Against All Enemies (32 page)

That proved hard to get.

CIA's assets in Afghanistan could usually tell us where bin Laden had been a few days earlier. They did not know, except rarely, where he would be the next day. On a few occasions, they were able to tell us where they thought he was at that moment. When word came through that we had a contemporaneous sighting from our informants, the CSG met immediately by secure video conference. In three meetings during 1998 and 1999, the CSG requested emergency meetings of the Principals to recommend to the President a cruise missile strike on the facility in which bin Laden was believed to be at the time.

We had to act quickly. By the time the information reached the CSG, it was already getting old. By the time the Principals met and recommended action to the President, another hour or two would have passed. After presidential approval, it would take at least two hours for the missiles to hit the target. Bin Laden had to stay put throughout that time, perhaps six hours or more. Working with CIA and the Joint Chiefs, we tried to compress that time. General John Maher established a procedure whereby the attack submarines moved to their launch positions and readied their missiles for firing as soon as the CSG recommended an emergency Principals meeting, shaving off almost an hour.

On each of the three occasions when we thought we had an opportunity, however, there was reason not to fire the missiles. Twice, George Tenet admitted to the Principals that the information came from a single source that was not always right. There was a risk we would be firing on a building that did not contain bin Laden. He recommended against the attacks. “Look, I want to get this guy as much as any of you. More. But can I tell you that I have 100 percent, 90 percent confidence in these reports, no. This is one source, no corroboration, what we call ‘single threaded' reporting.” On the third occasion, Tenet and I carefully examined satellite photos of CIA's proposed target and determined that it looked a lot more like a luxury mobile home camp than a terrorist hideout. We feared that the target was not al Qaeda, but a falcon hunting party from a friendly Arab state. Perhaps our source was being used to cause us to attack one of our friends and drive a rift between us. Tenet and I recommended against that attack. The planned attack was canceled.

Tenet's later review of the three events, using other sources who were able to report later on, revealed that on only one of the occasions was bin Laden actually at the proposed target when we thought he was. On that occasion, the house bin Laden was in was located next to a hospital, which would have received collateral damage from a cruise missile attack. CIA was extremely sensitive to the possibility that its sources might be wrong and the Agency would take the blame when the U.S. attacked the wrong place. On May 7, 1999, U.S. bombs had fallen on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the NATO bombing of Serbia. An investigation showed that the aircraft had hit the building it was assigned to strike, but the CIA had erroneously thought that the building was a Serbian government compound. U.S. relations with China had been badly, if temporarily, damaged by the mistaken bombing.

On these three occasions and during the presentation of the Pol-Mil Plan, I tried to make the case to the Principals that we should strike at known al Qaeda camps whether or not bin Laden was in them. “I know that you don't want to blow up al Qaeda facilities in Afghanistan trying to get bin Laden only to have the bastard show up the next day at a press conference saying how feckless we are. So don't say we were trying to get bin Laden; say we were trying to destroy the camps. If we get him, so much the better.”

The response I received from all the other members of the Principals usually went along the lines of: “So we spend millions of dollars' worth of cruise missiles and bombs blowing up a buck fifty's worth of jungle gyms and mud huts again?” Sometimes I heard, “Look, we are bombing Iraq every week. We may have to bomb Serbia. European, Russian, Islamic press are already calling us the Mad Bomber. You want to bomb a third country?”

Several times I tried the line of argument that the camps, whatever it cost to build them, were churning out thousands of trained terrorists, who were going home and setting up cells in countries all over the world. “We have to stop this conveyor belt, this production line. Blow them up every once in a while and recruits won't want to go there.”

This line of reasoning had some impact on the Principals but not enough. General Shelton noted that the regional commander, General Anthony Zinni of CENTCOM, advised against further bombings because of the negative effect they had in Pakistan. Zinni was afraid that we would cause a public outcry in Pakistan that would force that nuclear power to distance itself from us. We could lose the leverage necessary to prevent India and Pakistan from going to war, nuclear war. Both Madeleine Albright at the State Department and Bill Cohen at Defense found the routine and regular bombing of Afghanistan an un-appealing concept.

