Enemies

by Tim Weiner

  15. “It hurt all of us deeply”: Bolz oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  16. “There is a way to untie the Watergate knot”: Woodward notes, October 9, 1972, Harry Ransom Center, www.hrc.utexas.edu​/exhibitions/web/​woodstein/deepthroat/felt.

  17. “They would meet at the end of the day”: Daly oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  18. “We know what’s leaked”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 19, 1972.

  19. “we’ll screw up our source”: The White House knew thanks to Roswell Gilpatric—a lawyer for Time and once JFK’s deputy secretary of defense. The magazine’s top editors had ordered their reporter, Sandy Smith, to identify Felt as his own source. Then they betrayed his confidence by telling Gilpatric, who told his friend John Mitchell that Felt was leaking the FBI’s secrets.

  20. “They would probably ask you”: Nixon White House tapes, Feb. 16, 1973; Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 152–77.

  36. “THE BUREAU CANNOT SURVIVE”

  1. An FBI agent interviewed the Iraqi: Finnegan testimony, United States v. Khalid Mohammed el-Jessem, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 73 CR 500, March 6, 1993.

  The case against el-Jessem, aka Kahlid Jawary, is reconstructed here from the federal court records of his 1993 trial; a partially declassified National Security Agency history, “The First Round: NSA’s Efforts Against International Terrorism in the 1970’s”; an FBI situation report sent out under Director L. Patrick Gray’s name, “Black September Organization Activities,” dated March 25, 1973; and Santo F. Russo, “In re Extradition of Khaled Mohammed El Jassem: The Demise of the Political Offense Provision in U.S.-Italian Relations,” Fordham International Law Journal 16, no. 4 (1992). After serving sixteen years of his sentence, the Iraqi was deported to the Sudan in February 2009.

  2. “The Bureau cannot survive”: Nixon White House tapes, March 1, 1973.

  3. “For Christ’s sake”: Nixon White House tapes, March 1, 1973.

  4. “The quid pro quo”: Nixon White House tapes, March 13, 1973.

  5. “Dean had lied to us”: Gebhardt to Baker, “Subject: Confirmation,” March 7, 1973, FBI Watergate Special Prosecutor Files.

  6. “I would have to conclude”: Hearings on the Nomination of L. Patrick Gray, Senate Judiciary Committee, March 22, 1973.

  7. “Gray is dead”: Nixon White House tapes, March 22, 1973.

  8. “Dean has apparently decided”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, p. 238.

  9. “I’m worried”: Nixon White House tapes, April 17, 1973.

  10. “This is stupidity”: Nixon White House tapes, April 26, 1973.

  11. “I had never seen”: Ruckelshaus speech to National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys, Oct. 3, 2009.

  12. “Felt—everybody’s to know”: Nixon White House tapes, May 12, 1973.

  13. “a dangerous game we were playing”: FBI Special Agent Nick Stames interview with John H. Mitchell, May 11, 1973, FBI/FOIA.

  14. “I don’t think a cop should run the Bureau”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 25, 1971. There were strong rumors at the FBI that Nixon’s choice had come down to either Clarence Kelley or Bill Sullivan. The FBI’s Paul Daly said: “Kelley told me that when he went in to interview with the President … he sat beside Sullivan, and Sullivan went in first and came out, then he went in. And it was a very close call.” Nixon’s available presidential records do not confirm that Sullivan was signed in at the White House that day.

  15. “I was shocked by the wounds”: Clarence M. Kelley and James Kirkpatrick Davis, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director (Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews, McMeel & Parker, 1987), p. 116.

  37. HOUSE OF CARDS

  1. “The FBI engaged in a prolonged series”: Socialist Workers Party v. Attorney General; 73 Civ. 3150; 642 F. Supp. 1357 (Southern District of New York).

  2. “sirens, endless streams of sirens”: Hahn oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  3. “It was done clandestinely”: Dyson oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  4. “Why not add the FBI?”: Memorandum of Conversation, Oval Office, Jan. 4, 1975, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.

  5. “The FBI may be the sexiest part of this”: Memorandum of Conversation, White House, Feb. 20, 1975, GRFL.

