Against All Enemies (31 page)

We decided that we needed to have a serious talk with the Saudis as well as with a few of the financial centers in the region. We recognized that the Saudi regime had been largely uncooperative on previous law enforcement–focused investigations of terrorism, including the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers that killed nineteen members of the U.S. Air Force. So we wanted a different approach.

First, although law enforcement issues would play a role, this would be primarily an attempt to talk with the Saudis on a political level. Our goal would be map the important “nodes” in the al Qaeda financial network and then disrupt or destroy them using any available tool of the U.S. government. We were eager to take action, but we also knew the damage we could do to our credibility if we were seen to take action on the basis of flimsy intelligence—and at this point much of our intelligence was flimsy.

Second, we would use the leverage inherent in the presidential order to block al Qaeda accounts and the accounts of anyone else later deemed to be providing “material assistance” to the terrorists—a characterization that could apply potentially to significant actors within Saudi Arabia. Third, we would need buy-in from the highest levels of the Saudi government, so we asked Vice President Gore to talk to the Crown Prince about the problem and about accepting a U.S. delegation that would meet to discuss only this subject with representatives of all relevant Saudi agencies together, so there could be no run-around. And fourth—perhaps most important—we decided to lay our cards on the table and show Saudi Arabia what we knew about al Qaeda's finances, what we didn't know, and what we suspected and ask them to fill in the blanks.

We wanted to avoid a typical pattern of Saudi behavior we had seen: achingly slow progress, broken promises, denial, and cooperation limited to specific answers to specific questions. At the same time, we thought that, as longstanding friends of the U.S., the Saudis deserved the opportunity to establish a new kind of relationship with us on counterterrorism. We were looking for a full partnership, behind the scenes, of course. We recognized that they might not have the political will to strike such a partnership, but we thought it was worth a try—keeping the threat of public sanctions against Saudi entities in reserve if it didn't work.

Some U.S. government agencies didn't seem to like this different approach we were recommending. Some at State didn't like the idea of threatening sanctions, even though that authority was implicit in the President's executive order. Some at FBI really didn't like the fact that discussions of terrorist financing with the Saudis were going to take place outside their channels and without their being in charge. Soon after we told FBI about the initiative, a leak found its way to the
New York Times,
almost forcing us to cancel the trip.

And some in the intelligence community who jealously guarded “their” channels with Saudi intelligence also didn't like this approach. Turf is a powerful thing in Washington. This objection continued even after CIA cleared every piece of information we would be discussing with the Saudis. There was even a last ditch attempt by some in CIA's operation's directorate on the day that Wechsler's meetings were to take place—to deny our ability to hand over already cleared information.

Despite the interagency obstructionists, the meetings in the region went on as planned. We got answers to some questions. We forced the regulators in Saudi Arabia to talk with the police and intelligence agencies, something that they were clearly not used to doing. Some important actions were taken, such as the denial of landing rights to Ariana Airlines by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Ariana, Afghanistan's national airline, had been taken over by the Taliban and had, in many ways, become al Qaeda's direct lifeline to the outside world. When governments understood the leverage inherent in the Executive Order and were then faced with the possibility of having to choose between doing business with Ariana Airlines or with American Airlines—well, asking the question gave you the answer. Later we worked with Russia through the U.N. Security Council to add a multilateral aspect to these sanctions.

In the end, however, despite Saudi promises to provide additional information and support, little was forthcoming in the months after the visit, nor after a subsequent visit from Rick Newcomb to follow up. The Saudis protested our focus on continuing contacts between Usama and his wealthy, influential family, who were supposed to have broken all ties with him years before. “How can we tell a mother not to call her son?” they asked. They reacted defensively when we pointed out some weaknesses in their regulatory regime, pointedly noting that many in the U.S. Congress had recently sought to weaken aspects of the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act. And they were right about the U.S. Congress; although the Clinton administration had sought tougher money laundering provisions, only after 9/11 did Congress muster the political will to strengthen the U.S. laws to fight terrorist financing and money laundering.

So we went back to the drawing board. Mike Sheehan at the State Department sought unsuccessfully within his bureaucracy to raise the political stakes with Saudi Arabia and other countries unless we got more support in fighting terrorism financing. Rick Newcomb began to think about which entities in Saudi Arabia might deserve targeting sanctions. CIA went back to trying to map the important “nodes” in al Qaeda's financial network. This was important and extremely difficult work, but necessary if we were to take unilateral actions without real Saudi cooperation.

After Secretary Robert Rubin stepped down, it was easier to get cooperation from Treasury. Rubin had opposed our use of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to go after terrorist financing fronts in the United States. His attitude toward strengthening international money laundering rules had been less than enthusiastic. The new Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, was surprisingly a breath of fresh air. He asked Will Wechsler to join him for the last year of the Clinton administration in developing a multilateral approach to “name and shame” foreign money laundering havens that were providing “no questions asked” financial services for al Qaeda and other terrorists and criminals. This initiative made countries pay a price in the financial markets for their lack of cooperation and thus successfully forced over a dozen countries to rewrite their laws. Liechtenstein and the Bahamas later used those new laws after 9/11 to help us track down and freeze a key part of al Qaeda's financial network.

When the Bush administration came into office, I wanted to raise the profile of our efforts to combat terrorist financing, but found little interest. The new President's economic advisor, Larry Lindsey, had long argued for weakening U.S. anti–money laundering laws in a way that would undercut international standards. The new Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill, was lukewarm at best toward the multilateral efforts to “name and shame” foreign money laundering havens, and allowed the process to shut down before the status of Saudi Arabian cooperation was ever assessed.

