Against All Enemies (35 page)

Later in the book, on the issue of flying an armed version of the Predator to attack al Qaeda, Benjamin and Simon add that “the head of the Directorate of Operations, Jim Pavitt, was heard to say that if the Predator was used against bin Laden and the responsibility for this use of lethal force was laid at the Agency's doorstep, it would endanger the lives of CIA operatives around the world.” Finally, they note that in a White House meeting a week before September 11, CIA Director George Tenet “intervened forcefully. It would be a terrible mistake, he declared, for the Director of Central Intelligence to fire a weapon like this.”

The New Yorker
quotes Roger Cressey as saying of the bureaucratic dispute about the use of the armed Predator prior to September 11, “It sounds terrible, but we used to say to each other that some people didn't get it…it was going to take body bags.” It did. The armed Predator flew after al Qaeda in Afghanistan only following September 11. It proved highly successful.

D
URING THE
P
REDATOR'S TRIAL RUN
in October 2000, the al Qaeda cell that had sunk its own boat around the time of the Millennium tried once again to attack a U.S. destroyer in Aden, Yemen. This time they succeeded and killed seventeen American sailors aboard the USS
Cole.
For over three years the CSG had been concerned with security at the ports in the region that were being used by the U.S. Navy. Steve Simon had written a scathing report on security he discovered at the Navy pier near Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Sandy Berger had sent the report to the Secretary of Defense. I had personally crawled around and climbed up into sniper positions at the U.S. Navy facility in Bahrain because of repeated reports that al Qaeda planned to attack there. The Defense Department had fixed the problems in Bahrain and the UAE, but bases weren't the only points of vulnerability. When the USS
Cole
was attacked, we were shocked to learn that the Navy was even making port calls in Yemen.

Mike Sheehan, then the State Department representative on the CSG, had summed up our feelings: “Yemen is a viper's nest of terrorists. What the fuck was the
Cole
doing there in the first place?” The system had failed. When CENTCOM decided to begin port visits in Aden, no one in the Defense Department had referred that proposal for interagency security review.

As in the case of Khobar and the East African embassy bombings, the FBI sent out a large team to collect evidence and interrogate witnesses. Ever the hands-on guy, John O'Neill led the team. He ran right into the U.S. Ambassador I would least like to deal with under those circumstances, Barbara Bodine. O'Neill could charm a corpse, but he could not find a modus vivendi with the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen. The Yemeni government also dragged its feet in the investigation, leading to President Clinton's becoming personally involved. The U.S. government left the Yemenis in no doubt about the two alternative paths that Yemeni-American relations could take.

Meanwhile in Washington neither CIA nor FBI would state the obvious: al Qaeda did it. We knew there was a large al Qaeda cell in Yemen. There was also a large cell of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, but that group had now announced its complete merger into al Qaeda, so what difference did it make which group did the attack? Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, Paul Kurtz, and Roger Cressey had worked around the clock piecing together the evidence and had made a very credible case against al Qaeda. CIA would agree only months later.

In the meantime, in Principals discussions, it was difficult to gain support for a retaliatory strike when neither FBI nor CIA would say that al Qaeda did it. Once again I proposed bombing all of the al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, without tying the operation to getting bin Laden or even to retaliating for the
Cole.
There was no support for bombing.

Mike Sheehan could not believe what took place in the Principals meeting following the attack on the
Cole.
He had grown up in the military: West Point, Korea, Special Forces school, hostage rescue team in Panama, fighting in El Salvador, Command and General Staff School, peacekeeping in Somalia and Haiti, two tours with the NSC at the White House. He had always assumed that when U.S. forces were attacked and killed, U.S. government leaders would want to avenge the attacks. Sheehan knew those leaders. Now out of the Special Forces and a civilian serving as the State Department's leading counterterrorism official, he had worked with these Principals for years. He had energized the State Department from within to use all its diplomatic assets against al Qaeda. Yet now, with seventeen dead sailors, the Principals had decided to do nothing, to wait for proof of who had committed the attack. Sheehan was particularly outraged that the highest-ranking U.S. military officer had not even suggested that the U.S. employ existing retaliation plans against al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and against their Taliban hosts. Sheehan detested the Taliban, whose representatives had lied to his face.

On a brisk October day in 2000, Sheehan stood with me on West Executive Avenue and watched as the limousines left the White House meeting on the
Cole
attack to go back to the Pentagon. “What's it gonna take, Dick?” Sheehan demanded. “Who the shit do they think attacked the
Cole,
fuckin' Martians? The Pentagon brass won't let Delta go get bin Laden. Hell, they won't even let the Air Force carpet bomb the place. Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?”

