FTR#563—A Tale of Two Heroes—(Two 30-minute segments) (Sources are noted in
parentheses.) (Recorded on 8/13/2006.)
Note: FTR#’s 260-316, 317,
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NOTE: TWO
LECTURES PRESENTING MR. EMORY’S VIEWS OF WHAT WE CAN EXPECT IN THE FUTURE ARE
NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWLOAD FOR FREE IN
BOTH REAL AUDIO AND MP3. These lectures are:
L-1: ‘The Political Implications of the UFO Phenomenon and the ‘ET’ Myth’; and
L-2: ‘The Future--Technology, Theocracy and the Thousand-Year-Reich.’
Descriptions are available in the Lecture Series section.
NEW!! A number of
vitally important books are now available for download for FREE. The books are:
Martin Bormann: Nazi in
Exile by Paul Manning; The Nazis Go Underground
by Curt Reiss; and All Honorable Men (parts 1 and 2) by James
Stewart Martin. Taken together, these books will provide a significant
understanding of the concept and reality of The Underground Reich, and they can
be downloaded with a modem Internet connection. They are available at: Spitfirelist.com/Books. In addition, we have added Cairo to Damascus by John Roy Carlson [1951], Germany Plots with the Kremlin by T.H. Tetens [1953], and Armies of Spies by Joseph Golomb [1939].
Yet another recent addition is Germany’s
Master Plan by Joseph Borkin and Charles Welsh. (Borkin is the author of
the 1979 classic The Crime and Punishment
of I.G. Farben.) Another anti-fascist classic about I.G. Farben supplements
the Borkin and Welsh text—Treason’s Peace
by Howard Watson Ambruster. Two more recently-posted gems are The Thousand-Year Conspiracy by Paul
Winkler and Falange by Alan Chase,
both published in 1943. The Winkler text documents the evolution of militant
Pan-Germanism from the Teutonic Knights to the Nazis and Falange documents the Third Reich’s geopolitical goals in the
Spanish-speaking world. By the time many of you read this description, more of
the long-out-of-print anti-fascist books that are more than 50 years old will
have been added to the Spitfirelist.com/Books URL. The Manning text’s URL also features a discussion of
Paul Manning’s career and professional credentials. Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile is also available in html. Note also that FTR#305
has a synoptic overview of the Bormann organization. An understanding of the
Bormann organization is essential for an in-depth grasp of the arguments
presented on For The Record.
Note also that U.S. Government documents proving Prescott
Bush Sr.’s Money-Laundering on behalf of the Third Reich before and after World
War II are available at a linked website, along with commentary by John
Buchanan, who located the documentation. This material is discussed in FTR#435.
The website containing the documents is www.debatecomics.org/BushFamilyFortune/.
Summary of FTR#563—(Note: The massive
volume of ‘For The Record’ programs about 9/11 and related topics is summarized
and analyzed in the periodically-updated description for FTR#391.
FTR#’s 454,
455, 456 are compilations of
much of the key documentation culled from Mr. Emory’s investigation into 9/11.
Along with FTR#391, they should give
listeners/readers a substantive grasp of this momentous event. It is recommended
that listeners use this description and e-mail it to others.) Revisiting the tragic story of FBI Agent
John O’Neill, the program highlights his unsuccessful efforts at interdicting
Al Qaeda operations and details the magnificent work of his Lebanese-American
colleague Ali Soufan. These are the “Two Heroes” in the title of the broadcast.
In charge of the FBI’s investigation of Al Qaeda, O’Neill died in the 9/11
attacks. Despite remarkable efforts in Yemen by both men in their investigation
of the Al Qaeda bombing of the USS Cole, their discovery of information about
the impending 9/11 attacks was never properly utilized, due in considerable
measure to the CIA’s failure to share surveillance information. That
surveillance information led to the discovery that two of the attendees at a
Malaysia meeting of Al Qaeda operatives had traveled to the United States. The
article read here attributes the failure to interagency jealousy and a Justice
Department ruling dubbed “The Wall” that blocked proper information sharing
among intelligence and law enforcement personnel. How much of the
failure was due to incompetence and how much to the activity of a Fifth Column
is a matter of conjecture. It is Mr. Emory’s opinion that there was plenty of
both in conjunction with 9/11. (For more about John O’Neill, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 310. 326, 336. In particular, listeners
are encouraged to listen to side “A” of FTR#310, recorded in early July of 2001
and broadcast on WFMU on the evening of 9/10/2001, between 6 and 7pm. WFMU is
right across the river from the site of the World Trade Center. The morning
following the broadcast, O’Neill died in the attack on the World Trade Center.
To hear the program as it was broadcast on the evening of 9/10/2001, go to:
http://www.wfmu.org/daveemory.)
Program Highlights Include: Ali Soufan’s clever manipulation of captive Al Qaeda operatives in order
to ferret out the truth; open animosity and jealousy on the part of the CIA
toward John O’Neill; sympathy on the part of the Yemeni authorities toward the
jihadis; the conviction on the part of Al Qaeda captives that Israel was behind
the 9/11 attacks; attempts by the CIA to recruit Ali Soufan to “The Dark Side;”
the discrediting of John O’Neill.
1.
Introducing the
two heroes for whom the program is named, the broadcast opens with the bombing
of the USS Cole, investigated by the late John O’Neill and Ali Soufan. The
former was in charge of the FBI’s investigation of Al Qaeda and the latter was
his “right-hand man.” “October 12, 2000,
in the deep-water port of Aden, Yemen, the U.S.S. Cole, a guided-missile
destroyer weighing eighty-three hundred tons, was docked at a fuelling buoy.
The Cole, which cost a billion dollars to On build, was one of the most
survivable ships in the U.S. Navy, with seventy tons of armor, a hull that
could withstand an explosion of fifty-one thousand pounds per square inch, and
stealth technology designed to make the ship less visible to radar. As the Cole
filled its tank, a fiberglass fishing boat containing plastic explosives
approached. Two men brought the skiff to a halt amidships, smiled and waved, then
stood at attention. The symbolism of this moment was exactly what Osama bin
Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, had hoped for when he approved a plan to attack
an American naval vessel. The destroyer represented the West, bin Laden said
later. The small boat represented Muhammad. The shock wave from the blast
shattered windows onshore. Two miles away, people thought there had been an
earthquake. The fireball that rose from the waterline swallowed a sailor who
had leaned over the rail to see what the men in the skiff were up to. The blast
opened a hole, forty feet by forty feet, in the port side of the ship, tearing
apart sailors belowdecks who were waiting for lunch. Seventeen of them
perished, and thirty-nine were wounded. Several sailors swam through the blast
hole to escape the flames. The great man-of-war looked like a gutted animal.” (“The Agent: Did the C.I.A.
Stop an F.B.KI. Detective from Preventing 9/11” by Lawrence Wright; The New
Yorker; July 10-17/2006; pp. 62-63.)
2.
