Ghost Wars

by Steve Coll

  8. The Pillsbury quote is from Lundberg, Zelikow, and May, “Politics of a Covert Action,” p. 32. Other details are from the case study and author’s interviews with U.S. officials.

  9. That the CIA recruited and paid European journalists and travelers to report on Afghanistan is from multiple interviews with U.S. officials, including an interview with Warren Marik, March 11, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). That Haq’s relationship with Hart was passed to Piekney is from the author’s interviews with U.S. officials. Haq was by now a celebrated and famous commander. President Reagan praised him at a black-tie dinner in Washington, and Haq later met British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Although he was an increasingly outspoken critic of Pakistani intelligence and Hekmatyar, Haq did not openly break with the CIA until 1987.

  10. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows, p. 348.

  11. “Death by a thousand cuts” is from Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin, The Bear Trap, p. 1.

  12. Interviews with Mohammed Yousaf in 1992.

  13. Artyom Borovik, The Hidden War, p. 76. The booby trap examples from plastic explosives and “Hidden death” are on pp. 35-36.

  14. Quotations in this and the preceding paragraph are from the author’s interviews with Yousaf, 1992.

  15. Najibullah’s elevation to the Politburo is from Barnett R. Rubin, The Fragmentation of Afghanistan, p. 128. The size of Afghan intelligence service, ibid., p. 133. The location of foreign residencies and penetration of mujahedin headquarters is from Vasiliy Mitrokhin, “The KGB in Afghanistan,” pp. 151-56.

  16. The use of Spetsnaz tactics and “Omsk vans” is from interviews with U.S. officials in 1992. It is also described in detail in Lundberg, Zelikow, and May, “Politics of a Covert Action.” Helicopter tactics along Pakistani border and that Spetsnaz troops commandeered pickup trucks and operated in disguise are from Timothy Gusinov, a former Soviet military adviser in Afghanistan, writing in The Washington Times, November 3, 2001. The KGB’s use of false bands is from Mitrokhin, “The KGB in Afghanistan.”

  17. Interviews with U.S. officials.

  18. That Afghan fighters rejected suicide missions uniformly is from interviews with Yousaf and with Howard Hart, November 12, 26, and 27, 2001, in Virginia (SC), and other U.S. officials.

  19. “Most likely use” is from an interview with a U.S. official in 1992, addressing the specific question of sniper rifles, detonator packages, and other “dual use” covert supplies. “These aren’t terrorist … ever again” is from George Crile, Charlie Wilson’s War, p. 166. “Do I want … spreads fear,” ibid., p. 318. Endorsed reward for belt buckles, ibid., p. 350.

  20. The Vaughan Forrest quotation is from a telephone interview with Forrest, 1992. “Shooting ducks” and “off Russian generals” are from an interview with a participant in the debates, 1992.

  21. Interviews with multiple U.S. officials involved with the sniper rifle debate, 1992, as well as interviews with Yousaf, 1992, who received the guns and implemented the training.

  22. Statistics about Americans abroad in 1985 are from Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 150. Habash’s quotation from 1970 is also cited in Hoffman, pp. 70-71. He dates Jenkins’s seminal formulations to his article “International Terrorism: A New Mode of Conflict,” in David Carlton and Carlo Schaerf, eds., International Terrorism and World Security .

  23. “The incidents would become” is from Duane R. Clarridge, with Digby Diehl, A Spy for All Seasons, p. 320. The account of the Counterterrorist Center’s birth, the memo, and the quotations in the following five paragraphs are from Clarridge, ibid., pp. 320-29, and from an interview with Clarridge, December 28, 2001, San Diego, California (SC).

  24. A partially declassified version of NSDD-207 has been obtained and published by the National Security Archive.

  25. “Pretty much anything he wanted” is from Robert Baer, See No Evil, pp. 84-85. “Hit teams” is from the author’s interview with Clarridge, December 28, 2001.

  26. Interview with Robert Gates, March 12, 2002, Cleveland, Ohio (SC).

  27. The Baer quotation is from Baer, See No Evil, pp. 84-85. The Cannistraro quotation is from the author’s interview with Vincent Cannistraro, January 8, 2002, Rosslyn, Virginia (SC).

