 6. From Threat to Threat. In chapters 3 and 4 we described how the U.S. government adjusted its existing agencies and capacities to address the emerging threat from Osama bin Laden and his associates. After the August 1998 bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, President Bill Clinton and his chief aides explored ways of getting bin Laden expelled from Afghanistan or possibly capturing or even killing him. Although disruption efforts around the world had achieved some successes, the core of bin Laden's organization remained intact. President Clinton was deeply concerned about bin Laden. He and his national security adviser, Samuel Sandyberger, ensured they had a special daily pipeline of reports feeding them the latest updates on bin Laden's reported location. In public, President Clinton spoke repeatedly about the threat of terrorism, referring to terrorist training camps but saying little about bin Laden and nothing about al-Qaeda. He explained to us that this was deliberate, intended to avoid enhancing bin Laden's stature by giving him unnecessary publicity. His speeches focused especially on the danger of non-state actors and of chemical and biological weapons. As the millennium approached, the most publicized worries were not about terrorism but about computer breakdowns, the Y2K scare. Some government officials were concerned that terrorists would take advantage of such breakdowns. 6.1. The Millennium Crisis. Quote, bodies will pile up in sacks, end quote. On November 30, 1999, Jordanian intelligence intercepted a telephone call between Abu Zubaydah, a long-time ally of bin Laden, and Qadir Abu Hashar, a Palestinian extremist. Abu Zubaydah said, quote, the time for training is over, end quote. Suspecting that this was a signal for Abu Hashar to commence a terrorist operation, Jordanian police arrested Abu Hashar and 15 others and informed Washington. One of the 16, Rayed Hijazi, had been born in California to Palestinian parents. After spending his childhood in the Middle East, he had returned to Northern California, taken refuge in extremist Islamist beliefs, and then made his way to Abu Zubaydah's Kaldan camp in Afghanistan, where he learned the fundamentals of guerrilla warfare. He and his younger brother had been recruited by Abu Hashar into a loosely knit plot to attack Jewish and American targets in Jordan. After late 1996, when Abu Hashar was arrested and jailed, Hijazi moved back to the United States, worked as a cab driver in Boston, and sent money back to his fellow plotters. After Abu Hashar's release, Hijazi shuttled between Boston and Jordan, gathering money and supplies. With Abu Hashar, he recruited in Turkey and Syria as well as Jordan. With Abu Zubaydah's assistance, Abu Hashar sent these recruits to Afghanistan for training. In late 1998, Hijazi and Abu Hashar had settled on a plan. They would first attack four targets, the SAS Radisson Hotel in downtown Amman, the border crossings from Jordan into Israel, and two Christian holy sites at a time when all these locations were likely to be thronged with American and other tourists. Next, they would target a local airport and other religious and cultural sites. Hijazi and Abu Hashar cased the intended targets and sent reports to Abu Zubaydah, who approved their plan. Finally, back in Amman from Boston, Hijazi gradually accumulated bomb-making materials including sulfuric acid and 5,200 pounds of nitric acid, which were then stored in an enormous sub-basement dug by the plotters over a period of two months underneath a rented house. In early 1999, Hijazi and Abu Hashar contacted Khalil Deek, an American citizen and an associate of Abu Zubaydah, who lived in Peshawar, Pakistan, and who, with Afghanistan-based extremist, had created an electronic version of a terrorist manual, the Encyclopedia of Jihad. They obtained a CD-ROM of this encyclopedia from Deek. In June, with help from Deek, Abu Hashar arranged with Abu Zubaydah for Hijazi and three others to go to Afghanistan for added training and handling explosives. In late November 1999, Hijazi reportedly swore before Abu Zubaydah the Bayat to bin Laden, committing himself to do anything bin Laden ordered. He then departed for Jordan and was at a waypoint in Syria when Abu Zubaydah sent Abu Hashar the message that prompted Jordanian authorities to roll up the whole cell. After the arrests of Abu Hashar and fifteen others, the Jordanians tracked Deek to Peshawar, persuaded Pakistan to extradite him, and added him to their catch. Searchers in Amman found the rented house and, among other things, seventy-one drums of acids, several forged Saudi passports, detonators, and Deek's Encyclopedia. Six of the accomplices were sentenced to death. In custody, Hijazi's younger brother said that the group's motto had been, quote, the season is coming and bodies will pile up in sacks, end quote. On December 4th, as news came in about the discoveries in Jordan, National Security Council, NSC, counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clark wrote Berger, quote, if George's tenets story about a planned series of UPL attacks at the millennium is true, we will need to make some decisions now, end quote. He told us he held several conversations with President Clinton during the crisis. He suggested threatening reprisals against the Taliban in Afghanistan in the event of any attacks on U.S. interests anywhere by bin Laden. He further proposed to Berger that a strike be made during the last week of 1999 against al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, a proposal not adopted. Warned by the CIA that the disrupted Jordanian plot was probably part of a larger series of attacks intended for the millennium, some possibly involving chemical weapons, the principal's committee met on the night of December 8th and decided to task Clark's counter-rismed security group, CSG, to develop plans to deter and disrupt al-Qaeda plots. Michael Sheehan, the State Department Director of the CSG, communicated warnings to the Taliban that they would be held responsible for future al-Qaeda attacks, quote, Mike was not diplomatic, end quote. Clark reported to Berger. With virtually no evidence of a Taliban response, a new approach was made to Pakistan. General Anthony Zinni, the commander of Central Command, sent com, was designated as the president's special envoy and sent to ask General Musharraf to, quote, take whatever action you deem necessary to resolve the bin Laden problem at the earliest possible time, end quote. But Zinni came back empty-handed. As Ambassador William Milam reported from Islamabad, Musharraf was, quote, unwilling to take the political heat at home, end quote. The CIA worked hard with foreign security services to detain or at least keep an eye on suspected bin Laden associates. Tenet spoke to twenty of his foreign counterparts. Disruption and arrest operations were mounted against terrorists in eight countries. In mid-December, President Clinton signed a Memorandum of Notification, M-O-N, giving the CIA broader authority to use foreign proxies to detain bin Laden lieutenants without having to transfer them to U.S. custody. The authority was to capture, not kill, though lethal force might be used if necessary. Tenet would later send a message to all CIA personnel overseas saying, quote, the threat could not be more real. Do whatever is necessary to disrupt UBL's plans. The American people are counting on you and me to take every appropriate step to protect them during this period, end quote. The State Department issued a worldwide threat advisory to its posts overseas. Then, on December 14th, an Algerian jihadist was caught bringing a load of explosives into the United States. Ressam's Arrest Ahmed Ressam, 23, had illegally immigrated to Canada in 1994. Using a falsified passport and a bogus story about persecution in Algeria, Ressam entered Montreal and claimed political asylum. For the next few years, he supported himself with petty crime. Recruited by an alumnus of Abuza Beda's Kaldan camp, Ressam trained in Afghanistan in 1998, learning, among other things, how to place cyanide near the air intake of a building to achieve maximum lethality at minimum personal risk. Having joined other Algerians in planning a possible attack on a U.S. airport or consulate, Ressam left Afghanistan in early 1999, carrying precursor chemicals for explosives disguised in toiletry bottles, a notebook containing bomb assembly instructions, and $12,000. Back in Canada, he went about procuring weapons, chemicals, and false papers. In early summer 1999, having learned that not all of his colleagues could get the travel documents to enter Canada, Ressam decided to carry out the plan alone. By the end of the summer, he had chosen three Los Angeles area airports as potential targets, ultimately fixing on Los Angeles International, LAX, as the largest and easiest to operate in surreptitiously. He bought or stole chemicals and equipment for his bomb, obtaining advice from three Algerian friends, all of whom were wanted by authorities in France for their roles in past terrorist attacks there. Ressam also acquired new confederates. He promised to help a New York-based partner, Abelgani Moskini, get training in Afghanistan if Moskini would help him maneuver in the United States. In December 1999, Ressam began his final preparations. He called an Afghanistan-based facilitator to inquire into whether Bin Laden wanted to take credit for the attack, but he did not get a reply. He spent a week in Vancouver preparing the explosive components with a close friend. The chemicals were so caustic that the men kept their windows open despite the freezing temperatures outside and sucked on cough drops to soothe their irritated throats. While in Vancouver, Ressam also rented a Chrysler sedan for his travel into the United States and packed the entire well. On December 14, 1999, Ressam drove his rental car onto the ferry from Victoria, Canada to Port Angeles, Washington. Ressam planned to drive to Seattle and meet Moskini with whom he would travel to Los Angeles, and Case LAX. INSET. A Case Study in Terrorist Travel Following a familiar terrorist pattern, Ressam and his associates used fraudulent passports and immigration fraud to travel. In Ressam's case, this involved flying from France to Montreal using a photo substituted French passport under a false name. Under questioning, Ressam admitted the passport was fraudulent and claimed political asylum. He was released pending a hearing which he failed to attend. His political asylum claim was denied. He was arrested again, released again, and giving another hearing date. Again he did not show. He was arrested four times for thievery usually from tourists, but was neither jailed nor deported. He also supported himself by selling stolen documents to a friend who was a document broker for Islamist terrorists. Ressam eventually obtained a genuine Canadian passport through a document vendor who stole a blank baptismal certificate from a Catholic church. With this document he was able to obtain a Canadian passport under the name of Benny Antoine Norris. This enabled him to travel to Pakistan and from there to Afghanistan for his training and then return to Canada. Impressed, Abu Zabeda asked Ressam to get more genuine Canadian passports and to send them to him for other terrorists to use. Another conspirator, Abul Ghani Moschini, used a stolen identity to travel to Seattle on December 11, 1999 