Page 484 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

Gazelles and Lions 481

The same techniques of selection and omission were used to obscure the rec­
ord of American involvement in Arabia, of ARAMCO’s subservience to the

Al Saud, of its active encouragement of Saudi Arabia’s bid to subjugate Abu
Dhabi, of the Saudis’ efforts to subvert the sultanate of Oman, of the State
Department’s supine condonation of these activities and, indeed, of the entire
campaign to undermine Britain’s position in the Gulf. If the general drift of

American policy in the peninsula during and since the Second World War
was concealed from the Senate and House committees, how were their mem­
bers to judge for themselves the real nature of the situation in which the

United States now found herself, and where she might be headed on her
present course? Reliable information on Arabia and the Gulf was much more
difficult to come by than was the case, say, with European or Latin American
countries, where the congressional committees could draw for information

upon a multitude of independent and alternative sources. Newspaper cov­
erage of the Arabian peninsula was thin and riddled with inaccuracies. Few
books were published about its affairs, and fewer still which were reliable.

The American oil companies operating in Arabia and the State Department
alone possessed the resources to supply the committees with any volume of
material, and the former, naturally, were extremely loth to reveal anything
publicly which might possibly annoy or offend the governments of Saudi

Arabia and the other Gulf states. Perforce, therefore, the senators and
congressmen had to rely upon the State Department for full a ^accurate
information about the affairs of Arabia, Persia and the Gu ,

said that they were particularly well served in this respect by that arm

I972 onwards was that the departure of the Bntish had left no
resultant political vacuum in the Gulf. To substantia e tbemselves of
necessary to demonstrate that the Gulf states were capa

ensuring the security of the Gulf, and this in turn . Hence the
depicted as sober, responsible and well governed po itica already
portrait of Saudi Arabia drawn by the State Department a ong
described. It was not only in the case of Saudi Arabia, owever, re

Department witnesses before the committees were prone States
publicity agents for the Gulf states than as servants of the Untted
J. U rfinmmerv in describing the past
government. They served up the same dish o United Arab Emi-
and present condition of Kuwait, Bahrain, Palestinian terrorism, t e

rates. Kuwait’s surreptitious encouragemen sedition elsewhere in e
sanctuary she afforded to radical groups Pr° r tue ^yest, her prominent
Arab world, her government’s shrill denunciatio jncreases were all passe
role in forcing the pace of oil nationalization an . as very model o a

over in silence. The shaikhdom was presente 1 foresight, its riches
modern, welfare state, governed with benevo . ours transcending its
disbursed for the benefit of all, its philanthropic