Ghost Wars

by Steve Coll

  26. Sheehan’s cable suppressed is from Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror, pp. 294-95.

  27. “Allegations … enforced consistently” is from the State Department’s report “Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000,” April 2001. The conclusions of American investigators are from National Commission staff statement no. 15, p. 10.

  28. Interview with Prince Turki, August 2, 2002, Cancun, Mexico (SC). “Did not effectively … liaison services” is from the Joint Inquiry Committee’s final report, p. xvii.

  29. What Massoud believed in the summer of 2000 is from interviews with several of his senior aides. Massoud’s supply lines are described in detail in “Afghanistan, Crisis of Impunity,” Human Rights Watch, July 2001. The figure of $10 million from India is from an interview with a U.S. official familiar with detailed reporting about Massoud’s aid. That figure is an estimate for one year of assistance from India in the 2000 time period. Ismail Khan’s escape from a Kandahar prison is from Larry P. Goodson, Afghanistan’s Endless War, p. 84. He had been held by the Taliban since 1997. Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth, testifying before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommitee in July 2000, also cited the April assassination of the Taliban-appointed governor of Kunduz as evidence of gathering dissent.

  30. Interview with Abdullah, May 8, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW). Also, interview with a senior intelligence aide to Massoud.

  31. Interview with Danielle Pletka, March 27, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW). Earlier in 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented Congress with a twenty-four-page statement titled “America and the World in the 21st Century.” She devoted one sentence to Afghanistan and did not mention bin Laden by name.

  32. Interviews with U.S. officials. The State Department provided several hundred thousand dollars during 2000 to aid efforts at political negotiations organized from exiled King Zahir Shah’s offices in Rome. Squabbling among royal factions and slow progress disillusioned State officials, however, and the stipend was reduced the following year.

  33. “Remarks by Karl F. Inderfurth,” at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Tellingly, the hearing was entitled “The Taliban: Engagement or Confrontation?” The Congress as well as the Clinton administration could not make up its mind about that question.

  34. Interviews with U.S. officials, including Gary Schroen, November 7, 2002, Washington D.C. (SC).

  35. Ibid.

  36. Interview with Hamid Karzai, October 21, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (SC).

  37. Interview with Afrasiab Khattak, May 23, 2002, Islamabad, Pakistan (SC).

  38. Interviews with U.S. officials.

  39. Ibid. The accounts of internal debates about travel to the Panjshir in this section are drawn primarily from interviews with four officials familiar with them.

  40. Interview with a senior intelligence aide to Massoud.

  41. Ibid.

  CHAPTER 29: “DARING ME TO KILL THEM”

  1. Details of discussions about new options in the hunt for bin Laden are from interviews with multiple U.S. officials. Berger testified about the memo he wrote to Clinton and dated it as February before the Joint Inquiry Committee on September 19, 2002.

  2. Interviews with multiple U.S. officials. Clarke operated in a series of bureaucratic coalitions, and his ability to create policy or programmatic change on his own was limited. George Tenet was exceptionally alert to the al Qaeda threat, aggressively warned the White House about specific threat intelligence, and pushed for strong disruption efforts from the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. Tenet’s role in key policy debates after 1998-whether to covertly arm the Northern Alliance, whether to arm the Predator-is less clear. Allen’s comment is from National Commission staff statement no. 7, p. 5.

  3. Details of the Eagle program are from an interview with Dewey Clarridge, December 28, 2001, Escondido, California (SC). Other CIA officials confirmed his account. A search of electronic news databases turned up no previously published account of the Eagle. Clarridge does not discuss it in his memoir.

  4. Karem’s background and role are from an interview with James Woolsey, February 20, 2002,Washington, D.C. (SC). See also Aviation Week and Space Technology, December 14, 1987; May 23, 1988; and June 20, 1988, for details of Amber’s early history and design characteristics. Popular Science, September 1994, provides a history of the Predator to that point, including an account of Karem’s role.

