Ghost Wars

by Steve Coll

  3. Abdullah’s routine is from interviews with senior Saudi officials. His demeanor, palaces, and appearance are from an interview with Crown Prince Abdullah, January 28, 2002, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (SC).

  4. Interviews with senior Saudi officials.

  5. One American counterterrorism official called Naif ‘s Interior Ministry a “black hole” into which requests for names, telephone numbers, and other details usually disappeared, never to reemerge. Turki’s tent accident was described by several U.S. officials.

  6. Sheikh Turki’s presence is from interviews with senior Saudi officials. His presence was also described by Intelligence Newsletter, October 15, 1998.

  7. Turki’s assessment of Mullah Omar, al Qaeda membership, and bin Laden’s leadership role are from an interview with Prince Turki, August 2, 2002, Cancun, Mexico (SC).

  8. “Briefed … kingdom’s interests” is from the Associated Press, December 23, 2001, quoting Turki’s interview with the Arabic-language satellite television network MBC. “We made it plain” is from Los Angeles Times, August 8, 1999.

  9. The Turki interview was on ABC News Nightline, December 10, 2001.

  10. Rashid, Taliban, p. 72, describes Turki’s meeting with Omar as focused entirely on the upcoming Taliban military thrust against Northern Alliance forces in Mazar-i-Sharif. Saudi officials denied this was a subject of discussion. The only publicly available accounts of the meeting are from Turki and Mullah Omar. The Taliban leader told Time magazine on August 24, 1998, that Turki had told him to keep bin Laden quiet. Omar made no reference to a Saudi request to hand bin Laden over for trial. Instead, after hearing from Turki, Omar said he told bin Laden “that as a guest, he shouldn’t involve himself in activities that create problems for us.”

  11. Biographies and Afghan training of el Hage, Odeh, and Mohammed are from opening statements by their defense lawyers at their trial in the Southern District of New York, February 5, 2001.

  12. Casualty statistics and attack sequences are from “Report of the Accountability Review Boards: Bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7, 1998,” released on January 8, 1999.

  13. Ibid. The July 29 CTC warning is from the Joint Inquiry Committee’s final report, Appendix, p. 20. The review board’s investigators examined classified intelligence and threat warnings circulated prior to the attacks and found “no immediate tactical warning” about the embassy bombings. The board did not blame either the CIA or the FBI for failing to discover bin Laden’s Africa cells. They did criticize the heavy dependence on fragmentary and often inaccurate threat warnings as the primary guidance system for security measures at U.S. embassies. “We understand the difficulty of monitoring terrorist networks and concluded that vulnerable missions cannot rely upon such warning,” the board wrote. “We found, however, that both policy and intelligence officials have relied heavily on warning intelligence to measure threats, whereas experience has shown that transnational terrorists often strike without warning at vulnerable targets in areas where expectations of terrorist acts against the U.S. are low.” In the Africa cases, the earlier CIA and FBI efforts to track and disrupt el Hage’s activities in Nairobi had lulled the agencies into a false belief that they had broken up the local cells. Also, the State Department ignored repeated warnings from the U.S. ambassador to Nairobi, beginning in December 1997, that the chancery building was too close to a major street and was therefore vulnerable to just the sort of truck bombing that eventually occurred.

  14. Interviews with U.S. officials. Tracking the African cells, ibid.

  15. Interview with a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the woman’s reaction.

  16. Interviews with multiple senior Clinton administration officials.

  17. Interviews with participants. “Intelligence from a variety” is from Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 100-101. “Spoke pretty clearly … confidence” is from an interview with a Clinton administration official. “The first compelling … Americans” is from an interview with a senior Clinton administration official who spoke to Clinton about the incident in 2003.

