Front Burner

by Kirk S. Lippold

  Meanwhile, the Navy could only discuss the issue of the similar remains from Cole. Later that month, a proposal slowly worked its way up the chain of command toward Secretary of the Navy Gordon England. Initially, the proposal called for a ceremony, similar to the one just completed at Arlington National Cemetery for the victims of the Pentagon attack. But the military leadership of the Navy became concerned about having to deal with additional negative publicity—about the attack on Cole, the delay, the lack of communication with the families, and the future cost of identifying the remains should it eventually become technologically feasible to do so. To avoid and resolve these prickly issues, the remains would be buried at sea.

  It was two months later, in November of 2002, over two years after the attack on USS Cole, that the families of the victims of the attack were finally informed of these additional unidentified remains. None expressed any reservations over the Navy’s plan for their burial at sea, and on December 9, they were consigned to the deep.

  Seventeen sailors ruthlessly killed, thirty-seven more injured and scarred in unimaginable ways, and one of the most modern twenty-first century destroyers crippled by a devastating terrorist attack costing $250 million to repair: October 12, 2000, irreversibly changed the way the Navy conducts its operations across the globe. While many view the attack on USS Cole as a professional embarrassment, something that should not have happened, the heroism of the crew speaks to how well they were prepared to face evil in its purest form and defeat it. The crew denied the terrorists the victory they sought. The crew of USS Cole saved their ship and their shipmates. All of them are my heroes.

  Epilogue

  DURING MY VISITS IN EARLY 2001 with the families of the sailors killed in the attack, I was often asked why no one was being punished. Why, despite what President Clinton had promised the nation, did the government appear to be doing nothing to hold the terrorists accountable for killing their loved ones in a brutal suicide bombing? I tried as best I could to answer the questions; sometimes to their satisfaction and at other times to their great frustration, because there really were no clear-cut answers that would temper their anguish or relieve their utter sense of loss.

  I was as troubled as they were. Why did the attack against USS Cole go unpunished?

  Richard A. Clarke, the White House official in charge of counter-terrorism under presidents Clinton and Bush from 1998 to 2003, attempted to explain the inaction at the end of the Clinton administration by writing: “Neither CIA nor FBI would state the obvious: al Qaeda did it. We knew there was a large al Qaeda cell in Yemen. There was also a large cell of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, but that group had now announced its complete merger into al Qaeda, so what difference did it make which group did the attack?” In discussions with senior administration officials, Clarke wrote, “It was difficult to gain support for a retaliatory strike when neither FBI nor CIA would say that al Qaeda did it.”1

  Clarke’s statement about the reasons senior officials did not order action was later confirmed by the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, the 9/11 Commission, in a report published in 2004: “Neither the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration launched a military response for the Cole attack. Sandy Berger and other senior policymakers said that, while most counter-terrorism officials quickly pointed the finger at al Qaeda, they never received the sort of definitive judgment from the CIA or the FBI that al Qaeda was responsible that they would need before launching military operations.”2

  William S. Cohen, the Clinton administration’s secretary of defense, said just before the Bush administration took over, “With respect to what action will be taken, we have to be very careful and deliberative and sure of identifying those who . . . were responsible for this act of terrorism, because any action that we take at that time must be responsible. And I think that you would be the first to be critical of the administration if we should simply lash out and say we have a number of suspects and then take measures that would inflict punishment upon them in addition to bringing them before the bars of justice if we, in fact, were not very prudent and responsible in making those determinations. So we’ll have to wait for more factual analysis, more investigative work by the FBI. And then that will be the responsibility of the new administration to decide what action should be taken.”3

  But, as the 9/11 Commission staff later reported, “The new team at the Pentagon did not push for a response for the Cole, according to Secretary of Defense [Donald] Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy. Wolfowitz told us that by the time the new administration was in place, the Cole incident was ‘stale.’ The 1998 cruise missile strikes showed UBL and al Qaeda that they had nothing to fear from a U.S. response, Wolfowitz said. For his part, Rumsfeld also thought too much time had passed. He worked on the force protection recommendations developed in the aftermath of the USS Cole attack, not response options.”4

  Clarke, in his book, recalled watching limousines head back to the Pentagon, after a White House meeting on Cole just after the attack, with his State Department counterpart, Mike Sheehan. “What’s it gonna take, Dick?” Sheehan demanded. “Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?”5

  As I prepared to turn over command of Cole, the handwriting was clearly on the wall. President Clinton had been briefed on the Cole investigation on December 21, 2000, but unwilling to risk military action based mostly on their intelligence, the CIA would not definitively say it was bin Laden that was behind the attack, even though they had ample evidence to draw that conclusion. Ali Soufan and other FBI agents directly involved with the investigation in Aden, however, were quickly convinced that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the ship, but their leadership and the senior administration officials the FBI was reporting to remained unmoved by the growing body of evidence they were developing, paralyzed by fear of the political costs of either retaliatory action, or of its failure.6 Other terrorist actions immediately after the attack, confirmed through various government intelligence channels, provided further proof of al Qaeda’s complicity. Many in government were surprised that the President did nothing. An act of war had been committed and as the months went by, even with two ongoing investigations, the Clinton administration was interested only in wrapping up the enquiries. The Bush administration was just as dismissive toward the attack, taking a “we’re forward-looking, not backward-acting” attitude. The standard of evidence required to take action kept getting raised and then sidestepped. No one appeared interested or eager to view this attack in the larger strategic context of what it might mean for U.S. national interests.