The program details Ali Soufan’s background: “It was Al Qaeda's second successful strike against American targets. In
August, 1998, operatives had bombed the United States Embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania simultaneously, killing two hundred and twenty-four people. Yet an
important part of the Cole plot had failed: Fahd al-Quso, a member of Al
Qaeda's support team in Aden, was supposed to videotape the blast for
propaganda purposes, but he slept through a morning alarm and did not set up
his camera in time. Quso was in a taxi at the moment of the explosion, and he
immediately went into hiding. Shortly after the attack, Ali Soufan, a
twenty-nine-year-old Lebanese-American, was driving across the Brooklyn Bridge
when he received a page from the New York office of the F.B.I., where he was
employed as a special agent. He was told to
report to work at once. At the time, Soufan was the only F.B.I. agent in the city who spoke Arabic, and one of only
eight in the country. He had joined the New York office in the fall of 1997,
and his talents were quickly spotted by John O'Neill, the head of the F.B.I.'s
National Security Division, which is devoted to combatting terrorism. The
following February, when bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on America,
Soufan wrote a trenchant report on Islamic fundamentalism that O'Neill
distributed to his supervisors. combatting terrorism. The following February,
when bin Laden issued a fatwa declaring war on America, Soufan wrote a
trenchant report on Islamic fundamentalism that O'Neill distributed to his
supervisors. After
the 1998 embassy bombings, Soufan helped assemble the initial evidence linking
them to bin Laden. Soufan's language skills, his relentlessness, and his roots
in the Middle East made him invaluable in helping the F.B.I. understand Al
Qaeda, an organization that few Americans were even aware of before the embassy
bombings. O'Neill, who had joined the F.B.I. twenty-five years earlier,
referred to the young agent as a national
treasure. Despite Soufan's youth and his relatively short tenure, O'Neill placed
him in charge of the Cole investigation. As it turned out, Soufan became
America's best chance to stop the attacks of September 11th.” (Ibid.;
pp. 63-64.)
3.
“Soufan speaks rapidly, and there is still a hint of
Lebanon in his voice. He has an open face and an engaging smile, although there
are circles under his eyes from too many long nights. Soufan is a Muslim, but
he doesn't follow any particular school of Islam; instead, he is drawn to
mystical thought, especially that of Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese-American poet.
He told me that he has an interest in the Kabbalah, because it appeared at a
time when the political environment for the Jews was so harsh that they used
this philosophy to escape their anguish. When he wants to relax, he watches
reruns of Seinfeld--he's seen every episode three or four times--or Bugs Bunny
cartoons. One of his favorite writers is Karen Armstrong, whose biographies of
Muhammad and the Buddha knit together history and religion in a way that makes
sense to him. Soufan grew up in Lebanon during the calamitous civil war, when
cities were destroyed and terrorists were empowered by lawlessness and chaos.
His father was a journalist in Beirut, and as a child Soufan helped out at the
business magazine his father produced, often carrying galleys to the printshop.
In 1987, when Soufan was sixteen, the family moved to the United States.
Soufan's most vivid initial impression of his adopted country was that it was
safe. Also, it allowed me to dream, he said.” (Ibid.; p. 64.)
4.
“Soufan lived in Pennsylvania, and he never suffered from
prejudice because he was a Muslim Arab. In high school, he won many academic
awards. He attended Mansfield University, in central Pennsylvania, where he was
elected president of the student government. In 1997, he received a master's
degree in international relations from Villanova University, outside
Philadelphia. He initially planned to continue his studies in a Ph.D. program.
But he had developed a fascination with the U.S. Constitution--in particular,
with its guarantees of freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, and the right
to a speedy trial. People who are born into this system may take it for
granted, he said. You don't know how important these rights are if you haven't
lived in a country where you can be arrested or killed and not even know why.
Like many naturalized citizens, Soufan felt indebted for the new life he had
been given. Although he was poised for an academic career, he decided--almost
as a joke, he says--to send his resume to the F.B.I. He thought it was nearly
inconceivable that the bureau would hire someone with his background. Yet in
July, 1997, a letter arrived instructing him to report to the F.B.I. Academy,
in Quantico, Virginia, in two weeks.” (Idem.)
5.
After joining the FBI, Soufan hooked up with O’Neill. “Upon graduation, Soufan went to the New York bureau. He was
soon assigned to the I-40 squad, which concentrated mainly on the Islamist
paramilitary group Hamas, but, in 1998, on the day after the East African
embassy bombings, O'Neill drafted him into I-49, which had become the lead unit
in the F.B.I.'s investigation of Al Qaeda. O'Neill was one of a few top
managers in the F.B.I. who recognized early the danger that Al Qaeda posed to
America. His intensity was unyielding, and his manner was often abrasive; he
could be brutal not only to those under him but to superiors who he felt were
not fully committed to an investigation. Soufan proved to be a tireless ally,
willing to work nights and holidays. O'Neill adored him, and Ali felt the same
way, Carlos Fernandez, an agent who knew both
men well, observed. They were equals, in many ways. If you say something to
Ali, he'll remember it, word for word, ten years from now. John was also great
at remembering names and connecting the dots. They could go on for hours,
putting things together. The fact that a novice like Soufan had direct access
to O'Neill aroused some resentment among the other agents, but the bureau had
nobody else with his skills and dedication. John and I often talked about the need
to clone Ali, Kenneth Maxwell, an F.B.I. official who was then Soufan's
superior, told me.” (Idem.)
6.
“The afternoon of the Cole bombing, Soufan and a few dozen
other agents flew to Yemen to begin looking for evidence that could be used
against Al Qaeda in court. (A larger contingent, which included O'Neill, was
held up in Germany for a week, waiting for permission to enter the country.)
Yemen was a particularly difficult place to start a terrorist investigation, as
it was filled with active Al Qaeda cells and with sympathizers at very high
levels of government. On television, Yemeni politicians called for jihad
against America. When the agents landed in Aden, the day after the attack,
Soufan looked out at a detachment of the Yemen Special Forces, who wore yellow
uniforms with old Russian helmets; each soldier was aiming an AK-47 at the U.S.
plane. A jittery, twelve-man hostage-rescue team, which had been sent along to
protect the F.B.I. agents, responded by brandishing their M4s and handguns.
Soufan realized that everyone might die on the tarmac if he didn't do something
quickly. He opened the plane's door. One Yemeni soldier was holding a
walkie-talkie. Soufan walked directly toward him, carrying a bottle of water as
the guns followed him. It was a hundred and ten degrees outside.” (Idem.)
7.
An invaluable asset, Soufan’s presence of mind and understanding of
Arab culture and customs helped defuse the confrontation. It was one of many
instances in which Ali Soufan’s extraordinary abilities stood him in good stead.
“You look thirsty, Soufan said, in Arabic, to the
officer with the walkie-talkie. He handed him the bottle. ‘Is it American
water?’ the officer asked. Soufan assured him that it was, adding that he had
American water for the other soldiers as well. The Yemenis considered the water
such a precious commodity that some would not drink it. With this simple act of
friendship, the soldiers lowered their weapons. Soufan divided the agents on
the ground into four teams. The first three were responsible for forensics,
intelligence, and security; the last was devoted to exchanging information with
Yemeni authorities. Just getting permission from the Yemeni government to go to
the crime scene--the wounded warship in the Aden harbor--required lengthy
negotiations with hostile officials. Security was a great concern, considering
that automatic weapons were ubiquitous in the country, especially in rural
areas, but Barbara Bodine, the American Ambassador, refused to allow the agents
to carry heavy arms. She was concerned about offending the Yemeni authorities.”
(Ibid.; pp. 64-65.)
8.
