The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS

by Michael Morell

  Charles Duelfer once told me an instructive story about Saddam. In US custody, a clean-shaven Saddam became ill and needed medical attention. He was taken to a US military facility, where he proceeded to flirt with a nurse. The nurse, not surprisingly, was not responsive to the flirtations. On the way back to his cell, Saddam asked his American escort—his US debriefer, with whom Saddam had developed rapport—why the nurse had paid no attention to him. The escort, as a joke, said, “American women like men with facial hair.” The next day Saddam started growing a full beard. When, a few weeks later, Saddam walked into the Iraqi courtroom that would convict him and sentence him to death, he had quite a bit of facial hair. Media commentators, including a former CIA analyst, speculated that Saddam was trying to play to the religious elements of the court by looking Islamic. The real reason—trying to make himself more attractive to a US nurse—was hidden from the public. It was a humorous example of Saddam’s misjudging Americans.

  Duelfer also told me that Saddam had told him that he did not believe that the United States would object to his invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Saddam, in essence, said, “Look, if you guys did not want me to go into Kuwait, why didn’t you tell me you would deploy five hundred thousand troops, six carrier battle groups, fourteen hundred combat aircraft and a coalition of thirty-two countries? I am not crazy. If you had simply told me, I would not have gone into Kuwait.” Again, he assumed that the United States was smart enough to know what it was doing and that we did not have a problem with his invasion of Kuwait. Another misjudgment on his part.

  Together all of these stories paint a picture of Saddam misjudging us and we misjudging him. It was a recipe that took us to war and caused him to lose his rule.

  * * *

  The fear of al Qa‘ida, and of the damage that could be done if a rogue state like Iraq ever shared weapons of mass destruction with the group, led us to war. Oddly, one of the main results of the road we went down in Iraq—like Route Irish itself—was the creation of an environment that helped spread al Qa‘ida’s narrative across the Muslim world. The spread of al Qa‘ida’s ideology, which began when some of its operatives left South Asia after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, was given a new boost by a narrative that said that the United States was intent on bringing war to Muslim lands.

  CHAPTER 6

  Al Qa‘ida’s Nine Lives

  CIA’s counterterrorism analysts filed into my office in early 2013 for a prep session for a Deputies Committee, a meeting of all the number twos from the key national security departments and agencies in the government. It was a regular occurrence during my time as deputy director. During a discussion, one of the analysts handed me a single sheet of paper. He said, “This is the way we think about the threat posed by al Qa‘ida to the homeland.” It was a spectrum—a terrorist threat spectrum. At the left end was “No Threat.” “That is a good place to be,” said the analyst. At the right end was “Terrorists with Weapons of Mass Destruction.” “That is not a good place to be,” added another analyst. “You got that right,” I answered.

  Ignoring my intervention, the original analyst continued, pointing out that just to the left of the WMD point on the spectrum is where al Qa‘ida was on 9/11—the ability to carry out simultaneous, catastrophic attacks that kill thousands. Slightly to left of that is the ability to carry out single significant attacks that can kill hundreds. Further to the left on the spectrum and just to the right of “No Threat” are the lone wolves—the individuals who have no connection with an al Qa‘ida group but are motivated by the group’s ideology. The Boston Marathon bombing fit this category to a tee.

  I took the chart to the Deputies Meeting and shared it with my colleagues. I told them, “Here is a great way to think about the threat from al Qa‘ida and to measure how we are doing over time against the group and its allies.” They agreed. It was clear to everyone, of course, that terrorists with WMD was the worst nightmare for all of us. But outcomes well short of that could still be horrific. We could not afford to become complacent. The lives of American citizens and the citizens of our allies depended on us.

  * * *

  Bin Ladin welcomed the US intervention in Iraq. He believed that US soldiers in Iraq fit perfectly into his narrative. He believed that the Soviet Union, by invading Afghanistan and by investing much money and many young men, had significantly weakened itself as a nation. And he believed that jihadists, by driving the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, had dealt a body blow to its prestige and played a major role in its destruction. And now he wanted to do the same thing to America—draw us into Afghanistan and Iraq, watch us expend significant resources, and drive us out of the Middle East, hopefully destroying in the process the country that, in his mind, was doing more than any other to undermine and ultimately destroy Islam.

  Bin Ladin himself, however, was far from Iraq. In the run-up to the Iraq War and in the initial months of the war, he was hiding in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We never figured out exactly where he was hiding in those early years. In 2005 he moved to a newly built compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he would stay for the next six years. His focus during this period was on continuing al Qa‘ida’s attacks against the West and dealing with the rapid and significant changes his organization was undergoing. In the space of only five years, al Qa‘ida moved down, then up, and back down the analysts’ threat spectrum. It was a remarkable journey—one demonstrating both the group’s vulnerability and its resilience.

