A Brief History of the Spy (29 page)

Around this time, the FBI discovered that they too were being betrayed to the Russians – although it wasn’t Robert Hanssen whose treachery had come to light. Earl Edwin Pitts, a senior agent, had contacted the KGB in 1987 when stationed in New York, and for the next five years passed documents to his handler, Rollan G. Dzheikiya. Unfortunately for Pitts, Dzheikiya defected after the fall of the Soviet Union, and became part of a sting operation run by the Bureau to capture Pitts. On his arrest in December 1996, the American claimed he was motivated by rage at the FBI, partly because of his low pay. An investigation into Pitts’ activities made some suspicious that the Russians must have another mole within the Bureau, since they never asked Pitts for anything major. Pitts himself suggested that Robert Hanssen might be a spy. Neither lead was properly followed up, and Hanssen remained undetected.

In a rare demonstration of cooperation between the FBI and the CIA, the two organizations worked together on a four-year manhunt for Aimal Kansi, who had killed two CIA employees outside Langley in 1993. He was eventually
tracked down to Pakistan, whose administration allowed the joint task force agents to enter the country to capture him.

John Deutch resigned as DCI in December 1996, and was replaced by his deputy, George Tenet, who, unusually, remained in place after President George W. Bush succeeded President Clinton in 2000 – changes of party in the White House usually led to a new DCI. This provided an element of continuity when major changes were needed following 9/11. Tenet and the CIA would be accused of intelligence failures – and while the criticisms were justified, the Agency did far more in the build-up to 2001 than they have sometimes been given credit for. If information had been shared properly though in the three years before 9/11, the history of the first decade of the twenty-first century would have been very different.

It’s easy to be wise after the event. Everyone has 20/20 hindsight, and there has probably been more ‘Monday morning quarterbacking’ regarding the work of the intelligence agencies in the years leading up to 11 September 2001 than any other event in recent history.

In June 2012, many of the key documents relating to what the CIA knew were finally released after a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive, a private business. These were referenced, but not quoted, in the 9/11 Commission’s Report, and, even in a heavily redacted form, show a trail of missed opportunities and interagency bickering that would have catastrophic consequences. Perhaps most worrying of all is the CIA’s own Inspector General report from August 2001, which praised the Counterterrorism Center’s performance for ‘coordinating national intelligence, providing warning, and promoting the effective use of Intelligence Community resources on terrorism issues’ and even noting that the relationship with the FBI was better than
it had been in 1994 – mere days before that was conclusively proved to be false.

One of the biggest problems that the CIA and the other intelligence agencies faced when trying to deal with al-Qaeda was the religious fanaticism of its members, which meant it was far harder to infiltrate them. As Agency veteran Robert Dannenberg explained, al-Qaeda operatives weren’t like Soviet agents, who might be persuaded that the American way of life was better by showing them supermarkets ‘because they were driven by many of the same things that we’re driven by: success and taking care of our families’. They did get lucky early on though: Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, described by some as one of the founding members of al-Qaeda, walked into the US Embassy in Eritrea in spring 1996. He had embezzled $110,000 from al-Qaeda and was desperate to defect.

This came shortly after a designated bin Laden unit had been established within the CIA, the first time that the Agency had set up a group specifically to target one person or organization. This ‘virtual station’ operated out of Langley, and was run by Michael Scheuer, previously head of the CTC’s Islamic Extremist Branch, with a predominantly female team. From January 1996 onwards, their aim, according to DCI George Tenet, was ‘to track [bin Laden], collect intelligence on him, run operations against him, disrupt his finances, and warn policymakers about his activities and intentions’. Al-Fadl’s information gave them vital leads regarding al-Qaeda’s plans and hopes. SIGINT operations were put in motion; allies were sought. But even then, not everything was as smooth as it should have been: the NSA and CIA didn’t cooperate over jurisdictional issues.