at the request of Makhtar Hawari, another conspirator. Hawari provided fraudulent passports and visas to assist Ressam and Moschini's planned getaway from the United States to Algeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. One of Moschini's associates, Abdel Hakim Tezaga, also filed a claim for political asylum. He was released pending a hearing which was adjourned and rescheduled five times. His claim was finally denied two years after his initial filing. His attorney appealed the decision and Tezaga was allowed to remain in the country pending the appeal. Nine months later, his attorney notified the court that he could not locate his client. A warrant of deportation was issued. They planned to detonate the bomb on or around January 1, 2000. At the Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS, pre-inspection station in Victoria, Ressam presented officials with his genuine but fraudulently obtained Canadian passport from which he had torn the Afghanistan entry and exit stamps. The INS agent on duty ran the passport through a variety of databases, but since it was not in Ressam's name he did not pick up the pending Canadian arrest warrants. After a cursory examination of Ressam's car, the INS agents allowed Ressam to board the ferry. Late in the afternoon of December 14, Ressam arrived in Port Angeles. He waited for all the other cars to depart the ferry, assuming, incorrectly, that the last car off would draw less scrutiny. Customs officers assigned to the port noticing Ressam's nervousness referred him to secondary inspection. When asked for additional identification, Ressam handed the customs agents a price Costco membership card in the same false name as his passport. As that agent began an initial pat-down, Ressam panicked and tried to run away. Inspectors examining Ressam's rental car found the explosives concealed in the spare tire well, but at first they assumed the white powder and viscous liquid were drug-related until an inspector pried apart and identified one of the four timing devices concealed within black boxes. Ressam was placed under arrest. Investigators guessed his target was in Seattle. They did not learn about the Los Angeles airport planning until they reexamined evidence seized in Montreal in 2000. They obtained further details when Ressam began cooperating in May 2001. Emergency Cooperation After the disruption of the plot in Amman, it had not escaped notice in Washington that Hijazi had lived in California and driven a cab in Boston and that Deek was a naturalized U.S. citizen who, as Burger reminded President Clinton, had been in touch with Extremis in the United States as well as abroad. Before Ressam's arrest, Burger saw no need to raise a public alarm at home, although the FBI put all field offices on alert. Now, following Ressam's arrest, the FBI asked for an unprecedented number of special wiretaps. Both Burger and Tenet told us that their impression was that more Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, and wiretap requests were processed during the millennium alert than ever before. The next day, writing about Ressam's arrest and links to a cell in Montreal, Burger informed the President that the FBI would advise police in the United States to step up activities but would still try to avoid undue public alarm by stressing that the government had no specific information about planned attacks. At a December 22 meeting of the small group of FBI Director Louis Free, briefed officials from the NSC staff, CIA, and Justice on wiretaps and investigations inside the United States, including a Brooklyn entity tied to the Ressam arrest, a seemingly unreliable foreign report of possible attacks on seven U.S. cities, two Algerians detained on the Canadian border, and searchers in Montreal related to a jihadist cell. The Justice Department released a statement on the alert the same day. Clark's staff warned, quote, foreign terrorist sleeper cells are present in the U.S. and attacks in the U.S. are likely, end quote. Clark asked Burger to try to make sure that the domestic agencies remained alert. Quote, is there a threat to civilian aircraft, end quote, he wrote. Clark also asked the principals in late December to discuss a foreign security service report about a bin Laden plan to put bombs on transatlantic flights. The CSG met daily. Burger said that the principals met constantly. Later, when asked what made her decide to ask Ressam to step out of his vehicle, Diana Dean, a customs inspector who referred Ressam to secondary inspection, testified that it was her, quote, training and experience, end quote. It appears that the heightened sense of alert at the national level played no role in Ressam's detention. There was a mounting sense of public alarm. The earlier Jordanian arrests have been covered in the press, and Ressam's arrest was featured on Network Evening News broadcasts throughout the Christmas season. The FBI was more communicative during the millennium crisis than it had ever been. The senior FBI official for counterterrorism, Dale Watson, was a regular member of the CSG, and Clark had good relations both with him and with some of the FBI agents handling al-Qaeda related investigations, including John O'Neill in New York. As a rule, however, neither Watson nor these agents brought much information to the group. The FBI simply did not produce the kind of intelligence reports that other agencies routinely wrote and disseminated. As law enforcement officers, bureau agents tended to write up only witness interviews. Written case analysis usually occurred only in memoranda to supervisors requesting authority to initiate or expand an investigation. But during the millennium alert, with its direct links into the United States from Hijazi, Deek and Ressam, FBI officials were briefing in person about ongoing investigations, not relying on the dissemination of written reports. Burger told us that it was hard for FBI officials to hold back information in front of a cabinet rank group. After the alert, according to Burger and members of the NSC staff, the FBI returned to its normal practice of withholding written reports and saying little about investigations or witness interviews, taking the position that any information related to pending investigations might be presented to a grand jury and hence could not be disclosed under then prevailing federal law. The terrorist plots that were broken up at the end of 1999 display the variety of operations that might be attributed, however indirectly, to al-Qaeda. The Jordanian cell was a loose affiliate. We now know that it sought approval and training from Afghanistan and at least one key member swore loyalty to bin Laden. But the cell's plans and preparations were endless. Rassam's ties to al-Qaeda were even looser. Though he had been recruited, trained, and prepared in a network affiliated with the organization and its allies, Rassam's own plans were, nonetheless, essentially independent. Al-Qaeda and bin Laden himself did have at least one operation of their very own in mind for the millennium period. In Chapter 5 we introduced an al-Qaeda operative named Nashiri. Working with bin Laden, he was working near Yemen. On January 3 an attempt was made to attack a U.S. warship in Aden, the USS The Sullivan's. The attempt failed when the small boat overloaded with explosives sank. The operatives salvaged their equipment without the attempt becoming known and they put off their plans for another day. Al-Qaeda's quote Plains operation end quote was also coming along. In January 2000 the United States caught a glimpse of its preparations. It was the first to sail in Southeast Asia. In late 1999 the National Security Agency, NSA, analyzed communications associated with a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East, indicating that several members of quote an operational cadre end quote were planning to travel to Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. Initially only the first names of three were known. Nawaf, Salem and Khalid. NSA analysts surmised correctly that Salem was Nawaf's younger brother. Seeing links not only with Al-Qaeda but specifically with the 1998 Embassy bombings, a CIA desk officer guessed that quote something more nefarious was afoot end quote. In Chapter 5 we discussed the dispatch of two operatives to the United States for their part in the Plains operation. Nawaf Al-Hamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar. Two more, Khalid and Abu-Bara went to Southeast Asia to case flights for the part of the operation that was supposed to unfold there. All made their way to Southeast Asia from Afghanistan and Pakistan except for Midhar who traveled from Yemen. Though Nawaf's trail was temporarily lost the CIA soon identified Khalid as Khalid Al-Midhar. He was located leaving Yemen and tracked until he arrived in Kuala Lumpur on January 5, 2000. Other Arabs unidentified at the time were watched as they gathered with him in the Malaysian capital. On January 8 the surveillance teams reported that three of the Arabs had suddenly left Kuala Lumpur on a short flight to Bangkok. They identified one as Midhar. They later learned that one of his companions was named Al-Hazmi though it was not yet known that he was Nawaf. The only identifier available for the third person was part of a name Salase. In Bangkok CIA officers received the information too late to track the three men as they came in and the travelers disappeared into the streets of Bangkok. The counter-terrorist center, CTC had briefed the CIA leadership on the gathering in Kuala Lumpur and the information had been passed on to Berger and the NSC staff and to director Free and others at the FBI though the FBI noted that the CIA had the lead and would let the FBI know if a domestic angle arose. The head of the bin Laden unit kept providing updates, unaware at first even that the Arabs had left Kuala Lumpur let alone that their trail had been lost in Bangkok. When this bad news arrived the names were put on a Thai watch list so that Thai authorities could inform the United States if any of them departed from Thailand. Several weeks later CIA officers in Kuala Lumpur prodded colleagues in Bangkok for additional information regarding the three travelers. In early March 2000 Bangkok reported that Nawaf Al-Hazmi now identified for the first time with his full name, had departed on January 15th on a United Airlines flight to Los Angeles. As for Khalid Al-Midar there was no report of his departure even though he had accompanied Hazmi on the United flight to Los Angeles. No one outside of the counter-terrorist center was told any of this. The CIA did not try to register Midar or Hazmi with the State Department's tip-off watch list. Either in January when word arrived of Midar's visa in March when word came that Hazmi too had had a US visa and a ticket to Los Angeles. None of this information about Midar's US visa or Hazmi's travel to the United States went to the FBI and nothing more was done to track any of the three until January 2001 when the investigation of another bombing, that of the USS Cole, reignited interest in Khalid. We will return to that story in Chapter 8. End of Chapter 6.1 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org After the millennium alert elements of the US government reviewed their performance, the CIA's leadership was told that while a number of plots had been disrupted the millennium might be only the kick-off for a