Ghost Wars

by Steve Coll

  3. Family history is from Tenet’s account in two speeches, “Acceptance of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor Forum Club Lunch,” November 6, 1997, and “Remarks by DCI George J. Tenet at Swearing-In Ceremony by Vice President Gore,” July 31, 1997, CIA Office of Public Affairs.

  4. “Always talking” is from the New York Daily News, March 21, 1997. “To the future editorial page editor” is from Newsday, March 21, 1997.

  5. “Guy’s guy” is from an interview with Cliff Shannon, former aide to Heinz, March 8, 2002, by telephone (GW). “He was the only person … hard work” is from an interview with Bill Reinsch, former aide to Heinz, March 5, 2002, by telephone (GW).

  6. Interview with Gary Sojka, August 8, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW).

  7. Rudman quotation is from The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, March 19, 1997. The Newsom quotation is from an interview with Eric Newsom, March 8, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW).

  8. Interview with former senator David Boren, September 16, 2002, Norman, Oklahoma (GW).

  9. Ibid. Interview with Clair George, December 12, 2001, Chevy Chase, Maryland (SC). Interview with Thomas Twetten, March 18, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

  10. Interview with John Despres, February 28, 2002, by telephone (GW).

  11. Interviews with former senate Select Committee on Intelligence staff members.

  12. Interview with Newsom, March 8, 2002.

  13. “Streak of eccentric genius” is from “Acceptance of Ellis Island Medal,” November 6, 1997. “Nowhere in the world” is from “Remarks by DCI George J. Tenet at Swearing-In Ceremony,” July 31, 1997.

  14. “Does America Need the CIA?” November 19, 1997, CIA Office of Public Affairs.

  15. “Does America Need the CIA?,” November 19, 1997. “George J. Tenet on Strategic Direction,” May 5, 1998.

  16. “Does America Need the CIA?,” November 19, 1997.

  17. “George J. Tenet on Strategic Direction,” May 5, 1998.

  18. “Does America Need the CIA?,” November 19, 1997. “George J. Tenet on Strategic Direction,” May 5, 1998. “Should never be the last resort” is from Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Hearing on the Nomination of George Tenet as Director of Central Intelligence,” May 6, 1997.

  19. This habit of personality extended even to his religious faith. Tenet and his family worshiped at a Greek Orthodox church. He also routinely attended Catholic mass with his best friend, Jack DeGioia, a philosopher and academic administrator who had risen to become president of Georgetown University, Tenet’s alma mater. Without any discomfort he could move “back and forth between the two,” as DeGioia put it. Interview with Jack DeGioia, March 26, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW).

  20. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Hearing on the Nomination of George Tenet,” May 6, 1997, and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Hearing on “World Threat Assessment,” January 28, 1998. That Clinton’s guidance to the intelligence community about collection priorities was a classified presidential decision directive is from author’s interviews with former Clinton administration officials. Clinton’s quotes about those priorities are from “Remarks by the President to Staff of the CIA and the Intelligence Community,” July 14, 1995, White House, Office of the Press Secretary.

  21. “Remarks by DCI George J. Tenet to the University of Oklahoma,” September 12, 1997, CIA Office of Public Affairs.

  22. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Hearing on the Nomination of George Tenet,” May 6, 1997.

  23. “George J. Tenet on Strategic Direction,” May 5, 1998.

  24. The Albright quotation is from Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, p. 342. “We’re opposed to their [the Taliban’s] approach on human rights,” Albright said. “We’re opposed to their despicable treatment of women and children and their lack of respect for human dignity… . It is impossible to modernize a nation if half or more of a population is left behind.” Hillary Clinton’s quotations are from “Remarks by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, United Nations Economic and Social Council,” December 10, 1997, White House Press Office.

