The Black Banners

by Soufan, Ali H.

  Like many operatives, he also wasn’t happy that Egyptians were running al-Qaeda. Traditionally, Arabs from the Persian Gulf are accustomed to having Egyptians work for them. In al-Qaeda Egyptians took many of the top positions: they headed most of the training camps and were in other positions of power as well, and they tended to order the Gulf Arabs around. Of the nine members of the shura council, seven were Egyptian. And of the heads of al-Qaeda’s various committees, other than bin Laden himself and Abu Hafs al-Mauritani, all were Egyptians. The division extended to recreation: when al-Qaeda members played soccer on Fridays, the teams were usually Egyptians versus Saudis and Yemenis (and everyone else).

  Bin Laden understood the resentment, but there was little he could do. Part of the problem was that Egyptians joined al-Qaeda permanently, while those from the Gulf states, especially Saudis, fought for a couple of months and then returned home. Bin Laden called it “vacation jihad,” and jihadi strategist Abu Musab al-Suri often joked that the Gulf Arabs came for a few months to “cleanse themselves after a week of spending time with whores in Bangkok.”

  When Abu Jandal told bin Laden that he was returning to Yemen to find a wife, he also told him that he wanted to settle down and that this meant that he could no longer serve him. The al-Qaeda leader seemed unconcerned and gave Abu Jandal $2,500 in cash as a wedding present, telling him to “go and think about it after you are married.” Bin Laden appeared confident that Abu Jandal’s absence would not be permanent.

  Sometime after Abu Jandal’s departure for Yemen, bin Laden outlined a plan to his driver, Salim Hamdan: he and Abu Jandal should marry two sisters, as they were two of his most trusted followers and he wanted to bind them in this way. Hamdan did exactly as he was asked. Abu Jandal’s growing misgivings with the direction al-Qaeda was taking were laid aside, and ultimately the two married sisters.

  The Yemeni authorities who had raided Bayt Habra questioned Abu Jandal for an hour and a half, concluded that he was not part of the plot, and released him. Four hours later he bumped into another al-Qaeda operative, Ibrahim al-Thawer, alias Nibras (later to become one of the Cole suicide bombers), who warned him that the Yemeni police were searching for him again to ask more questions. Abu Jandal wasn’t going to stay around and see what they wanted. Telling himself that “there is no one for you but the sheikh”—bin Laden—he fled to Afghanistan. Other al-Qaeda members who hadn’t been picked up also left the country.

  Bin Laden, pleased to have his trusted bodyguard back, gave Abu Jandal a warm welcome. When Abu Jandal told him about the raid, bin Laden asked worriedly: “Was it against us specifically or did someone do something wrong?” Abu Jandal outlined the full sequence of events, and told the al-Qaeda leader that the arrests seemed to have been made in response to the car thefts, not because the Yemenis were cracking down on al-Qaeda. “That is good to hear,” bin Laden said, and a look of calm relief passed over his face as he invoked the president of Yemen: “The ship of Ali Abdullah Saleh is the only ship we have.”

  Mihdhar was executed in front of officials from the Yemeni prosecutor’s office and the interior ministry on October 7, 1999. The al-Qaeda members who were arrested and found to be part of the plot were given jail sentences. As their weeks in jail progressed, their thinking about the Yemeni state changed. So, too, did the thinking of their fellow al-Qaeda comrades living in Yemen who regularly visited them. Until then al-Qaeda members had viewed the Yemeni state as a friend who sometimes erred. They therefore mostly avoided operations in the country. This episode ended that view, and now they saw the Yemeni state as an accomplice of the West. Other actions by the Yemenis around this time helped to poison the relationship, among them the arrest and incarcertation of Khallad (Walid bin Attash), apparently in a case of mistaken identity.

  One of the men most deeply affected by his time in jail was Hassan al-Khamiri, who spent nine months behind bars. Khamiri was older than most other al-Qaeda members and was “considered like a father by all the brothers,” in the words of Abu Jandal. He returned to Afghanistan as soon as he was released, and his al-Qaeda brothers saw a changed man. He had become bitter and had developed a deep loathing for the Yemeni government. He already hated the United States: the emir of an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, he had lost a few of his men when the camp was bombed by the Americans in retaliation for the 1998 East African embassy attacks.

