Ghost

by Fred Burton

  The first break came in the spring of ’89. A sliver of the bomb’s timing device was discovered and sent to the FBI lab for analysis. It turned out to be an MST-13 device, built by MEBO, a Swiss company with lots of dealings with Libya. We only knew this because the FBI had an identical timer already cataloged in the database, thanks to the dedication of Special Agent Jim Casey, DSS.

  In 1986, Casey was assigned to the CT office and was on assignment in Togo, a West African nation where Libyan intel was operating against the regime. After a run-in with some Libyans, Casey recovered a complete MST-13. This was a very sophisticated timer, complete with its own printed circuit board. Jim saw it and thought it looked out of place with the other run-of-the-mill Dark World gear the ESO types were carrying. He palmed it, brought it back to Washington, and sent it to the FBI for analysis.

  His thoroughness paid off. The sliver of the MST-13 recovered from Lockerbie became one of the major publicly announced pieces of evidence used to condemn Libya for the downing of Pan Am 103. When investigators checked with MEBO, the company stated that they had sold twenty of these special timing devices to Qaddafi in 1985. The only other customer for that model turned out to be the East German Stasi.

  The newspaper at my side, I stand up and walk back over to the bagel shop’s counter to get a refill on my coffee. When I turn back to my table, I get a good long look at the street. A metro bus rolls up to the stop that Mr. Jogging Suit is hanging around. When it leaves, he’s still there.

  How many buses use that stop? I don’t know. Not many. We’ll see what he does next. Not far away from him, I see a transient moseying along the sidewalk. He’s wearing an old green coat and one of those knitted hats with a ball on top. He reminds me of Bob, the U.S. Marshal, who used such a disguise when I met him in ’87 atop that partially constructed building. I make a mental note to watch him closely.

  No doubt about it, these guys are getting better. I decide to remain here for a few more minutes before taking to the streets. I’ll give them a real run for their money then.

  The timing device probably would not have been enough to condemn Libya for Lockerbie without also exposing our most classified sources. Fortunately, the forensics teams discovered the bomb had been placed in the Samsonite suitcase. Like the bomb found in Frankfurt during Operation Autumn Leaves, the one reconstructed from the crash site had been built into a Toshiba boom box. One pound of Czech-made Semtex plastique was all it took to take down a massive 747. But the explosive residue the blast left behind gave us the most critical clue. It allowed the forensic investigators to piece together the contents of the suitcase. They found fragments of clothing—a tweed jacket, some pajamas, an umbrella, and a shirt—that had been next to the bomb inside the suitcase when it detonated. They traced those items to Malta, and a check with the stores there uncovered a shopkeeper who vividly remembered selling those items to a Libyan. When shown mug shots, he fingered Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, a known Libyan agent.

  Okay, enough of the reminiscing. It’s time to get out there and play with these guys. I polish off the last of my bagel and drain my second cup of coffee. As I do, I watch the transient wander close to Mr. Jogging Suit. They make eye contact, and I see them chatting.

  Big mistake. I make them both. When on a surveillance detail, it is all too common for operatives to wander over and speak to each other after a while. Watching somebody can get boring. It’s only human nature to want company. But in this game, in the street dance between target and surveillance team, that can be a fatal mistake.

  I toss the newspaper in the trash as I leave the bagel shop. Out on the sidewalk, I snatch a glance at the bus stop. The bum and Mr. Jogging Suit are staring at me. So now I will have a tail. I walk up the street and turn right, glancing back as I do. They’re already following me.

  Ahead I see a white male, longish hair, beard, and sunglasses, sitting at a window-side table in a “hot shop,” a cafeteria-style restaurant. He’s eyeballing me over a copy of The Wall Street Journal. As I walk past him, I see his gaze following me. I reach the end of the block, and as I turn left this time, I see Hot Shop Man on the sidewalk, looking nervous as he heads my way. Not good. That’s three.