  18. Interviews with Clinton administration officials. Berger’s view about military options is from testimony before the Joint Inquiry Committee, September 19, 2002. “I don’t think there was anybody in the press calling for an invasion of Afghanistan” in August 1998 or at any point afterward, Berger testified. “I just don’t think that was something [where] we would have diplomatic support; we would not have had basing support.” Clinton’s quotation, “As despicable … support us” is from an interview with a senior Clinton administration official.

  19. Tenet’s briefing that day is from Vernon Loeb, The Washington Post, October 21, 1999. See also the chronology provided on the day the missile strikes were announced by Madeleine Albright, transcript of press conference, August 20, 1998, Federal News Service.

  20. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Age of Sacred Terror, p. 358. National Commission staff investigators later reported that they found “no evidence that domestic political considerations entered into the discussion or decision-making process” during this period.

  21. Interviews with two Clinton administration officials familiar with the Pentagon’s targeting work, which seems to have begun around the time of bin Laden’s May press conference and his threat-filled interview with ABC News, which was broadcast in the United States a few weeks later.

  22. Interviews with multiple Clinton administration officials. The Zinni quotation is from Bob Woodward and Thomas Ricks, The Washington Post, October 3, 2001. In Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 107, the CIA’s Pillar wrote, “Intelligence about a scheduled meeting of bin Laden and other terrorist leaders … determined the timing of the attack.” See also the Joint Inquiry Committee’s final report, p. 297.

  23. Gul’s claim from National Commission, staff report no. 6, p. 6. Hussain’s account from interview with Mushahid Hussain, May 21, 2002, Islamabad, Pakistan (SC).

  24. Ibid.

  25. Interviews with U.S. and Pakistani officials involved in the episode, including the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan at the time, Tom Simons, August 19, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). Some published accounts have suggested that Ralston told Karamat directly at dinner that the cruise missiles were in the air. But one U.S. official familiar with the event said that in fact Ralston was not so forthcoming, telling Karamat only in general terms that a “retaliatory action” was being planned by the United States. By this account Ralston left Pakistani airspace before the missiles arrived, infuriating Karamat who felt the Americans had failed to take him adequately into their confidence. Sharif, meanwhile, was angry that the United States talked directly to the army about the attack rather than to Pakistan’s supposedly supreme civilian authority, and he was also angry at Karamat, believing that the general had deceived him or let him down. When Pakistani authorities learned that two of the missiles had fallen short and hit inside Pakistani territory, they denounced the attack in public and in private.

  26. Interviews with Clinton administration officials. Also Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy.

  27. Quotation from an interview with a senior Clinton administation official. The secret Blair House exercise in July is from Benjamin and Simon, Age of Sacred Terror, pp. 254-55.

  28. “Terrorist war” is quoted by Eleanor Hill, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement, September 18, 2002. “I think it’s very important” is from The Washington Post, August 22, 1998. “You left us with the baby” is from The Washington Post, September 2, 1998.

  29. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 103 and 107.

  30. Tenet’s quotations are from the Joint Inquiry Committee’s final report, Appendix, p. 21. Slocombe memo and Clarke forecast from National Commission, staff statement no. 6, p. 3.

  31. That Rana came along and an ISI officer translated is from an interview with a senior Saudi official.

  32. Ibid.

  33. The Omar quotatio
ns are from Prince Turki, ABC News Nightline, December 10, 2001.

  34. Interview with a senior Saudi official. Speaking to the Associated Press on November 23, 2001, Turki quoted himself similarly: “I told him, ‘You will regret it, and the Afghan people will pay a high price for that.’ ” See also National Commission, staff statement no. 5, pp. 9-10, which reports that Turki returned to Kandahar in June 1999 on a similar mission, “to no effect.”

  35. Interviews with U.S. officials.

  CHAPTER 23: “WE ARE AT WAR”

  1. In an early speech after becoming DCI, written to answer the question “Does America Need the CIA?,” Tenet described the agency as the country’s “insurance policy” against strategic surprise. Text of the speech from November 19, 1997, CIA Office of Public Affairs.