Sensing a point of information that was going to prove very fruitful,
Soufan initiated a search for a cameraman. That search ultimately yielded Quso,
who, in turn, helped to unravel the Cole bombing. That investigation ultimately
yielded information about the 9/11 attacks, which might have helped prevent the
attacks, had it not been for “The Wall” [see below.] “When Soufan and the investigators visited the ship, clumps of flesh
were strewn belowdecks, amid the tangled mass of wire and metal. F.B.I. divers,
hoping to make DNA identifications of the victims and the bombers, netted body
parts floating in the waters around the ship. Looking through the huge blast
hole, Soufan could see the mountainous, ancient city of Aden, rising above the
curved harbor like a classical amphitheatre. He figured that, somewhere in the
city, a camera had been set up to record the explosion, since terrorists
regularly documented their work. Although the bombers were likely dead, a
cameraman might still
be at large. When O'Neill finally arrived in Aden with the other agents, he was
puzzled, upon getting off the plane, to see the Yemeni soldiers saluting. I
told them you were a general, Soufan explained to him. Yemen is a status-conscious
society, and, because Soufan had promoted O'Neill to general, his counterpart
was General Ghalib Qamish, the head of Yemeni intelligence. Every night, when
the Yemeni authorities did business, Soufan and O'Neill spent hours pushing for
access to witnesses, evidence, and crime scenes. Initially, the Yemenis told
them that, since both of the bombers were dead, there was nothing to
investigate. But who gave them money? Soufan asked. Who provided the
explosives? The boat? He gently prodded the Yemenis to help him.” (Ibid.;
p. 65.)
9.
“A few days after the bombing, the Yemenis brought in two
known associates of bin Laden's for questioning. One was named Jamal Badawi;
the other was Fahd al-Quso, the man who had failed to videotape the Cole
attack. Both men were Yemeni citizens. Quso, who ran a guesthouse in Aden for
jihadis, had turned himself in after family members were questioned. He did not
admit his role in the Cole plot, but he and Badawi confessed that they had
recently travelled to Afghanistan, and had met there with a one-legged jihadi
named Khallad. Badawi said that he had bought a boat for Khallad, who, he
explained, had wanted to go into the fishing business. The Yemenis eventually
determined that this was the boat used in the Cole bombing. When Soufan heard
that Quso had mentioned the name Khallad, he was startled: he had heard it from
a source he had recruited a few years earlier, in Afghanistan. The source had
told him that he had met a fighter in Kandahar with a metal leg who was one of bin
Laden's top lieutenants. When Soufan asked to speak to Quso and Badawi, the
Yemenis told him that the men had sworn on a Koran that they were innocent of
any crime. For them, that settled the matter.” (Idem.)
10.
O’Neill and Soufan were able to establish an excellent rapport with
General Qamish. “Soufan and O'Neill knew that
General Qamish represented their best hope of gaining any cooperation. He was a
small, gaunt man whose face reminded Soufan of Gandhi's. Despite the tensions
between the two sides, Qamish had begun calling his American colleagues Brother
John and Brother Ali. One night, O'Neill and Soufan spent many hours asking
Qamish for passport photographs of suspected plotters, especially that of
Khallad. He said repeatedly that the F.B.I. was not needed on the case, but
O'Neill and Soufan pointed out that the sooner they could interrogate suspects
linked to the Cole bombing the sooner they might obtain intelligence that could
destroy Al Qaeda. The following night, Qamish announced, I have your photos for
you. Soufan immediately sent Khallad's photo to the C.I.A. He also faxed it to
an F.B.I. agent in Islamabad, Pakistan; the agent showed it to Soufan's source in Afghanistan, who
identified the man as Khallad, the Al Qaeda lieutenant. This suggested strongly
that Al Qaeda was behind the Cole attack. Another break came that same evening,
when a twelve-year-old boy named Hani went to the local police. He said that he
had been fishing
on a pier when the bombers placed their skiff in the water. One of the men had
paid the boy a hundred Yemeni riyals--about sixty cents--to watch his Nissan
truck and boat trailer, but he never returned. When the police heard Hani's
story, they locked him in jail and arrested his father as well. After repeated
requests, the Americans got permission to interview the boy and to examine the
launch site. Hani was scared, but he provided a description of the bombers: one
was heavy, and the other was handsome. An Arabic-speaking naval investigator
named Robert McFadden offered the boy some candy. He then said that the bombers
had invited him and his family to take a ride in the boat, which was white,
with red carpeting on the floor. When Soufan heard this, he deduced that the
bombers had been trying to determine how much weight the skiff could carry.” (Ibid.;
pp. 65-66.)
11.
“The abandoned truck and trailer were still at the launch
site. It was a major mistake on the part of Al Qaeda not to have retrieved
them. By checking registration records, investigators connected the truck and
trailer to a house in a neighborhood of Aden called Burayqah. When Soufan went
to the house, which was surrounded by a wall and a gate, he had an eerie
feeling: this residence had a striking resemblance to the house in Nairobi
where the bomb for the 1998 embassy attack had been made. Inside, in the master
bedroom, there was a prayer rug oriented to the north, toward Mecca. The
bathroom sink was full of body hair; the bombers had shaved and performed
ritual ablutions before going to their deaths. Soufan's men collected a razor
and hair samples, which might provide the F.B.I. with the DNA evidence
necessary to establish the identity of the killers. (So far, the investigators
at the Cole site had found only a couple of bone fragments that didn't belong
to American sailors.) Investigators found that another house in Aden had been
rented by the terrorists; it was registered to Abda Hussein Muhammad. The name
was dimly familiar to Soufan. At one point during the Nairobi investigation, a
witness had mentioned an Al Qaeda operative named Nasheri who had proposed
attacking an American vessel in Aden. Soufan did some research and discovered
that Nasheri's full name was Abdul Rahim Muhammad Hussein Abda al-Nasheri. The
middle names were the same, just reversed. Soufan's hunch paid off when
American agents discovered a car in Aden that was registered to Nasheri. It was
another strong link between Al Qaeda and the Cole attack.” (Ibid.; p. 66.)
12.
Among the many obstacles that Soufan, O’Neill and their associates had
to overcome was the more or less open sympathy that some Yemeni officials had
for jihadis. “A couple of weeks after the
bombing, Yemeni authorities placed Badawi and Quso, the two Al Qaeda
operatives, under arrest, apparently as a precaution. Soufan continued to press
General Qamish to let him interrogate the men directly, and finally, after
several weeks, Qamish relented. Soufan spent hours preparing for the
encounters, with the goal of finding some common ground with his subjects.
Often, the bond centered on religion. Ali was very spiritual, Carlos Fernandez
recalled. In Yemen, he was reading the Koran at night. He would talk to these
guys about their beliefs. Sometimes, he would actually convince them that their
understanding of Islam was all wrong. In the interrogation of Badawi, Soufan
learned that the skiff had been purchased in Saudi Arabia. Soufan questioned
Quso over the course of several days. Quso was small, wiry, and insolent, with
a wispy beard that he kept tugging on. Before Soufan could even begin, a local
intelligence official came into the room and kissed Quso on both cheeks--a
shocking signal that the security services were sympathetic to the jihadis.
McFadden, who participated in the interrogations, recalled that Soufan was not
intimidated. He said, Ali was a natural interviewer, and he was able to
dislodge Quso from his circle of comfort. Eventually, Quso began to open up. He
had been in Afghanistan, and boasted that he had fought beside bin Laden. He
said that bin Laden had inspired him with his speeches about expelling the
infidels from the Arabian Peninsula--in particular, American troops stationed
in Saudi Arabia.” (Idem.)
13.
Again, Soufan’s understanding of the Arab psyche yielded results: he
was able to learn of a Khallad, who eventually proved to be a key to
determining that another operation was on the way. That operation was 9/11,
although “the Wall” prevented the interdiction of the operation. “Soufan asked if Quso ever planned to get married. A shy,
embarrassed smile appeared. Well, then, help yourself out, Soufan urged him.