period of extended attacks. Clark wrote Burger on January 11, 2000 that the CIA, the FBI Justice and the NSC staff had come to two main conclusions. First, US disruption efforts thus far had quote not put too much of a dent end quote in Bin Laden's network. If the United States wanted to quote roll back end quote the threat disruption would have to proceed at a quote markedly different tempo end quote. Second, quote sleeper cell end quote and a quote variety of terrorist groups end quote had turned up at home. As one of Clark's staff noted only a quote chance discovery end quote by US customs had prevented a possible attack. He gave his approval for the NSC staff to commence a quote after action review end quote anticipating new budget requests. He also asked DCI Tenet to review the CIA's counter-terrorism strategy and come up with a plan for quote where we go from here end quote. The NSC staff advised Burger that the United States had only been quote nibbling at the edges end quote of Bin Laden's network and that more terror attacks were a question if end quote but rather of quote when end quote and quote where end quote. The principal's committee met on March 10th, 2000 to review possible new moves. The principal's ended up agreeing that the government should take three major steps. First more money should go to the CIA to accelerate its efforts to quote seriously a threat end quote al-Qaeda. Second, there should be a crackdown on foreign terrorist organizations in the United States. Third, immigration law enforcement should be strengthened and the INS should tighten controls on the Canadian border including stepping up US-Canada cooperation. The principal's endorsed the proposed programs. Some like expanding the number of joint terrorism task forces moved forward and others like creating a centralized translation unit where domestic intelligence intercepts in Arabic and other languages did not. Pressing Pakistan. While this process moved along diplomacy continued its rounds. Direct pressure on the Taliban had proved unsuccessful as one NSC staff note put it quote under the Taliban Afghanistan is not so much a state sponsor of terrorism as it is a state sponsored by terrorists end quote. In 2000 the United States began a high level effort to persuade Pakistan to use its influence over the Taliban. In January 2000 Assistant Secretary of State Carl Inderforth and the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator Michael Sheehan met with General Musharraf in Islamabad dangling before him the possibility of a presidential visit in March as a reward for Pakistani cooperation. Such a visit was coveted by Musharraf partly as a sign of his government's legitimacy. He told the two envoys that he would meet with Mullah Omar and press him on bin Laden. They left however reporting to Washington that Pakistan was unlikely in fact to do anything quote given what it sees as the benefits of Taliban control of Afghanistan end quote. President Clinton was scheduled to travel to India. The State Department felt that he should not visit India without also visiting Pakistan. The Secret Service and the CIA however warned in the strongest terms that visiting Pakistan would risk the President's life. Counterterrorism officials also argued that Pakistan had not done enough to merit a presidential visit. But President Clinton insisted on including Pakistan in the itinerary for his trip to South Asia. His one day stopover on March 25, 2000 was the first time a U.S. President had been there since 1969. At his meeting with Musharraf and others President Clinton concentrated on tensions between Pakistan and India and the dangers of nuclear proliferation but also discussed bin Laden. President Clinton told us that when he pulled Musharraf aside for a brief one-on-one meeting he pleaded with the general for help regarding bin Laden quote I offered him the moon when I went to see him in terms of better relations with the United States if he'd help us get bin Laden and deal with another issue or two end quote. The U.S. effort continued. Early in May President Clinton urged Musharraf to carry through on his promise to visit Afghanistan and press Malomar to expel bin Laden. At the end of the month under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering followed up with a trip to the region. In June DCI Tenant traveled to Pakistan with the same general message. By September the United States was becoming openly critical of Pakistan for supporting a Taliban military offensive aimed at completing the conquest of Afghanistan. In December taking a step proposed by the State Department some months earlier the United States led a campaign for new U.N. sanctions which resulted in U.N. Secretary Council Resolution 1333 again calling for bin Laden's expulsion and forbidding any country to provide the Taliban with arms or military assistance. This too had little if any effect. The Taliban did not expel bin Laden. Pakistani arms continued to flow across the border. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told us, quote, we did not have a strong hand to play with the Pakistanis. Because of the sanctions required by U.S. law we had few carrots to offer, end quote. Congress had blocked most economic and military aid to Pakistan because of that country's nuclear arms program and Musharraf's coup. Sheehan was critical of Musharraf telling us that the Pakistani leader, quote, blew a chance to remake Pakistan, end quote. Building New Capabilities The CIA The after-action review had treated the CIA as the lead agency for any offensive against al-Qaeda and the principles at their March 10th meeting had endorsed strengthening the CIA's capability for that role. To the CTC that meant proceeding with, quote, the plan, end quote, which it had put forward half a year earlier, hiring and training more case officers and building up the capabilities of foreign security services that provided intelligence via liaison. On occasion, as in Jordan in December 1999, these liaison services took direct action against al-Qaeda cells. In the CTC and higher up the CIA's managers believed that they desperately needed funds just to continue their current counter-terrorism effort, for they reckoned that the millennium alert had already used up all the center's funds for the current fiscal year. The bin Laden unit had spent 140% of its allocation. Tenet told us he met with Berger to discuss funding for counter-terrorism just two days after the principles meeting. While Clark strongly favored giving the CIA more money for counter-terrorism, he differed sharply with the CIA's managers about where it should come from. They insisted that the CIA had been short changed ever since the end of the Cold War. Their ability to perform any mission counter-terrorism included, they argued, depended on preserving what they had, restoring what they had lost since the beginning of the 1990s and building from there with across-the-board recruitment and training of new case officers and the reopening of closed stations. To finance the counter-terrorism effort, Tenet had gone to congressional leaders after the 1998 embassy bombings and persuaded them to give the CIA a special supplemental appropriation. Now in the aftermath of the millennium alert, Tenet wanted a boost in overall funds for the CIA and another supplemental appropriation, specifically for counter-terrorism. To Clark, this seemed evidence that the CIA's leadership did not give sufficient priority to the battle against bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He told us that James said that the head of the CIA's directorate of operations, quote, said if there's going to be money spent on going after bin Laden it should be given to him. My view was that he had had a lot of money to do it and a long time to do it and I didn't want to put more good money after bad, end quote. The CIA had a very different attitude. Pavett told us that while the CIA's bin Laden unit did, quote, extraordinary and commendable work, end quote, his chief station in London was, quote, just as much a part of the Al Qaeda struggle as an officer sitting in the bin Laden unit, end quote. The dispute had large managerial implications for Clark had found allies in the office of management and budget. They had supplied him with the figures he used to argue that the CIA's spending on counter-terrorism from its baseline budget had shown almost no increase. Berger met twice with Tenet in April to try to resolve the dispute. The deputy's committee met later in the month to review fiscal year 2000 and 2001 budget priorities and offsets for the CIA and other agencies. In the end, Tenet obtained a modest supplemental appropriation which funded counter-terrorism without requiring much reprogramming of baseline funds. But the CIA still believed that it remained underfunded for counter-terrorism. Terrorist financing. The second major point on which the Al Qaeda on March 10th was the need to crack down on terrorist organizations and curtail their fundraising. The embassy bombings of 1998 had focused attention on Al Qaeda's finances. One result had been the creation of an NSC-led interagency committee on terrorist financing. On its recommendation, the president had designated bin Laden and Al Qaeda as subject to sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. This gave the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets control the ability to search for and freeze any bin Laden or Al Qaeda assets that reached the U.S. financial system. But since OFAC had little information to go on, few funds were frozen. In July 1999, the president applied the same designation to the Taliban for harboring bin Laden. Here, OFAC had more success. It blocked more than $34 million in Taliban assets held in U.S. banks. Another $215 million in gold and $2 million in demand deposits all belonging to the Afghan Central Bank and held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York were also frozen. After October 1999, when the State Department formally designated Al Qaeda a, quote, foreign terrorist organization, end quote, it became the duty of U.S. banks to block its transactions and seize its funds. Neither this designation nor UN sanctions had much additional practical effect. The sanctions were easily circumvented and there were no multilateral mechanisms to ensure that other countries' financial systems were not used as conduits for terrorist funding. Attacking the funds of an institution, even the Taliban was easier than finding and seizing the funds of a clandestine worldwide organization like Al Qaeda. Although the CIA's bin Laden unit had originally been inspired by the idea of studying terrorist financial links, few personnel assigned to it had any experience in financial investigations. Any terrorist financing intelligence appeared to have been collected collaterally as a consequence of gathering other intelligence. This attitude may have stemmed in large part from the chief of this unit who did not believe that simply following the money from point A to point B revealed much about the terrorist plans and intentions. As a result the CIA placed little emphasis on terrorist financing. Nevertheless the CIA obtained a general understanding of how Al Qaeda raised money. It knew relatively early for example about the loose affiliation of financial institutions, businesses and wealthy individuals who supported extremist Islamic activities. Much of the early reporting