Dhahran general punished

US Defense Secretary William Cohen said on August 3 he was blocking the promotion of the air force general in charge of a housing complex in Saudi Arabia where 19 US airmen were killed by a truck bomb.

The officer, Brig. Gen Terryl Schwalier, now air force director of operations and training at the Pentagon, said he would resign.

Cohen said he was singling out Schwalier for not doing enough to guard the Khobar Towers barracks from the June 25, 1996, blast in Dhahran.

"He's not being made a scapegoat," Cohen told a news briefing at the Pentagon. But where Schwalier’s subordinates failed to persuade Saudi officials to extend defenses, he never raised the issue himself with his Saudi counterparts, Cohen said.