The Black Banners

by Soufan, Ali H.

  Headquarters instructed all personnel on the ground in East Africa to keep a low profile until the furor over the attacks had subsided. Being in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam was already dangerous enough: al-Qaeda had just attacked there and likely still had the means to attack again.

  There were many phone calls home that day from the two African cities—FBI agents assuring their loved ones back home that they were safe. There was some talk that President Clinton had ordered the strikes to distract attention from his ongoing Monica Lewinsky scandal, but I didn’t believe, nor did I want to believe, that national security would be used in such a manner. Still, whoever had decided to keep the FBI out of the loop took a great risk with American lives.

  The emir of one of the camps bombed was Hassan al-Khamiri. The bombing had a devastating effect on him, deepening his hatred of the United States and prompting him to ask bin Laden if he could martyr himself in an upcoming al-Qaeda operation.

  Rasheed was brought back in for further interrogation, this time by Stephen Gaudin and Wayne Parola. Neither of them spoke Arabic, so a translator was furnished by the WFO. He was an older man and Rasheed saw him as a father figure; the two bonded.

  Stephen and Wayne began by asking Rasheed the questions John Anticev had asked at the start of the original interrogation: What was he doing in Nairobi? What was his connection to the bombing? Rasheed initially gave the same answers he had supplied previously. Stephen and Wayne confronted him with the evidence; in addition, Stephen gave him Meals Ready to Eat (MREs), instant rations for U.S. soldiers abroad. Rasheed was fascinated with the idea of an instant meal, found the MREs to be tasty, and especially loved the cookies that came with them. Gradually his stonewalling gave way to a kind of resignation. Seemingly overwhelmed by the weight of the evidence, he simply declared: “Here’s what I want. I want to be tried in America, not Kenya, because America is my enemy. If you promise me this, I’ll tell you everything.”

  The FBI discussed his request with the Department of Justice, and it was agreed that there was no reason not to accede to it: we would have wanted to try him in the United States anyway, as he had attacked U.S. embassies and murdered U.S. civilians. Assistant U.S. attorney Pat Fitzgerald drew up a document stating that the United States would endeavor to get him extradited to the United States for a trial.

  Rasheed was presented with the document and an Arabic translation. He seemed happy with it. After it was signed, he said: “Thank you, and now I have something to tell you.” He paused, and then continued, “My name is not Khaled Saleem bin Rasheed. I am Mohamed al-Owhali, and I’m from Saudi Arabia.” Having fulfilled his role as a suicide bomber without in fact dying—a feat he would eventually explain—Owhali had fled the scene of the attack and was alive to tell the FBI his story.

  He said that his path to al-Qaeda had been through the Khaldan training camp. While the camp was not controlled by al-Qaeda, it was in the habit of letting the leadership know about promising recruits. Owhali had been one such recruit. He told the interrogators with pride that his skills had distinguished him from fellow recruits and that he had been recommended to al-Qaeda. In due course, he had met bin Laden. Owhali told the interrogators that he had found himself agreeing with everything that bin Laden said.

  He pledged bayat to bin Laden and joined al-Qaeda. Soon after, he asked bin Laden for a mission. Bin Laden told him that something would come his way. Eventually bin Laden summoned Owhali and told him that he would be part of an effort to inflict a mighty blow against the United States—he would help bomb the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. On July 31, he had flown from Pakistan to Afghanistan to Dubai, where he had missed his intended flight to Nairobi, not arriving till August 2.

  Owhali took the interrogation team through everything he knew about the bombing, from the bomb maker—whom he identified as the Egyptian known as Saleh—through to his actions on the day of the attack. He was not a proficient liar, and when he tried to withhold information or protect the identity of his friends, the interrogation team caught him out.

  Around May 1998, Harun Fazul, who was to serve as a guide for Owhali and his fellow designated bomber Jihad Ali during their time in Nairobi, rented a villa, at 43 New Runda Estates. On August 4, Owhali, Harun, and other al-Qaeda members reconnoitered at the U.S. Embassy. On the fifth, sixth, and seventh, Owhali called Hada’s switchboard in Yemen from a phone at the villa. On the morning of the bombing, at around 9:30, Harun accompanied the bombers from the villa to the embassy. They traveled in a convoy, led by Harun in his own truck, with Owhali and Jihad Ali following in the bomb-laden truck. Owhali was equipped with four stun grenades, a 9 mm Beretta handgun, bullets, and keys to the padlocks on the bomb truck.