I had thought that I had a special relationship with Albright and could persuade her, raising the political risk of inaction. Albright and I and a handful of others (Michael Sheehan, Jamie Rubin) had entered into a pact together in 1996 to oust Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations, a secret plan we had called Operation Orient Express, reflecting our hope that many nations would join us in doing in the U.N. head. In the end, the U.S. had to do it alone (with its U.N. veto) and Sheehan and I had to prevent the President from giving in to pressure from world leaders and extending Boutros-Ghali's tenure, often by our racing to the Oval Office when we were alerted that a head of state was telephoning the President. In the end Clinton was impressed that we had managed not only to oust Boutros-Ghali but to have Kofi Annan selected to replace him. (Clinton told Sheehan and me, “Get me a crow, I should eat crow, because I said you would never pull it off.”) The entire operation had strengthened Albright's hand in the competition to be Secretary of State in the second Clinton administration. Our personal relationship meant I had access to Albright and could talk frankly, but she was also hearing from her Deputy Secretary, Strobe Talbott, who was adamantly opposed to making the terrorist camps in Afghanistan a free-fire zone for routine American bombing. Talbott thought it was bad enough that we had made southern Iraq such a “bomb anytime” area. He knew his Russian friends were making hay by labeling America “the Mad Bomber.”

It was ironic that people had once worried whether Bill Clinton would use force and now there was criticism that he was using too much. In the Islamic world, there was criticism that Clinton was still bombing Iraq. After the start of hostilities with Belgrade, there were days when U.S. forces bombed both Serbia and Iraq. General Shelton and General Zinni looked on the idea of regular strikes against Afghanistan as another burden on an already stretched military. An aircraft carrier would have to be maintained off the Pakistani coast, tying down a major U.S. military asset.

Nonetheless, the idea of bombing all of the al Qaeda infrastructure was never ruled out. Indeed, the Joint Chiefs were instructed to prepare plans to hit the facilities not only with cruise missiles, but with B-1, B-2, and B-52 strategic bomber strikes. The targeters went to work, matching specific types of bombs and missiles to individual buildings at camps and sites across Afghanistan. They planned the choreography necessary to coordinate which aircraft and missiles went where, and in what sequence, as well as where the aerial tankers would circle and how rescue units would be stationed to get downed pilots. I waited for another opportunity to make the case.

W
HILE THERE WAS LITTLE SUPPORT
for a large-scale bombing campaign, there continued to be interest in eliminating the al Qaeda leadership. For years we had assumed that the Executive Order against U.S. agencies engaging in assassination was a firm ban against the use of lethal force in nonmilitary situations. The issue was not merely a legal one. There were moral issues as well as pragmatic considerations.

Israel had adopted a program to kill terrorists after the massacre of their Olympic team at Munich. Mossad, Israeli intelligence, sent hit teams around the Middle East and Europe, assassinating those involved with the Munich attack. On at least one occasion, they killed the wrong man as a result of mistaken identity. The assassinations had also done little to deter further attacks on Israelis. Indeed, Israel had become caught in a vortex of assassination and retaliation that seemed to get progressively worse.

Al Qaeda and bin Laden tested our own restraint. They seemed intent on continuing to kill innocent people, Americans and others. The U.S. military had been unable to come up with a way of attacking the al Qaeda leadership effectively. Gradually, the Principals accepted the idea that we needed to examine our policy on targeted assassination.

Beginning in the Reagan administration, U.S. policy had permitted the use of lethal force against a terrorist if the lethal act was necessary to stop an imminent attack. It was clear that there were going to be more al Qaeda attacks. What did “imminent” mean? Did we have to know the exact date and location of the next al Qaeda attack in order to use lethal force?

