Agent Storm: My Life Inside al-Qaeda (40 page)

‘I’m thankful too,’ I replied.

Michael was now getting into his stride. Perhaps he thought he was ahead on points.

‘I understand you might feel, and we’ll get to this in a second, like we fucked you over, and I don’t know why you would think that. You’ve got your own reasons and I’ll listen to them, okay? But I’m telling you if we were fucking you over I wouldn’t be sitting with you right now. I wouldn’t need to be.’

He had a habit of saying ‘okay’ after each point he made, as if to seek my agreement for each step of his logic.

‘You don’t have a good reputation,’ I replied, meaning the CIA as an institution.

‘That’s right. Unfortunately, because we’re in the business of protecting people like you, okay?

‘There is all this negative stuff we don’t respond to because it doesn’t do any good. People are going to read what they read and think what they think and you’re not going to convince them otherwise.’

People could not understand, he said, what it meant to ask someone like me to put their ‘balls on the line, day in day out’, at great risk to their family.

‘It’s very stressful,’ I replied, especially – I thought – when your commitment to a mission was overshadowed by the realization that your circus-masters had decided you were no longer essential.

Michael chose the moment to move on to the real business at hand. His voice dropped to a stage whisper.

‘Look – Awlaki was a bad man and bad in a lot of ways. You know this more than me.’

‘I told you even before the Americans were even interested in him. I told you guys: be careful – he’s going to be a danger,’ I replied.

‘That’s right,’ Michael said. He continued: ‘So, you, we had our
project together to go forward – we were not the only ones, okay? There were a number of other projects that were going.’

‘I agree,’ I replied.

‘We were very, very close,’ he said. ‘We were moving towards – and when I say we – I am talking about – you know – I want success.’

He paused to deliver the analogy he had clearly rehearsed.

‘It’s like being on the field at the World Cup, you’re moving down the field and you’re in the position to score, the other guy could have passed it to you but he didn’t, he took the shot, he scores. And that’s that. That’s what happened.’

It was a polite way of saying sorry – but not one I would accept.

‘Who was the boy you arrested in Sana’a? A boy between fifteen and seventeen years old?’

‘I don’t have any information a boy was arrested.’

I explained how an al-Qaeda courier had come to pick up the thumb drive three weeks before Awlaki was killed.

‘How do you know he was arrested?’ Michael asked.

‘Isn’t that a coincidence then – a very extreme coincidence?’ I asked.

Michael clearly sensed this was an argument that was not going to be resolved.

‘You either trust us or you don’t. In this case I guess you don’t.’

‘I don’t.’

Michael insisted he was briefed on the various plans to eliminate Awlaki.

‘So don’t you think that if a courier that was associated with your contact was arrested, I would know about it?’ he said.

Listening to the recording afterwards, I was struck by how Michael seemed willing to say anything to placate me – except to concede that my work directly led the CIA to Awlaki.

Now it was my turn. The Americans, I told him with some relish, had failed in their previous attempts to track down and kill Anwar al-Awlaki. Sure, they had come close a few times, not always by design. But it was only when I had gone in, established contact with him, passed on equipment and exchanged messages through couriers that he had eventually been killed.

I began to catalogue the other breakthroughs that Michael might not know about. I had been the one who encouraged Ahmed Warsame to develop a relationship between al-Shabaab and Awlaki. I had encouraged him to go to Yemen. And, I reminded Michael, it was when he was returning from one of his visits that he was seized.

Then there was the case of Saleh Ali Nabhan, who by 2009 had become one of al-Qaeda’s most dangerous operatives. He had even invited me into Somalia to see him. And it was the BlackBerry and laptop I had been given by Jed that had helped track him down.

‘Boom! He was wiped out using our gear. So why don’t you just say thank you?’

Michael let me carry on. Perhaps he thought the venting would do me good.

‘We just want gratitude from your government, just to accept the fact. Obama can take the honour – that’s fine. At least a ‘thank you’; that’s what we want from him.

‘I’ve been honest with you guys all the time. I know you listen to my phone, all my house, cars, everything. It’s fine. Every single [piece of] information you have from my side,’ I said, striking the table, ‘it’s always been honest, you never find a lie in it.’

‘And I’ve never accused you of lying,’ Michael said.

‘I even sent Anwar a wife. Did any of your agents manage to send him a wife?’

I realized that Michael’s mission was to watch a volcano exhaust itself. He was never going to acknowledge my role in leading US intelligence to Awlaki. The job was done; it was an American victory against terrorism.

I stood up and shouted down the stairs to Klang and Jesper.

‘He’s just sitting there and lying.’

Denmark’s initiative to make nice had aborted in spectacular fashion. Michael stood up and without looking at me or saying another word walked downstairs and out into the gardens. I would not see him again.

I faced Klang and Jesper.

‘You know what? I recorded the whole conversation.’

‘You can’t do that,’ said Klang, looking as though he was about to be
physically sick. Were the tape to become public, his failure to search me before the meeting would not impress his seniors.

‘But I did. And I quit,’ I told him.

Later, I realized the reason the CIA would never acknowledge that I had led them to Awlaki was that to do so would expose Danish intelligence to allegations that they had participated in an assassination – which was illegal under Danish law.

The agencies had closed ranks.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Back in the Ring

Late 2011

The weeks after Awlaki’s death were a dark time. I could not help feeling guilty about his killing. I kept imagining the grief of his ageing father, who had tried so hard to protect him, of his wives and children, and especially of the woman I had sent to Yemen to be his partner.

My sadness was compounded by an encrypted message I received from Aminah several weeks after Awlaki had been killed.

