SAUDI PEARL HARBOR

Saudi Arabia’s ruling family had its own shock with the coordinated terrorist attacks last week in Riyadh, the nation’s capital. The question now is how the privileged family that runs the desert kingdom will respond. The answer is not yet clear.

Evidence is mounting that the simultaneous car bombings of three gated Western housing compounds, killing 34 people including eight Americans, was the work of the elusive Osama bin Laden’s revived al-Qaida terrorist network.

The Saudi government has always played a double game in dealing with Mr. bin Laden, a renegade Saudi citizen, and his worldwide conspiracy. While denouncing terrorism, Saudi leaders have continued to permit a vast network of semi-official Saudi charities to funnel money to al-Qaida. And they continue to let government-owned newspapers and broadcasting stations continue to incite terrorist violence with diatribes against America and Israel. They also continue to permit Islamic schools to teach holy-war violence and encourage students to volunteer as suicide bombers and run off to join al-Qaida. Fourteen of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, although polls show that most Saudis dispute that fact and believe that Israel committed the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington as a provocation.

So, when Saudi Arabia has its supposed Pearl Harbor, it goes through the motions of denouncing terrorism, arresting a few suspects and pledging cooperation with the United States. But, as in the past, this cooperation has its limits. Saudi spokesmen keep saying that the 70 or so American investigators assigned to the case are not there to investigate but merely to “observe.” Saudis prefer to do their own interrogating, sometimes beheading the accused before any FBI agents can question them.

The Saudis gave only minimal help in the campaign against Iraq. And, evidently to the relief of the government, most of the American troops stationed in the country are being pulled out. When warned in recent weeks that terrorist attacks inside their country were likely, Saudi leaders ignored repeated and urgent U.S. government requests for better security around the Western compounds. They still haven’t done much to protect the 35,000 American civilians still in their country.

Crown Prince Abdullah’s foreign policy adviser, Adel al-Jubeir, acknowledged Saudi Arabia’s failure to act on the warnings. In a news conference in Washington, he promised improved cooperation. The New York Times reported that he said Saudi Arabia and the United States were prime targets of al-Qaida and, like boatmen in a canoe, should paddle together instead of hitting each other over the head.

He could have put a third paddler into the canoe – Israel, which has been facing the same sort of terrorist attacks for years. But Israel is also a prime target of the vitriolic newspapers, radio stations and radical Islamic schools that Saudi Arabia condones. And Saudi Arabia is a leader in a continuing Arab and Muslim belief that Israel is an illegal interloper in the Middle East and should be destroyed.

Unless President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell get tough with Saudi Arabia and insist on a full investigation of Saudi sources of support for world terrorism, the public can expect more and more of the old pattern of Saudi secrecy and timidity and American refusal to face the heart of the problem.