What seemed particularly absurd to the Principals about our policy on the use of force was that it did not apply to the U.S. military. We could fire a cruise missile into Afghanistan or ask a pilot to drop a bomb with the intention of killing al Qaeda leaders, but we could not ask an Afghan to go shoot bin Laden. If we used a bomber, the chances of collateral damage were higher. Moreover, using a B-1 meant that we had to publicly acknowledge our role and subject friendly governments like Pakistan to public criticism for their support or tolerance of it.

On the issue of the White House authorizing CIA to kill bin Laden, much has been written. Several reporters, including Barton Gellman in the
Washington Post
of December 19, 2001, have written that President Clinton approved multiple intelligence documents authorizing CIA to use lethal force against Usama bin Laden and his deputies. Sandy Berger elaborated before the Joint House-Senate Inquiry Committee, saying, “We received rulings in the Department of Justice not to prohibit our efforts to try to kill bin Laden, because [the assassination ban] did not apply to situations in which you're acting in self-defense or you're acting against command-and-control targets against an enemy, which he certainly was.”

Yet bin Laden was not killed. President Clinton as reported in
USA Today
(November 12, 2001) reflected his frustration by noting, “I tried to take bin Laden out…the last four years I was in office.”

I still to this day do not understand why it was impossible for the United States to find a competent group of Afghans, Americans, third-country nationals, or some combination who could locate bin Laden in Afghanistan and kill him. Some have claimed that the lethal authorizations were convoluted and the “people in the field” did not know what they could do. Every time such an objection was raised during those years, an additional authorization was drafted with the involvement of all the concerned agencies, and approved by the President's signature. The Principals and the President did not want to open the Pandora's box that the Israelis had found after Munich, they did not want a broad assassination policy and hit list, but the President's intent was very clear: kill bin Laden. I believe that those in CIA who claim the authorizations were insufficient or unclear are throwing up that claim as an excuse to cover the fact that they were pathetically unable to accomplish the mission.

E
ARLY IN
D
ECEMBER
1999,
THE HEAD
of CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Cofer Black, called. “We have to go to battle stations.”

“Cofer, it's not Friday,” I joked. It had become something of a tradition that either Black or FBI Assistant Director Dale Watson would call on Friday afternoons with late-breaking news that would cause us to spend the weekend in the office. We called the regular Friday afternoon CSG meetings the “Friday Follies.”

“No, Dick, this is the real deal,” Black insisted. “Jordan infiltrated a cell, planning lots of bang-bang for New Year's. The Radisson Hotel, Christian tourist sites, lots of dead Americans. Deal is, Dick, I don't think this is it. You know bin Laden, he likes attacks in multiple locations. They're like cockroaches. You see one, but you know that means there is a whole nest of them.”

Cofer Black was a hard-charging, get-it-done kind of CIA officer who had proved himself in the back alleys of unsavory places. He was what the CIA needed a lot more of, but had little of. I had urged George Tenet to find such a guy to run the Counterterrorism Center, someone who shared Tenet's view and mine that we had to go on the offensive. Unfortunately, Black reported to Tenet through the CIA's Deputy Director for Operations, Jim Pavitt, and Pavitt thought both Tenet and I were exaggerating the whole al Qaeda threat and would get CIA in trouble. Now, however, Black had proof that al Qaeda was planning attacks around the Millennium rollover.

I
N THE MONTHS
leading up to Cofer's phone call, much had been done to reduce our vulnerabilities at home and abroad.

We had hundreds of foreign diplomatic facilities (embassies, consulates, ambassadors' residences, and so on) in over 180 nations. A handful were built using the security guidelines adopted after Embassy Beirut was destroyed in the 1980s. Many, however, were so vulnerable that they invited attack. The institutional culture of the Department of State, however, resisted protecting the embassies. U.S. diplomats hated being housed in fortresses, walled off from the societies they were supposed to be serving. If there were new funds, the Department of State had many things it wanted to do with the money other than build more fortresses. I had found this attitude dismaying, since it was Department of State personnel who would be killed in embassy attacks. The Department should have been trying to do everything necessary to protect its own people. I knew that Madeleine Albright would understand the problem.

