Ghost (8 page)

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TWO HITS FOR EL DORADO CANYON

April 16, 1986

Thanks to modern media and communications, we have a real-time report of the attacks around Tripoli.
NBC Nightly News
has a man on the scene with Steve Delaney, who phones in a live report and even sticks his receiver out his hotel window so those of us at home can hear the roar of antiaircraft fire.

By dawn, Operation El Dorado Canyon is over. The eleven-minute attack transforms much of Qaddafi’s compound at Al Azizyah into smoking rubble. So is the French Embassy in Tripoli, which we accidentally hit with a bomb.

One F-111 is missing. Everyone else is down safely, which is amazing given our press leaks and a subsequent report that shows the Italians and Maltese tipped off the Libyans after our carrier planes showed up on their radar systems. Nothing like having allies in this war against terror.

Now, we have to await a response. Much of the world is furious at our attack. The French, Italians, and most of the British see the operation as reckless military adventurism. In the Middle East and North Africa, there are protests in the streets of most major Arab cities. Our embassy in Khartoum just reported in, painting a picture of large-scale mobs chanting anti-American slogans. Several hundred tried to storm the embassy, and they would have succeeded had it not been for teargas-firing local Sudanese police. They drove off the attackers, but now everyone is worried about a repeat of the ’79 embassy takeover in Tehran, or the attack on our embassy in Pakistan, where one of our marines was shot and killed.

A little after 3
P.M.
, a flash cable arrives from Khartoum. One of our embassy staff members has been shot. Gleason gives me the case.

There’s not much to tell at first. William J. Calkins, a thirty-three-year-old former navy communications specialist, was on his way home for the night. He left the embassy just before 10
P.M.
local time. Not far from his house, some locals found him unconscious and bleeding profusely, still strapped into his government vehicle. They rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery. Someone, or some group of someones, had shot him in the head.

This is going to be a tough case. The Sudanese hate us, and Khartoum is a playground for terrorists. It is a city on the edge of anarchy, sort of a Beirut lite. All the chaos with a third fewer murders. The local police hardly function, and trying to get physical evidence from the scene to our FBI lab will be futile.

I begin working with the RSO at the embassy in Khartoum. Together, we manage to build a basic sketch of the attack. Bill Calkins worked erratic hours. He’s the communication, or commo, guy there on the ground in Sudan, and this requires him to handle all the flash traffic, NIACT cables, and other messages that must be sent out. As a result, he tended to work until odd hours of the night.

He worked late on April 16. On his way home, somebody shot him. Now, he’s clinging to life in a Sudanese hospital. If he survives, he’ll be flown to Germany for further treatment.

Was this just a random act of violence in a Third World pit of mayhem? Or was this a deliberate hit? We’re not sure.

A day later, our RSO in Khartoum reports back to us. He’s found some witnesses. According to them, a small sedan with three males inside picked up Bill Calkins’s vehicle and began to tail him. Somewhere along the road, the sedan swerved to the left and accelerated until it was even with Bill’s car. Two men opened fire with pistols while the third drove. As Bill slumped over, bleeding from a bullet wound to the left side of his head, the hit team vanished into the night.

We have only one piece of forensic evidence to go on. The Sudanese police turned over a few shell casings. Our RSO in Khartoum promises to send those to us via overnight DHL right away.

This may just be the opening blow in Sudan. Another cable comes in from Khartoum with potentially dire news. The Sudanese prime minister declared he’d provide “material and human assistance” to combat “barbaric American aggression.” Given this development, the earlier mob at the embassy gates, and the hit on Calkins, the decision is made to evacuate all nonessential embassy personnel from Khartoum. Altogether, with relief agency workers and regular staff, there are about five hundred Americans at the embassy. Plans are made to fly most of them out on a charter flight to Kenya.

As I work the Calkins case, more bad news flows in to FOGHORN. In Beirut, the bodies of three hostages, including our two academics, are found on April 17. This is clear retaliation for the bombing of Tripoli. A note with the bodies claimed as much. Later that afternoon, the British discover a plot to blow up an El Al jetliner departing from London.

