Front Burner

by Kirk S. Lippold

  So in 2001, with the rank of commander that I had held while I was captain of Cole, I found myself assigned to the Strategic Plans and Policy Division of the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, working on United Nations and multilateral affairs. The pace and scope of the work were beyond anything I had been exposed to in any of my previous jobs as a Navy surface warfare officer, but three years in a multiservice assignment was part of the preparation that Congress had mandated for all officers who would eventually be under consideration for promotion to the most senior ranks. The posting to one of the most coveted divisions of the Joint Staff was, to me, the clearest indication I had yet seen that the Navy understood the unusual circumstances of the terrorist attack against USS Cole.

  During my first few weeks on the staff, one of my former commanding officers, Captain John Russack, whose executive officer I had been on the Aegis guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh, contacted me to see how I was doing. He had gone to work full time at the Central Intelligence Agency after retiring from the Navy, and was now deputy to Charles Allen, a legendary figure and forty-five-year veteran of the agency whose position gave him responsibility for how the CIA collected intelligence worldwide. After John had mentioned our acquaintanceship, Allen became interested in talking with me about what the CIA knew about Osama bin Laden and how it had determined that it was al Qaeda that had planned, financed, and carried out the attack against my ship. Needless to say, I was also very much interested in meeting Allen and hearing why neither Central Command, which had operational control over my ship at the time of the attack, nor the Navy, nor USS Cole had been provided with the kind of information that would have better enabled us to protect ourselves. I also wanted to understand why, after American intelligence had developed evidence that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the ship—a classic act of war—and that high-ranking operatives tied directly to Osama bin Laden had directed it, no aggressive retaliatory action had yet been taken against any of them, though their whereabouts in Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime had given al Qaeda sanctuary, were well known. Almost a year after the attack, the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations had left the issue on the back burner, as far as I could tell.

  John and I were finally able to work out a date for the meeting, and I arranged to arrive late to work that morning.

  I had never been to the CIA before this day. Driving from Alexandria, Virginia, to Langley, headed up the George Washington Parkway thirty minutes before sunrise, I could tell it was going to be a beautiful day. Without a cloud in the sky, the first glow of the coming sunrise painted the skyline of Washington, D.C., and the white marble monuments across the Potomac a pale yellow glow.

  The moment I walked into the front entrance is burned into my memory. On the highly polished floor of the Old Headquarters Building, the CIA seal, inlaid granite measuring sixteen feet across, stood out starkly against everything else around it. The sight stirred my emotions and raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The security guard in the lobby directed me to a phone to call John, who said he would be down in a few minutes. As I waited, I walked around the lobby until I came upon a single gold star in reverse bas-relief in the marble wall on the south side, honoring the men and women who had given their lives for our nation while serving with the CIA’s predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services. On the opposite wall were row after row of gold stars representing the men and women of the CIA who had made the ultimate sacrifice. I felt a close bond with these names—to me, the sacrifice of the seventeen sailors on my ship just one year before was no different from the sacrifices memorialized here on these hallowed walls.

  A few minutes later, at 0630, John picked me up and escorted me to his sixth-floor office next door to Allen’s. For the next thirty minutes we sat, drinking coffee and catching up, until at 0700 sharp, we went into Allen’s office.

  The first thing Allen did was apologize for the clearance level of the material he was about to show me, since I had not undergone the extensive background checks and polygraphs necessary for a CIA clearance. But for the next hour and a half, Allen carefully walked me through what the CIA knew about Osama bin Laden and his organization. He began with the coordinated embassy attacks in 1998 and then walked me through the presumed timeline for the development of the plan of attack against my ship. Some of the things I had learned from the FBI’s criminal investigators—including John O’Neill, George Crouch, and Ali Soufan, who gathered evidence on the ship in Aden and at safe houses—such as the names of the suspected masterminds and in-country facilitators of the attack, for instance, were not included in the CIA briefing.

  What I found most difficult to understand was why the CIA station chief at the U.S. embassy in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, had been unable or unwilling to ascertain that al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations operating in Yemen and throughout the region could pose a threat to ships refueling in Aden. The embassy, of course, was a couple of hundred miles north of Aden, but along with the ambassador, he was supposed to be the in-country expert and, in my view, both had failed the crew and me. But I bit my tongue. At our meeting, Allen and the others conveyed a strong sense of urgently wanting to go on the offensive and bring to justice the terrorists who had committed the atrocity against Cole, whoever and wherever they were, and that was more important now.

  As the discussion wrapped up, we briefly discussed how magnificently my crew had performed in the aftermath of the attack, taking care of each other and preventing the ship from sinking. I shook my host’s hand and said, “You know, Mr. Allen, first, thank you very much for taking the time to go over all this with me. It means an awful lot for me to understand what our country is doing to try to catch this guy. But, I don’t think America understands. I believe it is going to take a seminal event, probably in this country, where hundreds, if not thousands, are going to have to die before Americans realize that we’re at war with this guy.”