  At around 10:30 AM, Harun threw a stun grenade at embassy guards to engage and distract them while Owhali and Jihad Ali continued on toward the building. Harun drove off, his part in the mission finished. As Owhali and Jihad Ali got closer to the embassy, they reached a point where gates and another set of guards prevented them from going any further. Owhali jumped out—it had been agreed that his role would be to detonate himself at these very gates in order to enable Jihad Ali to explode himself and the car close enough to the embassy to do damage. Brandishing the stun grenades, Owhali shouted at a guard to open the gates. The guard refused, and Owhali threw a grenade at him. Seeing the commotion and the explosion, Jihad Ali began firing a pistol at the embassy, causing people to scatter.

  Owhali was unsure what to do: his mission had been to help Jihad Ali get as close to the embassy as possible. Although the gates were still closed, the guards had dispersed, and Jihad Ali was in fact now close enough to fulfill his mission. For Owhali to blow himself up would be considered suicide rather than martyrdom—forbidden under Islam. It was a fine distinction, but one of importance to Owhali. After making a quick calculation, Owhali began to run away—and was knocked over and injured by the explosion when Jihad Ali blew himself up.

  Owhali entered a nearby hospital, disposing of his remaining bullets from his gun in the bathroom in which they were later found and placing a few other belongings on the window ledge. He told the nurses and doctors who treated him that he had been a victim of the blast. After being stitched up and bandaged, he left the hospital and contacted al-Qaeda through the Hada switchboard, reporting what had happened. He asked that someone send him a passport and money. A thousand dollars was transferred, which Owhali used to buy new clothes. He was planning his escape from Nairobi when he was picked up.

  Owhali was flown to the United States and, once jailed, was asked who his next of kin was. He pointed to Stephen Gaudin. Owhali was tried in 2001 and sentenced in federal court to life without parole, along with Wadih el-Hage and two other operatives involved in the bombings, Mohamed Odeh and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed.

  Ali Mohamed was arrested in September 1998 when he tried to flee to Egypt after being subpoenaed for his connection to the bombings. He pled guilty in May 1999 but was never sentenced. To date he is awaiting sentencing and is being held in a secure location. Pat Fitzgerald had long been pressing for Mohamed to be tried and convicted, and when I went with Pat to debrief him in jail, the former double agent seemed shaken.

  The investigators followed up on Owhali’s leads, all of which proved accurate. We later learned that in the days after the Nairobi bombing, Harun Fazul hired people to clean the villa at 43 New Runda Estates, and around August 14 he left Nairobi for the Comoros Islands. In Dar es Salaam, Khalfan Khamis Mohamed cleaned the premises at House 213 in Ilala and made arrangements for the cleaning and discarding of the grinder used to prepare the TNT. On August 8, he left Dar es Salaam for Cape Town. A full picture emerged of how the attacks had been planned and carried out, and the prosecution teams began planning the indictments and trials of bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders for their roles.

  The searches of the different facilities, safe houses, and offices used by al-Qaeda generated valuable documents, phone numbers, and photographs of many al-Qaeda members. At the Help Af
rica offices, agents recovered passport-size photos used to issue bogus identification cards. The photos were of the entire al-Qaeda leadership, in addition to most of the main operatives from the period bin Laden was based in Sudan. The pictures became the basis for one of our first al-Qaeda “photo-books,” a term the agency uses for mug shots and other pictures of suspects relevant to an investigation.

  At the same time, our investigative interest now had taken new directions. First there was Yemen: it was clear that al-Qaeda members were based there and were using the country for operations. The fake passports used by Owhali (in the name of Rasheed) and other terrorists involved in the attacks were issued in Yemen, with Hada’s phone number the main means of communication. Then there were leads pointing to al-Qaeda in London. We had started investigating London in 1996 because bin Laden’s media office was based there. After the East African embassy bombings, British authorities had finally arrested Khalid al-Fawwaz and two of Zawahiri’s operatives. Working with Scotland Yard, we had found that the claims of responsibility for the attacks had been faxed by Zawahiri's two Egyptians, Adel Abdel Bary and Ibrahim Eidarous, from The Grapevine, a copy shop across the street from a residence on Beethoven Street used by the group’s media operatives. We dubbed it the Beethoven Office.