Tell me something. Finally, Quso admitted that he was supposed to film the
bombing but had overslept. (The Yemenis later found a video camera at his
sister's house.) He also said that several months before the Cole attack he and
one of the bombers had delivered thirty-six thousand dollars to Khallad, the
one-legged Al Qaeda lieutenant, in Bangkok. The money, Quso added, was meant
only to buy Khallad a new prosthesis. Soufan was suspicious of this
explanation. Why had Al Qaeda sent money out of Yemen just before the Cole
bombing took place? Money always flowed toward an operation, not away from it.
He wondered if Al Qaeda had a bigger plot under way. The C.I.A. had officials
in Yemen to collect intelligence about Al Qaeda, and Soufan asked them if they
knew anything about a new operation, perhaps in Southeast Asia. They professed
to be as puzzled as he was. In November 2000, a month after the Cole bombing,
Soufan sent the agency the first of several official queries. On Soufan's behalf,
the director of the F.B.I. sent a letter to the director of the C.I.A.,
formally asking for information about Khallad, and whether there might have
been an Al Qaeda meeting somewhere in Southeast Asia before the bombing. The
agency said that it had nothing. Soufan trusted this response; he thought that
he had a good working relationship with the agency.” (Ibid.; pp.
66-67.)
14.
The CIA’s reluctance to help the FBI obstructs attempts at penetrating
the conspiracy. The Agency’s jealousy of Soufan, O’Neill and the FBI played a
part. “Quso had told Soufan that when he and the
Cole bomber went to Bangkok to meet Khallad they had stayed in the Washington
Hotel. F.B.I. agents went through phone records to verify his story. They found
calls between the hotel and Quso's house, in Yemen. They also noticed that
there were calls to both places from a pay phone in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In
April, 2001, Soufan sent another official teletype to the C.I.A., along with
the passport photo of Khallad. He asked whether the telephone numbers had any
significance, and whether there was any connection between the numbers and
Khallad. The C.I.A. said that it could not help him. In fact, the C.I.A. knew a
lot about Khallad and his ties to Al Qaeda. The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. have long
quarrelled over bureaucratic turf, and their mandates place them at odds. The
ultimate goal of the bureau in gathering intelligence is to gain convictions
for crimes; for the agency, intelligence itself is the object. If the agency
had responded candidly to Soufan's requests, it would have revealed its
knowledge of an Al Qaeda cell that was already forming inside the United
States. But the agency kept this intelligence to itself. I come from a
generation of F.B.I. agents who have always worked closely with the C.I.A.,
Soufan told me. At the time he joined the bureau, law enforcement had become
internationalized. In the nineteen-nineties, his mentor, O'Neill, had
established close relations with foreign police services, an approach that
sometimes encroached on the C.I.A.'s territory. In 1999, O'Neill sent Soufan
and his supervisor, Pasquale D'Amuro, to Jordan, where authorities had
discovered that jihadis linked to Al Qaeda were plotting to bomb tourist sites
and hotels. Information that the Jordanians shared with Soufan made him realize
that the intelligence that the C.I.A. was reporting was deeply flawed. His
analysis forced local C.I.A. representatives to withdraw twelve cables that
they had sent to agency headquarters. On the floor of the C.I.A.'s station in
Amman, Soufan discovered a box of evidence that had been given to the agency by
Jordanian intelligence. Such evidence is what the F.B.I. needs in order to
mount prosecutions, and no one had examined the box's contents or turned it
over to the bureau. In the box, Soufan found a map of the proposed bomb sites,
which proved crucial in the prosecutions of twenty-eight plotters in Jordan,
twenty-two of whom were convicted. Soufan's success embarrassed the C.I.A.,
deepening the rift between the two institutions. ‘The C.I.A. people couldn't
stand the fact that Ali's opinion and analysis were correct, an F.B.I.
counterterrorism official who worked with Soufan told me. He was an Arabic
speaker and an F.B.I. agent on the ground who
was running circles around them.’” (Ibid.; p. 67.)
15.
The CIA tried to recruit Soufan. Their phraseology is interesting.
Interesting, also, is the fact that the FBI gave the CIA much of its
information about Al Qaeda. “Nevertheless, the
C.I.A. recognized Soufan's abilities and repeatedly tried to recruit him. ‘Come
over to the Dark Side,’ an agency operative once said to him. ‘You know you're
interested.’ Soufan said that he just laughed. Indeed, some of the C.I.A.'s
best information about Al Qaeda came from the F.B.I. In 1998, F.B.I. investigators
found an essential clue--a phone number in Yemen that functioned as a virtual
switchboard for the terror network. The bombers in East Africa called that
number before and after the attacks; so did Osama bin Laden. The number
belonged to a jihadi named Ahmed al-Hada. By combing through the records of all
the calls made to and from that number, F.B.I. investigators constructed a map
of Al Qaeda's global organization. The phone line was monitored as soon as it
was discovered. But the C.I.A., as the primary organization for gathering
foreign intelligence, had jurisdiction over conversations on the Hada phone,
and did not provide the F.B.I. with the information it was getting about Al
Qaeda's plans. A conversation on the Hada phone at the end of 1999 mentioned a
forthcoming meeting of Al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia. The C.I.A. learned the
name of one participant, Khaled al-Mihdhar, and the first name of another:
Nawaf. Both men were Saudi citizens. The C.I.A. did not pass this intelligence
to the F.B.I. However, the C.I.A. did share the information with Saudi
authorities, who told the agency that Mihdhar and a man named Nawaf al-Hazmi
were members of Al Qaeda. Based on this intelligence, the C.I.A. broke into a
hotel room in Dubai where Mihdhar was staying, en route to Malaysia. The
operatives photocopied Mihdhar's passport and faxed it to Alec Station, the
C.I.A. unit devoted to tracking bin Laden. Inside the passport was the critical
information that Mihdhar had a U.S. visa. The agency did not alert the F.B.I.
or the State Department so that Mihdhar's name could be put on a terror watch
list, which would have prevented him from entering the U.S.” (Ibid.;
pp. 67-68.)
16.
A monumental shortcoming on the part of the agency was its failure to
disclose to the FBI the information gleaned from Malaysian surveillance of an
Al Qaeda meeting attended by Mihdhar, Hazmi and Khallad. “The C.I.A. asked Malaysian authorities to provide
surveillance of the meeting in Kuala Lumpur, which took place on January 5,
2000, at a condominium overlooking a golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus. The
condo was owned by a Malaysian businessman who had ties to Al Qaeda. The pay
phone that Soufan had queried the agency about was directly in front of the
condo. Khallad used it to place calls to Quso in Yemen. Although the C.I.A.
later denied that it knew anything about the phone, the number was recorded in
the Malaysians' surveillance log, which was given to the agency. At the time of
the Kuala Lumpur meeting, Special Branch, the Malaysian secret service,
photographed about a dozen Al Qaeda associates outside the condo and visiting
nearby Internet cafes. These pictures were turned over to the C.I.A. The
meeting was not wiretapped; had it been, the agency might have uncovered the
plots that culminated in the bombing of the Cole and the September 11, 2001,
attacks. On January 8th, Special Branch notified the C.I.A. that three of the
men who had been at the meeting--Mihdhar, Hazmi, and Khallad--were travelling
together to Bangkok. There Khallad met with Quso and one of the suicide bombers
of the Cole. Quso gave Khallad the thirty-six thousand dollars, which was most
likely used to buy tickets to Los Angeles for Mihdhar and Hazmi and provide
them with living expenses in the U.S. Both men ended up on planes involved in
the September 11th attacks.” (Ibid.; pp. 67-68.)