  Allen, a bit surprised, said, “Well, hopefully that’ll never happen. I hope we’ll be able to head that off before it does.”

  John then took me around the building to talk to some of his co-workers and look at more work relating to the attack on USS Cole. I decided my work at the Joint Staff could wait. John first took me to see satellite images of some of the al Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and elsewhere that were under observation for any sign of preparation for more attacks.

  It was about 0850, as we were walking through another office, that a news bulletin flashing across one of the television monitors caught our attention. The north tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan had a gaping hole near the top, with dense black smoke and flames pouring out of it. The anchor reporting the story said there were now doubts about earlier reports that a private plane, a sightseeing plane perhaps, had gone off course and hit the building. I just shook my head. It was clear that only a large plane could cause so much damage.

  The date was September 11, 2001.

  JOHN AND I CONTINUED making our way along, he introducing me as the former commanding officer of USS Cole and I thanking everyone for what they were doing to keep our nation safe and accepting condolences on behalf of my crew and their families. We came to the office of Cofer Black, head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, the CTC. Waiting while he finished a telephone call, we continued to watch the unfolding scene in New York. Then, at 0903, with gut-wrenching horror, we watched as the second plane came into view on the television screen, banked to the left, and drove straight into the south tower.

  In that instant, it was clear to everyone present that the United States was under attack. The office became a ferocious beehive of activity, with people running in and out of Black’s office. We slipped in, were quickly introduced, and just as quickly slipped back out.

  As we turned to leave, Black’s office assistant took a phone down from her ear and yelled out, “John, is that Lippold with you? Mr. Allen wants to see both of you up in his office, now!”<
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  When we arrived at Allen’s sixth-floor office, I was in a state of shock as he motioned us in and came around from behind his cluttered desk. He walked straight up to me, put his arm around my shoulders, looked me in the eye, and said, “Kirk, I can’t believe you said what you did this morning.” As calmly as I could, I looked back at him and replied, “Well sir, I guess this is something I have suspected for eleven months—and the country is finding out about it the hard way this morning.” Adding that I knew all of us were going to have a busy day and that I needed to get on the road back to the Pentagon, I left. Passing once more by the walls of remembrance in the lobby, I realized that our nation was now at war. And Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were the enemy.

  As I got back onto the George Washington Parkway, I called Nicole Segura, the person closest to me, on my cell phone. Hearing her answer, my emotions cracked. My voice tightened; I felt tears of anger and frustration roll down my face. I felt that I had failed my nation again. People were dying because of my inaction. I had chosen a path in life that should have enabled me to defend my country to the utmost of my ability. But as commanding officer of USS Cole, I had not been able to prevent those fifty-four crew members from being killed or injured on my watch, and I had remained publicly silent about the entire event. Now, as the Twin Towers burned in New York, I called myself to task for my silence. “I can’t believe this is happening. It’s my fault,” I told Nicole on the phone. “I have kept my mouth shut for eleven months and tried to get my career back on track, and now look at what it has cost my country. I should have done something, anything to forewarn the Navy and the nation about this son of a bitch. Oh, God, why is this happening to me again?” It was my sworn duty to protect my country, and I had failed yet again.

  As I got closer to the Pentagon, Nicole suddenly broke off the conversation. “Oh my God, Jim Miklaszewski is on NBC News at the Pentagon saying that it was just hit.”

  A calmness suddenly settled over me. It was a feeling I had not experienced since the attack in Ade. Nicole told me later that it was as if a curtain had come down on my emotions. I became very calm and measured, intensely focused on what had just happened and what I could do to help.

  Through the front window of my car I could see the billowing column of black smoke rising into the clear blue sky. I told Nicole, “Yes, the Pentagon has taken a hit. You can see the smoke and flames. I don’t know what happened. Call my folks and let them know I’m okay. I don’t know when I’ll be home. It’s going to be a long day. Pack things up in case the city takes another hit and you have to get out of town.”

  No one knew how big or complex this attack might become. As I neared the Pentagon, I pulled onto the main highway, 395 South, and parked on the shoulder by Boundary Channel Drive. People evacuating the building on the Potomac side were just starting to reach the grass area. Flames shot into the air 100 to 120 feet above the building, and clouds of greasy, black smoke filled the air. Even from where I was, on the opposite side of the building from where the terrorists had crashed American Airlines Flight 77, I could smell burning jet fuel. A Virginia State trooper and two Arlington County police cars quickly joined me at the ramp. I introduced myself and offered to help them manage traffic flow.

  Over the next few hours, the officers and I directed traffic to get emergency vehicles and ambulances to where they were needed. We also made the decision to stop buses and load them with Pentagon evacuees. The police told the bus operators to drive down 395 and stop as people needed, to get them closer to home. The Washington Metro rail system and its station at the Pentagon had shut down altogether.

  Amid the horror, I ran into one of my co-workers, Commander Cathy Knowles, a brilliant, hardworking lawyer, walking up the road. Luckily, our office was exactly on the opposite side of where the aircraft had impacted. Relieved at having found me alive and well, she reported that everyone in the office had evacuated the building. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I’m out here directing traffic,” I answered.

