Against All Enemies (34 page)

“Hell, we can't go to a mosque or even a church unless we have cause. Can't send in a source either,” would always be the answer. Then they would add, “Listen, we go for prosecutions and the U.S. Attorney here isn't interested in some minor infraction for supporting terrorism. Shit, we don't even have any Assistant U.S. Attorneys who have top secret clearance.”

They all noted that the Attorney General's Guidelines made it impossible for them to do things without already knowing about a probable crime. They could not, without someone providing them an initial lead, attend services at mosques or sit in on meetings of student groups. They were prohibited from printing an organization's Web pages unless they suspected a crime was in progress. In many cities the agents did not even have Internet access.

The Attorney General's Guidelines were initially adopted in the wake of the Watergate era scandals of the early 1970s. During that period it had been revealed that the FBI had kept files on people and groups for no reason other than J. Edgar Hoover's whim. To correct that kind of abuse, the Justice Department had put the FBI in a strait-jacket and they were still in it.

The lack of computer support, however, was a failure of the Bureau's leadership. Local police departments throughout the country had far more advanced data systems than the FBI. In New York I saw piles of terrorism files on the floor of the JTTF. There was only one low-paid file clerk there, and he could not keep up with the volume of paper that was being generated. There was no way for one agent to know what information another agent had collected, even in the same office. Wiretap recordings lay around for weeks because there were too few Arabic or Farsi or Pashto translators. All translations were done in the city in which the conversations were recorded.

When the FBI did uncover something interesting and report it to Washington, no written record of it ever left the Bureau. This was in marked contrast to CIA, NSA, and the State Department, which flooded my secure e-mail with over one hundred detailed reports every day. The only way that we knew what FBI Headquarters knew was by secure telephone calls or meetings.

The volume of the reporting from other agencies became so great that we established a Threat Subgroup that tracked leads on an Excel spreadsheet called the Threat Matrix. The subgroup went through the reports, asking: what was the source of the information, was the source ever right before, is there any independent way to verify the report, what should we do to deal with the possible threat? The subgroup then followed up, going back to the report until it could be “negated,” struck from the list of active threats. The subgroup had representatives from FBI, CIA, Secret Service, NSA, DOD, State, FAA, and often other agencies.

Steve Simon and later Roger Cressey chaired the Threat Subgroup. It was not unusual for them to report that whoever the FBI representative was that day was not really participating, causing me to have to call higher levels of the Bureau. On one day I specifically remember, mild-mannered Cressey marched into my office after a Threat Subgroup meeting and announced, “That fucker is going to get some Americans killed. He just sits there like a bump on a log. Nothing to report. No comment on anybody else's work. Doesn't want to check anything out.” I knew he was talking about an FBI representative.

When we would ask FBI if there were criminal violations of support to terrorism such as establishing Web sites soliciting funds or other means of terrorist financing, we would get blank stares. Rick Newcomb's office at Treasury was trying to give the FBI some guidance on where to look for terrorist money, but to little avail. When FBI said there were no Web sites in the U.S. that were recruiting jihadists for training in Afghanistan or soliciting money for terrorist front groups, I asked Steve Emerson to check. Emerson had written the book
American Jihad,
which had told me more than the FBI ever had about radical Islamic groups in the U.S. Within days, Emerson had a long list of Web sites sitting on servers in the United States. I passed the list to Justice and the FBI. Nothing appeared to happen as a result, although the Justice Department staff did note how difficult it was to prosecute “free speech” cases.

The two bright lights in the FBI were John O'Neill and Dale Watson, who replaced O'Neill in Washington when John went to the New York Office. They were a study in contrasts. O'Neill could have passed for a Boston Irish Congressman who read
GQ
magazine. Watson pretended to be a “good old boy” and actually chewed tobacco. To encourage CIA-FBI cooperation after forty years of mutual hostility, the two organizations had exchanged senior counterterrorism managers. Watson had come to the FBI Headquarters job having spent two years in the CIA Counterterrorism Center. He knew his stuff.

When Dale Watson sat down with me to develop the Millennium After Action Review he knew he had a problem. “We have to smash the FBI into bits and rebuild it to do terrorism,” Dale confided. “We're off running around after crooks who rob banks when there are people planning to kill Americans right here in the USA.” Hallelujah! I thought.

Watson got Freeh to approve a meeting in Tampa for all senior FBI supervisors from all fifty-six offices. He asked me to begin the meeting by telling the audience what al Qaeda was and what they wanted to do.

I began, “Al Qaeda is a worldwide political conspiracy masquerading as a religious sect. It engages in murder of innocent people to grab attention. Its goal is a fourteenth-century-style theocracy in which women have no rights, everyone is forced to be a Muslim, and the Sharia legal system is used to cut off hands and stone people to death. It also uses a global banking network and financial system to support its activities. These people are smart, many trained in our colleges, and they have a very long view. They think it may take them a century to accomplish their goals, one of which is the destruction of the United States of America. They have good spy tradecraft and employ sleeper cells and front groups that plan for years before acting. They are our number one enemy and they are amongst us, in your cities. Find them.”

Watson followed me: “They are the FBI's number one priority in terrorism. You will find them. If you have to arrest them for jaywalking, do it. If the local U.S. Attorney won't prosecute them, call me. If you can't get your FISA wiretap approved by Justice, call us, don't just sit out there and sulk.” People were taking notes, but some looked like they had heard this sort of “new priority” speech before.