In general, the Bush appointees distrusted anything invented by the Clinton administration and anything of a multilateral nature—so the international terrorist financing effort had two strikes against it. The new Bush focus in early 2001 was on confronting China, withdrawing from various multilateral obligations, and spending much more money on an antimissile defense system—not on looking into al Qaeda's financial network. Will Wechsler quit Treasury within months of the change of administration.

A
LTHOUGH HE HAD APPROVED
the retaliatory bombing and the sanctions after the attacks on the African embassies, Clinton had also asked Berger for an overall plan to deal with al Qaeda. My team set out to develop what we had taken to calling a “Pol-Mil Plan.” A politico-military plan was something we had first invented to deal with Haiti. When General Shalikashvili, Hugh Shelton's predecessor, had presented Clinton with a military plan to invade Haiti, the President had been impressed by the detail, responsibilities being assigned, timelines, resources. Clinton asked for the civilian plan, saying, “Because the military will take over Haiti in a few hours. If they don't, we sure have been wasting billions of dollars over there at the Pentagon. But after they do—then what? We need this kind of detail on what happens after the shooting.”

The Pol-Mil Plan for Haiti (and then others for Bosnia, Kosovo, Iran, and Iraq) came in the form of a thick loose-leaf notebook with tabs for every conceivable issue. It was full of advance planning, anticipation of possible contingencies, specification of goals and objectives, identification of means of achieving the goals, estimation of resources required, timelines, and assignment of responsibilities. Pol-Mil Plan Haiti went through several iterations and exercises before U.S. forces moved onto the island. For the Principals the existence of the detailed Pol-Mil Plan was a security blanket that increased their confidence. Now we drafted one for dealing with al Qaeda.

Every military operation has a codeword or phrase, such as Infinite Reach, Just Cause, El Dorado Canyon, Provide Comfort. To express the intent of the Pol-Mil Plan for al Qaeda, I borrowed a phrase from Cato the Elder, Roman Senator and famous orator who in 201
B.C.E.
had encouraged war by ending every speech with the line “Carthage must be destroyed,” or as Cato would have said it, “Carthago delenda est.” When the Pol-Mil Plan was handed out it was labeled “Top Secret Delenda.” The Under Secretaries of State and Defense, Tom Pickering and Walt Slocombe, looked up from their copies knowingly. “You're right,” Pickering said. “Al Qaeda must be destroyed.”

Destroying al Qaeda would require a multifaceted, detailed plan. Intelligence agencies would need to identify and break up al Qaeda's cells, find its money, train and arm its enemies, and eliminate its leaders. Law enforcement agencies had similar responsibilities, including finding sleeper cells in the U.S. The State Department would persuade other governments to assist us, would provide international approval of our actions, and would fund nations that needed help to join in our efforts. The Defense and State Departments would reduce the number of low-hanging-fruit targets by hardening facilities. Treasury would seize al Qaeda funds here and work the international banking system to freeze them elsewhere. Resources were needed and were identified. Additional legal authorities were required and plans to obtain them were detailed. Military plans were requested for additional bombing and possible commando operations.

During their review of the Pol-Mil Plan, the Principals had agreed that we should stop referring publicly to Usama bin Laden (who had survived the August 20 missile strike) and focus attention on the network, al Qaeda. Unfortunately, few of the Principals then did so in their public comments. Like the media, the Principals were fixated on one man, the leader of this group that had declared war on us for no good reason. We all knew that killing bin Laden would not make al Qaeda go away. In fact, immediately after his death there would be a negative backlash against us. There was also the certainty that he would become a popular martyr, as the Latin American Communist Che Guevara had become after CIA had hunted him down in Bolivia. Nonetheless bin Laden obviously had something special. He had done what no one else had been able to do previously, he had united unconnected dissidents from dozens of countries. Maybe without him that network would fall apart over time. Thus, while we all knew we had to destroy the organization and had set out to do so, one of the first steps along that path was to eliminate its leader.

My past experience with our attempts to find rogue foreign leaders had been mixed. I had spent Christmas Eve 1989 in the State Department Operations Center as troops swept Panama looking for Manuel Noriega. From the Ops Center I had watched midnight Mass from the Vatican and looked to see the Vatican foreign minister being handed our note saying that we had trapped Noriega in the Vatican embassy in Panama. Yet despite having invaded the country and hit Noriega's known hangouts with Special Forces, he had eluded our operations for days.

From the White House, I had also helped to coordinate the effort to get Pablo Escobar, the leader of one of the Colombian drug cartels. Although we had the help of the Colombian police and military, Escobar stayed at large for years before he was shot by a special Colombian unit. I had agreed with Jonathan Howe that we should arrest Farah Aideed for killing U.N. peacekeepers, then watched as months went by and Aideed prepared for us, until finally U.S. Special Forces tried in vain to capture him and were killed in the process, along with a thousand Somalis.

Given the reluctance of the military to plan seriously for commando operations in Afghanistan and the fecklessness to date of CIA's Afghan friends, the best option to get bin Laden seemed to be to hit a building in which he was staying. For that purpose, the Defense Department was asked to keep cruise missile platforms off the Pakistani coast. This time we specified that they had to be in submarines. Aboard the submarines, the cruise missiles had multiple target options preloaded. The targets were places bin Ladin was thought to have been before, houses and villa complexes in several cities. Now all we needed was word that he was at one of those places again, and would likely stay there for a few hours.