Ghost Wars (114 page)

9. Quotations are from interviews with Gary Schroen, September 19 and November 7, 2002 (SC).

10. Benjamin and Simon,
Age of Sacred Terror,
p. 26.

11. Vernon Loeb,
The Washington Post,
August 23 and 25, 1998. Peter L. Bergen,
Holy
War, Inc.,
pp. 95-96.

12. The most thorough and balanced biography of al-Zawahiri yet published in English appeared as a long article in
The New Yorker
by Lawrence Wright on September 16, 2002.

13. Higgins and Cullison, in
The Wall Street
Journal,
July 2, 2002, drawing from draft letters from al-Zawahiri to fellow Islamists that were discovered on the hard drive of a computer left behind in Kabul. The article makes plain the Egyptian's disputatious nature and growing isolation. So does a careful reading of al-Zawahiri's own post-September 11 memoir,
Knights Under the Prophet's Banner;
extracts were published in the Arabic newspaper
Al-
Sharq al-Awsat.
In his memoir al-Zawahiri takes credit for a number of lethal terrorist operations prior to his formal alliance with bin Laden, including the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad.

14. Higgins and Cullison,
The Wall Street
Journal,
July 2, 2002, describe al-Zawahiri's itinerant travels and his fortunate escape from Russian custody in Dagestan. If the Russians had identified him correctly while he was in jail, it is possible that al Qaeda might have developed during the late 1990s in a different way.

15. Al-Zawahiri,
Knights Under the Prophet's
Banner.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. The memo was released by the office of Senator Jon Kyl and was described by Walter Pincus in
The Washington Post,
February 25, 1998.

19. "Report of the Accountability Review Board," January 8, 1999. This was the commission led by Adm. William Crowe (Ret.) that reviewed the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 and the warnings that had preceded them.

20. March 9 meeting and quotation from "Afghanistan: [Redacted] Describes Pakistan's Current Thinking," State Department cable declassified and released by the National Security Archive.

21. Interview with Bill Richardson, September 15, 2002, Albuquerque, New Mexico (GW).

22. All quotations, ibid. Richardson's recollections are supported by Rick Inderfurth and the U.S. ambassador to Islamabad at the time, Tom Simons, both of whom accompanied him.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. All quotations, ibid. Inderfurth and Simons were also at the table with Rabbani and recall the discussion similarly.

26. Interview with Rick Inderfurth, March 6, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

27. Interview with Tom Simons, August 19, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

28. Ibid.

29. Quotation from Jonathan Landay,
Christian
Science Monitor,
July 1, 1998.

30. Timothy Weiner,
The New York Times,
February 1, 1999.

31. "To the extent of brainwashing" and other details are from the interview with Richard Clarke, July 9, 2003, Washington, D.C. (SC). Useful profiles of Clarke's career include Landay,
Christian Science Monitor;
Weiner,
The New York Times;
and Michael Dobbs,
The Washington Post,
April 2, 2000. The descriptions of Clarke's character and style are also drawn from interviews with about a dozen colleagues who worked closely with him during the late 1990s.

32. Interviews with former Clinton administration officials.

33. "Paranoid" and "facilitate" are from
USA Today,
May 22, 1998. That his status as a principal was unprecedented for an NSC staffer is from Benjamin and Simon,
Age of
Sacred Terror,
p. 233. An account of PDD- 62's provisions and significance is offered by Perl, "Terrorism, the Future, and U.S. Foreign Policy," Congressional Research Service, September 13, 2001, and is described in the Joint Inquiry Committee's final report, p. 234.

34. Clinton's bioterrorism session in April is from Benjamin and Simon,
Age of Sacred
Terror,
p. 252. "Electronic Pearl Harbor" is from Weiner,
The New York Times,
February 1, 1999. "Pile driver" from National Commission staff statement no. 8, p. 3.

35. Michael Dobbs,
The Washington Post,
April 2, 2000.

36. Jonathan Landay,
Christian Science Monitor,
July 1, 1998.

37. Descriptions are from the author's visit, October 2002, and interviews with local residents.

38. Interview with Gary Schroen, September 19, 2002. Clarke email and Schroen cable from National Commission, final report, p. 112.