  25. Leonard Scensny, Chicago Tribune, October 21, 2001.

  26. Interview with Abdullah, May 8, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW). Interview with Rick Inderfurth, February 20, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

  27. Interview with Marty Miller, September 23, 2002, Austin, Texas (SC and GW). Unocal’s strategy, Robert Oakley said in an interview, had to be one of moderating the Taliban, drawing them out. “We felt it was worth a try. Most Afghans said, ‘Look, they brought order. It’s so much better than it was,’ ” Oakley said. Phyllis Oakley took over at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the fall of 1997 and was involved with discussions about how to handle the Taliban. The Taliban were constantly searching for approval from the United States, she said. She described the Taliban’s basic position in talks with the U.S. government in this way: “If you recognize us and build an embassy, we’ll be glad to work with you-except on these issues.” The off-limits issues were women’s rights and terrorism, however, so the conversations never made progress. Robert Oakley described Unocal’s attempts to moderate the Taliban as “frustrating” and cited the influence of bin Laden and other Arab extremists as the major reason. Bin Laden and others showered the Taliban with money, weapons, and volunteers. “It was a lot more than Unocal could give.”

  28. Interview with Miller, September 23, 2002. Interview with Thomas Goutierre, September 18, 2002, Omaha, Nebraska (GW).

  29. “Afghanistan: Meeting with the Taliban,” State Department cable, December 11, 1997, released by the National Security Archive.

  30. Interview with Goutierre, September 18, 2002.

  31. Interview with Miller, September 23, 2002. Miller is the source of the dinner scene at his house.

  32. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “World Threat Assessment,” January 28, 1998. The 105-page transcript of Tenet’s May 1997 confirmation hearing contains a serious discussion of terrorism only on page 103, and then only briefly, with no mention of bin Laden.

  33. Al-Fadl testified about his efforts to purchase uranium for bin Laden in open court early in 2001 during the trial of defendants accused of acting on bin Laden’s behalf in the August 1998 terrorist strikes against U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The question of contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq is highly controversial, and the evidence about such contacts at this writing remains at best uncertain. In interviews with U.S. officials throughout the intelligence community, the author heard repeated accounts of evidence collected in Sudan during the period of bin Laden’s exile there, which showed meetings between visiting midlevel Iraqi officers and Islamists in bin Laden’s circle. This was in the context of many meetings among multinational radicals in Khartoum with varying secular and Islamist agendas. The purpose and seriousness of these contacts, if they did occur, is difficult to gauge. U.S. intelligence believed and reported at the time, according to some of these officials-long before the events of September 11 or the debate over Iraqi links to bin Laden-that bin Laden’s group may have solicited these meetings to explore development of a chemical weapons expertise. Both Sudan’s government and Iraq’s government clearly were interested in chemical weapons capabilities, and bin Laden, for his part, was close to the Khartoum regime. Stanley Bedington, a senior analyst in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center until 1994, said in an interview, “The Iraqis were active in Sudan giving bin Laden assistance. A colleague of mine was chief of operations for Africa and knew it extremely well. He said the relationship between Sudan and the Iraqis was very, very close indeed… . Basically, the Iraqis were looking for anti-American partners and targets of opportunity in places like Sudan… . But his [Saddam’s] regime is essentially secular. If al Qaeda has established links with Iraq, it’s entirely opportunistic.” Later, after bin Laden relocated to Afghanistan and al Qaeda grew in strength, bin Laden clearly did engage in chemical weapons experiments at camps there, although the extent of his progress and outside technical res
ources remain uncertain. The staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States reported in the spring of 2004 that Sudan arranged contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda during the mid-1990s, including a meeting between an Iraqi intelligence officer and bin Laden in 1994. These and other sporadic, midlevel contacts “do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship,” the staff reported. “We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”

  CHAPTER 21: “YOU ARE TO CAPTURE HIM ALIVE”