17.
Contributing to the CIA’s reluctance to share information with FBI was
its resentment of O’Neill. The CIA neglected to notify the bureau that the
Mihdhar and Hazmi were in the country. “In March,
the C.I.A. learned that Hazmi had flown to Los Angeles two months earlier, on
January 15th. Had the agency checked the flight manifest, it would have noticed
that Mihdhar was travelling with him. Once again, the agency neglected to
inform the F.B.I. or the State Department that at least one Al Qaeda operative
was in the country. Although the C.I.A. was legally bound to share this kind of
information with the bureau, it was protective of sensitive intelligence. The
agency sometimes feared that F.B.I. prosecutions resulting from such
intelligence might compromise its relationships with foreign services, although
there were safeguards to protect confidential information. The C.I.A. was
particularly wary of O'Neill, who demanded control of any case that touched on
an F.B.I. investigation. Many C.I.A. officials disliked him and feared that he
could not be trusted with sensitive intelligence. ‘O'Neill was duplicitous,’
Michael Scheuer, the official who founded Alec Station but has now left the
C.I.A., told me. ‘He had no concerns outside of making the bureau look good.’
Several of O'Neill's subordinates suggested that the C.I.A. hid the information
out of personal animosity. They hated John, the F.B.I. counterterrorism
official assigned to Alec Station told me. They knew that John would have
marched in there and taken control of that case.” (Ibid.; p. 68.)
18.
The author speculates about possible reasons for the CIA’s failure to
notify the FBI about the hijackers’ presence in the United States. It should be
noted that, as Daniel Hopsicker (among others) has chronicled, in the San Diego
area, some of the hijackers were actively assisted by FBI informants. For more
about this subject, see—among other programs—FTR#507.) Were the
informants actually double agents? How much of the ostensible “incompetence” on
the part of elements of the federal bureaucracy was due to the activity of what
Mr. Emory calls “Fifth Columnists?” “The C.I.A.
may also have been protecting an overseas operation and was afraid that the
F.B.I. would expose it. Moreover, Mihdhar and Hazmi could have seemed like
attractive recruitment possibilities--the C.I.A. was desperate for a source
inside Al Qaeda, having failed to penetrate the inner circle or even to place
someone in the training camps, even though they were largely open to anyone who
showed up. However, once Mihdhar and Hazmi entered the United States they were
the province of the F.B.I. The C.I.A. has no legal authority to operate inside
the country. In the end, the C.I.A.'s failure to inform the F.B.I. may be best
explained by the fact that the agency was drowning in a flood of threats and
warnings, and simply did not see the pivotal importance of this intelligence.
Whatever the reason for the C.I.A.'s lapse, many F.B.I. investigators remain
furious that they were not informed of the presence of Al Qaeda operatives
inside America. Mihdhar and Hazmi arrived twenty months before September 11th.
Kenneth Maxwell, Soufan's former supervisor, told me, ‘Two Al Qaeda guys living
in California--are you kidding me? We would have been on them like white on
snow: physical surveillance, electronic surveillance, a special unit devoted
entirely to them.’ Of course, the F.B.I. had other opportunities to prevent
September 11th. In July, 2001, an F.B.I. agent
in Phoenix suggested interviewing Arabs enrolled in American flight schools; a
month later, the bureau's Minnesota office requested permission to aggressively
investigate Zacarias Moussaoui, who later confessed to being an Al Qaeda
associate. Both proposals were rejected by F.B.I. supervisors. But Mihdhar and
Hazmi were directly involved in the September 11th conspiracy. Because of their
connection to bin Laden, who had a federal indictment against him, the F.B.I.
had all the authority it needed to use every investigative technique to
penetrate and disrupt the Al Qaeda cell. Instead, the hijackers were free to
develop their plot until it was too late to stop them.” (Idem.)
19.
“In Yemen, the security situation deteriorated rapidly.
Soufan and the other F.B.I. agents were quartered at the Aden Hotel, crammed in
with other U.S. military and government employees, including Marine guards, and
billeted three and four to a room; several dozen slept on bedrolls in the hotel
ballroom. Gunfire erupted outside the hotel so frequently that the agents slept
in their clothes, with their weapons at their sides. Agents learned from a
mechanic in Aden that, after the bombing, some men brought to his shop a truck
similar to the one used by the bombers; the men wanted to have metal plates
installed in such a way that they could direct the force of an explosion.
Certainly, the most tempting target for such a bomb would be the Aden Hotel. It
wasn't clear that the Yemeni government troops who were guarding the hotel with
machine-gun nests would truly protect the Americans. We were prisoners, an agent recalled. One night, shots were fired on the
street while O'Neill was running a meeting inside the hotel. The marines and
the hostage-rescue team adopted defensive positions. Soufan ventured out,
unarmed, to talk to the Yemeni troops. Hey, Ali! O'Neill called out. Be
careful! He raced down the steps of the hotel to make sure Soufan was wearing
his flak jacket. Frustration, stress, and danger, along with the enforced
intimacy of their situation, had brought the two men even closer. O'Neill had
begun to describe Soufan as his secret weapon. Speaking to the Yemenis, he
called him simply my son.” (Ibid.; pp. 68-69.)
20.
Soufan again helped the investigators evade what may have been a
dangerous situation. “Snipers covered Soufan as
he approached a Yemeni officer, who assured him that everything was O.K. If
everything is O.K., why are there no cars on the street? Soufan asked. The
officer said that there must be a wedding nearby. Soufan looked around and saw
that the hotel was surrounded by a large number of men in traditional
dress--some in Jeeps, all carrying guns. They were civilians, not soldiers.
They could be intelligence
officers, or a tribal group bent on revenge. In either case, they easily
outnumbered the Americans. Soufan was reminded of the 1993 uprising in Somalia,
which ended with eighteen American soldiers dead, and one of the bodies being
dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. The hotel backed up to the harbor,
and the Americans were essentially trapped. After Soufan went inside and
offered his assessment of the situation, O'Neill ordered the marines to deploy
two armored vehicles to block the street in front of the hotel. The night passed
without further incident, but the next day O'Neill moved the investigators to
the U.S.S. Duluth, stationed ten miles away, in the Bay of Aden. That proved to
be a dangerous mistake. The next morning, when O'Neill and Soufan were flying
back to town, their helicopter suddenly lurched into violent evasive maneuvers.
The pilot reported that an SA-7 missile had locked in on them. O'Neill decided
to send most of the investigators home; those who remained returned to the
deserted hotel.” (Ibid.; p. 69.)
21.
The CIA turned down a suggestion by an Agency liaison at FBI
headqauarters to notify the bureau of Mihdhar and Hazmi’s presence in the
country. “Just before Thanksgiving, the F.B.I.
pulled O'Neill out of Yemen, apparently as a concession to Ambassador Bodine,
who felt that the F.B.I. presence was straining diplomatic relations between
America and Yemen. Soufan stayed on, but the threats in Aden became so acute
that he and the other agents moved to the American Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen's
capital. The investigation was losing its momentum. In the spring of 2001, Tom
Wilshire, a C.I.A. liaison at F.B.I. headquarters, in Washington, was studying
the relationship between Khaled al-Mihdhar, the Saudi Al Qaeda operative, and
Khallad, the one-legged jihadi. Because of the similarity of the names, the
C.I.A. had thought that they might be the same person, but, thanks in part to
Ali Soufan's investigations in Yemen, the agency now knew that they were not,
and that Khallad had orchestrated the Cole attack. O.K. This is important,
Wilshire said of Khallad, in an e-mail to his supervisors at the C.I.A.
