Ghost Wars

by Steve Coll

  President Clinton, weakened by impeachment proceedings and boxed in by a hostile Republican majority in Congress, proved unwilling or unable to force the astonishingly passive Pentagon to pursue military options. As an alternative he put the CIA’s covert action arm in the lead against al Qaeda. Historically, the CIA has carried out its most successful covert actions when its main patron under American law, the president of the United States, has been eager to push the agency forward and has proven willing to stomach the risks and failures that accompany CIA operations. This was not Clinton. The president authorized the CIA to pursue al Qaeda and he supported the agency to some extent. Yet he did not fully believe that the CIA was up to the job, and he at times withheld from Langley the legal authorities, resources, and active leadership that a president more confident about the agency’s abilities might have provided.

  Was the president’s evident skepticism about the CIA justified? Since the advent of spectacular modern terrorism in the late 1960s, the record of even the most accomplished intelligence agencies in preventing terrorist attacks has been mixed at best. The CIA in the 1990s was generally seen by intelligence specialists as strong on technology and mediocre at human intelligence operations against hard targets. Agent penetrations and covert action often work best where an intelligence service shares language, culture, and geographical space with its adversary—as with British operations in Northern Ireland, for example. Even then, it usually proves impossible to stop all terrorist attacks, and an intelligence service’s efforts to maneuver a terrorist group into surrender or peaceful politics often requires decades of persistent, secret effort. The difficulty is compounded when the enemy are religiously motivated fanatics who see their violence as above politics and divinely sanctioned. The Israeli spy and security services, widely regarded as leaders in human intelligence, agent penetrations, and covert action, have been unable to thwart suicide bombings by Islamist radicals. In the case of the CIA’s attempts to disrupt al Qaeda’s leadership in Afghanistan, the severe inherent difficulties were extended by the vast cultural gaps and forbidding geographical distances that separated CIA operatives from their targets.

  Still, even within these limits, the agency did not do all it might have done. George Tenet’s discretionary, internal allocation of money and people did not fully reflect his rhetoric about an all-out war, as he later acknowledged. The Counterterrorist Center’s failure early in 2000 to watch-list two known al Qaeda adherents with American visas in their passports appears, in hindsight, as the agency’s single most important unforced error. If it had not occurred, the specific attacks that were to unfold with such unique destructive power in New York and Washington might well have been prevented. Some of the CIA’s disruption operations in Afghanistan after 1998 were creative and resourceful, while others, such as the Pakistani commando plan in 1999, were naïve and ill-judged. In the end, however, it is difficult to evaluate fully the agency’s performance in covert operations against bin Laden after 1998 because some significant ideas generated by CIA officers—notably their plan to partner more actively inside Afghanistan with Massoud—were never authorized by the White House.

  EARLY IN SEPTEMBER CLARKE unloaded his frustrations in a memo to Rice. The previous spring she had declared the president was tired of “swatting flies” in his contest with bin Laden. Clarke felt that was all they were doing six months later. “Decision makers should imagine themselves on a future day when CSG has not succeeded in stopping al Qaeda attacks and hundreds of Americans lay dead in several countries, including the U.S.,” Clarke wrote. “What would those decision makers wish that they had done earlier?” The CIA was “masterful at passive aggressive behavior” and would resist funding new policy initiatives. “You are left with a modest effort to swat flies,” Clarke declared. “You are left waiting for the big attack, with lots of casualties, after which some major U.S. retaliation will be in order.”6

  The Bush Cabinet met at the White House on September 4. Before them was a draft copy of a National Security Presidential Directive, a classified memo outlining a new U.S. policy toward al Qaeda and Afghanistan. The stated goal of the draft document was to eliminate bin Laden and his organization. Its provisions included a plan for a large but undetermined amount of covert action funds to aid Massoud in his war against the Taliban. The CIA would supply Massoud with trucks, uniforms, ammunition, mortars, helicopters, and other equipment to be determined by the agency and the White House—the same rough shopping list drawn up the previous autumn. There was to be money as well for other anti-Taliban forces, although the full scope of covert action would unfold gradually, linked to renewed diplomatic efforts. Still, under the plan Massoud’s coalition of commanders and scattered insurgents in Afghanistan would soon be better equipped than at any time since the early 1990s.7 The Cabinet approved this part of the proposal, although there remained uncertainty about where the money would come from and how much would ultimately be available.

  A long, inconclusive discussion followed about whether to deploy an armed Predator to Afghanistan. The CIA remained divided internally. Cofer Black and the bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center wanted to go forward. James Pavitt at the Directorate of Operations worried about unintended consequences if the CIA suddenly moved back into the business of running lethal operations against targeted individuals—assassination, in the common usage. Such targeted killings carried out directly by the CIA could open agents in the field to retaliatory kidnappings or killings. The missions might also expose the agency to political and media criticism.