After one Principals meeting in the West Wing, I had asked to speak one on one and we walked together up West Executive Drive while her motorcade waited. “What do you think will happen if you lose another embassy? The Republicans in the Congress will go after you.”

I had her attention. She shot back, “First of all, I didn't lose these two embassies. I inherited them in the shape they were.” Then the Secretary of State, realizing that I was a friend who had tried to help her get the job, smiled coyly at me. “I know you, Dick. You have a plan. What is it you want me to approve?”

“Share the burden. These embassies don't just house State Department people, they have staff from a dozen agencies in them. Let's get them on the hook too. Let me run an interagency process to survey the embassies and identify which ones need quick fixes, which ones we may have to close. Then let me go after the money to build new ones, to put defenses around others.”

With Secretary Albright's approval, the White House took on the embassy security mission. I sent teams of Diplomatic Security, Secret Service, FBI, FEMA, and Defense Department experts to cities around the world to survey our embassies the way that a terrorist would. What streets did we need to close to prevent a truck bomb from getting too close? Were there enough local police and were they doing their job? Where did we need machine guns and fire zones? If there was a street that needed to be closed, the U.S. Ambassador was to go see the Foreign Minister personally. If that did not work in a week, the Secretary of State or National Security Advisor would be on the telephone. If we still did not get results, we would publicly announce that we were suspending diplomatic and consular services in the country and would advise U.S. citizens and businesses to stay away.

The teams came back with lists of immediate steps to harden scores of embassies. They also had embassies that could not be saved, where nothing could be done to make them safe. Those embassies were closed and the State Department sent out property buyers to find new locations.

We were able, in the wake of the embassy attacks, to persuade Congress to provide another Emergency Supplemental appropriation to cover the costs of the first wave of embassy hardening and to begin building two fortress-style embassies to replace the facilities we had lost. The CSG sat around the conference table in the Situation Room critiquing architectural plans for new embassies from Beijing to Berlin. Yet when it came time for the fiscal year 2000 budget, the State Department's submission to the White House did not include the funds to continue the embassy-hardening program. In a matter of four months from the attacks in Africa, embassy protection had slipped back to a low budget priority.

I called Josh Gottbaum, the number three person at the Office of Management and Budget and the official designated to work with me to make sure the President's terrorism and homeland protection priorities were funded. I explained the problem. Josh got it. “Well, it seems to me that it's the President's embassies and it's the President's budget…not the State Department's. Let me see here…yes, I think we will just drop several hundred million from what they want and add several hundred million of what we know the President would want. Done.”

Meanwhile, the State Department had been hard at work trying to put pressure on the Taliban to close the terrorist camps in Afghanistan and hand over the terrorists. Unfortunately, we had little leverage with the Taliban. The three nations that did have leverage were Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. They alone had diplomatic relations with Afghanistan. The Saudis and the Emirates also provided substantial foreign aid to that war-devastated land. All three had appealed on our behalf to the Taliban to cooperate on bin Laden. We also spoke directly to the Taliban. The answers that came back from Kandahar were transparent rejections. The Taliban had talked of their Islamic obligation as a host to take in those who sought shelter. They had spoken of convening a court of Islamic scholars to try bin Laden, if we would like to provide the evidence and accusations. They had assured us that they were preventing bin Laden from engaging in any terrorism.