  28. The use of beacons in planted weapons is from an interview with Clarridge, December 28, 2001.

  29. That the CIA had no sources in Hezbollah and “absolutely no idea” where the hostages were is from Baer, See No Evil,pp. 86-92. That the Counterterrorist Center was inundated with hoaxes, some mounted by Hezbollah, is from the interview with Cannistraro, January 8, 2002.

  30. The trucks and the development of the operation with Delta Force are from the interview with Clarridge, December 28, 2001.

  31. The account of the Eagle Program, the prototypes, the effort to equip them with cameras, explosives, and rockets is from the interview with Clarridge, December 28, 2001.

  32. Clarridge, with Diehl, Spy for All Seasons, p. 339.

  33. Interview with Yousaf, 1992.

  34. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, p. 41.

  35. Counterterrorist branches and priorities are from interviews with Clarridge, December 28, 2001; Cannistraro, January 8, 2002; and Stanley Bedington, a senior analyst at the center from its founding, November 19, 2001, Rosslyn, Virginia (SC).

  36. Interview with Clarridge, December 28, 2001.

  37. Bedington’s recollection that bin Laden’s activities were first reported in CIA cables around 1985 is supported by an unclassified profile of bin Laden released by the agency in 1996. Drawing on agency reporting, the profile says, “By 1985, Bin Laden had drawn on his family’s wealth, plus donations received from sympathetic merchant families in the Gulf region, to organize the Islamic Salvation Front… .”

  38. Gates, From the Shadows, p. 349.

  CHAPTER 8: “INSHALLAH, YOU WILL KNOW MY PLANS”

  1. Interview with Milton Bearden, November 15, 2001, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC). “I want you to go out there and win” is from Milt Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 214.

  2. “Uncle Milty” is from Robert Baer, See No Evil, p. 142. Other quotations and anecdotes are from interviews with U.S. officials.

  3. Interview with Milton Bearden, March 25, 2002, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC).

  4. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows, p. 429.

  5. Published accounts of the first Stinger shot include Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin, The Bear Trap, pp. 175-76, and Milton Bearden, “Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires,” Foreign Affairs, pp. 21-22. Also Milt Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, pp. 248-52. The incoming cable quoted is from Bearden and Risen. That the attack was recorded by a KH-11 is from interviews with U.S. officials. The Bearden quote describing the video is from the interview, November 15, 2001, and Bearden and Risen, Main Enemy, p. 252. That Reagan screened biopics of foreign visitors is from Bob Woodward, Veil, p. 249. George Crile, in Charlie Wilson’s War, argues that the crucial groundwork for the introduction of the Stinger was laid by Wilson and his supporters.

  6. Cable quoted by Gates, From the Shadows, p. 430.

  7. This account of the CIA’s agent network is from the author’s interviews with three former and current U.S. officials. Interviews conducted by the author with British officials in 1992 also described their liaison with Massoud but provided no dates. The British liaison appears to have begun very early in the war. According to still-classified records of the Afghan covert action program, the CIA received authority to expand its unilateral agent network after NSDD-166 was signed in March 1985, but the Islamabad station would have had standing authority to recruit some agents earlier for routine espionage purposes. That CIA assistance to Massoud began in 1984, see note 37 of chapter 6.

  8. Interviews with U.S. officials.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Interview with Bearden, November 15, 2001.

  11. That bin Laden’s house was in the University Town section of Peshawar is from Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc., p. 56. The description of the neighborhoo
d is from the author’s visits.

  12. Quotations and dates are from al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner . The English version is from the FBIS translation. The manuscript appeared to represent an effort by al-Zawahiri to publish a personal memoir and political manifesto before he was captured or killed by U.S. or coalition forces in Afghanistan. Some of the recollections in the manuscript may be constructed to promote al-Zawahiri’s contemporary political agenda, but many of the dates and details of the political and theological arguments he writes about are consistent with other accounts.

  13. Azzam’s biography details are from Nida’ul Islam, July-September 1996, and interviews with Arab journalists and activists who asked not to be further identified. See also Bergen, Holy War, pp. 51-54; Roy, Afghanistan: From Holy War to Civil War, p. 85; Mary Anne Weaver, The New Yorker, January 24, 2000. That the Tucson office opened in 1986 is from Judith Miller and Dale Van Natta, The New York Times, June 9, 2002.