  Two of the agents involved in the Dar es Salaam investigation were Abby Perkins and Aaron Zebley. Both were instrumental in apprehending and gaining a confession from Khalfan Khamis Mohamed—a confession that helped convict him and get him a life sentence in the eventual embassy bombings trial.

  In the second half of 1999, bin Laden met with some thirty graduates of a special “close combat” training session at Loghar training camp. Assembled by Khallad, the members of the group were viewed as special operatives. Khallad brought in a Pakistani trainer to teach the operatives hand-to-hand combat, and Tae Kwan Do and other martial arts.

  After the session was finished, the students were sent to Kandahar to see bin Laden. He congratulated them on graduating and lectured them about the East African embassy bombings, divulging operational details, including the vehicles and explosives used, and explaining, in particular, the reasons for the Nairobi attack: one, Operation Restore Hope, in Somalia, which he claimed had resulted in the death of thirty thousand Muslims, had been directed from the Nairobi embassy; two, the embassy was the base of support for Sudanese rebel leader and politician John Garang de Mabior; and, three, it was the biggest center of American intelligence in East Africa.

  Among the group to whom bin Laden offered this justification were Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the 9/11 hijackers.

  5

  * * *

  Operation Challenge and the Manchester Manual

  July 1999. “We’ve got one more important order of business,” said Tom Donlon, the I-40 squad leader. We had finished reviewing some operations we were running. Everything from the agenda had been covered, so I turned to Tom, curious about what he might have to say.

  “It’s Ali’s birthday today,” he continued, looking at me with a smile, and on cue the squad broke into a rendition of “Happy Birthday,” and cupcakes were pulled out from where they had been hidden under the table.

  As we were about to start eating, there was a knock at the door, and Tom Lang, the supervisor of the I-49 squad, stuck his head into the room. “I need to speak to you, Ali,” he said quietly. I was still splitting my time between the two squads, and Tom Lang was my I-49 boss.

  “Happy birthday, Ali,” Tom Donlon said with a grin. “It looks like we’ll have to have the party without you.”

  I followed Tom Lang into the hallway. “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got a big problem. The British are about to release Khalid al-Fawwaz, Adel Abdel Bary, and Ibrahim Eidarous, the al-Qaeda and EIJ leaders in London.”

  “What? Why?”

  Well-known Islamists and members of EIJ’s shura council, Bary and Eidarous had moved to London in 1996–97, signaling the growing importance of the city as a base for the terrorist movement. Al-Qaeda and EIJ were working toward a merger, and the two groups shared personnel, office space, and equipment. But they still had separate command structures; the EIJ shura council had not yet approved the merger, something Zawahiri was pushing hard for. Bary, appointed by Zawahiri in May 1996 to lead EIJ’s London cell, had subsequently been demoted to deputy with the arrival, in September 1997, of Eidarous. Former head of EIJ in Europe, Eidarous had been stationed in Baku, Azerbaijan, before the move to London.

  Fawwaz was living in London as a Saudi dissident, having claimed political asylum in the UK. London was the ideal place for Fawwaz to operate, bin Laden had decided: almost every news outlet in the world had representation there, and the British authorities tended to turn a blind eye to the activity of Islamist radicals as long as they didn’t pose an obvious threat. This unofficial policy had earned London the name “Londonistan” from frustrated French intelligence officials and had brought scorn from law enforcement and intelligence services around the world. The policy wasn’t even popular among many in the UK security services, especially within Scotland Yard. The Anti-Terrorism Branch of the police, SO13, had been monitoring al-Qaeda and EIJ operatives and understood the threat they posed. However, Scotland Yard was overruled.