Counterterrorist Center. This is a major-league killer. Wilshire already knew
that Hazmi, the other Saudi operative, had arrived in the United States and
that Mihdhar was possibly with him. Something bad [is] definitely up, Wilshire
wrote to a colleague. He asked permission to disclose this vital information to
the F.B.I. His superiors at the C.I.A. never responded to his request. (In an
official statement, the C.I.A. questioned the accuracy of this article but did
not address specific allegations. It said, Based on rigorous internal and
external reviews of its shortcomings and successes before and after 9/11, the
C.I.A. has improved its processing and sharing of intelligence. C.I.A.'s focus
is on learning and even closer cooperation with partners inside and outside
government, not on public finger pointing, which does not serve the American
people well.)” (Idem.)
22.
“That summer, Wilshire asked an F.B.I. analyst to review the
material on the Malaysia meeting, but he did not reveal that some of the
participants might be in the United States. More important, he conveyed none of
the urgency reflected in his e-mail; he told the analyst that she should
examine the material in her free time. She didn't get around to it until the
end of July. Wilshire did want to know, however, what the F.B.I. knew. He asked
Dina Corsi, another F.B.I. analyst, to show three surveillance photos from the
Malaysia meeting to several I-49 agents. The pictures showed Mihdhar and Hazmi
and a man who, the C.I.A. believed, resembled Quso, the Cole cameraman.
Wilshire told Corsi that one of the men was named Khaled al-Mihdhar, but he did
not explain why the pictures had been taken, and he did not mention that
Mihdhar had a U.S. visa. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, on June 11th
a C.I.A. supervisor went with the F.B.I. analyst and Corsi to New York to meet
with F.B.I. case agents on the Cole investigation; Soufan, who was still in
Yemen, did not attend. The meeting started in mid-morning, with the New York
agents briefing the C.I.A. supervisor, Clark Shannon, for three or four hours
on the progress of their investigation. Corsi then showed the three Malaysia
photographs to her F.B.I. colleagues. They were high-quality surveillance
photos. One, shot from a low angle, showed Mihdhar and Hazmi standing beside a
tree in Malaysia. Shannon wanted to know if the agents recognized anyone. The
I-49 agents asked who was in the pictures, and when and where they had been
taken. Were there any other photographs of this meeting?, one of the F.B.I.
agents demanded. Shannon refused to say. Corsi promised that in the days and
weeks to come she would try to get permission to pass that information along.
The meeting became heated. The F.B.I. agents sensed that these photographs
pertained directly to crimes they were trying to solve, but they couldn't
elicit any further information from Shannon. Corsi finally dropped the name
Khaled al-Mihdhar. Steve Bongardt, Soufan's top assistant in the Cole
investigation, asked Shannon to provide a date of birth or a passport number to
go with Mihdhar's name. A name by itself was not sufficient to prevent his
entry into the United States. Bongardt had just returned from Pakistan with a
list of thirty names of suspected Al Qaeda associates and their dates of birth,
which he had given to the State Department. That was standard procedure--the
first thing most investigators would do. But Shannon declined to provide the
additional information. Top C.I.A. officials had not authorized him to disclose
the vital details of Mihdhar's U.S. visa, his association with Hazmi, and their
affiliation with Khallad and Al Qaeda” (Ibid.; pp. 69-70.)
23.
“There was a fourth photograph of the Malaysia meeting that
Shannon did not produce. That was a picture of Khallad, the one-legged
operative. Thanks to Soufan's interrogation of Quso, the Cole investigators had
an active file on Khallad and were preparing to indict him. Knowledge of that
fourth photo would likely have prompted O'Neill to demand that the C.I.A. turn
over all information relating to Khallad and his associates. By withholding the
picture of Khallad attending the meeting with the future hijackers, the C.I.A.
may in effect have allowed the September 11th plot to proceed. That summer,
Mihdhar returned to Yemen and then went to Saudi Arabia, where, presumably, he
helped the remaining hijackers secure entry into the United States. Two days
after the frustrating June 11th meeting, Mihdhar received another American visa
from the consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Since the C.I.A. had not given his
name to the State Department to post on its watch list, Mihdhar arrived in New
York on the Fourth of July. The June 11th meeting was the culmination of a
strange trend in the U.S. government toward hiding information from the people
who most needed it. In this regard, the F.B.I. was as guilty as the C.I.A. [Italics
are Mr. Emory’s.] A federal law at the time prohibited the sharing of
information arising from grand-jury testimony, but the F.B.I. took it as a
nearly absolute bar to revealing any investigative evidence and, as a result,
repeatedly turned down requests for information from other intelligence
agencies. (The Joint Congressional Inquiry on 9/11 claimed that the law ‘came
to be used simply as an excuse for not sharing information.’)” (Ibid.; p. 70.)
24.
The Wall became an invincible obstacle for O’Neill, Soufan and the
investigators of the Cole bombing, as well as for those looking into what was
to become 9/11. “In 1995, the Justice Department
established a policy, known as the Wall, which regulated the exchange of
foreign intelligence information between agents and criminal investigators.
Managers at F.B.I. headquarters misinterpreted the policy, turning it into a
straitjacket for their own investigators. Intelligence agents were warned that
sharing such information with criminal agents could mean the end of their
careers. The Wall, the F.B.I. decided, separated even people who were on the
same squad. The F.B.I. also began withholding intelligence from the White
House. Every morning on the classified computers of the National Security
Council, there were at least a hundred reports, from the C.I.A., the N.S.A.,
and other intelligence branches, but the F.B.I. never disseminated information.
The C.I.A. embraced the idea of the Wall with equal vigor. The agency
frequently decided not to share intelligence with the F.B.I. on the ground that
it would compromise sensitive sources and methods. For example, the C.I.A.
collected other crucial information about Mihdhar that it did not provide to
the F.B.I. Mihdhar, it turned out, was the son-in-law of Ahmed al-Hada, the Al
Qaeda loyalist in Yemen whose phone number operated as the network's
switchboard. After arriving in New York on July 4th, Mihdhar flew to San Diego
and rented an apartment. From there, he made eight calls to the Hada phone to talk to his wife,
who was about to give birth. In the I-49 squad's office, there was a link chart
showing the connections between Hada's phone and other phones around the world.
Had a line been drawn from Hada's Yemen home to Mihdhar's San Diego apartment,
Al Qaeda's presence in America would have been glaringly obvious.” (Ibid.; pp. 70-71.)
25.
In statements before Congress, the CIA lied about its failure to divulge
the two hijackers’ presence in the United States: “After
September 11th, the C.I.A. claimed that it had divulged Mihdhar's identity to
the F.B.I. in a timely manner; indeed, both George Tenet, the agency's
director, and Cofer Black, the head of its counterterrorism division, testified
to Congress that this was the case. Later, the 9/11 Commission concluded that
the statements of both were false. The C.I.A. was unable to produce evidence
proving that the information had been passed to the bureau. The I-49 squad
responded to the secrecy in aggressive and creative ways. When the C.I.A.
refused to share intercepts of bin Laden's satellite phone, the squad came up
with a plan to build two antennae to capture the signal--one on Palau, in the
Pacific, and another on Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. The squad also
constructed an ingenious satellite telephone booth in Kandahar, hoping to
provide a convenient facility for jihadis wanting to call home. The agents
could listen in on the calls, and they received videos of callers through a
camera hidden in the booth. Millions of dollars and thousands of hours of labor
were consumed in replicating information that other U.S. officials refused to
share. According to Soufan, the I-49 agents were so used to being denied access
to intelligence that they bought a CD containing the Pink Floyd song Another
Brick in the Wall. He recalled, Whenever we got the speech about 'sensitive
sources and methods,' we'd just hold up the phone to the CD player and push
Play.” (Ibid.; p. 71.)
