At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA

by George Tenet;Bill Harlow

  All the alarm bells were going off at CTC, especially since the millennium period overlapped Ramadan. Jihadists believed the Islamic holy month a propitious time to wage warfare against nonbelievers. In addition, they viewed the millennium as a symbolic deadline for the return of Jerusalem to Muslims. From Cofer Black’s perspective, what we saw in Jordan matched Bin Ladin’s preference for softer targets, his focus on non-Muslim casualties, and his growing interest in the use of chemical agents. CTC’s and Cofer’s view was that the next attack would likely be bigger than East Africa. We told President Clinton that Usama bin Ladin was planning between five and fifteen attacks around the world during the millennium and that some of these might be inside the United States. This set off a frenzy of activity. CIA launched operations in fifty-five countries against thirty-eight separate targets. I must have talked to Sandy Berger, Louis Freeh, and Janet Reno three times a day during this period. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) surveillance warrants were being processed by Fran Townsend at the Department of Justice at a record pace. I made countless phone calls to my counterparts around the world trying to get them to share our anxiety and our efforts.

  We alerted our colleagues to the north about the presence of an Algerian terrorist cell in Canada. At about the same time an alert customs official in Port Angeles, Washington, spotted Ahmad Ressam nervously trying to enter the United States. The thirty-two-year-old Algerian panicked and tried to flee but was arrested. A quantity of nitroglycerin and four timing devices were found hidden in his car. He later admitted to being part of a plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. In looking back, much more should have been made about the significance of this event. While Ressam’s plot was foiled, his arrest signaled that al-Qa’ida was coming here.

  The government was exhausted—our northern border vulnerable, the United States did not have a comprehensive and integrated system of homeland security in place. Borders, visas, airline cockpits, watchlists—all were managed haphazardly. We would pay the price in two years, when the lack of a coherent system of protection would be exploited by terrorists.

  Dick Clarke, the national coordinator for security and counterterrorism, writes in his memoir that at three o’clock on the morning of January 1, 2000, he walked out on the roof of the White House and popped a bottle of champagne to celebrate the fact that the New Year had arrived on the West Coast without a single terrorist assault on the contiguous United States. In his memoir, Louis Freeh says that when the millennium finally passed that early morning, he was too tired to do anything other than go home and fall in bed. I don’t remember the moment arriving or passing, or my celebrating anything. To be sure, the millennium represented a spike in terrorist activity and a serious threat to American interests, but at CIA, the threat was part and parcel of a seamless terrorist onslaught. We had watched this, worried about it, and combated it for years, and we knew we would continue doing so after public attention had waned, the computers had all survived the flip over to a fresh millennium, and the news cameras had deserted Y2K and moved on in search of other stories.

  After the millennium, threat reporting mostly settled down to its usual dull roar. Then, in the late summer of 2000, it began to soar once more. Again with the help of liaison services, the fruit of all the bridge building we had been doing over the last several years, we were able to break up terrorist cells planning attacks against civilian targets in the Gulf region. These operations netted anti-aircraft missiles and hundreds of pounds of explosives and brought a Bin Ladin facilitator to justice.

  Our technological capacity increased dramatically in 2000 when CIA teams deployed to Central Asia and began operating on an experimental basis a new prototype of the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle. This small, remotely controlled aircraft started flying over Afghanistan and sending back truly remarkable real-time reconnaissance video. Sitting in a command center in Washington, Tampa, or anywhere in the world, you could see with great clarity what was going on in a terrorist compound half a world away.