  Although we had urged the British to arrest Fawwaz, Bary, and Eidarous in 1996, they had refused. As the men had done nothing but communicate with people the United States found “problematic,” and as they were not directly connected to terrorist attacks, there had been no evidence to support arresting them at that point. They had finally been arrested following the East African embassy bombings, based upon evidence of their connection to the attacks provided by the FBI.

  “The British just told us that a judge said they don’t have enough evidence to keep them locked up anymore,” Tom said to me.

  “What do you mean? There are piles of evidence—enough to keep them locked up for life. I’ve spent the last couple of months decoding documents and sending files to London with evidence for them to use.”

  “I know, I know,” Tom said, shaking his head, “the fault isn’t on our end, but somehow the ball has been dropped, and now the British are saying that we’ve got twenty-four hours to make the case for continuing to hold them or they’ll have to release them.” Tom explained that assistant U.S. attorneys Ken Karas and Pat Fitzgerald were expecting Dan Coleman, senior FBI agent Jack Cloonan, and me to meet them at the Southern District offices to put together a complaint to be filed in the UK requesting the extradition of the three men.

  “I see. So we have to have them arrested again based on new evidence, and use that for the extradition case?”

  “As long as they remain in jail, I don’t care how you manage it. But those guys are dangerous and can’t be released.”

  It was an open secret that anyone who wanted to reach bin Laden could do so by going through Fawwaz. When Peter Bergen and Peter Arnett interviewed bin Laden for CNN in 1997—his first interview with a Western media outlet—they went through Fawwaz. Documents that we later found in Fawwaz’s office described the process of bringing the two journalists to meet bin Laden. They were taken to Afghanistan by an associate of Fawwaz’s, Abu Musab al-Suri, a Syrian known among jihadists as a prolific writer and strategist; his real name is Mustafa Setmariam. In Afghanistan, Abu Musab handed them over to Saif al-Adel, a member of al-Qaeda’s military committee, who ran a series of “security checks,” including scanning them with a handheld metal detector to check if they were carrying weapons or had any tracking devices. Abu Musab’s notes report that the scanner didn’t work but that Saif al-Adel thought it was important to make the CNN crew think it did. Saif al-Adel, bin Laden, and other al-Qaeda members later joked with each other about having fooled Bergen and Arnett.

  The notes record that on this trip Abu Musab asked bin Laden for details about certain operations and that bin Laden was not forthcoming. “I can’t share this with you,” he said, “as you are in the enemy’
s belly.” Later Abu Musab left Europe and returned to Afghanistan.

  When John Miller interviewed bin Laden in 1998—almost two months before the East African embassy bombings—he, too, first traveled to London to meet Fawwaz, who, with an associate, assisted the ABC team in traveling to Islamabad and from there to Afghanistan, where bin Laden awaited them. It was also from Fawwaz’s London office that bin Laden had sent missives denouncing the Saudi royal family for having allowed U.S. troops into the Arabian Peninsula. Bin Laden’s vitriolic statements targeted Sheikh bin Baz (Abd al-Aziz bin Baz), the official head of all Saudi clerics. Bin Laden denounced bin Baz’s 1990 fatwa, which specified that foreign troops should be permitted in the kingdom.

  On August 6, 1998, the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, which is distributed around the world, published a message from EIJ and Zawahiri: “We wish to inform the Americans that their message has been received, and we are preparing our answer, with the help of God, in the only language they will understand.” The following day, the East African embassies were blown up.

  Zawahiri was referring to a raid a month earlier, in Albania, during which Albanian authorities, aided by the United States, had arrested members of an EIJ cell. The raid was conducted following intelligence reports that the cell was planning an attack on U.S. interests in Albania. The operatives were handed over to the Egyptian authorities, as they were wanted in Egypt for their involvement in a series of terrorist attacks, and tried along with others captured elsewhere. (Still others—such as Eidarous and Abdel Bary—were tried in absentia.) The case was named Returnees from Albania, given the country of origin of a large number of the detainees.

  Albania had become a favorable location for EIJ and other Egyptian Islamist terrorists, as the chaos following the fall of the communist regime—and, subsequently, the Balkan war that had begun in 1991—created perfect conditions for their operations. Because of the disorder in the country, many legitimate Islamic organizations and NGOs opened offices to help the local population, and EIJ operatives could pretend to be part of that.