The Watchers

by Shane Harris

  And yet, that is precisely what informs this book—my years of reporting and writing about intelligence, security, and technology for several magazines. It would have been impossible to write with the authority and insight that a narrative demands had I not come to it with this rich background and the tools of a journalist. While it took me a year to write this book, I spent about eight years researching and reporting it.

  Everything the reader finds in these pages is attributable to a person or group of people, and was gleaned from interviews, firsthand reporting, official transcripts, government reports, studies, news articles, books, and other documents. Broadly speaking the sources can be divided into two categories. First, there are the hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand, interviews I have conducted over the years with government officials (at the lowest to the highest levels), corporate executives, lawmakers, congressional staff, experts, academics, technologists, and writers. It would be practically unfeasible, and not terribly informative, to list everyone I’ve ever talked to about the subjects detailed in this book. And yet those interviews form the basis of my knowledge on those subjects. Additionally, I have likely read tens of thousands of pages of materials over the years, from textbooks to trade press, government audits to confidential documents. They too shaped my understanding and this story. The second category is narrower but still voluminous. These are the interviews with people identified in this book and with those who worked in the agencies, industries, and organizations in the story. Many of them agreed to be quoted on the record, and in those cases I have listed in these endnotes which people were the source of particular passages and chapters. Many of these people sat down with me for multiple interviews, each of which usually lasted from an hour and a half to three hours. I recorded most of them and took detailed notes. I had also interviewed many of these people before, either about the topics in the book or other matters. I interviewed them again specifically for this project so that they could elaborate, and so that I had the freshest recollections possible. Also, I often went back to the sources to verify the accuracy of a particular quote as well as my summary of what they said and did.

  In some cases people spoke with me on the condition that I not use their name or identify them by the place they work. It’s always regrettable to have to quote sources on background, or anonymously, but it is a fact of the intelligence beat that many of the most informed and influential people often can’t speak openly without fear of reprisal, embarrassment, or even prosecution. I have respected their wishes, verified their statements to the best of my ability, and in these notes I have aimed to give the reader a sense of who some of these people are and how they know what they do.

  I have also cited key documents in these endnotes, many of which are publicly available. I kept these references limited to those works that bear directly on the words in the story or that help amplify them.

  PROLOGUE

  Erik Kleinsmith’s account of his work on Able Danger, as well as his destruction of data and analysis derived from the program, comes from a series of interviews I conducted with him in 2005 and 2008. Kleinsmith also testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 21, 2005, and then before a joint hearing of two House Armed Services subcommittees on February 15, 2006. His account is also detailed in the Defense Department inspector general’s report on Able Danger, “Alleged Misconduct by Senior DoD Officials Concerning the Able Danger Program and Lieutenant Colonel Anthony A. Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve,” case number H05L97905217, dated September 18, 2006. This report was another valuable resource in reconstructing the events of Able Danger.

  9 the IDC’s main floor, which had been designed by a Hollywood visual effects artist: The designer, Bran Ferren, is a renowned three-time Academy Award winner, former Walt Disney "Imagineer," and founder of the idea lab Applied Minds. He has also served on the National Security Agency Advisory Board and the Army Science Board, and was an adviser to the Senate Intellig

  9 Kleinsmith and his team had uncovered a potential spy network in the United States: The work on Chinese industrial espionage is detailed in Chapter 8 and comes from interviews with Kleinsmith, former IDC employées, former deputy defense secretary John Hamre, and the Defense Depatment inspector general’s report on Able Danger.

  11 Few outside Lleinsmith’s chain of command knew what he had discovered about terrorists in America, or what secrets he and his analyssts had stored in their data banks: The DoD inspector general’ report makes clear that Able Danger was knows only to a small number of officials. The commission set up to investigate the 2001 terrirust attacjs was lade aware if Able Danger in the closing days of its work but did not choose to include the program in the final report.

  CHAPTER 1: FIRST STRIKE

  Accounts of life at the Marine base, and the details of the suicide bombing on the Battalion Landing Team headquarters, come principally from two sources: first, interviews conducted with Marines who served in Beirut (Alan Opra, Bob Jordan, Joe Golebiowski, and especially Glen Dolphin); second, the “Report of the DoD Commission on Beirut International Airport Terrorist Act,” published on December 20, 1983. It contains a richly detailed map of the Marine compound and description of the BLT, as well as numerous eyewitness interviews. Other valuable information came from interviews with John Lehman, then the secretary of the navy, and Philip Dur, who was the director of political-military affairs for the Middle East on the National Security Council staff.

  15 He turned, and he thought for a moment, “What’s that truck doing inside the perimeter?”: The unnamed guard’s account is contained in the DoD commission report.

  16 Alan Soiffert, a twenty-five-year-old staff sergeant from Nashua, New Hampshire, had taken a sniper round in the chest as he patrolled the airport perimeter in his Jeep: The account of Soiffert’s death came from an interview with Bob Jordan. It is also chronicled in a Time magazine article, “In the Crossfire,” which was published on October 24, 1983, one day after the bombing. It must have been written and filed earlier, because it makes no mention of the suicide attack.