  The history of this period teaches what I believe is the most fundamental lesson of the world of counterterrorism—al Qa‘ida has nine lives. When the West and its allies keep pressure on al Qa‘ida, when it has to worry about its own security more than it can about its operations, al Qa‘ida loses capability. When that pressure is not there, when it is free to operate, its capabilities grow. It is a pattern that has played out over and over again, wherever al Qa‘ida has operated.

  * * *

  After being forced out of Afghanistan at the end of 2001, some of Bin Ladin’s senior subordinates settled in the remote area of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but most took up residence in prearranged safe houses in the settled areas of Pakistan, and they regrouped quickly. At the same time, many key operatives made the decision to leave South Asia and return to their countries of origin. Both groups now posed a threat—those left in South Asia and those spread around the globe. This second group began the spread of al Qa‘ida’s ideology outside of South Asia. The war in Iraq did not start this spread, but it reinforced it.

  By late 2001 the prestige of being the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks had propelled Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) into a new job—the role of external operations chief for al Qa‘ida. Working from the safe houses in Pakistan, KSM quickly began planning new operations against the West. In a short time KSM had several plots under way, including Richard Reid’s attempt to use a shoe bomb in December 2001 to bring down an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami, and the successful assault in April 2002 against a Jewish synagogue in Tunisia, which killed nineteen. KSM was also planning to use operatives recruited in Saudi Arabia to hijack aircraft and crash them into London’s Heathrow airport, employ terrorists from Southeast Asia to conduct a similar aircraft attack against skyscrapers in California, and send a team of Pakistanis to smuggle explosives into New York to target gas stations, railroad tracks, and bridges. In addition to these plots, KSM was working to carry out simultaneous attacks in Karachi, Pakistan—against the US consulate, Western travelers at the airport, and Westerners residing in the Karachi area. KSM, bursting with confidence as a result of 9/11, was being extraordinarily aggressive. We would later learn that he also personally decapitated Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in a demonstration of brutality that is hard to fathom. I believe that KSM is the personification of evil.

  By a coincidence, I was back in the presidential briefing seat the day after Pearl was murdered. I was filling in for my successor, who’d wanted to take a day
off. When I met Tenet to conduct the final prep session for the briefing, he asked if I was going to show the president the video of Pearl’s decapitation, which al Qa‘ida had posted on the Internet. I said, “I have it with me, but there is no way I am going to show it to the president.” Tenet and I ran into Condi Rice as we entered the West Wing and she too asked about the video. Now I was wondering if I had made the wrong call in deciding not to show it to Bush. The answer became very clear when, in the middle of the discussion about Pearl’s murder, Rice told the president, “Michael has the video, if you want to see it.” The president snapped, “Why in the hell would I want to watch that?” I felt vindicated, and I had not lost my sense of what to share with the president and what not to share.

  Those operatives emerging from South Asia in the chaotic post-9/11 environment not only worked to support KSM’s plots, they did their own plotting against local targets—some with great success. Indonesian-born Riduan bin Isomuddin—best known among his extremist colleagues as “Hambali”—left Afghanistan and became the operational leader of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiya. He helped plan the October 2002 bombings in Bali that killed more than two hundred people, and facilitated the financing for the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta in August 2003.

  ‘Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who’d helped lead the successful attack against the USS Cole in the Port of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, also fled Afghanistan after 9/11 and returned to the Gulf, this time working out of the United Arab Emirates. From there he planned a successful attack on the French tanker MV Limburg off the coast of Yemen in October 2002. At the time of his arrest in November 2002, he was working on a number of plots, including attacking a US housing compound in Saudi Arabia, flying a plane into a US warship in Port Rashid, UAE, and striking oil tankers in the Strait of Gibraltar.

  In short, the immediate post-9/11 period saw what was probably the most significant plotting in al Qa‘ida’s history—despite its having lost its Afghan sanctuary. The scope of the plotting demonstrated the strength of the organization that Bin Ladin had built—in particular, the plans the group had made to resettle in the cities of Pakistan, if necessary. It was a reflection of the sense of confidence that al Qa‘ida had. And it was a reflection of the additional funding flowing to al Qa‘ida in the aftermath of 9/11, largely from private donors in Arab countries. Nothing boosts funding for a terrorist group like a successful attack.

  What did all these operatives have in common? Three things. One, they were as committed to “the cause” and to jihad against the West, in particular the United States, as was Bin Ladin himself. Many had previously fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and had seen many of their friends die in a fight that they eventually won. Two, they wanted to enjoy the success that KSM enjoyed. They wanted to lead a great victory against their enemy. KSM’s rapid rise to the top rungs of al Qa‘ida after 9/11 created strong incentives for others to mimic his career path. And three, they brought capability to the table. Not all terrorists are smart and skilled. In fact, many are not. But these operatives were. They were the best and deadliest of their generation of terrorists—battle-hardened from fighting in Afghanistan. These operatives were very dangerous.