  CIA Director Tenet later said he was surprised that Clinton did not think he had enough information, and that Sandy Berger never told him the President wanted more. It appeared to most that this was a situation in which they were trying to build a case that would stand up in a court of law, not meet a standard for a military strike. And nothing changed after the Bush administration took office, for all George Bush’s tough talk during the election campaign about terrorism.

  Not until September 11, 2001, that is, when al Qaeda got the attention of the President, the rest of the U.S. government, and the whole country. As I had told Charles Allen at the CIA headquarters in Langley the morning of that day of infamy, I feared it would take an attack that killed thousands of Americans to make us realize we were in a war with terrorism that would not end until we started striking back in a meaningful manner. Now it had happened, and soon we did strike back. But it would take almost ten years for Osama bin Laden to be finally brought to summary justice, and it would be even longer before Abdul Rahim al Nashiri, the on-scene coordinator of the Cole attack, would face a military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay for his actions.

  Back in the Pentagon immediately following the September 11 attacks, I focused on my work on the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The United Nations and multilateral affairs office of the JCS that I was assigned to became the lead office for a new mission: detain
ee policy.

  The nation, or at least the Pentagon, was definitely on a war footing, and the feeling around the building was one of dedicated and focused intensity as the military prepared to finally respond to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda’s attacks on the U.S. mainland. The USS Enterprise battle group, commanded by my former commanding officer, Rear Admiral John G. Morgan Jr., had recently concluded operations in the Middle East and was preparing to return to the United States when, on the day of the September 11 attacks, he took the unprecedented step of turning the battle group around and steaming at best speed toward the coast of Pakistan in preparation to go to war.

  Days later, military strikes would commence. At some point in those initial days, he had the commanding officer of Enterprise, Captain James “Sandy” Winnefeld, send me a photograph of a 2,000 pound Joint Direct Attack Munition with writing scrawled on it by the ordnance handlers on board: REMEMBER THE COLE. It brought a big smile to my face as I passed it on to Chris Peterschmidt and several other members of the crew.

  In the Pentagon, while everyone knew it, no one outwardly spoke of the fact that already the United States was inserting Special Operations forces and other government paramilitary forces into Afghanistan to attack and topple the Afghan government, headed by the Taliban, which had given unfettered sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.

  In our Joint Staff office, everyone understood that combat operations would result in enemy combatants being taken prisoner. Very quickly, the Department of Defense lawyers, in consultation with the Departments of Justice and State as well as the White House, determined that members of the Taliban and al Qaeda would not merit all the privileges of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions because they did not meet all of the necessary criteria required under the provisions of the treaty. Those criteria recognize members of regular military forces carrying arms openly and wearing uniforms, war correspondents and supply or maintenance contractors with them, and civilians resisting invasion by an occupying force—not terrorists operating without insignia or any association with a government or state.

  Since neither the Taliban nor the terrorists belonging to al Qaeda met these criteria, their capture put them in a unique legal category not clearly defined by either treaty or international law provisions. Eventually, the Bush administration chose to call them unlawful enemy combatants, and within a few weeks determined where to house them—the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

  The unique irony of my working detainee policy issues on how to fight, detain, and interrogate the same terrorists and their supporters who had launched the attack on Cole was not lost on me. I found a great deal of solace and satisfaction in my job as I focused on doing the detailed and thorough staff work necessary to support the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, in his role as the principal military advisor to the President and secretary of defense. It was a common joke around the office that we were expected to toil at least a half-day on the job—0600 to 1800 at a minimum—initially six and sometimes seven days a week as the war effort got organized and kicked off. The enemy was not resting and neither were we.

  As the relationship of our office and those working the detainee mission became better defined over the ensuing months, I became exposed to the true nature of the enemy we were fighting. They were ruthless, well trained, patient, and had no moral restraint in how they brutally carried out their version of warfare. My crew and I had already been exposed to the cruel and amoral nature of the way these terrorists operated under the guise of a religious banner. Now, those who had experienced the September 11 attacks began to comprehend what we had lived through in Aden. The destroyed section of the Pentagon, the obliterated Twin Towers in New York, and the smoldering hole in the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, served as stark daily reminders that we had been a nation at war for years, but only now had come to grips with it and were finally taking action. While I was glad to see the nation finally doing something, it was equally apparent that Cole and the crew had rapidly fallen into the shadow of this larger national event, and that the Navy was all too pleased to finally be out of the news as the most recent victim of a terrorist attack.