“One more thing,” Watson added. “Your bonus, your promotion, your city of assignment all depend upon how well you do on this mission.” There was an uneasy shifting in seats. Everyone was staring at Dale. “I mean it, and I have Louis's backing. If you don't believe me, try me.” Dale was not being a good old boy anymore.

As Watson walked me to the car, he said, “The FBI is like an aircraft carrier. It takes a long time to stop going in one direction and turn around and go in another. These Field Offices have all had their own way, little fiefdoms, for years. At least I'm starting.” He was starting, but it would take years of consistent top-down management to fix. We had been throwing millions of dollars at the FBI for counterterrorism and they did not even have any data system that allowed the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to share.

The Millennium After Action Review established twenty-nine recommendations, most aimed at the threat of foreign terrorists in the United States. Among the proposals was the creation of JTTFs in every one of the fifty-six FBI offices, staffing them with Immigration officers and Internal Revenue agents. We proposed creating one central wiretap translation office and hiring more translators. There were specific proposals for joint action with Canada, in light of the discovery of the Montreal cell, including conforming our visa and asylum policies. It was clear that if you could get into Canada, you could get into the United States. In the subzero conditions of February, Roger Cressey and I went to Ottawa and gained concurrence from our Canadian counterparts on a list of joint actions. Discovery of the Montreal cell had shaken the Prime Minister's office as well.

The Principals approved the After Action proposals. Those recommendations that could be immediately implemented were. For those that would require new funds, agencies were to work with Congress to change their fiscal year 2001 budgets. The aircraft carrier was turning into the wind of foreign terrorists in the U.S. It had taken too long.

T
HE
P
RESIDENT ALSO RECEIVED
a summary of the After Action Review, along with an update on the CIA's attempts to get bin Laden or, at least, to tell us where to fire cruise missiles. Clinton was not pleased with CIA's progress.

I thought we needed new eyes looking at the problem of locating the al Qaeda leadership long enough to permit us to act. Charlie Allen was managing intelligence collection priorities for the entire intelligence community. I asked him to meet with the three-star admiral who was the director of operations for the Joint Staff, Scott Frey. The two came back with a novel idea. Instead of depending on unreliable human assets to find bin Laden, why not fly an unmanned aircraft around? The new Predator had a long “dwell time” and it provided a real-time video feed, even if it was ten thousand miles away.

There were a few problems. First, we would need to get some Predators, and they were in short supply. Some were being used in Bosnia and some in Iraq. Second, we would need some money to pay for the operation. Finally, we would need to get the agencies to agree to do it.

It was the last that proved to be the biggest hurdle. Too risky. Too costly. Too not-invented-here. Usually when I hit a brick wall like that, Sandy Berger would try to persuade his counterparts of the wisdom of the idea. In this case, Berger virtually instructed that the mission be carried out. By September the satellite links and other necessary little technical issues were worked out and the first Predator flew into Afghanistan.

Roger Cressey and I made midnight trips to watch Kandahar on a giant video screen in northern Virginia. A small team sat at their consoles, not quite believing that what they were seeing was happening right then on the other side of the globe. This sort of intelligence capability was something we had seen only in Hollywood movies.

The bird flew quietly over a known terrorist camp and, as it did, a Land Rover was headed toward the gate. “Follow that car,” the mission controller called out to the “pilot” seated in front of him in the darkened Virginia room. He then turned to me and Cressey and with a big grin said, “I always wanted to say that.” The pilot kept the Land Rover on-screen as it moved through market squares and in and out of a tunnel. Finally it pulled up in front of a villa and those in the vehicle went inside. “Well, we now know that villa is al Qaeda–related.”

Predators flew in September and October of 2000. One Predator was damaged during takeoff, setting off a bureaucratic fight over who would pay the few hundred thousand dollars to repair it. On another flight, the Taliban's radar detected the Predator and an ancient MiG fighter was launched. The Predator's camera watched as the fighter plane lumbered into the air, climbed, and began a big circle that ended with the fighter about two miles from the Predator, aimed right at it. The image of the MiG grew from a speck to an enormous object hurtling at the camera. “Holy shit, it's going to hit us!” the controller yelled, as half the people in the control room dove under their desks. Ten thousand miles away, the MiG flew right by the Predator, apparently unable to see it.

From the camera images on three flights, I am convinced that I was looking at bin Laden. There were no submarines off the coast to fire. The Navy had been trying for months to get its submarines back and had succeeded. The seasonal winds were also picking up, making it impossible for the Predator to fly over the mountains it had to traverse. Reluctantly, we agreed that the flights would resume when the winter was over.

The Air Force had been intending to experiment with placing small rockets or missiles on the Predator, with a view to possibly having a working capability in 2004. We asked them to have it ready for the late spring of 2001.

Much has been written about the origins of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle and about the bureaucratic battles that followed my proposal to use it as a counterterrorist weapon in the fight against al Qaeda. In their book
The Age of Sacred Terror,
Dan Benjamin and Steve Simon quote a “senior DOD official” as saying that the CIA opposed the initial use of the Predator and the White House “had to cram this down the throat of the Agency. The [CIA] Directorate of Operations, they go to cocktail parties and recruit spies, and they said this is paramilitary and can screw up my relationship with the host government.”