  14. The Gates quotation is from Gates, From the Shadows, p. 349. “We should try … see them as the enemy” is from an interview with a U.S. official. “Actually did some very good things … anti-American” is from Bearden’s interview with Frontline, “Hunting Bin Laden,” March 21, 2000. The description of how the issue was viewed and debated within the U.S. intelligence community is from interviews with former U.S. officials.

  15. The account here and following of debates between bin Laden, Azzam, and other Arabs in Peshawar is drawn primarily from interviews with Arab journalists and activists who were in Peshawar at the time. Prince Turki described bin Laden’s relationship with Azzam and al-Zawahiri in similar terms in an interview on August 2, 2002, Cancun, Mexico: “Bin Laden, I think, liked very much Abdullah Azzam … and was taken by the man’s eloquence and personality.” Published accounts of the debates among Peshawar Arab activists during this period include The New York Times, January 14, 2001.

  16. “A place steeped in cussedness” is from an interview with Peter Tomsen, former special envoy to the Afghan resistance, May 8, 2003, Washington, D.C. (SC). “Know my plans” is from an interview with an Arab activist who was in Peshawar at the time.

  17. Published accounts of the November 13, 1986, Politburo meeting on Afghanistan, citing Politburo archives, include Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post, November 16, 1992. Gates describes the same meeting in less detail in From the Shadows, p. 430. The quotations here are from English translations of Politburo records provided by Anatoly Chenyaev of the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow to the Cold War International History Project, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

  18. U.S. officials interviewed by the author in 1992 described the VEIL intelligence as a significant factor in the decision to push the escalation ratified by NSDD-166. The intelligence reporting is described in detail in the case study “Politics of a Covert Action” by Kirsten Lundberg, Philip Zelikow, and Ernest May, Harvard University, 1999.

  19. Gates, From the Shadows, p. 386.

  20. Quotations are from “The Costs of Soviet Involvement in Afghanistan,” Directorate of Intelligence, CIA, Office of Soviet Analysis; originally classified Secret, February 1987. Published by National Security Archive; released by the CIA. Sanitized and declassified version, 2000, CIA Special Collections. “It still looked as though” is from Milt Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 217.

  21. Gorbachev’s meetings and conversations are from archives and Politburo documents translated into English by the Gorbachev Foundation, provided by Anatoly Chenyaev to the Cold War International History Project, George Washington University, Washington, D.C.

  22. Ibid.

  23. All quotations about Casey’s seizure and hospital discussions are from Joseph E. Persico, Casey: From the OSS to the CIA, pp. 551-57.

  24. Details about the three commando teams are from Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin, The Bear Trap, pp. 200-205, and from interviews with Yousaf in 1992. The satellite photos of Kazakhstan riots are from Gates, From the Shadows, p. 385.

  25. Bearden’s conversation with Clair George is from interviews with U.S. officials and from Bearden and Risen, Main Enemy, pp. 290-91. Bearden’s call to Yousaf is from Yousaf and Adkin, Bear Trap, p. 205. In his memoir Bearden is careful to absolve Casey from all knowledge of the attacks on Soviet soil. According to Bearden, when he first went out to Islamabad, Clair George told him that Casey had plans to make propaganda radio broadcasts into Soviet Central Asia and that this idea faced resistance from the State Department. In his memoir Bearden blames Yousaf for the attacks. The involvement of Akhtar, then head of Pakistani intelligence, “remained in doubt.”

  26. Milton Bearden, “Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires”; Bergen, Holy War, p. 57, citing in part translations of a slim biographical portrait of bin Laden in Arabic first published in 1991.

  27. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner, FBIS translation.