  Khamiri and other al-Qaeda members tried to pressure bin Laden into launching a big operation in Yemen as punishment for their incarceration. “The brothers in Yemen are frustrated and need to do something. If you don’t authorize it, they’ll do it alone,” Khamiri warned bin Laden.

  “Have the brothers be patient,” bin Laden replied. “An operation in Yemen is coming, and you will be involved. You need to be patient and discreet.”

  Khamiri returned to Yemen to help plan the operation and regularly visited the operatives who were still in jail. He spent a good deal of time speaking to Khallad, and to Khallad and Muhannad bin Attash’s younger brother Abdul Aziz bin Attash (al-Bara). Although al-Bara’s sentence was up, because of his family’s close ties to bin Laden, the Yemenis continued to hold him, citing national security reasons. They thought that he could be a future bargaining chip with bin Laden. “Don’t worry,” Khamiri told al-Bara, “the sheikh understands our concerns. Some kind of action is coming.”

  In the summer of 2000 Khamiri sent al-Bara a letter saying that bin Laden and Saif al-Adel had asked him to no longer visit him and their other al-Qaeda brothers in prison; he had to remove himself from “suspicious activities.” Khamiri concluded, “Soon you will hear the good news.” It was a clear message that he would be involved in an operation.

  Al-Bara smiled and burned the letter—while sitting in his Yemeni prison cell.

  October 12, 2000. The darkness of the night was only beginning to retreat as I drove my car from my apartment in Brooklyn to the FBI offices in Manhattan. It was around 6:00 AM, and it wasn’t unusual for me to be awake and on my way to the office at that early hour. The hours before daybreak were in many ways my favorite part of the day. New York was silent and peaceful, traffic and honking almost nonexistent. Not only did the quiet remind me, somehow, of my years in rural Pennsylvania, but it also gave me time to think clearly and without interruption before things started getting busy.

  I was midway through my drive, deep in thought on a case I was working on—and almost exactly in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge—when my cell phone rang. It startled me. A call at this hour meant that either something was wrong or a friend in the Middle East had forgotten the time difference. Having recently worked in Jordan to thwart the millennium attacks, I half-expected phone calls at early hours from the Middle East. But it wasn’t someone from Jordan on the phone; it was Kevin Cruise, supervisor of the I-45 squad, dedicated to the investigation into the East African embassy bombings.

  “Did you hear what happened?” Kevin asked, skipping a hello and other niceties.

  “I heard on NPR earlier,” I began cautiously. “Israel bombed Arafat’s headquarters. We probably need to take precautions . . .” As the words came out, I knew something else must have happened. That alone wouldn’t warrant a 6:00 AM call.

  “Not that,” he interrupted, not allowing me to finish my sentence. “A navy ship in Yemen was bombed. There are a lot of casualties, and some sailors are missing.”

  “Yemen?” I asked. “Why on earth do we have a navy ship in Yemen?”

  Yemen was well known in the intelligence community to be full of radical Islamists, including al-Qaeda members. Radical Islamist fighters developed a close relationship with the Yemeni authorities during the country’s civil war, when President Ali Abdullah Saleh reportedly used Arab mujahideen veterans of the Afghan-Soviet war to help him lead the North to defeat the socialist South. In return for the mujahideen’s help, the government turned a blind eye to radical Islamist activities in the country as long as they weren’t directed against the government or didn’t harm
the country’s interests.

  As a result al-Qaeda sympathizers could be found throughout Yemeni institutions, including in the intelligence services. Some would help terrorists obtain visas and fraudulent documents, or tip them off when foreign governments were looking for them. Many non-Yemenis involved in the 1998 East African embassy bombings, for example, used fraudulent Yemeni passports to hide their real identities.

  Yemen is a convenient place for a terrorist base, as it has a weak central government and tribes that in many ways operate as autonomous minigovernments. Some tribes are sympathetic to extremists, and others are willing to aid terrorists for reasons ranging from monetary reward to help in battles with rival tribes. The weak central government also means that the country’s borders are largely unsecured, allowing terrorists to enter and leave easily. To top it off, the country has a thriving arms market, giving terrorists access to the weapons and explosives they need.