on Al Qaeda's financial situation and its structure came from Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, whom we have mentioned earlier in the report. After the 1998 embassy bombings the US government tried to develop a clearer picture of Bin Laden's finances. A US interagency group traveled to Saudi Arabia twice in 1999 and 2000 to get information from the Saudis about their understanding of those finances. The group eventually concluded that the oft repeated assertion that Bin Laden was funding Al Qaeda from his personal fortune was in fact not true. The officials developed a new theory. Al Qaeda was getting its money elsewhere and the United States needed to focus on other sources of funding such as charities, wealthy donors and financial facilitators. Ultimately, although the intelligence community devoted more resources to the issue and produced somewhat more intelligence, it remained difficult to distinguish Al Qaeda's financial transactions among the vast sums moving in the international financial system. The CIA was not able to find or disrupt Al Qaeda's money flows. The NSC staff thought that one possible solution to these weaknesses in the intelligence community was to create an all-source terrorist financing intelligence analysis center. Clark pushed for the funding of such a center at Treasury, but neither Treasury nor the CIA was willing to commit the resources. Within the United States, various FBI field offices gathered intelligence organizations suspected of raising funds for Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. By 9-11, FBI agents understood that there were extremist organizations operating within the United States supporting a global jihadist movement and with substantial connections to Al Qaeda. The FBI operated a web of informants, conducted electronic surveillance and had opened significant investigations and a number of field offices, including New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Diego and Minneapolis. On a national level, however, the FBI never used the information to gain a systematic or strategic understanding of the nature and extent of Al Qaeda fundraising. Treasury regulators, as well as U.S. financial institutions, were generally focused on finding and deterring or disrupting the vast flows of U.S. currency generated by drug trafficking and high-level international fraud. Large-scale scandals, such as the use of the Bank of New York by Russian money launderers to move millions of dollars out of Russia, captured the attention of the Department of the Treasury and of Congress. Before 9-11, Treasury did not consider terrorist financing important enough to mention in its national strategy for money laundering. Border Security The third point on which the principles had agreed on March 10 was the need for attention to America's poorest borders and the laws. Drawing on ideas from government officials, Clark's working group developed a menu of proposals to bolster border security. Some reworked or reiterated previous presidential directives. They included creating an interagency center to target illegal entry and human traffickers, imposing tighter controls on student visas, taking legal action to prevent terrorists from coming into the United States to remove those already here, detaining them while awaiting removal proceedings. Further increasing the number of immigration assets to FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces to help investigate immigration charges against individuals suspected of terrorism. Activating a special course to enable the use of classified evidence in immigration related national security cases and both implementing new security measures for U.S. and foreign governments to raise global security standards for travel documents. Clark's working group compiled new proposals as well, such as undertaking a joint perimeter defense program with Canada to establish cooperative intelligence and law enforcement programs leading to joint operations based on shared visa and immigration data and joint border patrols, staffing land crossings 24-7 and equipping them with video, cameras, physical barriers and means to detect weapons of mass destruction, WMD, and addressing the problem of migrants, possibly including terrorists, who destroy their travel documents so they cannot be returned to their countries of origin. These proposals were praiseworthy in principle. In practice, however, they required action by weak, chronically underfunded executive agencies and powerful congressional committees which were more responsive to well-organized interest groups than to executive branch interagency committees. The changes sought by the principles in March 2000 were only beginning to occur before 9-11. AFGAN EYES In early March 2000, when President Clinton received an update on U.S. covert action efforts against bin Laden, he wrote in the memo's margin that the United States could surely do better. Military officers in the Joint Staff told us that they shared this sense of frustration. Clark used the President's comment to push the CSG to brainstorm new ideas, including aid to the Northern Alliance. Back in December 1999, Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud had offered to stage a rocket attack against bin Laden's Darunta Training Complex. Officers at the CIA had worried that giving him a green light might cross the line into violation of the assassination ban. Hence, Massoud was told not to take any such action without explicit U.S. authorization. In the spring of 2000, after the CIA had sent out officers to explore possible closer relationships with both the Uzbeks and the Northern Alliance, discussions took place in Washington between U.S. officials and delegates sent by Massoud. The Americans agreed that Massoud should get some modest technical help so that he could work on U.S. priorities, collecting intelligence on and possibly acting against al-Qaeda. But Massoud wanted the United States both to become his ally in trying to overthrow the Taliban and to recognize that they were fighting common enemies. Clark and Cofer Black, the head of the counter-terrorist center, wanted to take this next step. Proposals to help the Northern Alliance had been debated in the U.S. government since 1999 and, as we mentioned in Chapter 4, the U.S. government as a whole had been very wary of endorsing them largely because of the Northern Alliance's checkered history, its limited base of popular support in Afghanistan and Pakistan's objections. CIA officials also began pressing proposals to use their ties with the Northern Alliance to get American agents on the ground in Afghanistan for an extended period, setting up their own base for covert intelligence collection and activity in the Panjshir Valley and lessening reliance on foreign proxies. Quote, there's no substitute for face-to-face, end quote, one officer told us. But the CIA's institutional capacity for such direct action was weak, especially if it was not working jointly with the U.S. military. The idea was turned down as too risky. In the meantime, the CIA continued to work with its tribal assets in southern Afghanistan. In early August, the tribals reported an attempt to ambush Bin Laden's convoy as he traveled on the road between Kabul and Kandahar city, their first such reported interdiction attempt in more than a year and a half. But it was not a success. According to the tribal's own account, when they approached one of the vehicles, they quickly determined that women and children were inside and called off the ambush. Conveying this information to the NSC staff, the CIA noted that they had no independent operation for this incident, but that the tribals had acted within the terms of the CIA's authority in Afghanistan. In 2000, plans continued to be developed for potential military operations in Afghanistan. Navy vessels that could launch missiles into Afghanistan were still on call in the North Arabian Sea. In the summer, the military refined its list of strikes and special operations possibilities to a set of 13 options within the Operation Resolve Plan. Yet planning efforts continued to be limited by the same operational and policy concerns encountered in 1998 and 1999. Although the intelligence community sometimes knew where bin Laden was, it had been unable to provide intelligence considered sufficiently reliable to launch a strike. Above all, the United States did not have American eyes on the target. As one military officer put it, we had our hand on the door, but we had to close the door and walk in. At some point during this period, President Clinton expressed his frustration with the lack of military options to take out bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership, remarking to General Hugh Shelton, quote, you know it would scare the shit out of al-Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas repelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp, end quote. Although Shelton told the commission he did not remember the statement, President Clinton recalled this remark one of the many things I said, end quote. The president added, however, that he realized nothing would be accomplished if he lashed out in anger. Secretary of Defense William Cohen thought that the president might have been making a hypothetical statement. Regardless, he said, the question remained how to get the quote, ninjas, end quote, into and out of the theater of operations. As discussed in Chapter 4, plans of this kind were never carried out before 9-11. In late 1999, or early 2000, the Joint Staff's Director of Operations, Vice Admiral Scott Fry directed his Chief Information Operations Officer, Brigadier General Scott Gration to develop innovative ways to get better intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts. Gration and his team worked on a number of different ideas aimed at getting reliable American eyes on bin Laden in a way that would reduce the time lag of fighting and striking. One option was to use a small unmanned U.S. Air Force drone called the Predator, which could survey the territory below and send back video footage. Another option, eventually dismissed as impractical, was to place a powerful long-range telescope on a mountain within range of one of bin Laden's training camps. Both proposals were discussed with General Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and White House as the CSG was searching for new ideas. In the spring of 2000, Clark brought in the CIA's Assistant Director for Collection, Charles Allen, to work together with Fry in a joint CIA Pentagon effort that Clark dubbed, quote, Afghan eyes, end quote. After much argument between the CIA and the Defense Department about who should pay for the program, the White House eventually imposed a cost-sharing agreement. The White House agreed to pay for predator operations as a 60-day proof-of-concept trial run. The small group backed Afghan eyes at the end of June 2000. By mid-July, testing was completed and the equipment was ready, but legal issues were still being ironed out. By August 11, the principals had agreed to deploy the predator. The NSC staff considered how to use the information the drones would be relaying from Afghanistan. Deputy Roger Cressy wrote to Berger that emergency CSG and principals' committee meetings might be needed to act on video coming in from the predator if it proved able to lock in Bin Laden's location. In the memo's margin, Berger wrote