  28. Quotations are from Arab journalists and from activists.

  29. “Up to $25 million per month” is an estimate from Bearden in “Afghanistan.” The question of which of the Afghan mujahedin parties received what percentage of ISI weapons was debated at great length during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hamid Gul, Yousaf, and more than half a dozen U.S. officials directly involved all asserted that by the late 1980s, ISI and the CIA operated the pipeline by a rough rule of thumb: Hekmatyar received about 20 to 25 percent; Rabbani a similar amount; Younis Khalis and Sayyaf somewhat less. The three “moderate” factions recognized by ISI received 10 percent or less each. After 1987, ISI moved with CIA encouragement toward a system of “operational packaging” in which commanders, rather than political leaders, sometimes received weapons directly. What do all these statistics and supply system variations add up to? By all accounts the four main Islamists in the resistance-Hekmatyar, Rabbani, Khalis, and Sayyaf-received the greatest share of the official ISI-CIA-GID supply line. Hekmatyar himself probably did not receive as much raw material as the CIA’s critics sometimes asserted, although he and Sayyaf clearly had the most access to private Arab funding and supplies, and Hekmatyar received preferential treatment by ISI’s Afghan bureau for training and operations, especially after 1989. No detailed statistics about the CIA’s covert supplies have ever been formally published by the U.S. government.

  30. Interviews with U.S. officials, including former congressional aides who made visits to Pakistan while Bearden was station chief.

  31. Interviews with U.S. officials familiar with ISI’s Afghan bureau during this period.

  32. Bearden’s dialogue with Hekmatyar is from Bearden and Risen, Main Enemy, pp. 282-83. Anderson, “a pretty good commander … as many scalps” and Bearden, “much, much more time … very angry with me,” are from Afghan Warrior: The Life and Death of Abdul Haq, a film by Touch Productions broadcast by the BBC, 2003. In his memoir, Bearden recalls his dialogue with Hekmatyar as confrontational and unyielding. The author has heard another account of their meetings from a well-informed U.S. official. This version supports Bearden’s published account but is slightly different in tone. In this version Bearden tells Hekmatyar, “You don’t like me, and I don’t like you. I’m accused of giving you the lion’s share. I wouldn’t give you a fucking thing, but you’ve got commanders that are good.” Hekmatyar replies, “I didn’t say I didn’t like you.”

  33. The English translations are from Politburo records provided by Anatoly Chenyaev of the Gorbachev Foundation to the Cold War International History Project.

  34. Barnett R. Rubin, The Search for Peace in Afghanistan, pp. 83-84, partially quoting Shultz’s memoirs.

  35. Interview with Gates, March 12, 2002, Cleveland, Ohio (SC).

  36. Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 424-25.

  37. Archives and Politburo documents, from Anatoly Chenyaev of the Gorbachev Foundation, Cold War International History Project.

  38. Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 430-31.

  CHAPTER 9: “WE WON”

  1. Biography details and quo
tation are from interviews with Edmund McWilliams, January 15 and February 26, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

  2. The cable, “From Amembassy Kabul to Secstate WashDC,” January 15, 1988, is in the author’s files.

  3. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 431-32.

  4. Director of Central Intelligence, “USSR: Withdrawal from Afghanistan,” Special National Intelligence Estimate, March 1988, originally classified Secret; published by National Security Archive, Washington, D.C.

  5. Interview with Milton Bearden, November 15, 2001, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC).

  6. The Gul quotation is from an interview with Gul, May 23, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC). The Defense Intelligence Agency profile was declassified and provided to the author in 1992. That Gul was close to Saudi intelligence then and later is from the author’s interviews with Ahmed Badeeb and Saeed Badeeb, February 1, 2002, Jedda, Saudi Arabia (SC). That Americans thought he was sympathetic is from interviews with U.S. officials at the Islamabad embassy between 1989 and 1992. “Moderate Islamist” is from Milt Bearden and James Risen, The Main Enemy, p. 292.

  7. Interview with Gul, May 23, 2002. Bearden, “only real strength … strayed into Afghanistan,” is from Bearden and Risen, Main Enemy, pp. 235 and 238. Bearden’s support for sending high-tech weapons to eastern Afghanistan, ibid., pp. 278-79.

  8. Original interview with Sig Harrison published in Le Monde Diplomatique and quoted in Charles G. Cogan, “Shawl of Lead,” Conflict.

  9. Interviews with Milton Bearden, March 25, 2002, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC).

  10. Martin Ewans, Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics, p. 170.

  11. Interviews with Bearden, March 25, 2002, and other U.S. and Pakistani officials. “Tell them not” is from the interview with Bearden. “Big-chested homecoming … Arizona plates” is from Bearden and Risen, Main Enemy, p. 345.

  12. Interviews with U.S. officials. Bearden and Risen, Main Enemy, pp. 350-51.

  13. Interview with Robert Oakley, February 15, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

  14. Ibid. See also Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, p. 292.