Their Men in Riyadh: Ex-U.S. ambassadors who stick with the Saudis.

It's good to be the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia -- or, more precisely, it's good to have been Washington's man in Riyadh. No other posting pays such rich dividends once one has left it, provided one is willing to become a public and private advocate of Saudi interests.

The number of ex-U.S. ambassadors to Riyadh who now push a pro-Saudi line is startling. Walter L. Cutler runs the Meridian International Center, which has been heavily supported by the Saudis. Richard Murphy wields influence as a pro-Saudi voice at the Council on Foreign Relations. Chas W. Freeman Jr. now runs the robustly pro-Arab Middle East Policy Council, and heads a firm that sets up joint international business ventures. And lower-level diplomats with Riyadh experience on their resumes can be found throughout U.S. foreign-policy circles.

Prince Bandar, the colorful Saudi ambassador to the United States, makes no bones about how it works. The Washington Post has quoted Bandar as observing, "If the reputation builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you'd be surprised how much better friends you have who are just coming into office."

Not everyone feels all warm and fuzzy about this. "I think it's a disgrace," says Richard Perle, the former Reagan administration official. "They're the people who appear on television, they write op-ed pieces. The Saudis are a major source of the problem we face with terrorism. That would be far more obvious to people if it weren't for this community of former diplomats effectively working for this foreign government."

Hume Horan is a retired career diplomat whose service includes two stints in Riyadh. He says, "There have been some people who really do go on the Saudi payroll, and they work as advisers and consultants. Prince Bandar is very good about massaging and promoting relationships like that. Money works wonders, and if you've got an awful lot of it, and a royal title -- well, it's amusing to see how some Americans liquefy in front of a foreign potentate, just because he's called a prince."

An academic passion for sunny Araby hardly accounts for someone like Wyche Fowler, a former Democratic U.S. senator from Georgia who was dispatched as ambassador to Riyadh in President Clinton's second term. Fowler, a wily country boy who used to campaign on his rural background, seems to have had a good ol' time in King Fahd's court. "[The Saudis] are intelligent and quick," Fowler said in a recent interview, "and I enjoyed spending many hours drinking tea in the desert with them late into the night. They want to tell you about their family, and want to hear about yours. They would tell me a story about their father raising camels, and I would tell them one about my father raising cows."

When Fowler returned from Saudi Arabia, he landed several consulting contracts with international firms doing business in the region, and accepted the chairmanship of the Middle East Institute. This is a think- tank funded chiefly by Arab corporations and American corporations with significant business dealings in Arab countries. Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah is listed among a handful of "benefactors" on the institute's most recent donor list. And lately, Fowler has emerged as one of the most visible pro-Saudi spokesmen in the media. He has let fly with observations of the sort guaranteed to make Prince Bandar smile.

In an October 3 NewsHour appearance, Fowler was questioned about the Saudis' reluctance to let the U.S. military use its own bases in the kingdom for an attack on al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "Well, I think I can endorse that the cooperation by the Saudis with the United States could not be any closer," responded the ex-ambassador. Yet Fowler arrived in Riyadh immediately after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing, and he should know as well as anybody how the Saudis stonewalled U.S. investigators trying to figure out who killed all those American servicemen.

In a December 10 CNN appearance, Fowler contradicted Ken Adelman, the former arms-control official, who said that the Saudis' friendly face masks their funding of anti-American Islamic fundamentalism. "The Saudis have been very generous in their funding of Islamic causes and schools," replied Fowler, "but I'm afraid Mr. Adelman will not be able to produce any evidence of anti-American venom coming out of Islamic schools." This venom, of course, flows ceaselessly. In a later CNN appearance, Fowler said, "Whether or not you agree or disagree with the most conservative form of [Islam], Wahhabism, it does teach tolerance for Jews and Christians" -- a newsflash, indeed.

Then there is the case of Patricia Roush, an American whose Saudi ex- husband kidnapped their two daughters in Chicago, and has been holding them in Saudi Arabia for the past 16 years. She blames Fowler's interest in maintaining good relations with the Saudi royals for the loss of her girls. Years of negotiations between American diplomats -- particularly Amb. Ray Mabus -- and the Saudis, she says, had brought her daughters to the brink of release. But then Mabus vacated the office for Fowler. "The deal was done," Mrs. Roush says, "but [Fowler] told my attorney in 1997 that it was dead, and I could either take a visit with [the girls], or let the chips fall where they may. [Fowler] was deeply in bed with the Saudis, and sold his soul to them. It's because of Fowler that this thing has gone on so long, allowing my oldest daughter, Alia, to be sold in an arranged marriage last June. She's now pregnant." (Fowler has been traveling in the Middle East recently. Attempts to reach him by telephone and e-mail through his Washington office were unsuccessful.)

Mrs. Roush intends to lambaste Fowler and some of his diplomatic predecessors in a June 12 hearing of the House Government Reform Oversight Committee, which is looking into Saudi treatment of American citizens living there. She and others believe it's time for Congress to investigate the role played by ex-U.S. ambassadors to Riyadh in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy, and whether that affects the performance of America's ambassador while in office.

The Middle East expert Daniel Pipes confirms that old Riyadh hands can exploit their contacts to make a small fortune as business consultants. "I don't know of any other posting that works so consistently for turning diplomats into middlemen," Pipes says. "It's very corrupting on ambassadors to Saudi Arabia, because they know what they're headed for, and they don't want to spoil it. It's hard to be confident that our diplomats are representing us."

Perhaps Washington should reconsider the kind of ambassadors it sends to Riyadh (the current ambassador, Robert Jordan, is a Texas corporate lawyer). Though career diplomats may be just as pro-Saudi in their post- diplomatic lives as the political appointees, there is something particularly risky about sending amateurs in to deal with the al-Saud family, who are flatterers nonpareil. Says Horan, "The great failing in nonprofessional diplomats is they think their job is to be liked."

Especially when the ambassador spends his time not keeping an eye on terror links, or trying to help fellow Americans abused by the Saudi system, but luxuriating in the desert drinking tea and talking about kinfolk with fellow livestock-lovin' rustics who happen to be -- gol-lee! -- royalty. "I made friends for life there," Fowler has said of Saudi Arabia. Exactly: That's the problem.