  19 The entire structure rose into the air: The vivid details of the explosion and the BLT’s destruction come from eyewitness statements contained in the DoD commission report. Forensic explosives experts also examined the blast site, and the report contains their findings.

  20 The ring of the secure phone at his home in suburban Maryland summoned Admiral John Poindexter from slumber: Poindexter’s account of the morning of the bombing, and what he did and thought afterward, come from interviews conducted in 2008. These occurred in his home. He showed me the space in his basement where he used to keep his office.

  20 The Situation Room would raise McFarlane on a secure phone, and then he’d have to trot across the dark links to Reagan’s cottage, wake him, and impart the dreadful news: Poindexter recalled that the White House reached McFarlane this way, and the account of his meeting with Reagan is detailed in Robert Timberg’s epic book, The Nightingale’s Song (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). I am indebted to this masterful work, and its author, for extraordinary guidance.

  21 McFarlane assumed the political aspects of the job, advising the president and working with Congress, a task that Poindexter was happy to avoid: This and other reflections by Poindexter about his work on the National Security Council staff, which appear throughout this book, came from interviews in 2004 and 2008. The interviews usually covered events in chronological order, but it was common for Poindexter to jump back in time to a previous event that shed light on the current discussion.

  21 He liked the staff, and they respected him: This much was clear from interviews with Poindexter’s former colleagues, including Phil Dur. Timberg has the same assessment in The Nightingale’s Song.

  24 Since May, U.S. intelligence agencies had received more than one hundred warnings of car bombs in Lebanon”: DoD commission report.

  24 FBI forensic investigators discovered that the bombers had laden their explosives with ordinary pressurized
gas bottles, which magnified the force of the blast: Ibid.

  24 The National Security Agency . . . snatched a message from the Iranian Ministry of Information and Security to the Iranian ambassador in Syria: The details of this intelligence failure came out in the course of a lawsuit brought against the government of Iran by family members of some Marines who died in the suicide attack, and also by survivors. In September 2007 U.S. District Court judge Royce Lamberth decided the case in favor of the plaintiffs and ordered Iran to pay more than $2.6 billion.

  25 Hussein Musawi, the head of an Islamic terrorist group called Amal: For more on Musawi, see Robin Wright’s Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985). Also see Robert Baer’s See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism (New York: Crown, 2002).

  CHAPTER 2: KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

  The account of Poindexter’s early days at sea come from a 2008 interview, as well as The Nightingale’s Song (Robert Timberg, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). Decades later Poindexter used the analogy of antisubmarine warfare to describe his theories about detecting warning signals of a terrorist plot. I thought it was instructive to use this period of his life to illustrate that concept in vivid fashion. The application of the word “goblin” to terrorists is entirely my own invention, and is meant to draw attention to both the phantom nature of the threat and the artful science Poindexter and others have applied against it.

  In this chapter, accounts of how various National Security Council staff working groups functioned are derived mainly from the following sources: interviews with Poindexter; Tim Naftali’s Blindspot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism (New York: Basic Books, 2005); and presidential orders and directives published by the National Security Archive and the Federation of American Scientists, both in Washington, D.C., at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/presidentusa/presidential.html, and www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsdd/index.html.

  Unless otherwise noted, all statements, thoughts, and actions attributed to Poindexter come from interviews.

  28 You’ve got all sorts of noises down there in that jungle: Thach’s description of life under the sea appeared in Time magazine on April 7, 1958, under the headline “Antisubmarine Boss.”

  29 Oliver North . . . walked into Poindexter’s tiny West Wing office carrying a stack of photographs snapped by orbiting satellites: Interview with Poindexter. Details of the satellite photographs also came from interviews conducted in 2008 with John Lehman and Charlie Allen when the latter was serving as the top intelligence official at the Homeland Security Department.

  29 Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger scuttled the U.S. raid moments before the planes were set to launch: This is a matter of extraordinary historical significance, and controversy, and it deserves more attention than I can provide here. But briefly, it is known that Weinberger called off the U.S. raid inasmuch as he never gave a final order to launch U.S. aircraft. What is still open to question is why he did that, and precisely what Weinberger knew of the raid before it began. In my reporting I relied especially on four excellent books to get a firm answer: The Nightingale’s Song; David Martin and John Walcott’s often cited Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War Against Terrorism (New York: HarperCollins, 1988); Naftali’s Blindspot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism; and my National Journal colleague George Wilson’s adventurous account of life aboard a U.S. aircraft carrier, Supercarrier (New York: Macmillan, 1986).

  I also spoke with Poindexter extensively about the aborted raid. I conclude that Weinberger knew that a joint raid was planned with the French and that he knew President Reagan wanted to move ahead with it. Former NSC staff officials have told me and other journalists that Weinberger was present for a meeting in which Reagan made clear he wanted to launch a retaliatory strike if the intelligence community could determine who was responsible for the Beirut bombing. Based on my interviews with officials, principally Poindexter, Charlie Allen, and later Frances Townsend, I have no doubt that the intelligence community believed with as close to certainty as possible in the trade that the culprits resided at the Sheikh Abdullah barracks.