  In the Predator’s very first trial run, on September 28, 2000, we observed a tall man in flowing white robes walking around surrounded by a security detail. While the resolution was not sufficient to make out the man’s face, I don’t know of any analyst who didn’t subsequently conclude that we were looking at UBL. Finally, we now had a real-time capability and did not have to rely solely on secondhand information relayed by our tribal assets or picked up in signals intelligence and analyzed days later. What we were looking at, however fuzzy, could have been the shape of evil. Yet, as technologically dazzling as that was, it was frustrating in almost equal measure. Yes, we might have been looking at UBL, but we were not in a position to do anything about it. Later, after much testing and adjustment, the Predator would carry its own weapons load, but for now about the best the military could do was spin up some more cruise missiles and hope that UBL didn’t move on.

  Then, on October 12, 2000, the undeclared war we were fighting with al-Qa’ida got ratcheted up to a whole new level. Sitting at anchor in port at Aden, in Yemen, the Navy destroyer USS Cole was attacked by a small explosive-laden suicide boat. The ensuing explosion ripped a huge hole in the side of the Cole, rolling it up like the lid of a tin can and killing seventeen American sailors. Only by heroic effort was the crew able to save their ship from sinking.

  In the aftermath of the attack, it was clear that known al-Qa’ida operatives were involved, but neither our intelligence nor the FBI’s criminal investigation could conclusively prove that Usama bin Ladin and his leadership had had authority, direction, and control over the attack. This is a high threshold to cross. The ultimate question policy makers have to determine is what standard of proof should be used before the United States decides to deploy force? It must always be a standard set by policy makers because ultimately it is they who bear the responsibility for actions taken. What’s important from our perspective at CIA is that the FBI investigation had taken primacy in getting to the bottom of the matter.

  During the 9/11 Commission’s investigation, much was made of the fact that the United States did not immediately retaliate for the attack on the Cole. The country was in the middle of the 2000 presidential election, which then turned into a constitutional crisis when no clear winner emerged. Perhaps it would have been difficult to launch new military ventures while the country was fixated on counting chads and Supreme Court votes. Equally important was the fact that we didn’t have any inviting targets. By then we didn’t need any additional excuses to go after UBL or his organization. But simply firing more cruise missiles into the desert wasn’t going to accomplish anything. We needed to get inside the Afghan sanctuary.

  On December 18, 2000, with a month left in the administration, I again wrote to the president and representatives of virtually the entire national security bureaucracy:

  The next several weeks will bring an increased risk of attacks on our country’s interests from one or more Middle Eastern terrorist groups…The volume of credible threat reporting has grown significantly in the past few months, particularly concerning plans by Usama bin Ladin’s organization for new attacks in Europe and the Middle East….

  Our most credible information on bin Ladin activity suggests his organization is looking at US facilities in the Middle East especially the Arabian peninsula, in Turkey and Western Europe. Bin Ladin’s network is global however and capable of attacks in other regions, including the United States.

  Iran and Hezbollah also maintain a worldwide terrorism presence and have an extensive array of off-the-shelf contingency plans for terrorist attacks, beyond their recent focus in Israel and the Palestinian areas.

  We have the most success where local authorities share our concern—such cooperative efforts often produce valuable information about other terrorist plans as happened after the Millennium plot in London.

  Not every government and liaison service shares our concern or is willing to work closely with us, and such resistance often denies us go
od intelligence we could use to predict attacks or disrupt an operation. As a result, pockets exist where terrorists can establish a foothold, plan attacks and carry them out with little warning.

  A new administration would soon arrive, but the old situation awaited it. Al-Qa’ida were still coming at us. There was not a meeting held with a foreign partner or leader where either I or our officers did not register al-Qa’ida as our top priority. Many thought we had become obsessed. Others failed to understand fully how terrorists in their countries might be planning for attacks within ours. There is one important moral to the story: you cannot fight terrorism alone. There were clear limitations to what we could do without the help of like-minded governments.

  The 9/11 Commission suggested that in the run-up to 9/11 policy makers across two administrations did not fully understand the magnitude of the terrorist threat. This is nonsense.