26.
Even as the CIA was stonewalling with “The Wall” as an excuse, O’Neill
was preparing to leave the FBI after a damaging leak to the New York Times.
(For more about the nature of these disclosures, see FTR#326.) “Just days before the June 11th meeting took place in the
New York office, new threats in Yemen created a security crisis for the
Americans. Yemeni authorities arrested eight men who, they said, were part of a
plot to blow up the American Embassy, where Soufan and other investigators had
taken refuge. Louis Freeh, the director of the F.B.I., acting on O'Neill's
recommendation, withdrew the team entirely. By then, Soufan had a much clearer
idea of the relationship between Khallad and the Cole conspirators. In July,
2001, he sent a third formal request to the C.I.A. asking for information about
a possible Al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia, and about Khallad's trip to Bangkok to
meet with Quso and the Cole suicide bomber. Yet again, the agency did not respond.
On August 22nd, John O'Neill was packing boxes in his office. It was his last
day at the F.B.I. He had decided to retire from the bureau after he learned of
a damaging leak to the Times. The paper had reported that O'Neill's
briefcase, containing sensitive documents, was stolen while he was attending an
F.B.I. conference in Florida. The briefcase was quickly recovered, and it was
determined that none of the sensitive material had been touched, but it ruined
his prospects at the bureau.” (Idem.)
27.
The news that Mihdhar and Hazmi were in the country set off alarm bells
among those around Soufan and O’Neill. “That day,
Soufan came by O'Neill's office to say goodbye. He was going back to Yemen
later that afternoon; O'Neill's last act as an F.B.I. agent
was to sign the paperwork that would send Soufan's team back into the country.
They were determined to arrest the killers of the American sailors, despite the
risks of working in such a hostile environment. The two men walked to a nearby
diner. O'Neill ordered a ham-and-cheese sandwich. You don't want to change your
infidel ways? Soufan kidded him, indicating the ham. You're gonna go to Hell.
O'Neill urged Soufan to visit him in New York when he returned. He had taken a
job at the World Trade Center, as the head of security. I'm going to be just
down the road, he said. Soufan confided that he and his longtime girlfriend had
decided to get married. O'Neill gave his blessing. She has put up with you all
this time, he joked. She must be a good woman. The week that O'Neill retired
from the bureau, the F.B.I. analyst at Alec Station who had been reviewing
intelligence on the Malaysia meeting realized that Mihdhar and Hazmi were in
the U.S. She passed the information to Dina Corsi, at F.B.I. headquarters.
Corsi, alarmed, sent an e-mail to the supervisor of the I-49 squad, ordering
the unit to locate the Al Qaeda operatives. But, she added, because of the Wall
no criminal investigators could be involved in the search. As it turned out,
there was only one intelligence agent available,
and he was new. An F.B.I. agent forwarded
Corsi's message to Steve Bongardt, Soufan's top assistant. He called her. Dina,
you got to be kidding me! he said. Mihdhar is in the country? He complained
that the Wall was a bureaucratic fiction that was preventing investigators from
doing their work. In a conversation the next day, he said, If this guy is in
the country, it's not because he's going to fucking Disneyland! Later, he wrote
in an e-mail, Someday somebody will die--and, Wall or not, the public will not
understand why we were not more effective. The new agent's
attempt to find Mihdhar and Hazmi proved fruitless.” (Idem.)
28.
“Three weeks later, on September 11, 2001, Soufan was at
the embassy in Sanaa. He spoke on the phone with his fiancee, who told him that
the Twin Towers had been attacked. He turned on a television, and watched as
the second plane hit. He called O'Neill's cell phone repeatedly, but there was
no answer. The F.B.I. ordered Soufan and the rest of his team in Yemen to evacuate.
The morning of September 12th, the C.I.A.'s chief of station in Aden went with
the agents to the airport in Sanaa. The C.I.A. official was sitting in the
lounge with Soufan when he got a call on his cell phone from F.B.I.
headquarters. He told Soufan, They want to talk to you. Dina Corsi spoke to
Soufan, and told him to stay in Yemen. He was upset. He wanted to return to New
York and investigate the attack on America. This is about that--what happened
yesterday, she told him. Quso is our only lead. She wouldn't tell him any more.
Soufan got his luggage off the plane, but he was puzzled. What did Quso, the
Cole cameraman, have to do with September 11th? Robert McFadden, the naval
investigator, and several other officials stayed behind to help Soufan. The order
from headquarters was to identify the September 11th hijackers by any means
necessary, a directive that Soufan had never seen before. When he returned to
the embassy, a fax containing photographs of twenty suspects came over a secure
line. Then the C.I.A. chief drew Soufan aside and handed him a manila envelope.
Inside were three surveillance photographs and a complete report about the
Malaysia meeting--the very material that he had asked for so many times. The
Wall had come down. When Soufan realized that the C.I.A. had known for more
than a year and a half that two of the hijackers were in the country he ran
into the bathroom and threw up. (Soufan's disillusionment with the government
was so profound that he eventually quit the bureau; in 2005, he became director
of international operations for Giuliani Security and Safety, a company founded by
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York.)” (Ibid.; pp. 71-72.)
29.
“Soufan went to General Qamish's office and demanded to see
Quso again. What does this have to do with the Cole? Qamish wanted to know. I'm
not talking about the Cole, said Soufan. Brother John is missing. He started to
say something else, but he was unable to continue. General Qamish's eyes also
filled with tears. Qamish instantly made a decision, McFadden recalls. He said,
'You tell me what you want, and I'll make it happen.' Qamish said that Quso was
in Aden, and there was one last flight that evening from there to the capital.
He called his subordinates on the phone and began shouting, I want Quso flown
in here tonight! Then the General called the airport and demanded to be patched
through to the pilot. You will not take off until my prisoner is aboard, he
ordered him. You could hear them snapping to attention, McFadden recalled. At
midnight, in a room not far from Qamish's office, Soufan met with Quso, who was
in a petulant frame of mind. Just because something happens in New York or
Washington, you don't need to talk to me, he said. Soufan showed him the three
surveillance photographs of the Malaysia meeting, which included the Saudi
hijackers Mihdhar and Hazmi. Quso thought he remembered seeing them in Al Qaeda
camps, but he wasn't certain. ‘Why are you asking about them?’ He wanted to
know.” (Ibid.;
p. 72.)
30.
Soufan played a profound role in confirming the link between the Cole
bombing and the 9/11 attacks. “Finally, the next
day, Soufan received the fourth photograph of the Malaysia meeting--the picture
of Khallad, the mastermind of the Cole operation. The two plots, Soufan
instantly realized, were linked, and if the C.I.A. had not withheld information
from him he likely would have drawn the connection months before September
11th. He met again with Quso, who identified the figure in the picture as
Khallad--the first confirmation of Al Qaeda's responsibility for the September
11th attacks. Soufan interrogated Quso for three nights, while during the day
he wrote reports and did research, sleeping little more than an hour at a time.