that before considering action, quote, I will want more than verified location. We will need at least data on a pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place, end quote. President Clinton was kept up to date. On September 7, the predator flew for the first time over Afghanistan. When Clark saw a video taken during the trial flight, he described the imagery to Berger as, quote, truly astonishing, end quote, and he argued immediately for more flights seeking to find Bin Laden and target him for cruise missile or air attack. Even if Bin Laden were not found, Clark said, predator missions might identify additional worthwhile targets, such as other al-Qaeda leaders or stocks of chemical or biological weapons. Clark was not alone in his enthusiasm. He had backing from Kofa Black and Charles Allen at the CIA. Ten out of fifteen trial missions of the predator over Afghanistan were rated successful. On the first flight, a predator saw a security detail around a tall man in a white robe at Bin Laden's Tarnac Farms compound outside Kandahar. After a second sighting of the, quote, man-in-white end quote at the compound on September 28th, intelligence community analysts determined that he was probably Bin Laden. During at least one trial mission, the Taliban spotted the predator and scrambled MiG fighters to try without success to intercept it. Berger worried that a predator might be shot down and warned Clark that a shoot down would be a, quote, bonanza end quote for Bin Laden Still, Clark was optimistic about predator as well as progress with disruptions of al-Qaeda cells elsewhere. Berger was more cautious praising the NSC staff's performance but observing that this was no time for complacency, quote, unfortunately, end quote he wrote, quote, the light at the end of the tunnel is another tunnel, end quote. End of chapter 6.2 Recording by Cory Snow Olympia, Washington HCTP colon slash slash www.cyclometh.com Chapter 6.3 of the 9-11 commission report This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Cory Snow The 9-11 commission report Chapter 6.3 6.3 the attack on the USS Cole Early in chapter 5 we introduced, along with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed two other men who became operational coordinators for al-Qaeda Khalad and Nashiri As we explained both were involved during 1998 and 1999 in preparing to attack a ship off the coast of Yemen with a boatload of explosives. They had originally targeted a commercial vessel specifically an oil tanker but bin Laden urged them to look for a US warship instead. In January 2000 their team had attempted to attack a warship in the port of Aden but the attempt failed when the suicide boat sank. More than nine months later in December 2000 al-Qaeda operatives in a small boat laden with explosives attacked a US Navy destroyer the USS Cole. The blast ripped a hole in the side of the Cole killing 17 members of the ship's crew and wounding at least 40. The plot, we now know was a full-fledged al-Qaeda operation supervised directly by bin Laden. He chose the target and location of the attack and provided the money needed to purchase explosives and equipment. Nashiri was the field commander and managed the operation in Yemen. Khalad helped in Yemen until he was arrested in a case of mistaken identity and freed with bin Laden's help as we also mentioned earlier. Local al-Qaeda coordinators included Jamal al-Badawi and Fad al-Kusso who was supposed to film the attack from a nearby apartment. The two suicide operatives chosen were Hassan al-Khamri and Ibrahim al-Thawar also known as Nibras. Nibras and Khusso delivered money to Khalad in Bangkok during Khalad's January 2000 trip to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. In September 2000 bin Laden reportedly told Nashiri that he wanted to replace Khamri and Nibras. Nashiri was angry and disagreed telling others he would go to Afghanistan to explain to bin Laden that the new operatives were already trained and ready to conduct the attack. Prior to departing Nashiri gave Nibras and Khamri instructions to execute the attack on the next US warship that entered the port of Aden. While Nashiri was in Afghanistan Nibras and Khamri saw their chance. They piloted the explosives laden boat alongside the USS Cole made friendly gestures to crew members and detonated the bomb. Khusso did not arrive at the apartment in time to film the attack. Back in Afghanistan bin Laden anticipated US military retaliation. He ordered the evacuation of al-Qaeda's Khandahar airport compound and fled first to the desert area near Kabul then to Kaust and Jalalabad and eventually back to Khandahar. In Khandahar he rotated between five to six residences spending one night at each residence. In addition he sent his senior advisor Muhammad Atef to a different part of Khandahar and his deputy Aiman Al-Zawahiri to Kabul so that all three could not be killed in one attack. There was no American strike. In February 2001 a source reported that an individual whom he identified as the big instructor probably a reference to bin Laden complained frequently that the United States had not yet attacked. According to the source bin Laden wanted the United States to attack and if it did not he would launch something bigger. The attack on the U.S.S. coal galvanized al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts. Following the attack bin Laden instructed the media committee then headed by Khalid Sheikh Muhammad to produce a propaganda video that included a re-enactment of the attack along with images of the al-Qaeda training camps and training methods. It also highlighted Muslim suffering in Palestine, Kashmir, Indonesia and Chechnya. Al-Qaeda's image was very important to bin Laden and the video was widely disseminated. Portions were aired on Al-Jazeera, CNN and other television outlets. It was also disseminated among many young men in Saudi Arabia and Yemen and caused many extremists to go to Afghanistan for training and jihad. Al-Qaeda members considered the video an effective tool in their struggle for preeminence among other Islamist and jihadist movements. Investigating the attack Teams from the FBI, the Naval Criminal Investigative Services and the CIA were immediately sent to Yemen to investigate the attack. With difficulty Barbara Baudin, the U.S. Ambassador to Yemen tried to persuade the Yemeni government to accept these visitors and allow them to carry arms, though the Yemenis balked at letting Americans openly carry long guns, rifles, shotguns, automatic weapons. Meanwhile, Baudin and the leader of the FBI team, John O'Neill, clashed repeatedly to the point that after O'Neill had been rotated out of Yemen but wanted to return, Baudin refused the request. Despite the initial tension, the Yemeni and American investigations proceeded. Within a few weeks, the outline of the story began to emerge. On the day of the coal attack, a list of suspects was assembled that included Al-Qaeda's affiliate Egyptian Islamic Jihad. U.S. counterterrorism officials told us they immediately assumed that Al-Qaeda was responsible. But as Deputy D.C. John McLaughlin explained to us, it was not enough for the attack to smell, look and taste like an Al-Qaeda operation. To make a case, the CIA needed not just a guess, but a link to someone known to be an Al-Qaeda operative. Within the first weeks after the attack, the Yemenis found and arrested both Badawi and Kuso, but did not let the FBI team participate in the interrogations. The CIA described initial Yemeni support after the coal as, quote, slow and inadequate, end quote. President Clinton, Secretary Albright, and D.C.I. Tenet all intervened to help. Because the information was second-hand, the U.S. team could not make its own assessment of its reliability. On November 11th, the Yemenis provided the FBI with new information from the interrogations of Badawi and Kuso, including descriptions of individuals from whom the detainees had received operational direction. One of them was Khalad, who was described as having lost his leg. The detainee said that Khalad helped direct the coal operation from Afghanistan or Pakistan. The Yemenis, correctly, judged that the man described as Khalad was Taufik bin Atash. An FBI special agent recognized the name Khalad and connected this news with information from an important Al-Qaeda source who had been meeting regularly with CIA and FBI officers. They called Khalad bin Laden's quote, run boy, end quote, and described him as having lost one leg in an explosives accident at a training camp a few years earlier. To confirm the identification, the FBI agent asked the Yemenis for their photo of Khalad. The Yemenis provided the photo on November 22nd, reaffirming their view that Khalad had been an intermediary between the plotters and bin Laden. In a meeting with U.S. officials a few weeks later on December 16th, the source identified Khalad from the Yemeni photograph. U.S. intelligence agencies had already connected Khalad to Al-Qaeda terrorist operations including the 1998 embassy bombings. By this time the Yemenis had also identified Nashiri whose links to Al-Qaeda and the 1998 embassy bombings were even more well known. In other words the Yemenis provided strong evidence connecting the coal attack to Al-Qaeda in the second half of November identifying individual operatives whom the U.S. knew were part of Al-Qaeda. During December the U.S. was able to corroborate this evidence but the U.S. did not have evidence about bin Laden's personal involvement in the attacks until Nashiri and Khalad were captured in 2002 and 2003. Considering a response the coal attack prompted renewed consideration of what could be done about Al-Qaeda According to Clark Berger upgraded DCI tenets so sharply after the coal attack repeatedly demanding to know why the United States had to put up with such attacks that tenets walked out of a meeting of the principles. The CIA got some additional covert action authorities adding several other individuals to the coverage of the July 1999 memorandum of notification that allowed the United States to develop capture operations against Al-Qaeda leaders in a variety of places and circumstances. Tenet developed additional options such as strengthening relationships with the Northern Alliance and the Uzbeks and slowing recent Al-Qaeda related activities in Lebanon. On the diplomatic track Berger agreed on October 30, 2000 to let the State Department make another approach to Taliban Deputy Foreign Minister Abdul Jalil about expelling bin Laden. The National Security Advisor ordered that the U.S. message be, quote, stern and foreboding, unquote. This warning was similar to those issued in 1998 and 1999. Meanwhile the administration was working with Russia on new U.N. sanctions against Mullah Omar's regime. President Clinton told us that before he could launch further attacks on Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or deliver an ultimatum to the Taliban threatening strikes that he did not immediately expel bin Laden, the CIA or the FBI had to be sure enough that they would, quote, be willing to stand up in public and say, we believe that he, bin Laden, did this, end, quote. He said he was very frustrated that he could not get a definitive enough answer to do something about the coal attack. Similarly Berger recalled that to go to war a president needs to be able to say that his senior intelligence and law enforcement officers have concluded who is responsible. He