  5. Interview with Thomas Twetten, March 18, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). Interview with Woolsey, February 20, 2002. The information on Navy funding is from Aerospace Daily, January 28, 1994. Between its birth as Amber and its operational debut as Predator, the prototype drone was also called the Gnat.

  6. Interviews with Woolsey, February 20, 2002, and Twetten, March 18, 2002. Interview with Whit Peters, May 6, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). The Air Force announced that the Eleventh Reconnaissance Squadron would operate Predators in July 1995, Aerospace Daily, July 31, 1995.

  7. Twenty-four hours, five hundred miles, twenty-five thousand feet, and the Sony camera are from Popular Science, September 1994. The pilot profiles and roles of payload specialists in the van are from Air Force Magazine, September 1997, which profiled the Eleventh Reconnaissance Squadron. Also, interview with Peters, May 6, 2002.

  8. Interview with Woolsey, February 20, 2002.

  9. Debate about intelligence collection versus the kill chain is from interview with Peters, May 6, 2002, and interviews with multiple other U.S. officials. Navy test to link Predator to attack submarines is from Defense Daily, June 7, 1995. Laser targeting in Kosovo but not used is from the interview with Peters.

  10. Interview with Thomas Pickering, April 24, 2002, Rosslyn, Virginia (SC). Interviews with multiple U.S. officials. What Clarke said is from an interview with a U.S. official.

  11. Quotations from interviews with U.S. officials.

  12. Barton Gellman first described the INF treaty debate in The Washington Post, December 19, 2001. The account here is also from interviews with U.S. officials.

  13. Interviews with U.S. officials.

  14. Interview with Peters, May 6, 2002. Interviews with other U.S. officials. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, pp. 322-23.

  15. This account of the Predator proof of concept mission, including the scenes in the Langley flight center, is drawn from interviews with five U.S. officials familiar with the operation. All quotations are from author’s interviews, except Clarke’s exchange with Berger, from National Commission staff statement no. 8, p. 7.

  16. Ibid. Benjamin and Simon provide an account of the autumn mission that includes the MiG incident, although they make no reference to the location of the flight center or the size and nature of the audience.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Ibid. “The pilot will return” is from an interview with a U.S. official.

  19. Interview with Peters, May 6, 2002. Interviews with multiple U.S. officials. Benjamin and Simon report that Peters resolved the problem in December 2000 by locating enough money to keep the Predator program going in Afghanistan.

  20. Interviews with U.S. officials. Recalled one of these officials of the wind problem: “No matter how fast it was going, it would go backwards. So we had to stop. And the thought was, okay, we would begin again in March or April.”

  21. That there were long discussions of blast fragmentation patterns at Tarnak is from interviews with multiple U.S. officials. Tarnak’s layout is from interviews and author’s visit, October 2002.

  22. Ibid. In 2001 the CIA watched as bin Laden moved his family and other civilians out of Tarnak and began to turn the compound into a military training camp. U.S. analysts concluded that bin Laden had finally realized he was being closely watched at Tarnak and it was not safe. In place of the laundry lines and children’s swing he erected a military obstacle course and firing range.

  23. Newsweek, April 8, 2002. Clinton made his comments in an interview wit
h Jonathan Alter. “I don’t care … people will die” is from Clinton’s speech to the British Labour Party conference, October 3, 2002.

  24. Interviews with U.S. officials. Also, Gellman, The Washington Post, December 19, 2001, and Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror. Said one White House official of Tenet’s enthusiasm for the Predator images, “George, eventually, seeing the videotapes, decided this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And [now] it was his idea in the first place.” Clinton’s outlook and “strong and constant view” from an interview with a senior administration official who reviewed the subject with Clinton in 2003.

  25. Larry P. Goodson, Afghanistan’s Endless War, p. 84. Human Rights Watch, “Crisis of Impunity,” July 2001. The Human Rights Watch researchers reported that “the U.S. government was sufficiently concerned about the possibility of Pakistani involvement” in the capture of Taloqan “that it issued démarche to the Pakistani government in late 2000, asking for assurances that Pakistan had not been involved. The démarche listed features of the assault on Taloqan that suggested the Taliban had received outside assistance … including the length of preparatory artillery fire [and] the fact that much of the fighting took place at night.” The CIA’s $30 million estimate is from National Commission staff statement no. 15, p. 11.