  The CIA had conducted classified war games at Langley to discover how its chain of command, made up of spies with limited or no military experience, might responsibly oversee a flying robot that could shoot missiles at suspected terrorists. By early September of 2001 Tenet had reviewed a “concept of operations” submitted by his Counterterrorist Center that outlined how a CIA-managed armed Predator might be fielded and how a decision to fire would be made. At the September 4 Cabinet meeting, Tenet said he wanted the Bush policy makers to understand the proposal: The CIA would be operating a lethal fixed-wing aircraft of the sort normally controlled by the Air Force and its Pentagon chain of command. If Bush and his Cabinet wanted to entrust that operational role to the CIA, Tenet said, they should do so with their eyes wide open, fully aware of the potential fallout if there were a controversial or mistaken strike. Some at the meeting interpreted Tenet’s comments as reluctance to take on the mission. There were differing recollections about how forceful Tenet was in outlining the potential risks. For his part, Tenet believed he was only trying to clarify and facilitate a presidential decision that would break recent precedent by shifting control of a lethal aircraft from the uniformed military to the CIA. The armed Predator was by now a CIA project, virtually an agency invention. The Air Force was not interested in commanding such an awkward, unproven weapon. Air Force doctrine and experience argued for the use of fully tested bombers and cruise missiles even when the targets were lone terrorists. The Air Force was not ready to begin fielding or commanding armed robots.8

  Rice told the group that an armed Predator was needed, but that it obviously was not ready to operate. The principals agreed that the CIA should pursue reconnaissance Predator flights in Afghanistan while work continued—the same recommendation Clarke had made unsuccessfully the previous winter.

  On Massoud, however, the CIA could at least start the paperwork. CIA lawyers, working with officers in the Near East Division and Counterterrorist Center, began to draft a formal, legal presidential finding for Bush’s signature authorizing a new covert action program in Afghanistan, the first in a decade that sought to influence the course of the Afghan war.9

  MASSOUD READ PERSIAN POETRY in his bungalow in the early hours of September 9. The next morning he prepared to fly by helicopter toward Kabul to inspect his forward lines and assess Taliban positions. A colleague told him that he ought to meet the two Arab journalists before he left; they had been waiting for
many days. He said he would talk to them in the cement office used by his intelligence aide, Engineer Arif. Around noon he settled in the bungalow on a cushion designed to ease his back pain. Massoud Khalili, his friend and ambassador to India, sat next to him. As the more compact Arab journalist moved a table and set up his tripod at Massoud’s chest level, Khalili joked, “Is he a wrestler or a photographer?”10

  Massoud took a telephone call. Eight Arabs had been arrested by his troops near the front lines. He asked Engineer Arif to see if he could find out more about them, and Arif left the room.

  The visiting reporter read out a list of questions while his colleague prepared to film. About half his questions concerned Osama bin Laden. Massoud listened, then said he was ready.

  The explosion ripped the cameraman’s body apart. It smashed the room’s windows, seared the walls in flame, and tore Massoud’s chest with shrapnel. He collapsed, unconscious.

  His guards and aides rushed into the building, carried his limp body outside, lifted him into a jeep, and drove to the helicopter pad. They were close to the Tajikistan border. There was a hospital ten minutes’ flight away.

  Several of Massoud’s aides and the lanky Arab reporter sitting to the side of the blast recovered from the noise, felt burning sensations, and realized they were not badly hurt. The Arab tried to run but was captured by Massoud’s security guards. They locked the assassin in a nearby room, but he wiggled through a window. He was shot to death as he tried to escape.

  On the helicopter Massoud’s longtime bodyguard, Omar, held the commander’s head and watched him stop breathing. Omar thought to himself, he said later, “He’s dying and I’m dying.”11

  AMRULLAH SALEH CALLED the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center from Tajikistan. He spoke to Rich, the bin Laden unit chief. Saleh was in tears, sobbing and heaving between sentences as he explained what had happened.

  “Where’s Massoud?” the CIA officer asked.

  “He’s in the refrigerator,” said Saleh, searching for the English word for morgue.12

  Massoud was dead, but his inner circle had barely absorbed the news. They were all in shock. They were also trying to strategize in a hurry. As soon as the Taliban learned that Massoud was gone, they would swarm up the Panjshir Valley in attack, Massoud’s surviving aides felt certain. Based on the Taliban’s past behavior in newly conquered lands, the valley faced devastation and atrocities. Massoud’s aides had to get themselves organized. They had to choose a new leader and reinforce their defenses. They needed time.

  They had already put out a false story claiming that Massoud had only been wounded. Meanwhile, Saleh told the Counterterrorist Center, the suddenly leaderless Northern Alliance needed the CIA’s help as it prepared to confront al Qaeda and the Taliban.13

  This looked to many of the CIA’s officers like the end of the Northern Alliance. Massoud’s death immediately called into question a central plank of the national security strategy designed to confront al Qaeda in Afghanistan, endorsed by Bush’s Cabinet just five days earlier. There was no one in the wings who approached Massoud’s stature. The CIA’s quick assessment was that Massoud’s coalition might not be viable either militarily or politically without him.14

  Officers in the Counterterrorist Center alerted the White House to the news that Massoud was dead. Within hours the story had leaked to CNN. From Tajikistan, Saleh called Langley again, angry. The CIA was the only call he had made confirming Massoud’s death. How had the agency let it leak so fast?