‘I am sending you this mail with great sorrow and sadness in my heart but again happiness for my husband Shuhada [martyrdom.] Alhamdidullah he is now in the Jannat [paradise] and do not feel anything but joy and happines.

‘I wanted to contact you in case I will go back in Europe, but I have 4 months to decide what to do. My first option is shahada … May Allah give us all sabr [patience] and strenght to go through this severelly difficult moments in our life.

‘I ask Allah to bless you for connecting me with my husband. Our marriage was blessing from Allah and I am so proud for being his wife.’

I thought of her predicament – alone and helpless. But then I read the email again.

‘My first option is shahada.’

Shahada
: martyrdom. To avenge her husband’s death, the young
star-struck woman I had left sipping coffee in Vienna was ready to blow herself up.

In my sleep Awlaki would come to me, reprimanding me for what I had done.

My days were equally restless. I brooded incessantly over the behaviour of the Americans. They had vanished from my life. I was damaged goods, a loose cannon. I could hear the clichés echoing round Langley. I wanted to prove them wrong, to dispel the notion that I was a bit player. I wanted them to take notice of me again.

I also wanted to retire from frontline intelligence work on a high. The frustration simmered. Fadia was by turns anxious and irritated with my behaviour. I could hardly blame her; I was erratic and easily angered, but still I could not bring myself to tell her anything that had happened.

On a misty November afternoon I had an idea – a way to reconnect with PET and show that I, and they, could still sit at the top table. I might have missed out on the payday promised by the Awlaki mission but PET still had me on a retainer, and I was never the type to accept money for doing nothing. It was time to get to work again.

My time in Yemen had introduced me to a network that was far wider than just Awlaki. I had – as it were – grown up with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, by now the most active and lethal of the terrorist network’s tentacles. Awlaki had been critically important – but there was another figure whose operational skills and leadership were even more crucial: Nasir al-Wuhayshi.

A confidant of Osama bin Laden
who had played a senior administrative role at his pre-9/11 headquarters near Kandahar, Nasir al-Wuhayshi had fled to Iran after the US launched Operation Enduring Freedom in October 2001. The Iranians had arrested him and extradited him to Yemen but his escape from prison in 2006 had galvanized the cause of jihad in his native country.
Al-Qaeda in Yemen had become
al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Wuhayshi had become the group’s emir. In August 2010, bin Laden had sent a message from Abbottabad praising Wuhayshi for his ‘qualified and capable’ leadership of the group.

By late 2011 Wuhayshi, who was known by his fighters as Abu Basir,
had built AQAP into a powerful force. The group had exploited President Saleh’s unpopularity to recruit thousands of fighters from sympathetic tribes. In April it had spun off a new group called ‘Ansar al-Sharia’ – partisans of the Sharia – to attract as broad a base of support as possible.

Ansar al-Sharia fighters had taken advantage of political turmoil to seize control of territory in Abyan, Marib and Shabwa provinces, including the dusty town of Zinjibar on the south coast, just forty miles up the coastal road from Aden. It was the road I had driven along that September night to see Awlaki.

An al-Qaeda mini-state was in the making, with the town of Jaar, ten miles inland from Zinjibar, its cradle and Wuhayshi its undisputed leader. This burnished his credentials within the jihadist movement. He was beginning to be seen as a potential successor to bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri as the paramount leader of al-Qaeda worldwide.

I called Klang in Copenhagen; I needed a meeting. No longer was I immediately given a plane ticket; this time it was a trek across England and a ferry from Harwich.

I was contrite when I met Klang and Jesper. I knew they were my last chance to leave the game with a gold medal. I nevertheless was quietly confident: I knew what I was doing and there was no other agent – anywhere – who could get close to Wuhayshi.

‘I think I can get him within a year,’ I told them. Klang looked sceptical, almost uncomfortable – as if he were the barman being asked for one last drink by the local alcoholic.

Klang said he was happy for me to try to rekindle some militant contacts in Yemen, if that’s what I wanted to do, but his enthusiasm hardly overwhelmed me. PET would as usual adjust my retainer – they paid a premium when I was overseas – bringing it to some $7,500 a month. But I felt I was a nuisance to them, no longer the ticket to dine with Big Brother.

My obstinacy kicked in: I would show them what I could do. But effectively I was now freelance, setting my own priorities, and without my most valuable contact, Anwar al-Awlaki.

On 3 December I returned to Sana’a – and immediately felt vulnerable. Not only had I lost the backing of my handlers, but I would be
reliant on Abdul to put out feelers on my behalf. And after Malaga I was not sure where his loyalties lay. That meant another layer of danger.

Abdul showed no trace of being anxious or hiding something when we met. If he was working for the CIA he was good at displaying an air of composure. He suggested I talk to Mujeeb, who had delivered my first thumb drive message for Awlaki to al-Qaeda’s religious chief, Adil al-Abab, in the tribal areas the previous summer. Mujeeb, he said, regularly met with Wuhayshi.

The three of us met on the roof of the house in Sana’a where I was staying.

Mujeeb was short and chubby and had a long beard. He always wore a scarf around his head but not a tribal one. It was clear by the type of car he drove – a newish Mercedes – that he was not your standard Salafist. He was a show-off, proud of his connections. He boasted that he was acting as a mediator between Salafis in Dammaj, where I had studied more than a decade previously, and al-Qaeda.
¹

Mujeeb told me he had recently carried a letter from the Saudis to Wuhayshi proposing a deal. They said they would pardon Wuhayshi and his group and donate weapons and money if they stopped fighting the Saudis and the Americans and focused instead on fighting Shia rebels in northern Yemen. I thought it an unlikely offer, as well as an outrageous infringement of Yemeni sovereignty, but with Mujeeb you could never be sure.