500 Days

by Kurt Eichenwald

  • • •

  Thirty minutes later, an image of Osama bin Laden, clad in fatigues and sitting in a rocky outcrop, appeared on the Arab television network, Al Jazeera. The video had been prerecorded, although no one could say precisely when. The timing of its broadcast, coming so soon after the bombing began, hardly seemed a coincidence.

  Bin Laden held a black microphone in his right hand and, as he spoke, wagged his index finger up and down. “God Almighty hit the United States at its most vulnerable spot, he destroyed one of its great buildings,” he said. “Here is the United States. It was filled with terror from north to south, from east to west, praise be to God.”

  Less than two weeks had passed since bin Laden proclaimed the attacks were the work of Jews or enemies of the United States, that such an act was forbidden by the Koran, that al-Qaeda was not the enemy of America—comments that CIA analysts saw as the ravings of a madman. As expected, he was contradicting himself by proclaiming the horror as an act of God—on behalf of Muslims.

  This was divine retribution, bin Laden said, an infliction of the same pain felt by Islamic nations for decades. America was a nation of hypocrites, he intoned, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians with the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima while bemoaning as terrorism the deaths of far fewer people. All Muslims had to rise up in defense of their religion and join the fight to drive evil from Saudi Arabia.

  Finally, bin Laden had a few words for the American people. If peace did not come to Palestine, if infidels did not leave the land of Mohammed, the threat would never end.

  “I swear by Almighty God,” he said. “America will not live in peace.”

  • • •

  The anthrax killer was back in Princeton, walking toward the mailbox.

  Government health experts had already revealed news that someone had died from inhalation anthrax, but there was no real panic. The officials had told the public that there was nothing to fear, saying they did not believe this single case was the result of terrorism.

  Despite the number of letters that the killer sent to the news media almost two weeks before, no one seemed to have found them. There had been no announcement of anthrax discovered at NBC or the New York Post; no letter had been located at the Sun, where Stevens worked. There was a distinct possibility that the attacks might slip by without anyone’s ever knowing they had occurred.

  Soon, there would be no doubt that the country was again facing a terrorist threat. The killer arrived at the mailbox on Nassau Street carrying new letters. One was addressed to the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, and the other to Senator Patrick Leahy.

  Both men played a role in the nation’s anthrax efforts. Months before, Daschle had sent a letter to the Pentagon expressing concern about the safety of anthrax vaccines administered to soldiers. Shortly afterward, the Defense Department announced it was curtailing the program; the vaccine was running out, threatening the life’s work of researchers like Dr. Bruce Ivins.

  Daschle’s political influence on anthrax research was perhaps exceeded only by Leahy’s financial role. He was the former chairman of and now a senior Democrat on the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee. That Senate body oversaw funding for biosafety animal research facilities, such as the anthrax lab at Fort Detrick.

  These two men were among the most important politicians in Washington when it came to the future of the anthrax vaccine program. And they had just been targeted for exposure to the deadly bacteria.

  • • •

  Several sedans came to a stop at a mansion in the northwestern section of central London. A group of American intelligence and diplomatic officials climbed out and headed toward the front door, where a well-dressed servant awaited to escort them inside.

  The home was owned by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a member of the Saudi royal family who had served as ambassador to the United States since 1983. In those eighteen years, Bandar had become known internationally as an indispensable operator, a dominant diplomatic figure who served as a bridge between the Middle East and Washington.

  On this day in mid-October, Bandar was hosting a secret summit between government officials with both the United States and Libya, two countries that had not had formal diplomatic ties for twenty-two years. Libya had been on the State Department’s annual list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1979, and the country’s leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi, had been quietly pushing for a détente with the West. Bandar brokered earlier meetings between the Americans and the Libyans—at his London home, at his British country house, and in Geneva—as part of the opening steps in a potential diplomatic thaw.

  Until now, the discussions had focused on the role of Libyan officials in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland; there could be no progress, the Americans said, until Libya accepted its responsibility and agreed to a settlement with victims’ families.

  The meeting today would be quite different. The entourage of American officials walked through the first floor of Bandar’s home, passing an indoor swimming pool, before heading downstairs to a large, windowless room. There, they met with Moussa Koussa, who had worked as a deputy director of Libyan intelligence and had been linked to both the Lockerbie bombing and the downing of a French airliner a year later.

  The first rounds of meetings were handled by William Burns, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, with the talks focusing on the Libyans’ admitting their role in the Pan Am 103 attacks and agreeing to surrender their weapons of mass destruction.

  Ben Bonk, the deputy director of the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA, listened to the discussion without offering much input. He had attended several of these meeting with Koussa but arrived today with a new agenda.

  After a break, Bonk and Koussa headed upstairs to a parlor filled with elegant sofas and matching chairs. Although his English was excellent, Koussa brought along a translator; a CIA official accompanied Bonk from the Near East division. Everyone sat down around a coffee table. Bonk looked Koussa in the eyes.

  “I don’t care about the past anymore,” he said. “Forget about it, this is the past, ended, done with. All I care about is what happens from now on.”