  In authorizing several covert-action authorities, the principal policy makers of the Clinton administration understood fully the nature of the threat we were facing. These documents spelled out in detail why it was necessary to continually ratchet up the pressure against Bin Ladin. These written authorities made clear that Bin Ladin posed a serious, continuing, and imminent threat of violence to U.S. interests throughout the world. They said that CIA considered the threat unprecedented in geographic scope. They took note of the fact that twenty-nine Americans had died during the East African and Cole bombings; that Bin Ladin had a presence in at least sixty countries and had forged ties with Sunni extremists worldwide; that the intelligence community had strong indicators that Bin Ladin intended to conduct or sponsor attacks inside the United States. The documents also made clear that Usama bin Ladin’s organization was aggressively seeking chemical and biological weapons and that he would use them against American official and civilian targets. I know that the most senior decision makers in the Clinton administration understood the magnitude of what we were facing.

  As the new guard arrived, Steve Hadley and Condi Rice also understood the threat as well when they were briefed on the covert authorities they were inheriting as they assumed their jobs.

  Terrorism throughout the 1990s fully engaged the highest levels of our government, and while people can argue about what was or was not done, to me, the knowledge and concern of senior officials was indisputable.

  Very late in the Clinton administration, Sandy Berger asked me, if I were unconstrained by resources and policies, how I would go after Bin Ladin and al-Qa’ida. I asked Cofer Black and his team in CTC to put together a paper that we might present to the new administration—whoever it turned out to be. We called this the “Blue Sky” paper. It was designed to include our best ideas for how the war on terror might proceed if we were free from resource limitations or past policy decisions that had hampered our progress. We sent the paper to Dick Clarke on December 29. Among other things, it called for a significant effort to disrupt al-Qa’ida in its Afghan sanctuary. The paper also recommended major support for the Northern Alliance so that they could take on the Taliban, and it also sought to provide assistance to neighboring states such as Uzbekistan to help them drive the terrorists out of their backyard. There was “no single silver bullet” available to deal with the problem, we wrote. Instead, a multifaceted strategy was needed to produce change.

  To my mind the Blue Sky memo was a compelling blueprint for the future. It was brimming with good ideas—plans and strategies we would roll out less than ten months later, days after 9/11—but the timing of it meant that, for now, most of those good ideas would simply sit in Dick Clarke’s safe and await the new administration.

  CHAPTER 8

  “They’re Coming Here”

  On December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in effect, by a vote of 5–4, that George Bush would be the next president of the United States. If you believe some of my critics, I knew the outcome nearly two years earlier, when CIA headquarters was renamed the “George Bush Center for Intelligence,” after George W.’s father.

  I was pleased to preside at the ceremony on April 26, 1999, honoring the headquarter’s new namesake and one of my predecessors, George H. W. Bush. He is a man still fondly remembered for helping the Agency through a very rough patch when he was DCI two decades previously. But I can’t claim clairvoyance. An act of Congress directed the name change, not me. At the ceremony, I quoted from President Bush’s farewell remarks when he left the Agency in 1977: “I take with me many happy memories,” he said then. “I am leaving, but I am not forgetting. I hope I can find some ways in the years ahead to make the American people understand more fully the greatness that is CIA.”

  Although he served as Director for less than a year, George Bush, with his wife, Barbara, provided Agency employees with a sense of caring and family. They also maintained their connections after his time as DCI ended. As vice president, George Bush chaired a commission looking into the threat of terrorism—and his findings led to the creation of CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. As president he was committed to leveraging the power of intelligence to help him handle the burdens of his office, and he insisted on being personally briefed on the latest intelligence six days a week, just as his son would later do.

  During that visit to the Agency, he and his wife were greeted like rock stars. They were extraordinarily generous with their time, shaking hands, signing autographs, and reconnecting with a CIA workforce that was genuinely fond of both of them. Barbara Bush spoke at an event hosted by our family advisory board in the Agency’s auditorium. The two of them that day left us with a powerful leadership message: Take care of people and they will take care of you. During my tenure as director, 41 (as the first President Bush is known) frequently checked in with me with an encouraging note or phone call. He was always our staunchest public defender.