  “I can’t believe you,” she said, with an astounded look. “With everything that has gone on in your life, here you are again out here doing things. We’ve all been told to go home and call tomorrow to see whether we go back to work or not.”

  “I’ll be out here for the rest of the day, but I’ll eventually get home,” I replied. “Let me know what we decide to do tomorrow.” I found some compensation for my feeling of inadequacy in just doing what was needed out there on the road, helping people.

  Minutes later, a large black Ford Expedition with blue flashing lights roared by. Abruptly screeching to a halt as smoke curled up from the tires, the SUV backed up to where I was standing with police officers. The side window rolled down and there I found myself talking to one of the FBI agents who had been working the USS Cole criminal case: Special Agent Mark Whitworth, an explosives technician I had met in Pascagoula, Mississippi, after the ship returned to the United States. He asked the same question as Cathy: “What are you doing out here? Haven’t you had enough of this stuff?”

  I spent the next eight hours working with the police officers. Around 1700, the situation had quieted down considerably. Although the Pentagon continued to burn through the night, there was nothing more to do. It was time to go home, where, sunburned, tired, and emotionally exhausted, I found Nicole and gave her a big hug. We watched the news on television. I was dumbfounded at seeing the footage of the Twin Towers collapsing, even though I had heard over the car radio when it had happened.

  As a professional military officer, my job was to protect my country. It had been a long eleven months since the attack on USS Cole. During that time, my crew, their families, and I had all silently watched as our political and military leadership did nothing in response. Could I have pressed harder for actions that might have prevented the appalling disaster of the day we had just lived through? I did not know. But I did know that now, our country would finally be ready to respond. We would take action at last to avenge these terrorist attacks and prevent a recurrence.

  My nation was at war and, at that moment, my resolve to help defend it was stronger than ever.

  1

  Destination USS Cole

  GROWING UP IN CARSON CITY, NEVADA, in the 1970s, I never dreamed of becoming an officer in the Navy. My dream was to fly. As a teenager I would go the local airport about a mile from home just to sit on the edge of the runway and watch the planes. My father had earned a private pilot’s license years earlier, but eventually let it lapse. Even so, I can still vividly remember the few flights I took with him.

  A small parachute drop zone stood just off the airport, out in the middle of the sagebrush. I loved to watch the skydivers jump from small airplanes, then slowly drift to a solid landing in the gravel. When I turned sixteen, I asked my parents for permission to make a skydive: No!! I would have to bide my time until the opportunity came. When eventually I began skydiving myself, I found that looking down with eyes wide open as the ground rushed up at hundreds of feet per second gradually sharpened my ability to integrate and analyze inputs from all my senses—that or miscalculate the time for the parachute to open and break my fall. The capability would serve me well in the career I finally chose.

  My father had moved the family to Nevada when he was offered the opportunity to become the first psychologist for the Nevada State Prison system. My mother, a schoolteacher, started work in 1970 for the Carson City School District and continued teaching at the high school until her retirement a few years ago. My sister, Kelly, who is two years younger than me, also graduated from Carson High School, attended the University of Nevada, Reno, and is a schoolteacher today in California.

  During my junior year, the opportunity to attend one of our country’s military academies loomed larger and larger in my mind as an option to consider for college. Just prior to my senior year, I made a decision to become politically active and, in a giant leap, ran for Student Body President and won. In 1977, I received two appointments: one to West
Point for the U.S. Military Academy and the other to Annapolis, to the U.S. Naval Academy. I had no real idea of what lay ahead for me, but the Navy seemed to offer the greatest flexibility in a choice of career and profession: at graduation, I could become an officer in the Marines or Navy. I could even become a pilot.

  I earned my U.S. Navy gold military parachute jump wings while in Annapolis. However, when I obtained my commission as an ensign on graduation day in 1981, I chose to serve in surface combatant ships such as destroyers and cruisers—a career path that also required the acquisition and application of skills in air and submarine warfare—and went immediately to Surface Warfare Officer School in Newport, Rhode Island. At the end of the course that December, I was so anxious to report to my first ship that I drove straight from my graduation ceremony in Newport to a shipyard in Chester, Pennsylvania. I reported for duty in my service dress-blue uniform the next morning aboard the tank landing ship USS Fairfax County.

  At the time, the ship was in dry dock. Walking up the “brow,” as the Navy calls a gangplank, I had my records tucked under my arm and was ready to go to work. I was to serve as main propulsion assistant, in charge of about forty men who ran the six main diesel engines, three diesel generators, and the boilers and evaporators for making steam and fresh water, and managing the fuel and lubricants for all this equipment. I smartly saluted the ship’s ensign, the U.S. flag flying over the stern, turned to the officer of the deck, and said, “Request permission to come aboard.” When he responded, “Permission granted,” my real career in the U.S. Navy had finally started!