  6. “designed for the Civil War era”: Kelley to Attorney General, Aug. 7, 1974, FBI/FOIA.

  7. “warrantless searches”: John C. Kenney, Acting Assistant Attorney General, filing in U.S. v. Ehrlichman, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, May 9, 1975.

  8. a die-hard believer in the Bureau: Healy oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  9. “the long line of Attorneys General”: Church Committee, Federal Bureau of Investigation, at 1–2 (statement of Chairman Frank Church).

  10. “government monitoring”: Testimony of Attorney General Edward H. Levi, FBI Oversight: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Committee on the Judiciary, April 6, 1976.

  11. “Nobody wants to work terrorism”: Dyson oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  38. “A STATE OF CONTINUAL DANGER”

  1. “knowledgeably, knowingly, intentionally deceived”: Kelley transcript, Meet the Press, Aug. 8, 1976.

  2. “very little bad news”: Kelley and Davis, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director, pp. 39–40.

  3. “an FBI agent appeared at my door”: Edward H. Levi, address to Los Angeles County Bar Association, Nov. 18, 1976.

  4. “You’re going to have to let me think”: Daly oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  5. “We don’t ask our agents to squeal”: Kelley news conference, July 14, 1975, FBI/FOIA/Black Bag Jobs file, Vol. 13, p. 82.

  6. “Dear Clarence”: Felt to Kelley, personal communication, June 20, 1974, FBI/FOIA/Felt file, Vol. 10, p. 169.

  7. A man’s home is his castle: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  8. “Safety from external danger”: Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist no. 8.

  9. “One of the things that disturbs me”: Kelley confirmation hearings, Senate Judiciary Committee, June 19, 1973.

  10. “The superhuman image”: Kelley public statement, FBI headquarters, Aug. 11, 1976.

  11. “a crippled and beleaguered FBI”: Kelley public statement, FBI headquarters, Aug. 11, 1976.

  12. “He had these steely blue eyes”: Boynton oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  13. “do the work”: Webster oral history, Miller Center of Public Affairs, presidential oral history program, Aug. 21, 2002.

  14. “to pretend that we have a charter”: Webster oral history, Miller Center.

  15. “What was missing”: Webster oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  16. “a bastard godchild”: Ault interview, FBI/FBIOH.

  17. “I had no idea”: Mason oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  18. he was one of the very few: During the 1980s and 1990s, the Bureau wasted well over $1 billion on computer systems that never worked. Among the first of these failed technologies was a 1980s database called the Terrorist Information System. It was supposed to provide instant readouts on 200,000 people and 3,000 organizations. “Great concept,” said Richard A. Marquise, later one of the FBI’s leading terrorism investigators. “Totally useless.”

  19. “an incredible assault”: Webster et al., “A Review of FBI Security Programs,” Commission for Review of FBI Security Programs, Justice Department, March 2002.

  39. THE PRICE OF SILENCE

  1. “one of the most gut-wrenching investigations”: Pimentel oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  2. “blatantly false”: Revell testimony, Senate Intelligence Committee, Feb. 23, 1988.

  3. From 1988 onward: In Oct. 2009, the United States Department of Homeland Security began judicial proceedings to deport Vides Casanova on the grounds that he had tortured political prisoners in El Salvador. A final judgment was scheduled as this book went to press in January 2012.

  4. “They were skillful collectors”: Webster oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  5. “There is little or no doubt”: Hunter oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
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br />   6. “At first he was less than enthused”: Oliver “Buck” Revell and Dwight Williams, A G-Man’s Journal (New York: Pocket Books, 1998), p. 217.

  7. “That was my first experience with espionage”: York oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  8. “Mathews considered himself”: Matens memoir reprinted in FBI/FBIOH.

  9. “I did not want to turn the FBI”: Webster oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  10. “Reagan was preoccupied”: Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 397.

  11. “The Attorney General doesn’t”: Revell deposition, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran/Contra Affair, June 11, 1987, pp. 909ff.

  12. “I was sort of odd man out”: Ibid.

