the country. Hartung points out that in a
1975 interview a Pentagon official described Vinnell as
"our own little mercenary army in Vietnam" and asserted
that "we used them to do things we either didn't have
the manpower to do ourselves, or because of legal
problems". But in overstretching its abilities, Vinnell
almost ruined itself financially during the Vietnam War,
and when a contract with the Saudi royal family opened
up the timing could not have been better. "The firm's
February 1975 contract for $77 million to train the
Saudi Arabian National Guard [SANG] brought Vinnell back
from the brink of bankruptcy," Hartung explains.
These ties have remained strong ever since. At
present, Vinnell holds a five-year contract worth more
than $800 million, employing more than 1,000 employees
plus almost 300 US government personnel training the
Royal Saudi Air Force, Saudi land forces and other
elements of the Saudi military. The contract is financed
by the Saudi government and run by the US Army Materiel
Command.
The SANG is not part of the regular
armed forces, but functions as a rough equivalent of
Saddam Hussein's Royal Guard, slated specifically with
the task of protecting the royal family. Historically,
the guard is the descendant of the army that initially
helped acquire the territory (now called Saudi Arabia)
for the House of Saud. If in the future there were to be
an internal uprising or a low-grade guerilla campaign
conducted against the crown or its oil assets, the SANG
would be the ones to respond.
The timing of the
suicide attacks has drawn significant attention,
particularly on the heels of the announcement that the
US will withdraw most of its troops from the kingdom,
starting next month. However, the planning for such a
highly coordinated attack would likely have taken a
considerable amount of time - several months according
to some Saudi sources. In all probability, planning
began before the announcement of the intended US troop
withdrawal and before the announcement of Secretary of
State Colin Powell's visit. The impetus of the act was
probably intended to send a broadly framed message that
the House of Saud and its significant remaining ties to
the US are not safe. The timing was also probably tied
to the major Riyadh raid on militants conducted a week
and a half ago. In that raid, major stashes of arms were
confiscated, but 19 suspects allegedly escaped. Militant
cells in Riyadh may have felt that the time to make a
move was now or never.
This is not the first
time that Vinnell and the SANG have been targeted. On
November 13, 1995, a 220-pound car bomb exploded in a
parking lot adjacent to an office building housing the
office of the program manager, Saudi Arabian National
Guard, in Riyadh, causing five US and two Indian
fatalities. The attack was widely assumed to be the work
of Osama bin Laden, although the four men captured
following the attack gave obviously forced confessions
on TV before they were publicly beheaded.
After
the 1995 attack, questions were raised about the quality
of the security provided for Vinnell employees at the
compound. Similar questions have been raised again,
partially in light of the fact that US intelligence
sources warned the Saudi government that there was
reason to believe an attack was imminent. Other
questions have also begun cropping up. For example, some
wonder why it was so easy for the bombers to shoot their
way onto the grounds of the compound. That the attackers
apparently knew exactly where the switches were to open
the steel gates allowing the cars strapped with
explosives to enter the facilities once the outer guards
were eliminated implies that the bombers may have had
inside information.
Others wonder about
Vinnell's own training capabilities. It was the very
forces that Vinnell was in the process of training which
were in charge of security on the compound. If this
event was any indication of Vinnell's quality control,
then the House of Saud may want to begin looking
elsewhere for security assistance.
(©2003 Asia
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