  Bush had been clear about the new administration position, Bonk said—countries had to choose. They would be either with the United States, or against it. There was no longer a middle ground.

  “You know these are serious problems. If you’re going to work with us, we want to work with you,” Bonk said.

  A moment passed. “You go after them, you have to go after all of them,” Koussa said. “You can’t just go after bin Laden and expect this to go away. If you don’t get them all, they’re not going to stop.”

  “That’s fine with us,” Bonk replied. “We’re going after everybody.”

  Koussa’s voice dropped. “You know, of course, that your biggest problem is the Saudis and what they’re doing with the spread of their philosophy.”

  Amazing. They were meeting in the home of the Saudi ambassador. This was no place to talk about the role of Wahhabism—the austere form of Islam promoted by the royal family and practiced by bin Laden and other extremists—in the growth of al-Qaeda.

  I’ll bet this room is bugged. Bonk stayed silent, not disagreeing, not nodding. The conversation moved on.

  After about half an hour, Bonk handed Koussa a small pile of documents containing information about the hijackers—nothing earth-shattering, but enough to signal that the administration was willing to cooperate and provide intelligence to Libya on terrorists. In return, Koussa brought out sheets of paper covered with a matrix of telephone numbers.

  “We think al-Qaeda is contacting these phones,” Koussa said. “We’ve picked these up from our people in Afghanistan.”

  The meeting ended, and Bonk walked away feeling pleased with the progress. Tentative steps, to be sure, but the American and Libyan intelligence agencies were starting to work together in confronting the al-Qaeda threat.

 
At his first opportunity, Bonk studied the papers that Koussa had provided him. The telephone numbers could be helpful; Bonk planned to turn them over to the NSA as soon as he returned home. As he scanned the numbers, one almost jumped off the page.

  Area code 202.

  Then he saw the prefix, 456. Bonk’s eyes widened in disbelief. Someone at that prefix had been calling a phone number in Afghanistan linked by Libyan intelligence to al-Qaeda.

  It was a number that Bonk knew well, a prefix used at only one building in Washington.

  The White House.

  • • •

  Shortly after 10:30 on the morning of October 8, a red Volkswagen Golf parked in front of an apartment building in Zenica, north of Sarajevo. Two Bosnian police officers stepped out and approached the ground-floor residences. A knock on the door, and Anela Kobilica answered.

  “Is Belkacem Bensayah available?” one of the officers asked. “We need to speak with him.”

  Kobilica hesitated. Bensayah, her husband, was an Algerian Arab who did not understand Bosnian well. Meeting with the police would be difficult for him.

  “Why do you wish to speak with him?” she asked.

  “We want to check on the status of his citizenship.”

  This was bad news. Kobilica was aware that a number of Arab men had been expelled from Bosnia recently and feared this would now be her husband’s fate. She grew upset, but one of the officers told her not to worry.

  “We’re just here to conduct a check,” he said. “Ask him to collect his identity papers and come with us.”

  Kobilica went inside to fetch her husband. Minutes later, Bensayah was heading out to the street with the police, his immigration papers in hand.

  Before Kobilica could close the door, two more uniformed officers appeared. They instructed her to stay at home with her daughters until Bensayah returned. She agreed. The two men took up positions in front of the apartment building, standing sentry.

  The plan to question Bensayah had been set in motion days before. Since the 9/11 attacks, authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina had been working with the Americans to root out terrorist sympathizers. During the Bosnian War, the country had become a magnet for jihadists, as large numbers of them joined the battle in defense of fellow Muslims. After hostilities ended, many remained, often taking jobs with Muslim charities that American intelligence believed were fronts used to funnel cash to terrorists.

  For six years, the Bosnians had looked the other way as their country emerged as a haven for Islamic fundamentalists. But Bush’s “with us or against us” edict had shaken the Federation government into action. A new counterterrorist unit was formed, which immediately launched a headlong assault on the terrorist threat in Bosnia. Over the previous few weeks, a coterie of law enforcement officials had pulled up in SUVs every few days at homes and offices around the country, quietly conducting arrests and searches. That had culminated two weeks earlier with a significant raid on Visoko airfield, northwest of Sarajevo; armored fighting vehicles, Humvee jeeps, and attack helicopters descended on the landing strip that American intelligence had identified as a hub for organizations providing support to al-Qaeda. Calls intercepted at a listening post in neighboring Croatia had fueled concern that Visoko was about to be used as a launch site for another airborne attack, this time against the American embassy or military bases in Sarajevo.

  In the crackdown, information emerged about an Algerian known to law enforcement only by the nickname “Abu Maali.” The intelligence suggested that this man—a veteran of conflicts in Algeria, Afghanistan, and the Balkans—worked closely with al-Qaeda. Bensayah was the prime suspect; the Americans had evidence that he had placed as many as seventy calls to Abu Zubaydah, identified by the CIA as a top al-Qaeda operative. In one intercepted conversation with Zubaydah after 9/11, the Americans told the Bosnians, Bensayah had discussed passport procurement. But the Bosnians had only the assurances of United States embassy officials that Bensayah associated with terrorists. If they were going to arrest him, they needed their own evidence.