  * * *

  This was one of the Agency’s most active periods against al Qa‘ida, a period when we put great pressure on the group. And, with new post-9/11 resources and authorities, as well as the Pakistani government’s new commitment to being a partner against al Qa‘ida, our work paid off. Operating largely with our intelligence, the Pakistanis began arresting senior al Qa‘ida operatives—one after another. Zayn al-‘Abidin Abu Zubaydah was the first to be captured, in March 2002. Abu Zubaydah, a leading al Qa‘ida facilitator, had earlier helped Bin Ladin move his men from Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996. He’d assisted Ahmad Rashid’s travel and attempted entry into the United States for the millennium-related attack on Los Angeles International Airport. He’d run al Qa‘ida’s document forgery operation as well as a number of the group’s training camps in Afghanistan, including one attended by some of the 9/11 hijackers. And Abu Zubaydah had helped smuggle Abu Mus‘ab al-Zarqawi and over fifty fighters out of Pakistan after 9/11 so they could make their way to Iraq. They would become the main extremist element in Iraq, killing hundreds of US and coalition soldiers during the Iraq War and later evolving to become the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) that has gained so much ground in Syria and Iraq.

  Zubaydah’s arrest was followed by others—of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a key facilitator in the 9/11 attacks, in Karachi in September 2002, and of KSM in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003. The Pakistanis and we were so successful that most of the remaining al Qa‘ida leadership and its operatives pulled up stakes and moved a second time. Some of the most senior figures moved from Pakistan’s settled areas to Iran, where they were put under house arrest. Most, however, moved to the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (or “FATA”), an area of western Pakistan adjacent to the border with Afghanistan.

  The FATA is extremely remote. It is small—roughly the size of Massachusetts—but it is extremely mountainous, with rural villages dotting the valleys. If you count the sides of the mountains as part of the area of the FATA, it grows to the size of Texas (I had a twelve-by-twenty-four-inch topographic map of the FATA hanging on the wall in my office, and the many mountain ranges stood out from the surface of the map by an inch). The FATA is semiautonomous, and its residents are fiercely independent. They barely think of themselves as part of the Pakistani state. It is a dangerous place for the Pakistani military and intelligence officers to venture, and it is exceptionally dangerous for US personnel to operate there.

  Because the FATA was new to al Qa‘ida, it had a hard time finding a home there, and the group’s capabilities took a significant turn during this period. Without many of the group’s senior operatives, without a local network of support, and without a financial pipeline, its skills and therefore the threat it posed to the United States diminished. But this would not last for long.

  * * *

  My year of briefing the president and my time serving as the number three in the Directorate of Intelligence’s front office earned me a new assignment. In the summer of 2003 I became CIA’s senior focal point for liaison with the analytic community in the United Kingdom. The relationship was a simple one: our objective and that of the British was to share our analysis with each other to see where we agreed and where we did not, and, if we did not, to find out why. This process strengthened the analysis that both of us provided to our senior policy-makers.

  I dealt largely with the UK’s Cabinet Office Assessments staff. The analysts there wrote two to four assessments a week for the prime minister and other senior ministers involved in national security. In preparing the assessments, the analysts relied on information they obtained from UK government agencies, from allies such as CIA and the NSA, and from open sources. They were particularly reliant on reporting from the UK’s three intelligence collection agencies—the country’s internal intelligence service, the Security Service (MI5), the nation’s external intelligence service, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), and the UK’s counterpart to the NSA, the General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

  The analysts at the Cabinet Office had to present their assessments once a week to the country’s Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The JIC—an institution in the British government since 1936—is comprised of both senior leaders from the country’s intelligence agencies and British policy-makers from the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, and the Cabinet Office. The JIC could approve a paper with or without changes, send a paper back for more work, or kill it outright. The JIC was the door that the analysts had to pass through to get their assessments to the prime minister. We did not have anything like it in the United States.

  My time as our representative to the British analytic community, from the summer of 2003 to early 2006, was dominated by two issues—Iraq, namely our failure to find weapons of mass destruction and
the rapidly deteriorating security and political situation there, and al Qa‘ida, both the immediate threat that the group posed and where it was going over the longer term.

  * * *

  As I began this assignment, we were still on a hair trigger regarding the threat from terrorists, because, even though al Qa‘ida was now struggling in the FATA, the memories of 9/11 and of the degree of attack plotting in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 were still fresh.

  While this intensity of focus is necessary for success against real threats, it can also lead to some false positives. Perhaps none was wilder than a perceived threat that arose in late 2003. A part of the intelligence community, not normally involved in analysis, believed that it had uncovered a fiendishly clever way for the al Qa‘ida leadership to communicate with its operatives abroad. (I am not permitted to explain the method of communication, as it remains highly classified.)

  But our terrorism analysts weren’t buying it—there was very little evidence to support the existence of this communication method, it was something we had never seen before, and it seemed beyond al Qa‘ida’s capabilities. Many of the IC’s senior leadership didn’t believe it either, but this was the kind of theory that could not easily be dismissed. What if this analysis was right?

  The findings were briefed to the National Security Council staff, the Department of Homeland Security, and others. Some of the information appeared to be very specific, suggesting threats to particular flights on particular days right around the Christmas holiday.