Following the embassy bombings in 1998, Tenet significantly increased the attention on bin Laden. The CTC carried out a review of strategy, which led to Scheuer’s departure as unit leader and the development of a comprehensive plan of attack against al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, much as what was known as
‘The Plan’ called for a united campaign by the CIA, FBI, NSA and others, this didn’t happen in practice. FBI agents working with the CIA’s bin Laden unit were not allowed to pass relevant information back to the Bureau; the NSA left intercepts of phone calls to the FBI, fearful of going beyond their remit, but the Bureau didn’t obtain the phone records for those who had already been identified as potential hijackers until after 9/11. A briefing by Counterterrorism ‘Tsar’ Richard Clarke briefed representatives of the various agencies about the al-Qaeda threat – but these weren’t passed back properly, and indeed Clarke would suggest the threat wasn’t so pressing at the start of August. In an effort to cope with all the information flowing to the Unit, a new Strategic Assessments Branch was set up – but its new chief only reported for duty on 10 September 2011.

The CIA’s own internal report, following the 9/11 Commission’s verdict that the intelligence community had failed the President, noted that:

Agency officers from the top down worked hard against the al-Qa’ida and Usama Bin Ladin targets. They did not always work effectively and cooperatively, however . . . If Intelligence Community officers had been able to view and analyse the full range of information available before 11 September 2001, they could have developed a more informed context in which to assess the threat reporting of the spring and summer that year . . . That so many individuals failed to act in this case reflects a systematic breakdown.

Threats certainly were reported up the chain of command but no one was certain whether the attack would be within the United States or on American interests elsewhere in the world. In June, a briefing suggested ‘operatives linked to Usama Bin Ladin’s organisation expect the near-term attacks they are planning to have dramatic consequences’. A briefing for the
President on 6 August was headlined ‘Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US’, but wasn’t treated with the urgency it required, as 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey later told CNN. ‘You were told again by briefing officers in August that it was a dire threat,’ Kerrey said of Bush’s claim that he would have moved heaven and earth if he had been aware ahead of time of the al-Qaeda threat. ‘And what did you do? Nothing, so far as we could see on the 9/11 Commission.’

Other agencies around the world similarly received information that confirmed bin Laden was planning a major operation against US targets. MI6 had warned the Americans in 1999 that al-Qaeda was considering using commercial aircraft in ‘unconventional ways . . . possibly as flying bombs’. Egyptian President Mubarak claimed that his country’s intelligence service had penetrated al-Qaeda and warned of an attack using ‘an airplane stuffed with explosives’, although the target appeared to be the G8 talks held in spring 2001. An MI5 report on 6 July 2001 noted that ‘UBL and those who share his agenda are currently well advanced in operational planning for a number of major attacks on Western interests’, although it thought the most likely location ‘is in the Gulf States, or the wider Middle East’. Mossad sent warnings to their CIA counterparts over the summer of 2001 citing ‘credible chatter’ that their agents had picked up in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen – the CIA forced one paper who reported this to print a retraction. Even the Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil tried to pass on a warning, although this wasn’t taken seriously.

On 11 September 2001, two hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York; a third hit the Pentagon in Washington DC. A fourth was hijacked but was retaken by its passengers; it crashed in Pennsylvania killing all on board. There were 2,753 victims at the World Trade Center including 411 emergency workers; 184 died at the Pentagon, and forty were killed in the Pennsylvania crash. The world’s intelligence
agencies had failed to read the signs in time. Everything would have to change.

The CIA’s DCI George Tenet refused to accept that the Agency had failed in its duty, blaming the FBI for the shortcomings that allowed the terrorists to enter the United States and get into position to hijack the aircraft. As far as he was concerned, the fact that he was able to present President Bush with a plan for retaliation within four days indicated that the CIA was on top of the situation, even if others were not.