The next day, a letter bomb arrives in the British House of Commons addressed to a member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet. At the end of the week, a bomb squad in Istanbul defuses a device placed at the entrance of an American bank. The Turks also thwart another potential disaster when they catch two Libyans carrying a bag full of grenades, which they confessed they were going to throw into an American military wedding party.

Khartoum reports in at week’s end. Most of the nonessential personnel are now in Kenya. Meanwhile, a few more details have emerged on the Calkins hit. First, he was shot in a residential neighborhood, not far from the Libyan People’s Bureau. The two gunmen fired five times. Calkins will live, but right now he’s blind, unable to speak, and partially paralyzed on his right side.

Were the Libyans involved? There’s just not enough evidence to point one way or the other yet, although we did receive a report that Sa’id Rashid was seen in the city and left just after the attack. Rashid is a well-known Libyan intelligence operative and a member of the Revolutionary Committees Bureau, which is Qaddafi’s elite terror and subversion organization. Rashid has been linked to numerous assassination attempts and an attempted bombing of a Pan Am airliner in December 1983, and he was last seen in Berlin around the time of the La Belle Discotheque operation. Is he orchestrating these attacks? It certainly couldn’t be proven in a court of law, but right now it looks pretty suspicious. We must keep a closer eye on him. I send a message to our RSO in Khartoum, asking him to get the Sudanese to send us the passenger manifests for outbound flights to Tripoli in the days following the attack. The RSO is not optimistic he can get those, but he gives it a shot. The Sudanese turn him down cold. They aren’t going to help us much beyond what they’ve already done.

Ten days after the Tripoli attack, we get hit again. This time, we receive a flash cable from our embassy in Sanaa, Yemen. It is another attempted hit on one of our diplomats. Gleason tells me to find out what happened.

I contact the RSO, who sends word that the victim is another communications officer, just like the hit in Khartoum. Arthur Pollick was on his way to the embassy when a car overtook his and shot him up. According to our agent on the scene, Art was shot in the leg, shoulder, and head. Somehow, he managed to stop his car and limp back to his house, where he called for help. He’s going to live, but he’s suffered serious wounds.

Fortunately, he’ll be able to talk to me. Ten days after the Khartoum hit Bill Calkins is still unable to communicate. He’s out of the woods, but he’ll have permanent injuries, according to the doctors in Germany.

The two hits are extraordinarily similar. We need to get to the bottom of this quickly so we can prevent further attacks. In a few days, I’ll be able to sit down with Art and debrief him. Hopefully, he’ll give us something to go on. In the meantime, I send a cable to Sanaa, asking the RSO there to get to the crime scene and take some photographs.

Within twenty-four hours, some of the pieces start to fall into place. First, Art has identified his assailants’ vehicle. It was a Toyota sedan, which the Yemeni police discover going into the Libyan Embassy later that day. The sedan also carries Libyan diplomatic plates. How careless is that? Of course, maybe they wanted us to know who pulled this off. Or maybe they just don’t care. Either way, this is pretty brazen, even for the Libyans.

The Yemeni police also find spent shell casings by the side of the road. The gunmen fired multiple shots, and we’ve now got five more shells to run ballistic tests on when they arrive here in D.C.

Coordinating this investigation, getting our RSO to ask specific follow-up questions, and trying to work with the Yemeni police through our agents on the spot proves unwieldy and time-consuming. I shouldn’t be shackled to this desk here in Foggy Bottom. I need to be out in the weeds, eyeballing this stuff for myself. I make a mental note to talk this over with Gleason. In the future, we need to send a team in to assist the agents on the spot. Between their normal security and protection duties and trying to ride herd on a multinational investigation, our RSOs are getting overwhelmed.

For now, I’ll work from here, gathering the pieces so we can study the big picture.

By the end of the month, we’ve got more details from both attacks. In Khartoum, it looks like a Libyan surrogate terror group known as the Sudanese Revolutionary Guard pulled off the hit on Calkins. Our agent in Khartoum interviewed witnesses who saw the attack, and they gave a description of one of the gunmen that matched a known SRG operative.