recalled that the intelligence agencies had strong suspicions but had reached, quote, no conclusion by the time we left office that it was Al-Qaeda, end, quote. Our only sources for what intelligence officials thought at the time are what they said in informal briefings. Soon after the coal attack and for the remainder of the Clinton administration analysts stopped distributing written reports about who was responsible. The topic was obviously sensitive and both Ambassador Baudin in Yemen and CIA analysts in Washington presumed that the government did not want reports circulating around the agencies that might become public, impeding law enforcement actions or backing the president into a corner. Instead the White House and other principles relied on informal updates as more evidence came in. Though Clark worried that the CIA might be equivocating in assigning responsibility to Al-Qaeda, he wrote Burger on November 7 that the analysts had described their case by saying that, quote, it has web feet, flies and quacks, end, quote. On November 10, CIA analysts briefed the small group of principles on their preliminary findings that the attack was carried out by a cell of Yemeni residents with some ties to the transnational Mujahideen network. According to the briefing, these residents likely had some support from Al-Qaeda, but the information on outside sponsorship, support and direction of the operation was inconclusive. The next day, Burger and Clark told President Clinton that while the investigation was continuing it was becoming increasingly clear that Al-Qaeda had planned and directed the bombing. In mid-November, as the evidence of Al-Qaeda involvement mounted, Burger asked General Shelton to reevaluate military plans to act quickly against Bin Laden. General Shelton tasked General Tommy Franks, the new commander of CENTCOM, to look again at the options. Shelton wanted to demonstrate that the military was imaginative and knowledgeable enough to move on an array of options and to show the complexity of the operations. He briefed Burger on the, quote, infinite resolve, end, quote, strike options developed since 1998, which the joint staff and CENTCOM had refined during the summer into a list of 13 possibilities or combinations. CENTCOM added a new, quote, phased campaign, end, quote, concept for wider-ranging strikes, including attacks against the Taliban. For the first time, these strikes envisioned an air campaign against Afghanistan of indefinite duration. Military planners did not include contingency planning for an invasion of Afghanistan. The concept was briefed to Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Carrick on December 20th and to other officials. On November 25th, Burger & Clark wrote President Clinton that although the FBI and CIA investigations had not reached a formal conclusion, they believed the investigations would soon conclude that the attack had been carried out by a large cell whose senior members belonged to al-Qaeda. Most of those involved had trained in bin Laden-operated camps in Afghanistan, Burger continued. So far, bin Laden had not been tied personally to the attack and nobody had heard him directly order it, but two intelligence reports suggested that he was involved. When discussing possible responses, though, Burger referred to the premise, al-Qaeda responsibility, as an, quote, unproven assumption, end, quote. In the same December 25th memo, Burger informed President Clinton about a closely held idea, a last chance ultimatum for the Taliban. Clark was developing his idea with specific demands. Immediate extradition of bin Laden and his lieutenants to a legitimate government for trial, observable closure of all terrorist facilities in Afghanistan, and expulsion of all terrorists from Afghanistan within 90 days. Non-compliance would mean that the Taliban would force directed at the Taliban itself, end, quote, and U.S. efforts to ensure that the Taliban would never defeat the Northern Alliance. No such ultimatum was issued. Nearly a month later, on December 21st, the CIA made another presentation to the small group of principals on the investigative team's findings. The CIA's briefing slides said that their, quote, preliminary judgment, end, quote, was that bin Laden's al-Qaeda group, quote, reported the attack, end, quote, on the coal, based on strong circumstantial evidence tying key perpetrators of the attack to al-Qaeda. The CIA listed the key suspects including Nasheeri. In addition, the CIA detailed the timeline of the operation from the mid-1999 preparations to the failed attack on the USS The Sullivan's on January 3rd, 2000, through a meeting held by the operatives on the attack. The slides said that so far the CIA had, quote, no definitive answer on the crucial question of outside direction of the attack, how and by whom, end, quote. The CIA noted that the Yemenis claimed that Qalad helped direct the operation from Afghanistan or Pakistan, possibly as bin Laden's intermediary, but that he did not see the Yemeni evidence. However, the CIA knew from both human sources and signals intelligence that Qalad was tied to al-Qaeda. The prepared briefing concluded that while some reporting about al-Qaeda's role might have merit, those reports offered few specifics. Intelligence gave some ambiguous indicators of al-Qaeda direction of the attack. This, President Clinton and Berger told us, was not the conclusion they needed in order to go to war or deliver an ultimatum to the Taliban threatening war. The election and change of power was not the issue, President Clinton added. There was enough time. If the agencies had given him a definitive answer, he said, he would have sought a UN Security Council ultimatum and given the Taliban one, two or three days before taking further action against both al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But he did not think it would be responsible for a president to launch an invasion of another country just based on a, quote, preliminary judgment, end, quote. Other advisors have echoed this concern. Some of Secretary Albright's advisors warned her at the time to be sure the evidence conclusively linked bin Laden to the call before considering any response, especially a military one, because such action might inflame the Islamic world and increase support for the Taliban. Defense Secretary Cohen told us it would not have been prudent to risk killing civilians based only on an assumption that al-Qaeda was responsible. General Shelton added that there was an outstanding question as to who was responsible and what the targets were. Clark recalled that while the Pentagon and the State Department had reservations about retaliation, the issue never came to a head because the FBI and the CIA never reached a firm conclusion. He thought they were, quote, holding back, end, quote. He said he did not know why, but his impression was that and Reno possibly thought the White House, quote, didn't really want to know, end, quote, since the principal's discussions by November suggested that there was not much White House interest in conducting further military operations against Afghanistan in the administration's last weeks. He thought that instead, President Clinton, Berger, and Secretary Albright were concentrating on a last-minute push for a peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Some of Clark's fellow counterterrorism officials such as the State Department's Sheehan and the FBI's Watson shared his disappointment that no military response occurred at the time. Clark recently recalled that an angry Sheehan asked rhetorically of defense officials, quote, does Al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention, end, quote. On the question of evidence, Tenet told us he was surprised to hear that the White House was awaiting a conclusion from him on responsibility for the whole attack before taking action against Al Qaeda. He did not recall Berger or anyone else telling him that they were waiting for the magic words from the CIA and the FBI. Nor did he remember having any discussions with Berger or the president about retaliation. Tenet told us he believed that it was up to him to present the case. Then it was up to the principals to decide if the case was good enough to justify using force. He believed he laid out what was knowable really early in the investigation and that this evidence never really changed until after 9-11. A CIA official told us that the CIA's analysts chose the term, quote, preliminary judgment, end, quote, because of their notion of how an intelligence standard of proof differed from a legal standard. Because the attack was the subject of a criminal investigation, they told us, the term preliminary was used to avoid locking the government in with statements that might later be by defense lawyers in a future court case. At the time Clark was aware of the problem of distinguishing between an intelligence case and a law enforcement case. Asking U.S. law enforcement officials to concur with an intelligence-based case before their investigation had been concluded, quote, could give rise to charges that the administration had acted before final culpability had been determined, end, quote. There was no interagency consideration of just what military action might have looked like in practice. Either the Pentagon's new, quote, phased campaign, end, quote, concept or a prolonged air campaign in Afghanistan. Defense officials, such as Undersecretary Walter Slocum and Vice Admiral Fry, told us the military response options were still limited. Bin Laden continued to be elusive. They felt, just as they had for the past two years, that hitting inexpensive and rudimentary training camps with military missiles would not do much good and might even help al-Qaeda if the strikes failed to kill Bin Laden. In late 2000, the CIA and the NSC staff began thinking about the counter-terrorism policy agenda they would present to the new administration. The Counter-Terrorist Center put down its best ideas for the future, assuming it was free of any prior policy or financial constraints. The paper was therefore informally referred to as the, quote, new Sky, end, quote, memo. It was sent to Clark on December 29th. The memo proposed a major effort to support the Northern Alliance through intelligence sharing and increased funding so that it could stave off the Taliban army and tie down al-Qaeda fighters. This effort was not intended to remove the Taliban from power, a goal that was judged impractical and too expensive for the CIA alone to attain. Increased support to the Uzbeks to strengthen their ability to fight terrorism and assist the United States in doing so. Assistance to anti-Taliban groups and proxies who might be encouraged to passively resist the Taliban. The CIA memo noted that there was, quote, no single silver bullet available to deal with the growing problems in Afghanistan, end, quote. A multifaceted strategy would be needed to produce change. No action was taken on these ideas in the few remaining weeks of the Clinton Administration. Burger did not recall seeing or being briefed on the Blue Sky memo, nor was the memo discussed during the transition with incoming top Bush Administration officials. Tenet and his deputy told us they pressed these ideas as options after the new team took office. As the Clinton Administration drew to a close, Clark and his staff developed a policy paper of their own, the first such comprehensive effort since the Dalinda Plan of 1998. The resulting paper entitled, quote, strategy for eliminating the threat from the jihadist networks of al-Qaeda, status and prospects, end, quote. Reviewed the threat and the record to date incorporated the CIA's new ideas from the Blue Sky memo and posed several near-term policy options. Clark and his staff proposed a goal to, quote, roll back, end, quote, al-Qaeda over a period of three to five years. Over time, the policy should try to weaken and eliminate the network's infrastructure in order to reduce it to a, quote, rump group, end, quote, like other formerly feared but now largely defunct terrorist organizations of the 1980s. Quote, continued anti-al-Qaeda operations at the current level will prevent some attacks, end, quote, Clark's office wrote, quote, but will not treat their ability to plan and conduct attacks, end, quote. The paper backed covert aid to the Northern Alliance, covert aid to Uzbekistan and renewed predator flights in March 2001. A sentence called for military action to destroy al-Qaeda command and control targets and infrastructure and Taliban military and command assets. The paper also expressed concern about the presence of al-Qaeda operatives in the United States. End of chapter 6.3 Recording by Corey Snow. Olympia, Washington. HTTP colon slash slash www.cyclometh.com Chapter 6.4 of the 911 commission report. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to find out how you can find this video, please visit LibriVox.org. The 911 commission report. Chapter 6.4 Change and continuity. On November 7, 2000 American voters went to the polls in what turned out to be one of the closest presidential contests in US history, an election campaign during which there was a notable absence of serious discussion of the al-Qaeda threat or terrorism. Election night became a day legal fight. Until the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling on December 12 and Vice President Al Gore's concession, no one knew whether Gore or his Republican opponent Texas Governor George W. Bush would become president in 2001. The dispute over the election and the 36-day delay cut in half the normal transition period. Given that a presidential election in the United States brings wholesale change in personnel, this loss of time hampered the new administration in identifying, recruiting, clearing and obtaining Senate confirmation of key appointees. From the old to the new. The principal figures on Bush's White House staff would be National Security Advisor Conalisa Rice, who had been a member of the NSC staff in the administration of George H.W. Bush, Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley, who had been an assistant secretary of defense under the first Bush and Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who had served that same administration as Deputy Chief of Staff, then Secretary of Transportation. For Secretary of State, Bush chose General Colin Powell, who had been National Security Advisor for President Ronald Reagan and then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For Secretary of Defense he selected Donald Rumsfeld, a former member of Congress, White House Chief of Staff and under President Gerald Ford already once Secretary of Defense. Bush decided fairly soon to keep Tenet as Director of Central Intelligence. Louis Free, who had statutory 10 year tenure, would remain Director of the FBI until his voluntary retirement in the summer of 2001. Bush and his principal advisors had all received briefings on terrorism including bin Laden. In early September 2000, Acting Deputy Director of Central Intelligence John McLaughlin led a team to Bush's Ranch in Crawford, Texas and gave him a wide-ranging 4-hour review of sensitive information. Ben Bonk, Deputy Chief of the CIA's Counter-Terrorist Center used one of the 4 hours to deal with terrorism. To highlight the danger of terrorists obtaining chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons Bonk brought along a mock-up suitcase to evoke the way the Om Shinrikyo Doomsday cult had spread deadly sarin nerve agent on the Tokyo subway in 1995. Ben Bonk told Bush that Americans would die from terrorism during the next 4 years. During the long contest after Election Day, the CIA set up an office in Crawford to pass intelligence to Bush and some of his key advisors. Tenet, accompanied by his Deputy Director for Operations, James Pevitt briefed President-Elect Bush at Blair House during the transition. President Bush told us he asked Tenet whether the CIA could kill Bin Laden, and Tenet replied that killing Bin Laden would have an effect but would not end the threat. President Bush told us Tenet said to him that the CIA had all the authority it needed. Footnote Pevitt also recalls telling the President-Elect that killing Bin Laden would not end the threat. Vice President-Elect Janie, Rice, Hadley and White House Chief of Staff Designate Andrew Card also attended the briefing which took place about a week before the inauguration. The President noted that Tenet did not say he did not have authority to kill Bin Laden. Tenet told us he recalled a meeting with Bush but not what he said to the President-Elect. He told us, however, that if circumstances changed and he needed more authority he would have come back to either President Clinton or President Bush and asked for the additional authority. Footnote In December, Bush met with Clinton for a two-hour one-on-one discussion of national security and foreign policy challenges. Clinton recalled saying to Bush I think you'll find that by far your biggest threat is Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda. Clinton told us that he also said one of the great regrets of my presidency is that I didn't get him, Bin Laden, for you, because I tried to. End quote. Bush told the Commission that he felt sure President Clinton had mentioned terrorism but did not remember much being said about al-Qaeda. Bush recalled that Clinton had emphasized other issues such as North Korea and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In early January Clark briefed Rice on terrorism. He gave similar presentations describing al-Qaeda as both an adaptable global network of jihadist organizations and a lethal core terrorist organization to Vice President-Elect Cheney, Hadley and Secretary of State Pal. One line in the briefing slides said that al-Qaeda had sleeper cells in more than 40 countries including the United States. Berger told us that he made a point of dropping in on Clark's briefing of Rice to emphasize the importance of the issue. Later the same day Berger met with Rice. He says that he told her the Bush Administration would spend more time on terrorism in general and al-Qaeda in particular than on anything else. Her recollection was that Berger told her she would be surprised at how much more time she was going to spend on terrorism than she expected but that the bulk of their conversation dealt with a faltering Middle East peace process and North Korea. Clark said that the new team having been out of government for eight years had a steep learning curve to understand al-Qaeda and the new transnational terrorist threat. Organizing a new Administration During the short transition Rice and Hadley concentrated on staffing and organizing the NSC. Footnote Hadley told us that he was able to do less policy development than in a normal two-month transition. And footnote Their policy priorities differed from those of the Clinton Administration. Those priorities included China, missile defense, the collapse of the Middle East peace process and the Persian Gulf. Footnote Public references by candidate and then President Bush about terrorism before 9-11 tended to reflect these priorities focusing on state-sponsored terrorism and WMD as a reason to mount a missile defense. See, for example, President Bush remarks Warsaw University, June 15, 2001. And footnote Generally aware that terrorism had changed since the first Bush Administration they paid particular attention to the question of how counter-terrorism policy should be coordinated. Rice had asked University of Virginia history professor Philip Zelikov to advise her on the transition. Footnote Rice and Zelikov had been colleagues on the NSC staff during the first Bush Administration and were co-authors of a book concerning German unification. As the Executive Director of the Commission Zelikov has recused himself from our work on the Clinton-Bush transition at the National Security Council. And footnote Hadley and Zelikov Clark and his deputy Roger Cressy for a special briefing on the terrorist threat and how Clark's transnational threats directorate and counter-terrorism security group functioned. In the NSC during the first Bush Administration many tough issues were addressed at the level of the deputy's committee. Issues did not go to the principles unless the deputies have been unable to resolve them. Presidential Decision Director 62 of the Clinton Administration had said specifically that Clark's counter-terrorism security group should report through the deputies committee or at Berger's discretion directly to the principles. Berger had in practice allowed Clark's group to function as a parallel deputies committee reporting directly to those members of the principles committee who set on the special small group. There Clark himself set as a de facto principal. Rice decided to change the special structure that had been built to coordinate counter-terrorism policy. It was important to sound policy-making, she felt, that Clark's interagency committee, like all others reported the principles through the deputies. Rice made an initial decision to hold over both Clark and his entire counter-terrorism staff, a decision that she called rare for a new administration. She decided also that Clark should retain the title of national counter-terrorism coordinator, although he would no longer be a de facto member of the principles committee on his issues. The decision to keep Clark, Rice said, was not uncontroversial, since he was known as someone who broke China. But she and Hadley wanted an experienced crisis manager. No one else from Berger's staff had Clark's detailed knowledge of the levers of government. Clark was disappointed at what he perceived as a demotion. He also worried that reporting through the deputies committee would slow decision-making on counter-terrorism. Footnote. As Clark put it, there goes our ability to get quick decisions. However, Paul Kurtz told the commission that even though Clark complained about losing his seat on the principles committee on terrorism issues, Kurtz saw no functional change in Clark's status. Footnote. The result amid all the changes accompanying the transition was significant continuity in counter-terrorism policy. Clark and his counter-terrorism security group continued to manage coordination. Tenet remained director of central intelligence and kept the same chief subordinate including Black and his chief at the counter-terrorist center. Shelton remained chairman of the joint chiefs, with the joint staff largely the same. At the FBI director Free and assistant director for counter-terrorism Dill Watson remained. Working-level counter-terrorism officials at the State Department and the Pentagon stayed on as is typically the case. At the cabinet and sub-cabinet level and in the CSG's reporting arrangements. At the sub-cabinet level there were significant delays