Time was running out on the Clinton administration. There was going to be one last major national security initiative and it was going to be a final try to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. It really looked like that long-sought goal was possible. The Israeli Prime Minister had agreed to major concessions. I would like to have tried both, Camp David and blowing up the al Qaeda camps. Nonetheless, I understood. If we could achieve a Middle East peace much of the popular support for al Qaeda and much of the hatred for America would evaporate overnight. There would be another chance to go after the camps. The Principals asked me to update the Pol-Mil Plan for the Transition, flagging the issues where there was not consensus, where decisions had not been agreed. I listed aiding the Northern Alliance, eliminating the camps, and flying armed Predators to eliminate the al Qaeda leadership.

Clinton left office with bin Laden alive, but having authorized actions to eliminate him and to step up the attacks on al Qaeda. He had defeated al Qaeda when it had attempted to take over Bosnia by having its fighters dominate the defense of the breakaway state from Serbian attacks. He had seen earlier than anyone that terrorism would be the major new threat facing America, and therefore had greatly increased funding for counterterrorism and initiated homeland protection programs. He had put an end to Iraqi and Iranian terrorism against the United States by quickly acting against the intelligence services of each nation.

Because of the intensity of the political opposition that Clinton engendered, he had been heavily criticized for bombing al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, for engaging in “Wag the Dog” tactics to divert attention from a scandal about his personal life. For similar reasons, he could not fire the recalcitrant FBI Director who had failed to fix the Bureau or to uncover terrorists in the United States. He had given the CIA unprecedented authority to go after bin Laden personally and al Qaeda, but had not taken steps when they did little or nothing. Because Clinton was criticized as a Vietnam War opponent without a military record, he was limited in his ability to direct the military to engage in anti-terrorist commando operations they did not want to conduct. He had tried that in Somalia, and the military had made mistakes and blamed him. In the absence of a bigger provocation from al Qaeda to silence his critics, Clinton thought he could do no more. Nonetheless, he put in place the plans and programs that allowed America to respond to the big attacks when they did come, sweeping away the political barriers to action.

When Clinton left office many people, including the incoming Bush administration leadership, thought that he and his administration were overly obsessed with al Qaeda. After all, al Qaeda had killed only a few Americans, nothing like the hundreds of Marines who died at the hands of Beirut terrorists during the Reagan administration or the hundreds of Americans who were killed by Libya on Pan Am 103 during the first Bush's administration. Those two acts had not provoked U.S. military retaliation. Why was Clinton so worked up about al Qaeda and why did he talk to President-elect Bush about it and have Sandy Berger raise it with his successor as National Security Advisor, Condi Rice? In January 2001, the new administration really thought Clinton's recommendation that eliminating al Qaeda be one of their highest priorities, well, rather odd, like so many of the Clinton administration's actions, from their perspective.

A
L
Q
AEDA PLANNED ATTACKS
years in advance, inserted sleeper cells, did reconnaissance. They took the long view, believing that their struggle would take decades, perhaps generations. America worked on a four-year electoral cycle and at the end of 2000, a new cycle was beginning. In the presidential campaign, terrorism had not been discussed. George Bush and Dick Cheney had mentioned the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. They had also talked about Iraq.

In January 2001, with the Florida fiasco behind us, I briefed each of my old friends and associates from the first Bush administration, Condi Rice, Steve Hadley, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell. My message was stark: al Qaeda is at war with us, it is a highly capable organization, probably with sleeper cells in the U.S., and it is clearly planning a major series of attacks against us; we must act decisively and quickly, deciding on the issues prepared after the attack on the
Cole,
going on the offensive.

Each person reacted differently. Cheney was, as ever, quiet and calm on the surface. The wheels were spinning behind the mask. He asked an aide to arrange for a visit to CIA to learn their view of the al Qaeda threat. That was fine by me because I knew that George Tenet would be even more alarmist than I had been about what al Qaeda was planning. Cheney did make the trip up the Parkway to CIA Headquarters, one of many he would make. Most of the visits focused on Iraq and left midlevel managers and analysts wondering whether the seasoned Vice President was right about the Iraqi threat; perhaps they should adjust their own analysis. In the first weeks of the Administration, however, Cheney had heard me loud and clear about al Qaeda. Now that he was attending the NSC Principals meetings chaired by Condi Rice (something no Vice President had ever done), I hoped he would speak up about the urgency of the problem, put it on a short list for immediate action. He didn't.