  There should be one more.

  I stair-step up a few more blocks, checking my six at every turn. I see the bum twice. Both times he’s watching from a doorway. Mr. Jogging Suit appears as well. Hot Shop Man stays on the opposite side of the street from him, but I catch the two of them trying to communicate as they go.

  Bad move. I’ll remember that.

  The SDR I’ve run proves that I have a tail. Now I have to shake it. A funnel is a good way to set them back. A few blocks up, there’s a footbridge over an expressway. That’ll be perfect. I make for it.

  Funnels are tough to deal with if you’re trying to surreptitiously follow somebody. Things like bridges or escalators or raised causeways force the surveillance team to break cover and move through a narrow stretch of terrain where they are easily detected. About the only thing the surveillance team can do is wait to cross the funnel until after the target is out of its line of sight. It should give me enough time to disappear into the city grid.

  I cross the footbridge. The three men tailing me pause on the other side. They mill around and look out of place. They’ve totally lost both their cover for status and their cover for action. These are critical skills for operatives. I’ve exposed their weakness here.

  A cover for status is nothing more than a reason for an operative to be in a particular place at a particular time. Mr. Jogging Suit was supposedly waiting for a bus. The bum was wandering around aimlessly like bums do. Hot Shop Man was enjoying the morning paper. Those worked. What didn’t work is that they lingered around too long. The bus came and went, but Mr. Jogging Suit stayed in place. The bum loitered too near Mr. Jogging Suit. They talked. That looked out of place. Not many people talk to transients. Hot Shop Man blew his cover for status by staring too long at me, following me with his eyes as I went by, then leaving the restaurant too soon.

  Cover for action requires more thought and preparation. If an operative is going to move from one place to another, he has to have a clear reason to do so. Perhaps he can cloak his movements by window shopping, or acting like he’s looking for something. He could have a bike stashed nearby and once the target’s on the move, use it to stay in the vicinity and appear to be nothing more than a cyclist out for a ride.

  The best operatives don’t stand out. They don’t do anything that would draw attention to their actions. They are subtle, and since most people are poor observers, that makes them as good as invisible.

  But I’m a trained observer, and I’ve drawn these three out. They’ve broken two cardinal rules, and now they’re in a tough spot.

  I cross the bridge and head deeper into the city. I stair-step at the next block. A cab passes as I cross the next street. I quickly glance at its plates and memorize the number. Two more stair-steps. I’ve lost my tail. A minute later, I see the same cab parked on the side of the road a block ahead. There’s nobody in the backseat. The cabbie’s got shaggy hair, a dark complexion, and a bushy mustache. I walk right by his cab.

  Two blocks later, he drives past me again. Okay. I’ve made him. Number four was in a vehicle. The cab was his cover for status and cover for action, but he’s overdone it.

  Ten minutes later, I’m standing in front of the bagel shop again. I slide my earpiece into place and key my radio. “Team. This is Merlin. Exercise complete.”

  One by one, my agents congregate back at Virginia Avenue. I explain how I made each one of them. They look sheepish over how easily I burned their cover. “Look,” I tell them, “this is going to take time. We’ll get it right.” I lead the debriefing, and we study our errors and figure out ways to correct them.

  Practicing surveillance and tailing techniques right here in town has already given us a wealth of knowledge. Communicating with the rest of your surveillance team, especially on the move, bec
omes a problem. You don’t want to talk with your fellow agent. Too often that blows both your covers. Using a radio or having an earpiece visible is also a rookie mistake. Brief eye contact. A simple hand gesture—subtle, always subtle, of course—these are the ways to speak to each other during this sort of street dance. Clothes make a huge difference. White shirts or pants tend to stand out in the crowd. An agent wearing one or both will usually get made if the target is any kind of observer. Subdued colors that blend into the crowd are the best.