Even while the attacks were continuing, the CTC was beginning to track down information from all their sources, and within hours Tenet told the president that the attacks ‘looked, smelled and tasted like bin Laden’. Four days later, Tenet’s plan, which included ‘a full-scale covert attack on the financial underpinnings of the terrorist network, including clandestine computer surveillance and electronic eavesdropping to locate the assets of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups’ and his ‘Worldwide Attack Matrix’, a plan for covert action in eighty countries, was presented to the president and his advisers at Camp David. On 17 September, Bush signed a Presidential Finding authorizing the CIA to hunt down, and if necessary, kill the leaders of al-Qaeda: ‘I want justice,’ he told reporters that day. ‘And there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that said ‘‘Wanted, Dead or Alive’’.’ (The CIA had requested this authority in July, but had not yet received it.) He also authorised an extra $1 billion funding for the Agency.

President Bush declared his War on Terror in a speech to Congress on 20 September, stating bluntly that ‘Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.’ Among the rhetoric, he announced the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, adding, ‘We will come together to give law enforcement the additional tools it needs to track down terror here at home. We will come together to strengthen our intelligence
capabilities to know the plans of terrorists before they act and to find them before they strike.’ The phrase ‘war on terror’ was adopted around the world, although the British stopped using it, partly, as former MI5 head Elizabeth Manningham-Buller pointed out, because the 9/11 attacks were ‘a crime, not an act of war’.

The Taliban refused to hand bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leaders over to the Americans, leading in October to Operation Enduring Freedom, the invasion of Afghanistan. During the preparation for the war, the CIA worked inside Afghanistan, trying to create rifts between al-Qaeda and the Taliban, even proposing to assist a coup from within the Taliban if it meant al-Qaeda were handed over. When these efforts failed, the invasion was launched and within a few weeks, bin Laden was forced to flee to Tora Bora, in the east of Afghanistan, from where (probably with the aid of Pakistani intelligence, even though they were ostensibly assisting the Americans), he was able to escape into Pakistan. For a long time, it was believed he was dead until a video recording was released in late 2002.

Interrogation of detainees has always been a useful source of intelligence for spies across the centuries, but it was taken to a new level in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center. The arguments for and against ‘enhanced’ interrogation – using such techniques as waterboarding (where water is poured onto a cloth over a suspect’s face, making him believe he is drowning) and sensory deprivation – have been rehearsed many times: can evidence produced that way be trusted, or has the suspect said what he thinks the interrogators want to hear in order to prevent the torture from recurring?

The CIA was given wide latitude in its hunt for the terrorist suspects. José Rodriguez, who became head of the National Clandestine Service, in charge of the interrogations, defended their actions, pointing out, ‘We did the right thing for the right
reason. And the right reason was to protect the homeland and to protect American lives.’ The CIA took over responsibility for the interrogations in early 2002 and began ‘rendition’ of the suspects – removing them secretly to ‘black sites’ in foreign countries, places where the Agency could have control over the interrogations without supervision from others in the US administration or the media. Abu Zubaida, believed at the time to be one of the senior members of al-Qaeda, was rendered to Thailand after his capture in Faisalabad, Pakistan, in March 2002, However, both George Tenet, in his book about his time as DCI, and Rodriguez maintain that they were careful to check the legality of their moves (what Rodriguez calls ‘get[ting] everybody in government to put their big boy pants on and provide the authorities that we needed’) before proceeding.

A series of techniques was approved in what became described as the ‘Torture Memo’, an eighteen-page document dated 1 August 2002 sent by the Assistant Attorney General to the CIA’s General Counsel. This set out in considerable detail the methods by which the processes would be applied, and how the use of them could not be classified as torture within the definition of Section 2340A of title 18 of the United States Code. (It would be further clarified by three memoranda in 2005 totalling 106 pages.) Speaking in April 2012, Rodriguez claimed: ‘This program was about instilling a sense of hopelessness and despair on the terrorist, on the detainee, so that he would conclude on his own that he was better off cooperating with us.’

The FBI carried out the initial interrogation of Zubaida, during which he identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) as the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and revealed plans to attack American apartments with bombs, as well as an assault on the Brooklyn Bridge. According to Ali H. Soufan, the FBI officer in charge of the interrogation of Zubaida and other al-Qaeda members, Zubaida gave up nothing further of
use during the enhanced interrogation – and indeed he and his Bureau colleagues refused to have anything to do with them.