  On the morning of September 10 the CIA’s daily classified briefings to President Bush, his Cabinet, and other policy makers reported on Massoud’s death and analyzed the consequences for America’s covert war against al Qaeda. At the White House Stephen Hadley chaired a meeting of the Deputies Committee called to finalize new policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, decisions that would round out the National Security Presidential Directive approved by cabinet members six days earlier. Explaining the Bush Administration’s deliberate pace in fashioning new policies toward al Qaeda, Paul Wolfowitz emphasized the need to think carefully about Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet after five months of discussion and delay they had arrived at relatively cautious, gradual plans that departed from Clinton policies in their eventual goals, but not in many of their immediate steps. On the Taliban, the committee agreed to pursue initially a track of diplomatic persuasion: They would send an envoy to Afghanistan to urge Mullah Omar to expel bin Laden or face dire consequences, as Clinton’s diplomats had done unsuccessfully for several years. In the meantime the Bush Administration would secretly provide enough covert aid to keep the Northern Alliance on life support, if possible, and would prepare for additional secret aid to anti-Taliban Pashtuns. If diplomacy failed, anti-Taliban forces would be encouraged to attack al Qaeda units inside Afghanistan. If that limited covert war failed, the Bush Administration would then move directly to overthrow the Taliban itself, providing enough aid to Afghan opposition forces to achieve victory. The deputies estimated on September 10 that the full project, if it all proved necessary, would likely take about three years. The group also agreed to try to improve relations with Pakistan; its departures from Clinton’s approach on that score were subtle at best.

  Officers in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, still hopeful that they could maintain a foothold in northern Afghanistan to attack bin Laden, called frantically around Washington to find a way to aid the rump Northern Alliance before it was eliminated.

  Massoud’s advisers and lobbyists in Washington, aware of the truth, ducked media phone calls as best they could, trying to keep alive the speculation, still prominently featured in news accounts, that Massoud might still be alive. But privately, as September 10 wore on, phone call by phone call, many of the Afghans closest to the commander, in Dushanbe and Tehran and Europe and the United States, began to learn that he was gone.15

  Hamid Karzai was in Pakistan when his brother reached him. With less than three weeks to go before Pakistani intelligence planned to expel him, Karzai was torn. He did not think southern Afghanistan was ripe for rebellion, yet he did not want to end up as just another Afghan exile in Europe. Karzai had talked to Massoud a few days earlier. He was considering a flight to Dushanbe, from where he might enter Afghanistan across Massoud’s territory. From there Karzai could try to begin his quixotic rebellion among anti-Taliban Pashtuns.

  Karzai’s brother said it was confirmed: Ahmed Shah Massoud was dead.

  Hamid Karzai reacted in a single, brief sentence, as his brother recalled it: “What an unlucky country.”16

  Afterword

  In the year since I completed research for the first edition of Ghost Wars, the history it describes has been enlarged by the disclosure of previously classified U.S. government documents, mainly from the Clinton Administration’s second term and the first nine months of the George W. Bush Administration. By far the greatest number of these memos, intelligence reports, emails and handwritten notes were obtained and published by the subpoena-brandishing investigative staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, more commonly known as the 9/11 Commission, a ten-member panel of former American politicians and lawyers co-chaired by Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. The commission was appointed to investigate “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks” of September 11 and to make recommendations about preventing such attacks in the future. It delivered a majestic 567-page final report in July 2004. Together with previously published interim statements by its investigative staff and voluminous testimony from Clinton, Bush, their cabinet officers, and CIA officials, the commission’s final report placed before the public an unprecedented cache of secret documents and communications from inside the American government and intelligence community. These included the first published interrogation statements from captured al Qaeda leaders such as the architect of the September 11 operation, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In addition to the commission’s work the non-governmental National Security Archive published
during 2004 some new declassified American diplomatic cables about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and bin Laden.

  My goal in crafting this edition of Ghost Wars has been to incorporate these new materials into the narrative where they enhance or correct the history I constructed in the first edition. The great majority of these additions and fixes occur in Part Three, covering the years from 1998 to 2001. Most of the new material in this edition adds direct quotations from documents, emails, and reports not previously available. In other cases I have been able to quote the recollections of cabinet and intelligence officers who had declined to speak for the record during my earlier research, but who testified under oath before the commission. I have also gone back to my own interview subjects and have convinced a few of them who declined to be named in the first edition to allow me to place some of their originally anonymous quotations “on the record” here. In doing so I have tried to make the book’s sourcing and multiple points of view as transparent and complete as possible.