  Eyelines are critical components to any successful street dance. Most people keep their heads down as they go about their daily business. Their situational awareness is practically nil. We can exploit that by getting out of typical sight lines and placing agents on balconies, rooftops, around corners, and in other urban nooks and crannies. To avoid typical eyelines takes a light touch and a lot of practice. You’ve got to be willing to think unconventionally. We’re only now starting to really practice this.

  A moving target represents a new set of challenges for a surveillance team. How best do you follow your target in that sort of situation? What if he starts on foot but transfers to a car? Clearly, our agents on the street need backup in vehicles. That’s a lesson we learned earlier when we first started this training regimen. But where should they be placed, and what happens if the target takes a city bus or goes into the subway system? These are all tactical problems we’re working to solve.

  Today’s exercise was part of a larger plan I’ve been working on for several years now. The Edward Louis Gallo case, the two Libyan hits in ’86 on our diplomats, and the near assassination of President Bush in Kuwait not long ago have all convinced me we need to approach protective security in a new manner. Today’s street dance was another test of my new tactics. We’ll keep working on it. And when the time is right, I’ll take it to Mr. Dittmer and ask that we give it a try. If we do this right, this new concept may just give us the chance to finally get one step ahead of the likes of Imad Mugniyah and Hasan Izz-Al-Din. They’re still out there, somewhere, planning their next op. I want to be ready for them this time.

  thirty

  THE COLONEL’S REVELATIONS

  12:25 p.m.

  February 26, 1993

  Virginia Avenue

  “Fred, I’ve got bad news.”

  I look up from a stack of recent cables to see Larry Dan, the best and most incisive agent we have on our threat-analysis team upstairs, standing next to my cube. He looks grim.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “We’ve had a bombing at the World Trade Center.”

  I get to my feet. Things are about to get crazy around here.

  “They finally did it. They finally hit us here at home.”

  “Yeah,” replies Larry. “We all knew it was inevitable.”

  Larry and I walk over to FOGHORN. Inside, CNN’s blaring on the television. The Star Trek console is lit up like a Christmas tree. Each of the duty agents has a phone in both ears. Others ring incessantly in the background.

  “Fred?” one of the duty agents asks. “Everyone’s calling to see what we know.”

  “We don’t know anything yet. Tell them to hold on.”

  That’s not an answer anyone will want to hear right now.

  I watch the scene on CNN. Smoke billows up around the tower. People flee down the street. Emergency response vehicles race to the scene. Except for the New York plates, this could be Beirut or Paris or Berlin.

  The first details trickle in. Whoever detonated the bomb placed it in the underground parking garage beneath one of the towers. This strikes me as odd. If Hezbollah pulled this off, they would have left a car bomb on the street in front of the building. That has been their standard MO since Beirut I. Last year, they blew up a car bomb in front of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina, proving they could operate in our hemisphere.

  Placing the bomb in the street actually magnifies the destruction the device can cause. The blast blows glass out of windows for blocks, and the shards become flying shrapnel. It always increases the casualties and the carnage.

  Maybe whoever planted this bomb isn’t nearly as sophisticated as Hezbollah.

  The Secret Service operates out of the WTC. Many of its protective security vehicles are stored near that underground parking garage. Could that have been the target? Did somebody go after the Secret Service? I know a lot of those guys from all the times I’ve been to New York to pull dignitary protection duty. I say a prayer for their safety.

  “Okay, guys, call the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI, and the NYPD. See what they need from us. Let’s give them whatever support they can use.”

  “Stick?” I call out. Scott Stewart, who has become one of the best agents in the office, steps forward. “Here, Fred.”

  “I want you to be our eyes at the blast seat. Take an explosives detector and head on up. Work with the other agencies and check in frequently, okay?”

  If Hezbollah didn’t pull this off, who did? Mentally, I build a suspect list. The Libyans have been quiet since Lockerbie, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t decided to get aggressive again. They make the list. Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s intelligence service has been up to all sorts of no good since the Gulf War. Between plots to blow up embassies and immolate George Bush with a car bomb in Kuwait, Saddam’s agents might very well be behind this.