  It was in early 2002 that a Naval Academy classmate of mine, Captain Neal Kusumoto, contacted me about traveling to Newport, Rhode Island, to discuss the aftermath of the attack on Cole with those who were preparing, like me just two short years earlier, to assume commanding officer and executive officer positions on ships. These prospective CO and XO courses were taught five times a year. Initially I demurred, with the excuse that I was too busy with Joint Staff work to take time off to impart lessons learned. In reality, I was not yet ready to face discussing the matter in any detail. It was still too painful a reality, and in many ways, I was still debating if I wanted (or needed) to ever talk about the attack again.

  Finally, after missing three classes, Neal called me up and in a humorous but blunt manner informed me that he was smarter than me and therefore had graduated higher in the class standings than me, which therefore naturally made him senior to me regarding this outstanding request to teach these new COs and XOs. Sensing where the conversation was headed, I laughed and in August 2002 arrived at the Surface Warfare Officer School in Newport to teach not only the CO/XO course, but also the damage control assistant class held just across the street from the main building. In the future, it would be those young ensigns and lieutenants (junior grade) that would set the damage control standards for their ships. They had best be prepared, just like Nat Fogg and Sean Dubbs, for what might happen in an instant of time. For the next four and a half years, covering twenty-three classes, I never missed the opportunity to spend several hours with each of those two groups and discuss in detailed and sometimes graphic descriptions what the crew and I did to prepare for and then respond to that terrorist attack. Over time, the department head classes were also included, with those valuable lessons learned gladly shared with them as well.

  During the eleven months following the attack on Cole, the Yemeni government became more and more recalcitrant and unwilling to cooperate with the FBI in providing evidence and access to suspects, such as al Badawi and a new suspect, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al Quso, who were in custody for their suspected involvement in the plot. Almost immediately after the September 11 attacks, however, the Yemenis became more compliant and offered the FBI unprecedented access to the al Qaeda terrorists in their custody. It was also during this time that the file on exactly who the principal conspirators were in the attack was narrowed down to five key individuals: [Khallad] bin Attash, Jamal al Badawi, al Nashiri, al Quso, and Abu Ali al Harithi. Later interrogations by Soufan and others clearly established that Khallad had also been one of the organizers of the September 11 hijackings. At the end of 1999, he had personally taken two of the hijackers who would crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon to a meeting in Bangkok, where he also collected $36,000 he had ordered al Quso and Ibrahim al Thawar to bring him, ostensibly to finance the planned attack on a Navy ship in Aden. Al Quso later confessed to Soufan that he had been ordered to videotape the attack when it took place, and al Thawar was of course one of the two suicide bombers who blew up Cole. But the $36,000, Soufan later concluded, “had in all likelihood been used for the 9/11 attack, probably paying for tickets for two of the hijackers” who carried it out. The attack on Cole, like the attacks on the embassies in Africa in 1998, was absolutely central to what happened in Washington and New York City on September 11, 2001.7

  The Cole families continued to undergo a series of highs and lows as the war dragged on. While those responsible for attacking the ship were being killed or captured, it was usually seen as being done in conjunction with the larger picture of September 11 taking the stage, front and center. Given the overwhelming publicity surrounding the September 11 families, along with the extensive benefits and financial compensation received by them, the Cole family members were put in an awkward position. They did not want to be seen as whiners but they also did
not want to be forgotten by the nation, while the Navy had urged them to move on. The crew and families never complained, but it was always a source of friction, especially because they were kept at arm’s length and at times ignored by the Navy in the process.

  On a good note, the FBI meticulously continued to build their case and make steady progress so that eventually justice and accountability could be meted out to the perpetrators. Among the first apprehended by the Yemeni government was al Badawi, who had bought the truck and trailer used to launch the boat full of explosives and transported them to Aden. It was a particularly hard blow to all the crew and their families to learn that al Badawi had escaped from custody in Yemen in April of 2003. Many took the news of his escape as a sign that the U.S. government was unwilling to pressure President Saleh to hold al Qaeda terrorists in his country accountable for their actions.

  Unknown to the crew and families but related to my work on the Joint Staff, I was quietly briefed in early 2003 that in a highly classified operation, the CIA, operating under a Presidential Finding by President Bush, had conducted a targeted operation in Yemen that had killed al Harithi, along with five other al Qaeda operatives, in an RQ-1 armed Predator remote-controlled drone strike with a Hellfire missile. It was the first operation of its kind, and while the crew and families could not learn of this blow for vengeance for several more years, I certainly enjoyed the deep sense of satisfaction that action was finally being taken on our behalf.

  Unfortunately, the Yemeni government continued to prove its ineptness as a reliable partner in the War on Terror. Al Badawi was recaptured in March 2004, and at his trial by a Yemeni court in September 2004, along with other participants in the plot to carry out the attack, he and al Nashiri (in absentia) were convicted and sentenced to death by Yemen. The other four defendants were sentenced to five to ten years’ imprisonment. After hearing his sentence, al Badawi was allowed by the Yemeni government to declare, “This is an unjust verdict, this is an American verdict. There are no human rights in the world, except for the Americans. All the Muslims in the world are being used to serve American interests.”