  1. This chapter’s account of the CIA’s tribal agents, how they were first recruited, how their plans evolved, how they interacted with CIA officers, and how their operations were debated at the White House and at Langley is drawn from interviews with eight American officials knowledgeable about the plans. Many cables and documentation of these episodes remain classified and were unavailable to supplement the recollections of officials. As best the author could discover, the earliest accurate public reference to the plans described in this chapter was a very brief mention in a September 6, 1998, New York Times article by James Risen. Barton Gellman, writing in The Washington Post on December 19, 2001, provided a fuller sketch of their activities. Bob Woodward first described the team’s makeup and intelligence collection role in The Washington Post on December 23, 2001. None of these articles described the origin of the unit as a team to arrest Kasi, the plan to attack Tarnak Farm, the plan to kidnap bin Laden and hold him in a cave, or the extended debate over risks and casualties. On October 17, 2002, George Tenet testified at a Joint Inquiry Committee hearing that by 1998 the CIA was “pursuing a multi-track approach to bring bin Laden himself to justice, including working with foreign services, developing a close relationship with U.S. federal prosecutors, increasing pressure on the Taliban, and enhancing our capability to capture him.”

  2. “It’s a match” is from Patricia Davis and Maria Glod, The Washington Post, November 14, 2002. Other background is from Davis and Thomas, The Washington Post, June 20, 1997, and Dennis Kux, The United States and Pakistan, p. 340. The account here of how the CIA received the tip about Kasi, how the fugitive was betrayed by a business partner, how the arrest operation was planned, and the “Red Light Zulu” radio message to Langley are from interviews with U.S. officials.

  3. CNN, June 18, 1997.

  4. Here as elsewhere in the book the author has published the full names of active CIA officers in the clandestine service only if those names have already been made public. In a few cases elsewhere in the book only the first name of an officer is used or no name at all in order to protect the officer’s professional and personal security.

  5. See note 1. The quotations are from interviews with Gary Schroen, September 19 and November 7, 2002, Washington D.C. (SC). Clinton aides’ approval from National Commission final report, p. 110.

  6. The public record about the grand jury investigation of bin Laden is limited. Press accounts date the origins of the investigation to 1996, around the time the CIA opened its bin Laden unit. Former National Security Council counterterrorism officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, in The Age of Sacred Terror, p. 239, confirm what court records seem to indicate: that an indictment against bin Laden by the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, then Mary Jo White, was first filed under seal in June 1998. CIA officers probably learned informally of the investigation because of their close interaction with FBI agents who were gathering evidence against bin Laden for the grand jury.

  7. This account is from interviews with U.S. officials involved in the Egyptian rendition program. Some of those rendered to Egypt during this period were placed on trial by Egyptian authorities in 1999. Islamist violence against tourists and foreign interests in Egypt climaxed during 1997. In November, Islamic Group gunmen shot to death about seventy tourists, mainly Swiss and Japanese, at the Hatshepsut Temple in Luxor, Egypt.

  8. Michael W. Reisman and James E. Baker, Regulating Covert Action, pp. 123-30. Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 116-17. During the 1980s, under a ruling by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. agents had “no law enforcement authority in another nation unless it is the product of that nation’s consent.” In 1989 this standard was overturned by the Justice Department in favor of a new rule that authorized the executive branch to “violate the territorial sovereignty of other states” while making certain arrests abroad. As Reisman and Baker write, “Notwithstanding executive regulations and international norms against extraterritorial kidnapping, federal courts, until now, [have held] that once custody is obtained, the Court will not examine how a defendant was brought to the dock unless it involved conduct that ‘shocks the conscience.’ ” These standards continue to evolve as fresh cases of fugitives abducted overseas and returned to American courts are reviewed on appeal.

  9. Quotations are from interviews with Gary Schroen, September 19 and November 7, 2002 (SC).

  10. Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror, p. 26.

  11. Vernon Loeb, The Washington Post, August 23 and 25, 1998. Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc., pp. 95-96.

  12. The most thorough and balanced biography of al-Zawahiri yet published in English appeared as a long article in The New Yorker by Lawrence Wright on September 16, 2002.

  13. Higgins and Cullison, in The Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2002, drawing from draft letters from al-Zawahiri to fellow Islamists that were discovered on the hard drive of a computer left behind in Kabul. The article makes plain the Egyptian’s disputatious nature and growing isolation. So does a careful reading of al-Zawahiri’s own post-September 11 memoir, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner; extracts were published in the Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat. In his memoir al-Zawahiri takes credit for a number of lethal terrorist operations prior to his formal alliance with bin Laden, including the 1995 bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad.