  But then there is the odd group that’s coalesced around some of the Afghan war jihadists. They’ve become more active in the Dark World these past few years and have become virulently anti-American. Just a few years ago, they were our allies against the Soviets. A Saudi Arabian exile named Osama bin Laden appears to be the leader of this group.

  By the end of the day, we’ve learned that over a thousand people suffered injuries from the bomb. Four people are dead. Frankly, I think we’ve gotten off lightly. Had the bomb been placed on the street and detonated at lunch hour, the casualties would have been catastrophic.

  Over the next few days, the pieces start to fall into place. Stick sends frequent updates to us. The bomb’s composition included urea, nitroglycerin, aluminum, magnesium azide, and hydrogen. The FBI doesn’t have anything on file that fits this profile. This is a new type of bomb, constructed by a new type of terrorist organization. They are aggressive, but their tactics are flawed. For that, I’m relieved.

  Stick’s there in the blast seat when the investigation turns up a huge clue. The bomb had been placed inside a vehicle. An NYPD bomb-squad tech finds the golden nugget: the metal plate with the vehicle’s VIN number intact and readable. A quick check shows it belongs to a Ryder rental truck and that a Palestinian named Mohammad Salameh last rented it.

  Within days, arrests are made. Salameh gets nabbed, as do several of his comrades. They all seem to be tied in to a group of jihadists operating out of a mosque in Brooklyn.

  Ten days after the attack, I fly to New York to sit down with my contacts in the FBI and JTTF offices. As we puzzle through what’s happened, I discover that the FBI had an informant who penetrated the mosque two years ago. He wore a wire and attended planning sessions and meetings with Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric who had become the spiritual leader of an entire network of radical jihadists living in the New York area.

  I convince my contacts to let me see the transcripts of what this informant recorded. After two pages, I’m floored. After ten, I’m terrified. My mind reels. The informant was a former colonel in the Egyptian military, and he’d somehow earned the sheikh’s trust. Abdel-Rahman invited him into his network’s inner circle. He took part in dozens of operational meetings.

  I cannot doubt the authenticity of what I’m reading. This homegrown group of jihadists have made us out to be fools. And if we don’t act fast, somebody else will die for it.

  The blind sheikh’s minions spent two years preparing target portfolios before they actually launched the WTC attack. Led by a very capable, highly intelligent engineer named Ramzi Yousef, these jihadists planned to blow up landmark
s all over New York City. They looked into destroying bridges, hotels, and other fixed targets. But what chills me to the bone is their efforts against the DSS.

  For three years, they have been watching us. Their many plans included an operation to assassinate several key leaders, including the UN secretary general and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The planners were especially anxious to take out Mubarak and any other Egyptian diplomatic officials. They had particular hatred for that regime, since the sheikh and some of his followers had been captured in Egypt and tortured during their incarceration.

  During one stay, President Mubarak selected the Waldorf-Astoria for himself and his entourage, including his foreign minister, to stay at while they were in Manhattan. Yousef and his operatives scouted out the security arrangements around the hotel. They watched our motorcades and studied our tactics. They knew when we rotated agents, when shifts changed, and where our gaps were in fixed-site security coverage of the hotel. Using local resources, such as taxicabs, they followed our motorcades all over New York. Their operatives became so familiar with us that they not only knew what each vehicle in the formation was for, they could also tell the difference between a DSS motorcade with the foreign minister in it and the one guarded by the Secret Service that included President Mubarak. At times, they could even figure out who was who when our two motorcades operated together. With the Egyptians, we frequently ran joint motorcades with the Secret Service because there’d been so many previous attempts on Mubarak and his government.

  As I read the transcripts, I realize that I had been on some of the details they’d been watching. The revelation drains the color from my face. We never even caught a whiff of this sophisticated surveillance operation.