in the confirmation of key officials, particularly at the defense department. The procedures of the Bush administration were to be at once more formal and less formal than its predecessors. President Clinton, a voracious reader received his daily intelligence briefings in writing. He often scrolled questions and comments in the margins eliciting written responses. The new president, by contrast, reinstated the practice of face-to-face briefings from the DCI. President Bush and Tenet met in the Oval Office at 8am, with Vice President Cheney, Rice and Card usually also present. The president and the DCI both told us that these daily sessions provided a useful opportunity for exchanges on intelligence issues. The president talked with Rice every day, and she in turn talked by phone at least daily with Powell and Rumsfeld. As a result the president often felt less need for formal meetings. If, however, he decided that an event or an issue called for action, Rice would typically call on Hadley to have the deputy's committee develop and review options. The president said that this process often tried his patients but that he understood the necessity for coordination. Early Decisions Within the first few days after Bush's inauguration, Clark approached Rice in an effort to get her and the new president to give terrorism very high priority and to act on the agenda that he had pushed during the last few months of the previous administration. After Rice requested that all senior staff identify desirable major policy reviews or initiatives, Clark submitted an elaborate memorandum on January 25th, 2001. He attached to it his 1998 the LENDA plan and the December 2000 strategy paper. We urgently need a principal's level review on the Al Qaeda network, Clark wrote. He wanted the principal's committee to decide whether Al Qaeda was a first order threat or a more modest worry being overblown by chicken little alarmists. Alluding to the transition briefing that he had prepared for Rice, Clark wrote that Al Qaeda is not some narrow little terrorist issue that needs to be included in broader regional policy, end quote. Two key decisions that had been deferred, he noted, concerned COVID-8 to keep the Northern Alliance alive when fighting began again in Afghanistan in the spring and COVID-8 to the USPEX. Clark also suggested that the decisions should be made soon on messages to the Taliban and Pakistan over the Al Qaeda sanctuary in Afghanistan on possible new money for CIA operations and on when and how to respond to the attack on the USS Cole. The National Security Advisor did not respond directly to Clark's memorandum. No principal's committee meeting on Al Qaeda was held until September 4, 2001. Although the principal's committee met frequently on other subjects such as the Middle East peace process, Russia and the Persian Gulf. Footnote, the Bush administration held 32 principal's committee meetings on subjects other than Al Qaeda before 9-11. Rice told us the administration did not need a principal's meeting on Al Qaeda because it knew that Al Qaeda was a major threat. End footnote. But Rice and Hadley began to address the issues Clark had listed. What to do or say about the Cole had been an obvious question since inauguration day. When the attack occurred 25 days before the election, candidate Bush had set to CNN. Quote, I hope that we can gather enough intelligence to figure out who did the act necessary action. There must be a consequence. End quote. Footnote. Vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney also urged swift retaliation against those responsible for bombing the destroyer, saying quote, any would-be terrorist out there needs to know that if you're going to attack you'll be hit very hard and very quick. It's not time for diplomacy and debate. It's time for action. End quote. End footnote. What was the Bush administration to do? On January 25th Tenet briefed the president on the Cole investigation. The written briefing repeated for top officials of the new administration what the CIA had told the Clinton White House in November. This included the preliminary judgment that Al Qaeda was responsible with the caveat that no evidence had yet been found that Bin Laden himself ordered the attack. Tenet told us he had no recollection of the conversation with the president about this briefing. In his January 25th memo Clark had advised Rice that the government should respond to the Cole attack but quote, should take advantage of the policy that we will respond at a time, place and manner of our own choosing and not be forced into knee-jerk responses. End quote. Before Vice President Cheney visited the CIA in mid-February Clark sent him a memo outside the usual White House document management system suggesting that he asked CIA officials quote, what additional information is needed before CIA can definitively conclude that Al Qaeda was responsible end quote, for the Cole. In March 2001 the CIA's briefing slides for Rice were still describing the CIA's preliminary judgment that a strong circumstantial case could be made against Al Qaeda but noting that the CIA continued to lack conclusive information on external command and control of the attack. Clark and his aide continued to provide Rice and Hadley with evidence reinforcing the case against Al Qaeda and urging action. Footnote. In early March Cressy wrote Rice and Hadley that at a belated wedding reception at Tarnac Farms for one of Bin Laden's sons the Al Qaeda leader had read a new poem gloating about the attack on the Cole. A few weeks later Cressy wrote Hadley that while the law enforcement was on, quote, we know all we need to about who did the attack to make a policy decision, end quote. Around this time Clark wrote Rice and Hadley that the Yemeni prime minister had told State Department counter-terrorism chief Hull that while Yemen was not saying so publicly, Yemen was 99% certain that Bin Laden was responsible for the Cole. In June Clark wrote Rice and Hadley that a new Al Qaeda video claimed responsibility for the Cole. Later that month, two Saudi jihadists, arrested by Bahani authorities during the threat spike, told their captors that their Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan had held celebratory parties over the Cole attack. Footnote. The President explained to us that he had been concerned that an ineffectual airstrike just served to give Bin Laden a propaganda advantage. He said he had not been told about Clinton administration warnings to the Taliban. The President said that he had concluded that the United States must use ground forces for a job like this. Rice told us that there was never a formal recorded decision not to retaliate specifically for the Cole attack. Exchanges with the President, between the President and Tenet, and between herself and Powell and Rumsfeld had produced a consensus that tit for tat responses were likely to be counterproductive. This had been the case, she thought, with the cruise missile strikes of August 1998. The new team at the Pentagon did not push for action. On the contrary, Rumsfeld thought that too much time had passed and his deputy, Paul Wolfewitz, thought that the Cole attack was tail. Hadley said that in the end the administration's real response to the Cole would be a new, more aggressive strategy against Al Qaeda. The administration decided to propose to Congress a substantial increase in counter-terrorism funding for national security agencies, including the CIA and the FBI. This included a 27% increase in counter-terrorism funding for the CIA. Starting a review In early March, the administration postponed action on proposals for increasing aid to the Northern Alliance and the Uzbeks. Rice noted at the time that a more wide ranging examination of policy toward Afghanistan was needed first. She wanted the review very soon. Rice and others recalled the President saying, quote, I'm tired of swatting at flies, end quote. Footnote Rice remembered President Bush using this phrase in May 2001, when warnings of terrorist threats began to multiply. However, speaking on background to the press in August 2002, Richard Clark described a directive from the President in March 2001 to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem. A reporter then said to Clark that he understood Bush to have given that direction in May, and Clark said no, it was March. End footnote The President reportedly also said, quote, I'm tired of playing defense, I want to play offense, I want to take the fight to the terrorists, end quote. President Bush explained to us that he had become impatient. He apparently had heard proposals for rolling back al-Qaeda, but felt that catching terrorists one by one or even sell by sell was not an approach likely to succeed in the long run. At the same time, he said he understood that policy had to be developed slowly, so that diplomacy and financial and military measures could match with one another. Hattley convened an informal deputies committee meeting on March 7, when some of the deputies had not yet been confirmed. For the first time, Clark's various proposals, for aid to the Northern Alliance and the USPEC's and for predator missions, went before the group that, in the Bush NSC, followed the policy work. Though they made no decisions on these specific proposals, Hattley apparently concluded that there should be a presidential national security policy directive, NSPD, on terrorism. Clark would later express irritation about the deputies insistence that a strategy for coping with al-Qaeda be framed within the context of a regional policy. He doubted that the benefits would compensate for the time lost. The administration had in fact proceeded with principles committee meetings on topics including Iraq and Sudan without prior contextual review and Clark favoured moving ahead similarly with a narrow counter-terrorism agenda. But the president's senior advisors saw the al-Qaeda problem as part of a puzzle that could not be assembled without filling in the pieces for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rice deferred a principles committee meeting on al-Qaeda until the deputies had developed a new policy for their consideration. The full deputies committee discussed al-Qaeda on April 30th. CIA briefing slides describe al-Qaeda as the most dangerous group we face, citing its leadership, experience, resources save haven in Afghanistan and focus on attacking US. The slides warned there will be more attacks. At the meeting, the deputies endorsed covert aid to Uzbekistan. Regarding the Northern Alliance, they, quote, agreed to make no major commitment at this time, end quote. Washington would first consider options for aiding other anti-Taliban groups. Meanwhile, the administration would, quote, initiate a comprehensive review of US policy on Pakistan, end quote, and explore policy options on Afghanistan, quote, including the option of supporting regime change, end quote. Working-level officials were also to consider new steps on terrorist financing and America's perennially troubled public diplomacy efforts in the Muslim world, where NSC staff warned that, quote, we have by and large ceded the court of public opinion, end quote, to al-Qaeda. While Clark remained concerned about the pace of the policy review, he now saw a greater possibility of persuading the deputies to recognize the changed nature of terrorism. The process of fleshing out that strategy was underway. End of chapter 6.4