He was sick as a dog, but he was getting really good information, his fellow-agent Carlos Fernandez recalled. On the fourth night,
Soufan collapsed from exhaustion. We wanted to medevac him out of there,
Fernandez said. We took him to the emergency room. The kid could barely stand.
But he refused to leave, and the next day he was right back at it. None of us
had ever seen anything like that. His co-workers began referring to Soufan as
an American hero. Soufan was intensely aware that the information he was
getting was critical, and that perhaps no one else could extract the truth from
Quso. Finally, after hours of extended questioning, Quso was shown a photograph
of Marwan al- Shehhi, the hijacker who piloted United Airlines Flight 175,
which crashed into the second tower. Quso identified him, and said that he had
met Shehhi in a guesthouse in Kandahar. He remembered that Shehhi had been ill
during Ramadan and that the emir of the guesthouse had taken care of him. The
emir's name was Abu Jandal. As it happened, Abu Jandal was also in Yemeni
custody, and the Americans arranged to interview him. He was a large, powerful
man with a dark beard. What are these infidels doing here? he demanded. He took
a plastic chair and turned it around, sitting with his arms crossed and his
back to the interrogators. After some coaxing, Soufan got Abu Jandal to face
him, but he refused to look him in the eye. Abu Jandal did want to talk,
however; he delivered a lengthy, rapid-fire rant against America.” (Idem.)
31.
“Soufan realized that the prisoner was trained in
counter-interrogation techniques, since he easily agreed to things that Soufan
already knew--that he had fought in Bosnia, Somalia, and Afghanistan, for
instance--and denied everything else. Abu Jandal portrayed himself as a good
Muslim who had considered jihad but had become disillusioned. He thought of
himself not as a killer but as a revolutionary who was trying to rid the world
of evil, which he believed came mainly from the United States, a country he
knew practically nothing about. As the nights passed, Abu Jandal warmed to Soufan.
He told him that he was in his early thirties, older than most jihadis. He had
grown up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia--bin Laden's home town--and he was well read
in religion. He seemed to enjoy drinking tea and lecturing the Americans on the
radical Islamist view of history; his sociability was a weak spot. Soufan
flattered him and engaged him in theological debate. Listening to Abu Jandal's
diatribes, Soufan picked up several useful details: that he had grown tired of
fighting; that he was troubled by the fact that bin Laden had sworn loyalty to
Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, in Afghanistan; and that he worried
about his two children, one of whom had a bone disease. Soufan also noted that
Abu Jandal declined some pastries, because he was a diabetic.” (Idem.)
32.
Abu Jandal’s ignorance of America was profound. “The next night, the Americans brought some sugarless
wafers, a courtesy that Abu Jandal acknowledged. Soufan also brought him a
history of America, in Arabic. Abu Jandal was confounded by Soufan: a moderate
Muslim who could argue about Islam with him, who was in the F.B.I., and who
loved America. He quickly read the history that Soufan gave him and was amazed
to learn of the American Revolution and its struggle against tyranny. Soufan,
meanwhile, was trying to determine the boundaries of Abu Jandal's moral
landscape. He asked him about the proper way to wage jihad. Abu Jandal eagerly
talked about how a warrior should treat his adversary in battle. The Koran and
other Islamic texts discuss the ethics of conduct in warfare. Where do they
sanction suicide bombing? Soufan asked him. Abu Jandal said that the enemy had
an advantage in weapons, but the suicide bombers evened the score. These are
our missiles, he said. What about women and children? Soufan asked. Aren't they
supposed to be protected? Soufan pointed to the bombings of the American
embassies in East Africa. He recalled a woman on a bus in front of the Nairobi
embassy, who, after the bomb exploded, was found clutching her baby, trying to
protect him from the flames. Both had been incinerated. What sin had the mother
committed? What about the soul of her child? God will give them their rewards
in the Hereafter, Abu Jandal said. Besides, he added, can you imagine how many
joined bin Laden after the embassy bombings? Hundreds came and asked to be
martyrs. Soufan countered that many of the East African victims--perhaps most
of them--were Muslims. Several times, Abu Jandal quoted clerical authorities or
chapters from the Koran, but he found that Soufan was more than a match for him
on theological matters. Abu Jandal finally asserted that, because the embassy
bombings were on a Friday, when the victims should have been in the mosque,
they were not real Muslims.” (Ibid.; pp. 72-73.)
33.
Note that Abu Jandal blamed the 9/11 attacks on Israel and the Jews. He
would have fit very well in the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement. “On the fifth night, Soufan slammed a news magazine on the
table between them. The magazine had photographs of the airplanes crashing into
the Twin Towers--graphic shots of people trapped in the buildings and jumping a
hundred stories. Bin Laden did this, Soufan told him. Abu Jandal had heard
about the attacks, but he didn't know many details. He studied the pictures in
amazement. He said that they looked like a Hollywood production, but the scale
of the atrocity visibly shook him. Soufan and Abu Jandal were joined in the
small interrogation room by McFadden and two Yemeni investigators. Everyone
sensed that Soufan was closing in. American and allied troops were preparing to
go to war in Afghanistan, but they desperately needed more information about
the structure of Al Qaeda, the locations of hideouts, and the plans for
escape--all of which American intelligence officials hoped Abu Jandal could supply.
Coincidentally, a local Yemeni paper was on a shelf under the coffee table.
Soufan showed it to Abu Jandal. The headline read, TWO HUNDRED YEMENI SOULS
PERISH IN NEW YORK ATTACK. (At the time, the death-toll estimates were in the
tens of thousands.) Abu Jandal read the headline and drew a breath. God help
us, he muttered. Soufan asked what kind of Muslim would do such a thing. Abu
Jandal insisted that the Israelis must have committed the attacks on New York
and Washington. The Sheikh is not that crazy, he said of bin Laden.” (Ibid.;
p. 73.)
34.
Eventually, Soufan was able to out maneuver Abu Jandal, who yielded the
information Ali sought. “Soufan then took out a
book of mug shots containing photographs of known Al Qaeda members and of the
hijackers. He asked Abu Jandal to identify them. The Yemeni flipped through
them quickly and closed the book. Soufan opened the book again and told him to
take his time. Some of them I have in custody, he said, hoping that Abu Jandal
wouldn't realize that the hijackers were all dead. Abu Jandal paused for a
half-second on the photograph of Shehhi, the pilot of United Airlines Flight
175, before he started to turn the page. You're not done with this one, Soufan
said. Ramadan, 1999. He's sick. You're his emir, and you take care of him. Abu
Jandal looked at Soufan in shock. When I ask you a question, I already know the
answer, said Soufan. If you're smart, you'll tell me the truth. Abu Jandal
conceded that he knew Shehhi and gave his Al Qaeda nom de guerre, Abdullah
al-Sharqi. He did the same with Khaled al-Mihdhar and five others, including
Mohammed Atta, the lead hijacker. But he still insisted that bin Laden would
never commit such an action. It was the Israelis, he maintained. I know for
sure that the people who did this were Al Qaeda guys, said Soufan. He took
seven photographs out of the book and laid them on the table. How do you know?
Abu Jandal asked. Who told you? You did, said Soufan. These are the hijackers.
You just identified them. Abu Jandal turned pale. He covered his face with his
hands. Give me a moment, he pleaded. Soufan walked out of the room. When he
came back, he asked Abu Jandal what he thought now. I think the Sheikh went
crazy, he said. And then he told Soufan everything he knew.” (Idem.)