  That spring day in 1999, I was not worrying about who might occupy the Oval Office almost two years hence. At CIA we pay attention to who might win foreign elections, but we have no special insights on U.S. politics. True, whoever the new president might be, it would have a significant impact on my life.

  Either candidate was likely to want his own DCI, but if the party in power changed along with the president, the odds of my going were greater still. Intellectually, I accepted that fact, but in my heart I wanted to stay because I felt the job was unfinished. Once the Supreme Court ruled in favor of George W. Bush, I figured the odds of my being gone by January 20 had increased.

  David Boren, the former Oklahoma senator and now president of the University of Oklahoma—and one of my closest and most valued mentors—advised me that, if given the opportunity, I should stay on for the first half-year of the new administration, then tender my resignation. That way, he said, I would have worked under presidents of both political persuasions. I also felt that by sticking around I could ease the transition for both the new administration and CIA. Back when he was DCI, the first president Bush offered to stay on at CIA similarly at the start of the Carter administration. Jimmy Carter said, “No, thanks.” Had Carter said yes, it is questionable whether George H. W. Bush would ever have reached the presidency.

  I was in downtown D.C. in late December, racing to some meeting, when I got a call from Dottie, my invaluable special assistant, the “Miss Moneypenny” of CIA. Dottie said that Rich Haver, who was handling the intelligence transition for Dick Cheney, had just come by my office and was all but measuring the place for new drapes. Donald H. Rumsfeld, Cheney’s own esteemed mentor, was going to be the new DCI, Haver gleefully hinted. How soon could I move out? Because the election had been so heavily contested in the courts, the Bush people had gotten a delayed start in filling senior positions. Any day, I expected a call informing me of the name of my successor.

  I remember taking time off at the end of the month so that Stephanie, John Michael, and I could spend Christmas with my brother in New York City, and then head off to Boston to celebrate New Year’s Eve with our closest personal friends, Steve and Jeryl. Just before we left New Y
ork, the media was filled with the Rumsfeld story—the announcement that he was to be the new director was due any hour. Rather than wait around for what amounted to a deathwatch for my tenure, we decided to get an early start to Boston. We were on the interstate—John Michael and I in the lead car, and Stephanie in the follow car—when word came in from the headquarters command post that Rumsfeld had indeed been appointed, but to be secretary of defense, not DCI.

  This didn’t mean that my job was safe—far from it. At any moment I might get a call that would tell me to start cleaning out my desk. But for the time being, the most frequently rumored candidate to replace me was going elsewhere.

  We had started giving George W. Bush intelligence briefings even before he was officially designated president-elect. The administration had authorized us to give him access to the same kinds of data that was being provided to Bill Clinton in his final month in office. Al Gore, of course, continued to be briefed as the sitting vice president.

  We sent some of our top analysts down to Austin in late November to establish contact and start bringing the governor up to speed in case he were about to become commander in chief. The governor scared our briefers one morning when he said after one session, “Well, I assume I will start seeing the good stuff when I become president.” We were not sure what his expectations were, but he was already seeing “the good stuff.” As a result, though, we redoubled our efforts to upgrade the PDBs. It was clear that if he were certified the winner, this son of a former president and DCI was going to pay very close attention to our business.

  A little more than a week before assuming office, the president-elect came to Washington and took up residence at Blair House, across the street from the White House, on Pennsylvania Avenue. On January 13, I went to see him there, to brief him on the state of the world and what we were most worried about. John McLaughlin and the deputy director for operations, Jim Pavitt, were with me. The president was joined by the vice president–elect and Andy Card. We told them that our biggest concerns were terrorism, proliferation, and China. I don’t recall Iraq coming up at all. At the end of the briefing the president asked to have a word with me alone. Uh, oh, here it comes, I thought.