TV REVIEW : PBS Reports on U.S. Military Buildup of Saudis

American military support of Saudi Arabia was no longer a secret after the Gulf War, when the oil-rich kingdom served as the military base for the multinational alliance against Iraq. The allies’ ability to quickly employ massive troop levels did not happen overnight but developed over a long period--longer, even, than the “Frontline” report, “The Arming of Saudi Arabia,” allows for (at 9 tonight, KCET Channel 28 and KPBS Channel 15; 8 p.m., KVCR Channel 24; 9 p.m., Wednesday, KOCE Channel 50).

As reported a year ago by former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee in the PBS program “The Secret Files: Washington, Israel and the Gulf,” U.S. military aid to the Saudis began in 1950, as part of a Cold War-related move to ensure oil supplies to the West in the face of perceived Soviet advances in the Middle East. Ironically, when Bradlee’s own reporter, Scott Armstrong, found in 1981 that the U.S. sale of AWACS reconnaissance planes to Saudi Arabia was a cover for a massive buildup of bases and supplies, the story was held until after Congress voted in favor of the sale. (If there was pressure from the Pentagon on the Post, the report says Bradlee “could not recall.”)

Armstrong’s investigation found what he terms “the ultimate government off-the-books,” in which Congress was seemingly left in the dark while the Reagan and Bush administrations arranged an estimated $150-billion sale of arms and infrastructure to the Saudis. The money bought nine new ports, a system of six large land bases and dozens of air fields, all designed to U.S. specifications for military operations such as the Gulf War.

This broadcast’s most extraordinary revelation is provided by free-lance reporter Murray Waas, whose series of reports with The Times’ Douglas Frantz uncovered the long U.S. military support of Iraq up to the eve of the Gulf War. Waas reports that--partly as a reaction to the 1981 Israeli bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, partly as support for Iraq against the rise of fundamentalist Iran--the Saudis funded a $5-billion Iraqi nuclear project, which may have included weapons development.

At the same time, the United States and Saudi Arabia may have agreed to a lowering of oil prices as a weapon against recession. Energy analyst Edwin Rothchild, who is currently in court to get a release of classified documents confirming the arrangement, says here that the price drop had a terrible effect on long-term American energy policy. The heightened dependence on imported oil and the gathering internal political pressure on the Saudi kingdom may become, Rothchild and others suggest, a future foreign policy horror story for Bill Clinton.