  13. “A real bombshell”: Vice President Bush’s diary entry for Nov. 22 and his FBI interview on Dec. 12, 1986, are described in the Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Aug. 4, 1993.

  14. “We probably could have overcome”: Duane R. Clarridge with Digby Diehl, A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 371.

  15. “effectively neutralized”: Revell, A G-Man’s Journal, p. 296.

  16. “down to zero”: Revell testimony, House Committee on International Relations, Oct. 3, 2001.

  17. “terrorism was not a big deal”: Marquise oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  40. MOSAIC

  1. “The FBI was not set up”: Marquise oral history. The FBI’s work on Pan Am 103 is minutely described in Marquise’s book on the case: SCOTBOM: Evidence and the Lockerbie Investigation (New York: Algora Publishing, 2006).

  2. “fearlessly moved”: Robert S. Mueller III combat citation (2nd Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Regiment, 3rd Marine Division), Dec. 11, 1968.

  3. “Getting Director Sessions’ full attention”: Baker oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  4. Megrahi was indicted: Qaddafi turned Megrahi over to the long arm of international law in 1999. He was found guilty by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands in 2001, but released in 2009 after a diagnosis of cancer and threats against the British government by Qaddafi. In February 2011, Qaddafi’s justice minister, after defecting during the NATO attack on Libya, said unequivocally that Qaddafi had commanded the bombing of Pan Am 103.

  41. THE BLIND SHEIKH

  1. “destroying the structure of their civilized pillars”: United States v. Abdel Rahman, 93 Cr. 181, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Government exhibit 76T.

  2. “If it had been properly”: Revell testimony, House Committee on International Relations, Oct. 3, 2001.

  3. “We were feeling pretty good”: Revell testimony, House Committee on International Relations, Oct. 3, 2001.

  4. “I believe the defendant”: State of New York v. El Sayyid Nosair, sentencing hearing, Jan. 29, 1992, Manhattan Criminal Court.

  5. “Salem’s penetration had”: Andrew C. McCarthy, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (New York: Encounter Books, 2009), p. 10.

  6. “We couldn’t let you make a bomb”: Salem recorded his conversations with both the FBI and the targets of the investigation on his own; transcripts of the tapes quoted here were introduced as trial evidence in United States v. Abdel Rahman. As Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy wrote: “Salem had installed a home recording system that would have made the Nixon White House blush. He would sometimes wear amateur body wires to meetings with FBI agents and cops. He was not systematic about it. When he was out of tape and wanted to make new recordings, he would haphazardly grab an old tape and record over it. But what tapes he had, he maintained—here, there and everywhere in the clutter of his home. All sixty-seven of them, capturing well over two thousand conversations which I was just thrilled beyond words to have to share with over a dozen salivating defense lawyers. Salem wanted to help the FBI and, in his supreme self-confidence, believed he could infiltrate the jihad group. He would not try it, however, unless he was given iron-clad assurance that he was involved only in intelligence-gathering, just as it had been with the Russians, and not in an investigation regarding which his public testimony might one day be required … The [FBI] agents misled Salem, Salem lied to the agents, and it ended in a disastrous parting of the ways.”

  7. “Egypt’s most militant Sunni cleric”: Unsigned CIA analysis, “Hizballah Ties to Egyptian Fundamentalists,” in CIA Near East and South Asia Review, April 24, 1987, CIA/FOIA.

  8. “Quickly, when I came into office”: Reno testimony, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (9/11 Commission), April 14, 2004.

  9. “The speed at which this occurs”: Hahn oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  10. “I told you they will blow bombs”: United States v. Abdel Rahman.

  11. “The big house, I will take care of it”: United States v. Abdel Rahman.

  42. FLAWS IN THE ARMOR

  1. “He came to believe”: Louis J. Freeh with Howard Means, My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror (New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), pp. 177ff. Freeh’s book is a classic Washington memoir, though often dubious and disingenuous. I cite it only to reflect Freeh’s direct experience. Freeh distorts many aspects of his dealings with the White House. A small case in point: The FBI created a pointless controversy after it mistakenly sent the Clinton White House the files on four hundred people who had held security clearances under Presidents Reagan and Bush. When these files turned up, Freeh’s aides asserted that Clinton had solicited them. That was false. But Freeh publicly protested that the White House was smearing the good name of the FBI. This was a symptom of a far more serious problem.