39. Ibid.

40. National Commission final report, pp. 112-114.

41. The nuclear weapons quotations are from Peter L. Bergen,
Holy War, Inc.,
p. 100. The ABC News quotations are from
The
Washington Post,
April 23, 1998, and September 16, 2001.

42. Benjamin and Simon, Clarke's principal deputies for counterterrorism, write in their memoir that "there was nothing like a workable plan."

43. National Commission final report, p. 114.

CHAPTER 22: "THE KINGDOM'S INTERESTS"

1. Quotation from Prince Sultan bin Salman, son of the governor of Riyadh, from Ahmed Rashid,
Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil,
and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,
p. 138.

2. Bin Laden described the January arrests of his Saudi followers at his May 1998 press conference. He said they possessed an American Stinger missile and a number of SA-7 surface-to-air missiles. See Peter L. Bergen,
Holy War, Inc.,
pp. 100-101. The defection of Moisalih and the arrests in Saudi Arabia it produced are from "Afghanistan: Crisis of Impunity," Human Rights Watch, July 2001, p. 33. Turki has given half a dozen press interviews about his mission to Kandahar in June 1998. He provided an early detailed account to the
Los Angeles Times,
August 8, 1999.

3. Abdullah's routine is from interviews with senior Saudi officials. His demeanor, palaces, and appearance are from an interview with Crown Prince Abdullah, January 28, 2002, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (SC).

4. Interviews with senior Saudi officials.

5. One American counterterrorism official called Naif 's Interior Ministry a "black hole" into which requests for names, telephone numbers, and other details usually disappeared, never to reemerge. Turki's tent accident was described by several U.S. officials.

6. Sheikh Turki's presence is from interviews with senior Saudi officials. His presence was also described by
Intelligence Newsletter,
October 15, 1998.

7. Turki's assessment of Mullah Omar, al Qaeda membership, and bin Laden's leadership role are from an interview with Prince Turki, August 2, 2002, Cancun, Mexico (SC).

8. "Briefed . . . kingdom's interests" is from the Associated Press, December 23, 2001, quoting Turki's interview with the Arabic-language satellite television network MBC. "We made it plain" is from
Los Angeles Times,
August 8, 1999.

9. The Turki interview was on ABC News
Nightline,
December 10, 2001.

10. Rashid,
Taliban,
p. 72, describes Turki's meeting with Omar as focused entirely on the upcoming Taliban military thrust against Northern Alliance forces in Mazar-i-Sharif. Saudi officials denied this was a subject of discussion. The only publicly available accounts of the meeting are from Turki and Mullah Omar. The Taliban leader told
Time
magazine on August 24, 1998, that Turki had told him to keep bin Laden quiet. Omar made no reference to a Saudi request to hand bin Laden over for trial. Instead, after hearing from Turki, Omar said he told bin Laden "that as a guest, he shouldn't involve himself in activities that create problems for us."

11. Biographies and Afghan training of el Hage, Odeh, and Mohammed are from opening statements by their defense lawyers at their trial in the Southern District of New York, February 5, 2001.

12. Casualty statistics and attack sequences are from "Report of the Accountability Review Boards: Bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7, 1998," released on January 8, 1999.

13. Ibid. The July 29 CTC warning is from the Joint Inquiry Committee's final report, Appendix, p. 20. The review board's investigators examined classified intelligence and threat warnings circulated prior to the attacks and found "no immediate tactical warning" about the embassy bombings. The board did not blame either the CIA or the FBI for failing to discover bin Laden's Africa cells. They did criticize the heavy dependence on fragmentary and often inaccurate threat warnings as the primary guidance system for security measures at U.S. embassies. "We understand the difficulty of monitoring terrorist networks and concluded that vulnerable missions cannot rely upon such warning," the board wrote. "We found, however, that both policy and intelligence officials have relied heavily on warning intelligence to measure threats, whereas experience has shown that transnational terrorists often strike without warning at vulnerable targets in areas where expectations of terrorist acts against the U.S. are low." In the Africa cases, the earlier CIA and FBI efforts to track and disrupt el Hage's activities in Nairobi had lulled the agencies into a false belief that they had broken up the local cells. Also, the State Department ignored repeated warnings from the U.S. ambassador to Nairobi, beginning in December 1997, that the chancery building was too close to a major street and was therefore vulnerable to just the sort of truck bombing that eventually occurred.