  “We’re looking into that,” Kevin replied to my question. “Just get in as fast as you can.” In situations like this, Kevin was curt and to the point. A former military man, he was efficient in emergency situations. He was a devout Catholic, a family man, and someone committed to the truth. I remember him telling me after 9/11, when the bureau was being incorrectly blamed for not stopping the attacks (before the 9/11 Commission told the real story), that he felt that people in church were looking at him differently. It saddened him that the American people were being misled and that the FBI’s reputation was being smeared.

  “I’m on my way,” I told Kevin. Why on earth do we have a navy ship in Yemen? I said out loud to myself after hanging up. The question kept repeating itself in my mind as I hurried toward the office.

  Ten minutes later I pulled up outside the NYO. I parked my car across the street in what was a no-parking zone, not wanting to waste the time looking for a spot and for once not caring whether I’d get a ticket.

  Details of the attack were filtering in: at 11:22 AM Yemen time, the USS Cole, a navy destroyer weighing 8,300 tons and carrying almost 300 sailors, was making a routine fueling stop in the Port of Aden. Suicide bombers pulled alongside the destroyer in a small boat and blew themselves up. At this point 12 sailors were confirmed dead and many more were reported injured. News of deaths and casualties was still coming in, and the numbers were expected to rise.

  Details of the attack were first sent in by Col. Robert Newman, a military attaché based in Sanaa. He saw and felt the explosion firsthand and alerted the embassy. The explosion was so powerful, Newman later told me, that it was heard as far as two miles away. The first ship on the scene to provide aid to the Cole was the British Royal Navy’s HMS Marlborough, which was in the vicinity. Sailors with the gravest injuries were flown to a French military hospital in Djibouti before being transferred to a U.S. hospital in Germany. Rescuers and crew members focused on trying to stop the Cole from sinking, a very real danger.

  Marines from the Interim Marine Corps Security Force, based in nearby Bahrain, arrived soon after to secure the area around the ship. They didn’t know if a second attack was planned and were taking no chances. They were followed by a U.S Marine platoon, which helped secure the Cole itself. The marines also secured a nearby hotel, the Mövenpick, where U.S. troops, investigators, diplomats, and the press would be staying when they arrived.

  At the office I found the answer to the question I had been asking myself on my way in: the Cole needed to refuel in Aden because it was making a 3,300-mile transit from the Mediterranean, where it had last refueled.

  Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, had been used for several years as the refueling port for U.S. vessels, but in January 1999 it was dropped in favor of Aden. The Eritrea-Ethiopia War (1998–2000) had made Djibouti less appealing to the United States, although in intelligence reports it was never ranked as being as dangerous as Aden. The real reason for the switch was that while Yemen had supported Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, the Clinton administration had launched a major diplomatic initiative aiming to bring Yemen into the U.S. orbit. Trusting Yemen with hosting U.S. ships, along with the economic benefits that hosting provides, was part of that effort. The State Department and its country team in Yemen concurred that the security situation in Aden was acceptable.

  While the diplomatic corps supported the move, security agencies warned against it. An intelligence report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s Multiple Threat Alert Center (MTAC) warned that security in Aden was tenuous and that the central government had little or no control. Nor would this be the first time that radical jihadi terrorists were responsible for plotting an attack against a U.S. target. In December 1992, during the Yemeni Civil War, when Ali Abdullah Saleh was using Islamic militants to help the North defeat the South, terrorists bombed the Gold Mohur Hotel, aiming to hit U.S. Marines who were en route to Somalia to take part in Operation Restore Hope. The bombs missed their intended mark (the marines had already left) but killed a Yemeni citizen and an Austrian tourist.

  All U.S. ships, before they visit a foreign port, are required to file a force-protection plan. The Cole’s plan—approved by higher U.S. military authorities—was that it would operate under threat or force condition “bravo,” which is a heightened state of readiness against potential attack. (The lesser condition is alpha; beyond bravo is charlie; delta signifies the most critical state.) Under bravo, security teams on deck are armed with shotguns and other small arms and looking for threats.