Colin Powell took the unusual step during the transition of asking to meet with the CSG, the senior counterterrorism officers from NSC, State, Defense, CIA, FBI, and the military. He wanted to see us interact, respond to each other's statements. When we all agreed at the importance of the al Qaeda threat, Powell was obviously surprised at the unanimity.

Brian Sheridan, the soon departing Assistant Secretary of Defense, summed it up: “General Powell, I will be leaving when the administration changes. I am the only political appointee in the room. All these guys are career professionals. So let me give you one piece of advice, untainted by any personal interest. Keep this interagency team together and make al Qaeda your number one priority. We may all squabble about tactics and we may call each other assholes from time to time, but this is the best interagency team I have ever seen and they all want to get al Qaeda. They're comin' after us and we gotta get them first.” Powell asked extensive questions about what State could do, took detailed notes, and later asked Rich Armitage (who would become Deputy Secretary) to get involved.

I met Condi Rice wandering the halls of the Executive Office Building looking for my office. She said that she had fond memories of working in the old building on the White House grounds. I escorted her to my office and gave her the same briefing on al Qaeda that I had been using with the others. Condi Rice's reaction was very polite, as she almost always is. I realized, when I prepared to brief my former colleague and now boss, that she was the fourth National Security Advisor I had worked for and the seventh I had worked with.

Brent Scowcroft had been the lovable old sage, focused largely on the strategic nuclear balance until the First Gulf War came along. Brent, although a close friend of the first President Bush, suffered from the fact that the Secretary of State cut him out and talked, frequently, directly to the President. Tony Lake had been the passionate, thoughtful leader whose professorial image belied the fact that he was a master bureaucratic schemer, always several moves ahead of everyone else. Lake had always won the bureaucratic battles, but he had not won the President's heart. Their two personalities did not mesh well and Clinton shifted him to CIA Director in the second term. (Lake withdrew during a bruising confirmation fight in the Senate. Had he been CIA Director, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have relentlessly gone after bin Laden and moved out the bureaucrats who got in the way.)

Sandy Berger had been Lake's deputy, but also a long-standing friend of both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Initially the assumption on the NSC Staff was that Berger was the political commissar, but his prodigious capacity for detailed work on the tough national security issues won him the respect of the bureaucrats. As National Security Advisor, he had dominated State and the Pentagon.

Now Condi Rice was in charge. She appeared to have a closer relationship with the second President Bush than any of her predecessors had with the presidents they reported to. That should have given her some manuver room, some margin for shaping the agenda. The Vice President, however, had decided to be involved at the NSC Principals level. The Secretary of Defense also made clear that he didn't care about anyone else's relationship with the President; he was doing what he wanted to do. As I briefed Rice on al Qaeda, her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before, so I added, “Most people think of it as Usama bin Laden's group, but it's much more than that. It's a network of affiliated terrorist organizations with cells in over fifty countries, including the U.S.”

Rice looked skeptical. She focused on the fact that my office staff was large by NSC standards (twelve people) and did operational things, including domestic security issues. She said, “The NSC looks just as it did when I worked here a few years ago, except for your operation. It's all new. It does domestic things and it is not just doing policy, it seems to be worrying about operational issues. I'm not sure we will want to keep all of this in the NSC.”

Rice viewed the NSC as a “foreign policy” coordination mechanism and not some place where issues such as terrorism in the U.S., or domestic preparedness for weapons of mass destruction, or computer network security should be addressed. I realized that Rice, and her deputy, Steve Hadley, were still operating with the old Cold War paradigm from when they had worked on the NSC. Condi's previous government experience had been as an NSC staffer for three years worrying about the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Steve Hadley had also been an NSC staffer assigned to do arms control issues with the Soviet Union. He had then been an Assistant Secretary in the Pentagon, also concerned with Soviet arms control. It struck me that neither of them had worked on the new post–Cold War security issues.

I tried to explain: “This office is new, you're right. It's post–Cold War security, not focused just on nation-state threats. The boundaries between domestic and foreign have blurred. Threats to the U.S. now are not Soviet ballistic missiles carrying bombs, they're terrorists carrying bombs. Besides, the law that established the NSC in 1947 said it should concern itself with domestic security threats too.” I did not succeed entirely in making the case. Over the next several months, they suggested, I should figure out how to move some of these issues out to some other organization.