  26. The Washington Post, October 13, 2000; October 15, 2000; and June 19, 2001. What the CIA later concluded is from interviews with U.S. officials.

  27. No specific tactical warning is from ” Terrorist Attack on USS Cole: Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, January 30, 2001. The Pentagon analyst resignation is from The Washington Post, October 26, 2000; and The New York Times, October 26, 2000. Benjamin and Simon are from Age of Sacred Terror, p. 324. Zinni defended himself in testimony before a Senate subcommittee on October 19, 2000; see The Washington Post, October 20, 2000.

  28. Sandy Berger testified to the Joint Inquiry Committee on September 19, 2002, that “when we left office, neither the intelligence community nor the law enforcement community had reached a judgment about responsibility for the Cole. That judgment was reached sometime between the time we left office and 9/11.” National Commission staff reported that “the highest officials” of the Bush Administration received “essentially the same analysis” as the Clinton Cabinet did late in the year, showing that individuals linked to al Qaeda had been involved, but that proof of bin Laden’s role was lacking. The State Department’s annual report on global terrorism, culled from CIA and other intelligence community reports and published in April 2001, found “no definitive link” between the Cole attack and “bin Laden’s organization.” Berger and other Clinton officials cite the lack of a proven link as one reason that they did not launch military action against bin Laden or the Taliban before leaving the White House. However, interviews about the Massoud covert action proposal and other subjects debated during the late autumn of 2000 seem to make clear that for a variety of reasons, including unsettled national politics and a desire not to preempt the next president’s options, Clinton and Berger had little interest in a parting military shot. Even without the establishment of definitive responsibility for the Cole attack, they might have found other ways to justify an attack if they had wanted to launch one. The Bush administration’s early hesitancy about bin Laden and its causes are described in chapters 30 and 31.

  29. Interviews with U.S. officials. All quotations are from the author’s interviews.

  30. The thirteen options and the quotations from Clarke and Shelton’s operations chief are from the Joint Inquiry Committee’s final report, pp. 279 and 305-6. Albright quotation from her written testimony to the National Commission March 23, 2004.

  31. Ibid.

  32. From Black’s testimony to the Joint Inquiry Committee, September 26, 2002.

  33. Interviews with five U.S. officials familiar with the CIA’s plan. The account of the plan’s development in the next seven paragraphs is from those interviews.

  34. The New York Times, January 16, 2001, first described the December 20 principals’ meeting. That account emphasized discussions at the meeting about who was responsible for the Cole bombing. That the meeting also formally rejected the plan backed by Clarke and the CIA for covert aid to Massoud is from interviews with U.S. officials. “Roll back” from National Commission staff statement no. 8, p. 8.

  35. “A bit … a capture operation” is from an interview with an intelligence aide to Massoud.

  36. According to the interview with Schroen, September 19, 2002, Washington D.C. (SC), the seventh and last CIA liaison team to reach the Panjshir before September 11 exited during the early winter of 2001 when the helicopter was put into storage.

  37. “You replay … formidable adversary” is from Clinton’s response to a question during a speech at the Washington Society of Association Executives in October 2001, as quoted in USA Today, November 12, 2001.

  CHAPTER 30: “WHAT FACE WILL OMAR SHOW TO GOD?”

  1. That Bush never spoke in public about bin Laden or al Qaeda is from a search of the Lexis-Nexis electronic news database. It is conceivable that the author missed something, but the database is very extensive. The party platform is from www.rnc.org. “If a country is hosting … intelligence briefings” is from Bulletin Broadfaxing Network, Inc.‘s transcript of a Fox News interview with Bush, October 12, 2000.