In response, we had adopted a three-part strategy. First, I granted a media interview in which I stated that if there were any further al Qaeda terrorism against the United States, we would hold the Taliban responsible and retaliate against them the next time. There was some complaining that I had not obtained proper approval for that announcement, but nobody retracted it. Second, we asked the Saudis and UAE rulers to terminate diplomatic relations with Afghanistan and terminate foreign aid. The UAE agreed to cooperate fully, and did. The Saudis, too, terminated diplomatic relations. Both also sent their own emissaries to reason with the Taliban. The Saudi emissary was Intelligence Minister Prince Turki. Press reports suggested that he offered to increase aid to the Taliban if they would give up bin Laden. Turki was rebuffed, something that seldom happens in the life of a senior Saudi prince. Third, we had sought economic sanctions against the Taliban. The President ordered all Taliban assets in the United States seized. In a rare show of solidarity, the United States and Russia co-sponsored sanctions in the U.N. Security Council.

There were two problems that had prevented progress with the Taliban. The first was that the Taliban rightly believed that if they evicted bin Laden, as Sudan had done, the U.S. would then have other objections that would block aid. America would want the Taliban to insure women's rights and would insist on verifying an end to opium production. The second problem was that Taliban leaders, including Mullah Omar, completely agreed with bin Laden and al Qaeda's goals. There were stories of intermarriage between the bin Laden and Omar families. There were also economic, military, and political ties that were inviolable. One Taliban official, speaking honestly, told Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth, “If we give you bin Laden, we will face a revolt against us.”

W
HILE ALL THIS WAS GOING ON,
of course, al Qaeda was busy laying the groundwork for an attack against us. The Millennium was approaching, and it was a temptingly symbolic occasion upon which, as Cofer Black would help discover, they couldn't resist seizing.

From my position at the time of Cofer's phone call, not yet knowing of al Qaeda's plans, I had only limited options. I had tried to argue that the U.S. work harder to fight against the Taliban in its civil war in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance still held sway over a third of the country but provinces switched sides as a result of combat or cash, and much of the combatants and all of the cash came from bin Laden to help the Taliban. It was only a matter of time before the Alliance crumbled. I argued that we could provide the counterweight, sending arms and funds to Massoud's northern forces. If Massoud posed a serious threat to the Taliban, bin Laden would have to devote his arms and men to the fight against the Northern Alliance rather than fighting us. Massoud had at least token support from India, Russia, and Uzbekistan. CIA had kept open contact with him, but had refused to provide him with significant assistance.

Once again, CIA's career management saw my proposal to aid the Northern Alliance as a risk to CIA. For those who had spent fifteen, twenty, or more years in CIA, there was a clear pattern: Whoever was in the White House would get worked up over the cause du jour. He would be unable to get the rest of the government to produce results, so he would turn to the CIA. He would push the CIA to do risky, potentially controversial things. Later, after things went badly, the White House people would be gone and CIA would get the blame. It was through this template that the Agency saw the Northern Alliance: Sure, Massoud was a good guy now, but later the Congress, or the media, or some other White House staff would focus on the fact that he sold opium, abused human rights, and had killed civilians. They would blame CIA. Audits of the CIA assistance would undoubtedly show that some funds had gone for questionable purposes. In the final analysis, the CIA proclaimed the Northern Alliance was feckless and no match for the Taliban.

Although CIA staff would admit their Agency's bias to me in private, in official meetings they nodded and said they would prepare to help Massoud and his Northern Alliance. Of course, they first needed their internal legal review to be complete and then there would have to be an interagency legal review. The money to help Massoud, apart from token aid that the CIA called “trinkets,” would have to be given to the Agency over and above all funds already available to them.

This reluctance to fund the Northern Alliance without “found money” caused me to wonder exactly what CIA was doing with all of the counterterrorism budget increases that the White House had given them through several Emergency Supplemental budgets. Working with the Office of Management and Budget and CIA's own auditors, we discovered that almost all of the Agency's activities against al Qaeda were being paid for by the Emergency Supplementals. There were almost no baseline CIA funds going into the effort. In 2000 and in 2001 we asked CIA to identify some funds, any money, earmarked for other activities that were less important than the fight against al Qaeda, so that those funds could be transferred to the higher priority of countering bin Laden. The formal, official CIA response was that there were none. Another way to say that was that everything they were doing was more important than fighting al Qaeda.