Rice decided that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism would also be downgraded. No longer would the Coordinator be a member of the Principals Committee. No longer would the CSG report to the Principals, but instead to a committee of Deputy Secretaries. No longer would the National Coordinator be supported by two NSC Senior Directors or have the budget review mechanism with the Associate Director of OMB. She did, however, ask me to stay on and to keep my entire staff in place. Rice and Hadley did not seem to know anyone else whose expertise covered what they regarded as my strange portfolio. At the same time, Rice requested that I develop a reorganization plan to spin out some of the security functions to someplace outside the NSC Staff.

Within a week of the Inauguration I wrote to Rice and Hadley asking “urgently” for a Principals, or Cabinet-level, meeting to review the imminent al Qaeda threat. Rice told me that the Principals Committee, which had been the first venue for terrorism policy discussions in the Clinton administration, would not address the issue until it had been “framed” by the Deputies. I assumed that meant an opportunity for the Deputies to review the agenda. Instead, it meant months of delay. The initial Deputies meeting to review terrorism policy could not be scheduled in February. Nor could it occur in March. Finally in April, the Deputies Committee met on terrorism for the first time. The first meeting, in the small wood-paneled Situation Room conference room, did not go well.

Rice's deputy, Steve Hadley, began the meeting by asking me to brief the group. I turned immediately to the pending decisions needed to deal with al Qaeda. “We need to put pressure on both the Taliban and al Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance and other groups in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, we need to target bin Laden and his leadership by reinitiating flights of the Predator.”

Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld's deputy at Defense, fidgeted and scowled. Hadley asked him if he was all right. “Well, I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden,” Wolfowitz responded.

I answered as clearly and forcefully as I could: “We are talking about a network of terrorist organizations called al Qaeda, that happens to be led by bin Laden, and we are talking about that network because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States.”

“Well, there are others that do as well, at least as much. Iraqi terrorism for example,” Wolfowitz replied, looking not at me but at Hadley.

“I am unaware of any Iraqi-sponsored terrorism directed at the United States, Paul, since 1993, and I think FBI and CIA concur in that judgment, right, John?” I pointed at CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, who was obviously not eager to get in the middle of a debate between the White House and the Pentagon but nonetheless replied, “Yes, that is right, Dick. We have no evidence of any active Iraqi terrorist threat against the U.S.”

Finally, Wolfowitz turned to me. “You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist.” I could hardly believe it but Wolfowitz was actually spouting the totally discredited Laurie Mylroie theory that Iraq was behind the 1993 truck bomb at the World Trade Center, a theory that had been investigated for years and found to be totally untrue.

It was getting a little too heated for the kind of meeting Steve Hadley liked to chair, but I thought it was important to get the extent of the disagreement out on the table: “Al Qaeda plans major acts of terrorism against the U.S. It plans to overthrow Islamic governments and set up a radical multination Caliphate, and then go to war with non-Muslim states.” Then I said something I regretted as soon as I said it: “They have published all of this and sometimes, as with Hitler in
Mein Kampf,
you have to believe that these people will actually do what they say they will do.”

Immediately Wolfowitz seized on the Hitler reference. “I resent any comparison between the Holocaust and this little terrorist in Afghanistan.”

“I wasn't comparing the Holocaust to anything.” I spoke slowly. “I was saying that like Hitler, bin Laden has told us in advance what he plans to do and we would make a big mistake to ignore it.”

To my surprise, Deputy Secretary of State Rich Armitage came to my rescue. “We agree with Dick. We see al Qaeda as a major threat and countering it as an urgent priority.” The briefings of Colin Powell had worked.

Hadley suggested a compromise. We would begin by focusing on al Qaeda and then later look at other terrorism, including any Iraqi terrorism. Because dealing with al Qaeda involved its Afghan sanctuary, however, Hadley suggested that we needed policy on Afghanistan in general and on the related issue of U.S.-Pakistani relations, including the return of democracy in that country and arms control with India. All of these issues were a “cluster” that had to be decided together. Hadley proposed that several more papers be written and several more meetings be scheduled over the next few months.

I
WASN'T THE ONLY ONE
asserting an al Qaeda threat whom Wolfowitz belittled. Our Ambassador to Indonesia, Robert Gelbard, was putting pressure on the Jakarta government to do something about al Qaeda and its offshoot, Jemmah Islamiyah (JI). Gelbard had closed the U.S. embassy in Jakarta when he received credible reports that a six-person al Qaeda hit team had been dispatched from Yemen. He had publicly criticized the Indonesian government for turning a blind eye to al Qaeda infiltration and subversion. Then on Christmas Day 2000, the JI launched an offensive against Christians, bombing twenty churches. Gelbard stepped up his pressure privately and publicly.