  2. “One of the greatest flaws”: Steinberg oral history, Sept. 27, 2000, National Security Council Project, Brookings Institution/Center for International and Security Studies, University of Maryland; “His mistrust of the White House”: Clinton’s national security aides Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin reported in The Age of Sacred Terror (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 301. More pithily, Clinton’s political aide John Podesta told the reporter John Harris, then at The Washington Post, that Freeh’s first name never passed Clinton’s lips: it was always Fucking Freeh, as in Fucking Freeh has screwed us again.

  3. When President Clinton expressed: Freeh, My FBI, p. 263. The FBI’s expenditure of working hours on the Chinese campaign contributions case exceeded all terrorism investigations from 1995 to 2002: “Federal Bureau of Investigation Casework and Human Resource Allocation,” Office of the Inspector General, Justice Department, September 2003. On the Katrina Leung case and its suppression during Freeh’s tenure at the FBI, see “A Review of the FBI’s Handling and Oversight of FBI Asset Katrina Leung,” Office of the Inspector General, Justice Department, May 2006. FBI Agent Smith was sentenced to three years’ probation and a $10,000 fine. FBI Agent Cleveland—“a very religious man who was universally well regarded, dedicated to the FBI, and considered a mainstay in the FBI’s China Program in the 1980s and early 1990s,” according to the inspector general’s report—was not charged with a crime. As the investigation surfaced, Cleveland was the chief of security at a leading American nuclear weapons research laboratory.

  4. “Merely solving this type”: Freeh’s statement comes from the FBI’s fiscal 1995 budget request to Congress.

  5. “We allowed him”: Schiliro interview by Lowell Bergman and Tim Weiner, Sept. 18, 2001. PBS broadcast, “Looking for Answers,” Oct. 9, 2001. The facts of Yousef’s arrest are taken from the records of his criminal trial, United States v. Yousef, and the appeals court’s summary in the case. The FBI did not arrest Yousef in a safe house owned by Osama bin Laden, as was widely reported at the time.

  6. “to make the American people”: Pellegrino testimony, United States v. Yousef (appeals court record dated April 4, 2003).

  7. “disrupt, dismantle a
nd destroy”: The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 22 USC 2237.

  8. “We will not allow terrorism to succeed”: Presidential Decision Directive 39, “U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism,” June 21, 1995, declassified Jan. 27, 2009.

  9. “exhausted, many sick”: Freeh testimony, Senate and House Joint Intelligence Committee, hereinafter Joint Inquiry, Oct. 8, 2002.

  10. “Khobar represented”: Ibid.

  11. “I have information about people”: Al-Fadl testimony, U.S. v. Osama bin Laden, 98 Cr. 1023, Feb. 7, 2001.

  12. “no one was thinking”: Watson interview, Joint Inquiry staff report, “Strategic Analysis,” p. 338.

  13. “The balance of power has shifted”: O’Neill speech, National Strategy Forum, Chicago, Illinois, June 11, 1997.

  14. “double the ‘shoe-leather’ ”: Freeh testimony, Senate Intelligence Committee, Jan. 28, 1998.

  15. “almost the primary responsibility”: Clarke interview and Clarke testimony, 9/11 Commission.

  16. “Freeh should have been spending” and “We have to smash”: Richard C. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), pp. 116, 219.

  17. “a Stalinist show trial”: Clinton interview, Ken Gormley, The Death of American Virtue (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 249.

  18. “I wanted to hurt the Bureau”: Ault oral history, FBI/FBIOH. Ault debriefed Pitts at length after his conviction.

  43. AN EASY TARGET

  1. “The cell members in East Africa”: The message was first published by Frontline in a PBS/New York Times documentary series, “Hunting Bin Laden,” and later entered into evidence in U.S. v. Bin Laden.

  2. “I was introduced to al Qaeda”: Plea hearing, United States of America v. Ali Mohamed, 98 Cr. 1023, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Oct. 20, 2000.