14. Interviews with U.S. officials. Tracking the African cells, ibid.

15. Interview with a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the woman's reaction.

16. Interviews with multiple senior Clinton administration officials.

17. Interviews with participants. "Intelligence from a variety" is from Paul R. Pillar,
Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy,
pp. 100-101. "Spoke pretty clearly . . . confidence" is from an interview with a Clinton administration official. "The first compelling . . . Americans" is from an interview with a senior Clinton administration official who spoke to Clinton about the incident in 2003.

18. Interviews with Clinton administration officials. Berger's view about military options is from testimony before the Joint Inquiry Committee, September 19, 2002. "I don't think there was anybody in the press calling for an invasion of Afghanistan" in August 1998 or at any point afterward, Berger testified. "I just don't think that was something [where] we would have diplomatic support; we would not have had basing support." Clinton's quotation, "As despicable . . . support us" is from an interview with a senior Clinton administration official.

19. Tenet's briefing that day is from Vernon Loeb,
The Washington Post,
October 21, 1999. See also the chronology provided on the day the missile strikes were announced by Madeleine Albright, transcript of press conference, August 20, 1998, Federal News Service.

20. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon,
The Age of Sacred Terror,
p. 358. National Commission staff investigators later reported that they found "no evidence that domestic political considerations entered into the discussion or decision-making process" during this period.

21. Interviews with two Clinton administration officials familiar with the Pentagon's targeting work, which seems to have begun around the time of bin Laden's May press conference and his threat-filled interview with ABC News, which was broadcast in the United States a few weeks later.

22. Interviews with multiple Clinton administration officials. The Zinni quotation is from Bob Woodward and Thomas Ricks,
The
Washington Post,
October 3, 2001. In
Terrorism
and U.S. Foreign Policy,
p. 107, the CIA's Pillar wrote, "Intelligence about a scheduled meeting of bin Laden and other terrorist leaders . . . determined the timing of the attack." See also the Joint Inquiry Committee's final report, p. 297.

23. Gul's claim from National Commission, staff report no. 6, p. 6. Hussain's account from interview with Mushahid Hussain, May 21, 2002, Islamabad, Pakistan (SC).

24. Ibid.

25. Interviews with U.S. and Pakistani offi- cials involved in the episode, including the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan at the time, Tom Simons, August 19, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). Some published accounts have suggested that Ralston told Karamat directly at dinner that the cruise missiles were in the air. But one U.S. official familiar with the event said that in fact Ralston was not so forthcoming, telling Karamat only in general terms that a "retaliatory action" was being planned by the United States. By this account Ralston left Pakistani airspace before the missiles arrived, infuriating Karamat who felt the Americans had failed to take him adequately into their confidence. Sharif, meanwhile, was angry that the United States talked directly to the army about the attack rather than to Pakistan's supposedly supreme civilian authority, and he was also angry at Karamat, believing that the general had deceived him or let him down. When Pakistani authorities learned that two of the missiles had fallen short and hit inside Pakistani territory, they denounced the attack in public and in private.

26. Interviews with Clinton administration officials. Also Pillar,
Terrorism and U.S. Foreign
Policy.

27. Quotation from an interview with a senior Clinton administation official. The secret Blair House exercise in July is from Benjamin and Simon,
Age of Sacred Terror,
pp. 254-55.

28. "Terrorist war" is quoted by Eleanor Hill, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement, September 18, 2002. "I think it's very important" is from
The Washington Post,
August 22, 1998. "You left us with the baby" is from
The Washington
Post,
September 2, 1998.