The chance of catching these guys is remote. The Sudanese government has no interest in going after the SRG, especially on behalf of the United States. They’re supporting the Libyans, and a few days ago recalled their ambassador from Washington.

In Yemen, we’ve got more details, thanks to the local police, who are British-trained. The real break comes, though, when I’m able to sit down with Art Pollick. Still bandaged up, he proves to be an outstanding witness to his own attack.

“Fred, I sensed something was wrong. There was this car behind me, and it seemed to be following too close,” Art tells me. “It was a sedan with three people inside. Something just didn’t seem right, you know?”

Art’s memory of the incident is crystal clear. His balding head is still bandaged, but he’s as sharp as they come. “I had this feeling. Not sure how to describe it, but it was unsettling. I glanced in my rearview mirror, but the car was gone,” he continues. “So I looked over my left shoulder. As I did, the window shattered. Glass went everywhere. Two of the men were shooting at me with pistols.”

Art’s quick glance to the left probably saved his life. One of the first bullets hit him in the head just as he turned it. The bullet entered his forehead and followed the curve of his skull around until it exited near his left ear. That shot should have killed him. Instead, it blinded him in the left eye. He’s a lucky, lucky man. I wish Bill Calkins had been as fortunate. Two weeks after his attack, he’s only now starting to regain his speech, and most of his right side is still paralyzed.

“Did you notice anything unusual before the attack?” I ask Art.

He thinks about it for a minute, then replies, “You know, a few days before, I saw a car parked in our neighborhood. I’d never seen it before, and it stuck out in my mind. Do you think they were watching me?”

“Possibly.” This is a critical piece of the puzzle. If this is connected, it means the terrorists have been watching our diplomats. Worse, they know where they live.

I arrange for Art to work with an Identi-Kit, which is sort of like a flat plastic Mr. Potato Head with which we can build a composite image of the suspects. It comes complete with hairstyles and colors, mustaches, facial shapes—everything an investigator needs to re-create a victim’s memory of his assailant. When we’re done, each of the three men in the car have olive complexions and black curly hair.

Next, I sit Art down with an FBI sketch artist. When the sketches are done, I take them and start comparing them to photographs of known Libyan diplomats and intelligence agents. We get a match. The Libyans had an agent from their embassy in the car when they hit Art Pollick.

In Sanaa, a Yemeni police captain has taken a personal interest in the attack. He’s prosecuted his investigation with vigor, and he sends word back to us via our RSO at the embassy that he’s come up with the names of the two other men in the vehicle. Both are local thugs, almost certainly recruited for a one-time job by the Libyan operative.

Not long after this revelation, the first batch of evidence arrives at Foggy Bottom. Crime-scene photos, photos of the two cars involved, mug shots of the local thugs, all have been neatly packaged for us, along with the shell casings. Not surprisingly, they’re 9 mm pistol shells, just like the ones recovered in Khartoum. I first take them over to the FBI, as I want to have the lab there run a comparison on the casings. Could they have been fired from the same weapons? It would be a nice tie between the two hits. The FBI, however, decides it has better things to do with its time. These attacks happened overseas, and though I beg and plead for priority, the casings are dumped at the bottom of their to-do list. Frustrated, I take them to the ATF, hoping that they will prove more cooperative. They do, and I make a mental note to cultivate a tight relationship with the ATF folks. I know that connection will come in handy in the future.

A few more meetings with Art brings in a bit more granular detail. By early May, I’ve got a pretty good picture of the two attacks. First, they used the same modus operandi in both hits. It is simple and effective: Catch a lone diplomat between the embassy and his residence where he’s most vulnerable. Then hit him with a drive-by shooting and leave him for dead.

The method is not tactically elegant by any stretch of the imagination. It is brutal and thuggish, which is how Libyan intelligence operates. It worked, too.

But there are some things about both cases that trouble me deeply. First, why did they hit two communications officers? Were they just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Did the Libyans plant their hit teams along known routes used by diplomatic personnel, then hit the first embassy staffer to come along? How would they identify them as American diplomats?