  My later review indicated that the sailors and the captain of the USS Cole did everything they could under the circumstances. The fact that the Cole was a sitting duck and identified as such by the terrorists was the fault of those responsible for designating Aden a safe port. At such close quarters, it would be next to impossible for sailors on a destroyer to ascertain in a minute or two whether a small boat pulling alongside was a friend or an enemy.

  Bob McFadden, the NCIS special agent with whom I later partnered in the Cole investigation, told me when we first met: “I’ve been coming here since 1997 and have a good sense of the atmosphere of Aden and the harbor, and when a ship pulls in there’s a lot of bustling activity. Small boats that service navy vessels routinely pull up to and away from the ship. It’s inconceivable that a nineteen-year-old sailor with a twelve-gauge shotgun would be able to distinguish friend from foe under those circumstances.”

  JTTF supervisors gathered in Pat D’Amuro’s office in New York to discuss the bombing, although Pat himself was out of the office at firearms training. (His was the most spacious office for a meeting of this kind.) Senior officials from FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, participated via speakerphone, and the JTTF supervisors asked me to join them in the room.

  A week earlier I had written a memo suggesting that an al-Qaeda attack was imminent. It was based on a video bin Laden had just released, in which the al-Qaeda leader, wearing a jambiya (a traditional Yemeni dagger) and standing in front of a map of the Near and Middle East, issued threats against America. John O’Neill had distributed that memo across the law enforcement and intelligence community. Because of the memo, and because of the previous al-Qaeda and EIJ-related cases I had been involved in (such as the East African embassy bombings, Operation Challenge in the UK, the millennium plot in Jordan, and operations in Albania) that had direct links to Yemen, the JTTF supervisors asked me to brief everyone on the history of Yemen, terrorism in Yemen, and who was likely responsible. This last point was especially relevant because of the bureau’s office of origin system: if al-Qaeda were behind the bombing of the Cole, the NYO would be charge of the investigation.

  The Washington field office representatives on the call made the case that this wasn’t an al-Qaeda plot. Their view was that the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan, Mihdhar’s group—still operational after his death—was behind the attack. I argued that it was more likely that al-Qaeda was behind the incident, as an attack of that magnitude required planning, funds, and greater operational capability than a local terrorist group w
ould have. Bin Laden’s video threat strengthened this view.

  After hearing both arguments, FBI director Louis Freeh decided that agents from the two offices should go to Yemen until we found out who was behind the attack. Having to replace a WFO team with a NYO team, or the reverse, would waste the precious first weeks after an attack, when evidence is still on the ground and witnesses’ memories are fresh.

  The next decision to make was who would represent the NYO. Pat Fitzgerald and another assistant U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York, David Kelley, were consulted. They would be handling any prosecutions for the bombing, and they said that they wanted me. I had worked closely with both men on the 1998 East African embassy bombings, the millennium attacks in Jordan, and other cases. I was happy to be working alongside them again.

  In terrorism prosecutions it’s necessary to have a case agent who is an expert in the organizations involved and who understands what is legally required to prosecute the culprits. Half the battle is determining who is responsible; the second half is capturing them and ensuring they’re prosecuted. With Fitzy’s much-vaunted memory came a dedication that put work before everything. He had a stove in his apartment in New York that wasn’t hooked up for ten years. When Heather, my girlfriend, joked with him about it, he said: “I don’t like to rush things.” He is the son of a doorman and went to school on a scholarship.

  Kelley is a Renaissance man: a great lawyer and prosecutor, a sharp-witted intellectual, a volunteer professor at a law school, an NFL referee, and an athlete who keeps himself in top shape. I remember once checking security with John O’Neill on the roof of our hotel in Aden. We spotted Kelley swimming solitary laps. Everyone else was too worried about personal safety to use the pool. David wasn’t going to let the terrorists ruin his regimen. Instead of going to a gym, he ran up and down the hotel stairs. Whatever he does, he works hard to be the best at it. He’s also a pretty funny guy. When he first met Heather, he asked her what she did and she told him, “Social work. I work with children with challenges.” David said, “So that’s how you met him,” pointing at me.