  The subsequent revelations in the civil trial against the government of Iran bolster that conclusion. In his memoir Weinberger said that he only learned about the raid when his French counterpart called him the morning of the attack to ask whether U.S. Navy jets would be taking part. Weinberger claimed that this was the first he’d heard of any raid. But Weinberger offers no evidence to counter the assertions made by several former Reagan administration officials—in the books I cite here and in other venues—that he knew about the raid and was present at meetings when the president said he wanted to strike. It is also inconceivable to me, despite the disorganization that marked the Reagan White House in 1983, that the secretary of defense and one of the president’s closest aides would not know about such a significant operation.

  It is my opinion, shared by a former NSC staff official who asked to remain anonymous but who provided independent corroboration of what I learned from interviews and research, that Weinberger intervened to stop the raid because he feared broader U.S. military engagement in the Middle East. While that was an understandable concern—and not a small one—I fail to see what authority Weinberger could have to countermand the expressed wishes of the president.

  In his memoir Reagan said that he called off the attack at the last minute, after changing his mind. As Naftali observes, “If he did, then he told only Weinberger and left McFarlane and Poindexter in the dark.” Naftali also interviewed Poindexter, who said that the president looked surprised when McFarlane informed him that the defense secretary “had canceled the air strike.” Poindexter told me the same thing in an interview. If Weinberger and Reagan came to some new agreement about the raid in private, which is possible, then both men took the details to their graves.

  30 North replied that his CIA contact on terrorism, Charlie Allen, had just brought them to his attention: Interview with Poindexter, confirmed by Charlie Allen.

  31 Poindexter called up his friend CIA director Bill Casey. The two had developed an honest rapport: The fateful relationship of Poindexter and Casey nearly merits a book of its own. Both men can rightly be called architects of the Iran-Contra affair, and they exerted tremendous influence on the foreign policy of the Reagan administration. Their legacies are intertwined. Casey, who died in 1987, is one of the oddest and most mysterious directors of central intelligence I’ve ever encountered. His portrait is perhaps best captured in Bob Woodward’s riveting account of the CIA in the 1980s, Veil (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987). In an interview, Poindexter told me the story of how he and Casey first came to be on close terms, and it’s worth retelling here because it illuminates the characters of both men.

  The early part of their relationship was cool and distant. After Poindexter became the deputy national security adviser, he let it be known within the White House that he thought Casey should resign. He said that the CIA was doing a terrible job managing a covert program to aid Contra rebels fighting the socialist government of Nicaragua. A CIA document, known as the “Freedom Fighter’s Manual,” had leaked to the press; it used cartoon illustrations and simple language to teach average Nicaraguans how to disrupt their government through sabotage and organized violence or by passively combating nationalized industries. (One panel showed a smiling man with dark hair and a mustache, his bare feet propped up on an ottoman, holding a glass of champagne while calling in sick to work.)

  Casey found out that Poindexter had spoken poorly of his leadership, and one afternoon he called the admiral in his White House office and requested a private audience. Under direct questioning from Casey, Poindexter repeated what he’d said. He told Casey that the manual was an embarrassment to the administration. He also said that Casey appeared ill, and he noted that the director had been missing a lot of meetings lately.

  Casey wasn’t Poindexter’s boss, but he had every right t
o chew him up one side and down the other for what he’d said. Instead Casey confided to Poindexter that he had cancer and that when he was away it was because he’d gone to New York to receive treatment. Poindexter never again called for Casey to step aside. “In the future,” Casey told him, “if you think I’m not doing something right, just give me a call.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that,” Poindexter replied.

  32 Bush led a top-to-bottom review of the government’s haphazard counterterrorism and intelligence efforts: The review, titled “Public Report of the Vice President’s Task Force on Combating Terrorism,” was published in February 1986. The document contains a helpful chronology of “significant 1985 terrorist events involving U.S. citizens,” which gives a good sense of how the Reagan administration viewed the burgeoning antiterrorism campaign.

  34 North had felt overwhelmed when he arrived at the White House: See Timberg’s The Nightingale’s Song, as well as North’s memoir, Under Fire: An American Story, cowritten with William Novak (New York: HarperCollins, 1991).

  34 Poindexter knew that North exaggerated his own influence on the NSC staff: Poindexter’s recollections of North come from interviews conducted in 2004 and 2008.

  CHAPTER 3: AND HE SHALL PURIFY

  Without question, the best and most compelling account of the Achille Lauro affair that I encountered was written by Michael Bohn, a former director of the Situation Room and a retired naval intelligence officer. The Achille Lauro Hijacking: Lessons in the Politics and the Prejudice of Terrorism (Dulles, Va.: Brassey’s, 2004) seamlessly weaves Bohn’s personal experience working at the White House during the crisis with historical documents, contemporaneous journalism, and more than a dozen interviews with participants, including John Poindexter, Jim Stark, and Nicholas Veliotes. His sources are almost all public, and they provided an invaluable source of research material as I reconstructed the narrative from a new point of view.