  • • •

  The police returned Bensayah to his home just before 1:30 P.M., this time with a show of force. Almost forty officers arrived, parking their vehicles haphazardly around the street, then milling about for ten minutes until one of them informed Bensayah and Kobilica that they had come to search the apartment. There was no Arab interpreter present, so Kobilica did all the talking.

  “Can we observe?” she asked.

  “Yes,” one of the officers replied. “But don’t talk to each other.”

  The police began by searching a small room with a couch. There wasn’t much to examine there, so they moved on to the bedroom. They checked the floor, opened all of the drawers and closets, and dug through the couple’s clothes.

  The telephone rang. On the line was a friend of Kobilica, sounding distressed. “I just heard on the news that Belkacem was arrested!” the friend said.

  That was odd. He was home, and this was about immigration. Why was any of that newsworthy?

  “There are just some questions about his citizenship papers,” Kobilica said.

  “That’s not what they said on the news. They said that Belkacem was connected to terrorism!”

  Kobilica thanked her friend, hung up, and approached the nearest officer. “They are saying on the news that this has something to do with terrorism,” she said. “What is all this about?”

  “It has nothing to do with terrorism,” the officer replied. “This is just an investigation relating to your husband’s citizenship.”

  Just before 3:30, the couple asked if the search could be interrupted to allow for afternoon prayers. The police agreed. The prayers lasted longer than usual; the two had missed the noon session, so they doubled up on their devotions this time. The search resumed as soon as they were finished.

  The police returned to the bedroom closet. About twenty books were stacked inside, and an officer inspected each one. A number of boxes were also stored there, and those were moved into the bedroom. An officer prepared to look inside the first.

  “No!” Bensayah blurted out in Arabic. “Do not open that box. It contains items that are not mine. They belong to other men who have left the country. They asked me to keep their things safe for them until they returned.”

  Ignoring the protests, the officer opened the box and pulled out a fax machine. When she saw it, Kobilica whipped around on her husband, furious. This device communicated by telephone. Who knew what calls the men who owned it may have made?

  “What are you doing with this?” she barked. “Why would you store something like that from someone you don’t know?”

  “Don’t talk to him!” one officer snapped. Kobilica was escorted into the living room, away from Bensayah.

  Searching through more boxes, an officer found about seventy books. While flipping through the pages of one, he saw a slip of paper with numbers on it. He pulled it out of the book and held it aloft.

  • • •

  Soon after, the police emerged from the bedroom and turned their attention to the living room. An officer saw the remote control for the television, picked it up, and held it out to Kobilica.

  “What’s this?” he said, suspicion in his voice.

  Kobilica blinked. “It’s the television remote control.”

  The officer nodded. “All right,” he said.

  One of the searchers standing near the television noticed a book entitled The Tragedy of Immorality. He opened it and saw handwriting on the pages.

  “Whose book is this?” he asked.

  “It’s mine,” Kobilica responded.

  “What’s all this writing?”

  “It’s mine. It’s the answers to scores of personality tests that I saw in the newspaper.”

  The officer continued to look through the book. Kobilica thought nothing of it.

  • • •

  As each belonging was seized, the police recorded it on a receipt for the couple. The paper with the n
umbers on it was listed as the ninth item. The book, The Tragedy of Immorality, was thirteenth. The description of that entry said that it included two sheets of paper with Arabic letters. There was no mention of numbers. None of the officers could read Arabic.

  • • •

  About that same time, Muhamed Beić, the interior minister for the Federation government, was standing before a group of reporters in Sarajevo.

  A man named Belkacem Bensayah had been arrested in nearby Zenica on terrorism charges, Bes˘ić said. Police had discovered a slip of paper at his home with the phone number of Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaeda member.

  The evidence, though, was curious. In court, the government would identify item thirteen on the receipt list—The Tragedy of Immorality and the two sheets of paper—as the one containing the Zubaydah phone number. But none of those papers had numbers on them. The one that did, number nine, was never identified as suspicious.

  • • •

  Erin O’Connor stayed home sick from her job at NBC for a few more days.

  Her flulike symptoms and rashes had grown worse the week before. She had been unable to shake the fear that she had been exposed to anthrax from the powder-laced letter addressed to her boss, Tom Brokaw. So, she had called the FBI and the New York City Police Department, and had gone to see a doctor, asking repeatedly, “Could this be anthrax?” Each time, the answer was no. A bite from a brown recluse spider maybe, but not anthrax.

  She returned to work on Monday, October 8, and Brokaw asked her how she was doing. “I’m actually feeling quite a bit better,” she replied.

  Soon after, O’Connor went to the restroom with two coworkers. When they came out, one of the employees immediately tracked down Brokaw. They had just seen O’Connor’s skin, she told him.

  “It’s a scabrous mess,” she said.

  Brokaw approached O’Connor. “We’ve got to get additional medical care for this.”

  He needed to find Kevin Cahill, Brokaw decided, his family’s doctor and an expert in infectious disease. Cahill would know what to do.

  • • •

  The crowd of administration officials took their seats around a conference table in Room 6320 at the State Department.