The Saudi government gave White House aides large suitcases containing jewellery worth tens of thousands of dollars, according to a new memoir by Barack Obama’s speechwriter and former deputy national security adviser.
Ben Rhodes describes the incident in his book, The World As It Is, which is published on Tuesday.
After landing in Saudi Arabia in June 2009, Rhodes writes, US officials were taken by golf cart to “identical housing units amid the rolling desert”, in a compound owned by the monarchy.
“When I opened the door to my unit, I found a large suitcase,” he writes. “Inside were jewels.”
Rhodes initially thought it was a bribe aimed at him because he was writing the “Cairo speech”, intended as an address to the Muslim world, that Obama was due to deliver in Egypt on the next stop on the trip. But then he found that others in the White House delegation had received similar gifts.
“We all got suitcases full of jewels,” Rhodes said in an email exchange with the Guardian. “We all gave them to the state protocol office who handles gifts. You have the option to buy the gifts, but given the price – I don’t remember what it was but it was tens of thousands, I believe – no one kept them that I recall.”
It has previously been reported that the then Saudi king, Abdullah, gave Michelle Obama a ruby and diamond jewellery set worth $132,000, including earrings, a ring, a bracelet and a necklace. Those presents, together with luxury gifts to the president and the couple’s two daughters, were handed over to the US National Archives, as required by US law.
According to the state department register, Rhodes was given a pair of silver cufflinks, a man’s and a woman’s watch, a silver pen, and a diamond jewelry set including earrings, a ring and a bracelet, of an estimated total value of $5405. Similar gift sets, of values up to $9000 are given to 13 other White House staff.
Donald Trump made his first foreign trip as president to Saudi Arabia, in May last year, accompanied by a large entourage including his wife Melania, his daughter, Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner. In public, King Salman gave Trump a gold medal and chain.
Gifts given to the Trump family and entourage in private have not been made public. The state department protocol gift unit has not yet published its records for 2017.
Obama’s first visit to Riyadh did not go well. The Saudi monarchy refused to accept detainees from Guantánamo Bay, to help the US president fulfil his pledge to close the detention camp. Nor did Saudi Arabia offer the peace gesture towards Israel for which Obama had been hoping.
Saudi relations with the Obama White House worsened further when it negotiated an agreement in 2015 with other major powers and Iran, curbing Tehran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
Riyadh has emerged as one of the Trump administration’s closest allies, beginning with the mutual flattery of the 2017 visit. Last month, Saudi Arabia was one of a small handful of countries that supported Trump’s abrogation of the Iran nuclear deal.