  2. National Journal, May 4, 2000. Also recounted by Elaine Sciolino in The New York Times, June 16, 2000.

  3. All quotations in this paragraph are from Sciolino, The New York Times, June 16, 2000.

  4. Interview with former senator David Boren, September 16, 2002, Norman, Oklahoma (GW).

  5. Ibid. All quotations are from Boren’s conversation with Bush.

  6. “An undetermined period … a later period” is from The New York Times, January 19, 2001.

  7. “We are grateful … weapons of mass destruction” is from a Federal News Service transcript. The visit took place on March 20, 2001.

  8. “Number one … the threat was” is from Berger’s testimony to the Joint Inquiry Committee, September 19, 2002. What Berger said to Rice is from interviews with U.S. officials. See also Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, January 20, 2002, and Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, pp. 328-29.

  9. That Clarke’s office described the al Qaeda threat as “existential” is from Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror, pp. 328-29. The CIA’s annual threat assessment, delivered by Tenet, had also emphasized the primacy of the missile threat from rogue and hostile regimes; until 2001 this was the danger Tenet listed first in his public briefing. In testimony delivered on February 7, 2001, for the first time the CIA director listed al Qaeda first. Armitage’s quotation is from the Joint Inquiry Committee’s final report, p. 39.

  10. Excerpts from this January 25 memo have been quoted in at least three published reports. Gellman, The Washington Post, January 20, 2002, cites “sleeper cells” and “a major threat in being.” Benjamin and Simon, in Age of Sacred Terror, cite “urgently needed” and “this is not some little terrorist issue.” See also National Commission staff statement no. 8, p. 9.

  11. See note 10. The idea of “making a deal” with Musharraf and trading military rule for help on bin Laden was not described in the other published accounts of these exchanges; it is from interviews with U.S. officials.

  12. “Was out there … lower on the list” is from Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror, pp. 335-36. Rumsfeld’s recollection is from National Commission, staff statement no. 6, p. 11.

  13. Discussions of armed Predator testing and the “sensor to shooter” quotation are from interviews with U.S. officials. The missile struck the turret is from The New York Times, November 23, 2001, quoting a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., press release issued at the time of the test.

  14. Interviews with U.S. officials. See also Gellman, The Washington Post, January 20, 2002.

  15. Interviews with U.S. officials. See al
so National Commission staff statement no. 7, p. 6.

  16. Ibid. “Oh these harebrained … a disaster” is from an interview.

  17. In an extensive interview about U.S. policy toward Afghanistan on March 27, 2001, Eastham was asked to summarize U.S. policy toward the Taliban. “We have contacts with all the factions in Afghanistan,” he said. “That includes the Taliban. We talk to the Taliban when we get the opportunity and when we have things to say, just as we talk to the representatives of the Northern Alliance, and just as we talk to representatives of the former king, of Afghan groups outside Afghanistan. We try to maintain contacts with all parts of Afghanistan.” The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, March 27, 2001. Clarke, Rice, and Hadley from National Commission, staff statement no. 5, p. 15.

  18. Interviews with U.S. officials.

  19. Ibid. “The prospect … fracture the Taliban internally” is from “Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue State” by Zalmay Khalilzad and Daniel Byman, The Washington Quarterly, Winter 2000.

  20. The Republican platform said that the United States “should engage India” while being “mindful” about its relationship with Pakistan. Bush appointed Blackwill as his ambassador to India. Once in New Delhi, Blackwill pushed for a tougher U.S. policy toward Musharraf.

  21. Letter exchange and Stalin quote are from an interview with a Pakistani official.

  22. “We find practical reasons … refuse to cooperate” is from documents recovered in Pakistan’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, after September 2001 and reported as “The Taliban Papers” by Tim Judah in Survival, Spring 2002, pp. 69-80. “Worst of both worlds” is from an interview with a Pakistani official. Quotations from Bush’s letter from written testimony of Colin Powell to the National Commission, March 23, 2004.

  23. Interviews with Pakistani officials involved in the discussions. “We are losing too much … serious about this” is from an interview with a Pakistani participant in the discussions. Omar’s letter to Musharraf is from Judah, “The Taliban Papers,” Survival.