  14. Higgins and Cullison, The Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2002, describe al-Zawahiri’s itinerant travels and his fortunate escape from Russian custody in Dagestan. If the Russians had identified him correctly while he was in jail, it is possible that al Qaeda might have developed during the late 1990s in a different way.

  15. Al-Zawahiri, Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ibid.

  18. The memo was released by the office of Senator Jon Kyl and was described by Walter Pincus in The Washington Post, February 25, 1998.

  19. “Report of the Accountability Review Board,” January 8, 1999. This was the commission led by Adm. William Crowe (Ret.) that reviewed the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 and the warnings that had preceded them.

  20. March 9 meeting and quotation from “Afghanistan: [Redacted] Describes Pakistan’s Current Thinking,” State Department cable declassified and released by the National Security Archive.

  21. Interview with Bill Richardson, September 15, 2002, Albuquerque, New Mexico (GW).

  22. All quotations, ibid. Richardson’s recollections are supported by Rick Inderfurth and the U.S. ambassador to Islamabad at the time, Tom Simons, both of whom accompanied him.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Ibid.

  25. All quotations, ibid. Inderfurth and Simons were also at the table with Rabbani and recall the discussion similarly.

  26. Interview with Rick Inderfurth, March 6, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

  27. Interview with Tom Simons, August 19, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

  28. Ibid.

  29. Quotation from Jonathan Landay, Christian Science Monitor, July 1, 1998.

  30. Timothy Weiner, The New York Times, February 1, 1999.

  31. “To the extent of brainwashing” and other details are from the interview with Richard Clarke, July 9, 2003, Washington, D.C. (SC). Useful profiles of Clarke’s career include Landay, Christian Science Monitor; Weiner, The New York Times; and Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post, April 2, 2000. The descriptions of Clarke’s charac
ter and style are also drawn from interviews with about a dozen colleagues who worked closely with him during the late 1990s.

  32. Interviews with former Clinton administration officials.

  33. “Paranoid” and “facilitate” are from USA Today, May 22, 1998. That his status as a principal was unprecedented for an NSC staffer is from Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror, p. 233. An account of PDD-62’s provisions and significance is offered by Perl, “Terrorism, the Future, and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Congressional Research Service, September 13, 2001, and is described in the Joint Inquiry Committee’s final report, p. 234.

  34. Clinton’s bioterrorism session in April is from Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror, p. 252. “Electronic Pearl Harbor” is from Weiner, The New York Times, February 1, 1999. “Pile driver” from National Commission staff statement no. 8, p. 3.

  35. Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post, April 2, 2000.

  36. Jonathan Landay, Christian Science Monitor, July 1, 1998.

  37. Descriptions are from the author’s visit, October 2002, and interviews with local residents.

  38. Interview with Gary Schroen, September 19, 2002. Clarke email and Schroen cable from National Commission, final report, p. 112.

  39. Ibid.

  40. National Commission final report, pp. 112-114.

  41. The nuclear weapons quotations are from Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc., p. 100. The ABC News quotations are from The Washington Post, April 23, 1998, and September 16, 2001.

  42. Benjamin and Simon, Clarke’s principal deputies for counterterrorism, write in their memoir that “there was nothing like a workable plan.”

  43. National Commission final report, p. 114.

  CHAPTER 22: “THE KINGDOM’S INTERESTS”

  1. Quotation from Prince Sultan bin Salman, son of the governor of Riyadh, from Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, p. 138.

  2. Bin Laden described the January arrests of his Saudi followers at his May 1998 press conference. He said they possessed an American Stinger missile and a number of SA-7 surface-to-air missiles. See Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc., pp. 100-101. The defection of Moisalih and the arrests in Saudi Arabia it produced are from “Afghanistan: Crisis of Impunity,” Human Rights Watch, July 2001, p. 33. Turki has given half a dozen press interviews about his mission to Kandahar in June 1998. He provided an early detailed account to the Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1999.