  2. Interviews with Clinton administration officials. One recalled his reaction to the Africa bombings this way: “I’m at the White House, so I’m thinking two things: One is the venal thought that it is not good for the president to have embassies blowing up, so probably we want to limit that. And the other is that deterrence really depends on these kinds of things not happening, and that’s really important for the exercise of U.S. power.”

  3. “A tendency … attention and resources” is from Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 115-16.

  4. Interviews with U.S. officials. David Benjamin and Steven Simon highlighted the White House complaints about unedited intelligence in their book, The Age of Sacred Terror. The East Africa bombings, they wrote, “had a catalytic effect on CIA stations, foreign intelligence services, and it seemed, everyone who had ever peddled information” (p. 261). The CIA “gave Clinton substantial amounts of threat information that did not require presidential attention” (p. 265).

  5. “No double standards” is from interviews with U.S. officials. Benjamin and Simon estimate that “scores” of embassies were closed for at least brief periods during the last months of 1998 and the first months of 1999.

  6. Summaries of classified aviation threat reports in the fall of 1998 are from Eleanor Hill, Joint Inquiry Staff Statement, September 18, 2002.

  7. Ibid., and interviews with U.S. officials. See also the Joint Inquiry Committee’s final report, Appendix, p. 23.

  8. Joint Inquiry Staff Statement, September 18, 2002.

  9. That the submarine order was closely held, that Tarnak coordinates were preloaded, what Clinton made clear to his senior aides, and that exercises reduced decision-to-target time to about four hours are all from interviews with U.S. officials involved. Delenda Plan and Steinberg quotation from National Commission, staff statement no. 6, pp. 3-4, and no. 8, p. 4.

  10. The account that follows is based mainly on interviews with multiple participants. Staff investigators from the National Commission have helpfully corrected two errors in the account of this episode in the first edition of Ghost Wars: It occurred in December 1998, not September; and decision-makers feared hitting a mosque, not a hospital. See staff statement no. 6, p. 7.

  11. Clinton’s outlook and Clarke’s advice from interviews with multiple senior Clinton administration officials involved in the discussions.

  12. The Berger quotation is from testimony before the Joint Inquiry Committee, September 19, 2002.

  13. That Berger’s standard was “significant” or “substantial” probability of success is from interviews with Clinton administration officials.

  14. The account in this section of the MONs signed by Clinton is from interviews with multiple officials familiar with the documents. Barton Gellman published the first account of the memos in The Washington Post, December 19, 2001. The account here differs from his in a few details. According to officials interviewed by the author, Clinton signed at least four MONs related to bin Laden. The first predated the Africa embassy bombings and authorized the use of force to detain or arrest bin Laden’s international couriers, according to these officials. The second was drafted immediately after the embassy bombings and authorized snatch operations against bin Laden and certain of his lieutenants. The third was signed later that autumn and involved bin Laden’s aircraft, as described in this chapter. A fourth was signed in late 1999 or early 2000 and involved the CIA’s liaison with Massoud, as described in Chapter 25 and following. In addition to authorizing snatch operations by Massoud, Clinton specifically authorized the CIA’s tribal team in southern Afghanistan, a Pakistani commando team, and an Uzbek commando team to carry out snatch operations using lethal force against bin Laden and his lieutenants. Whether the authorizations for each of these different strike forces required a separate MON or were handled by some other form of legal documentation is not clear to the author. All the documents re-main highly classified. “As smart as bin Laden … equally ruthless” is from Clinton’s speech to the Democratic Leadership Council at New York University, December 6, 2002.

  15. Baker is the coauthor of a legal book on these issues, Regulating Covert Action .

  16. Interviews with U.S. officials.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Interviews with U.S. officials involved. “We wanted … be possible” is from the Joint Inquiry Committee’s final report, p. 283.

  19. The Hitz quotation is from an oped article he published in The Washington Post, September 15, 1998. Goss called the Directorate of Operations “gun-shy,” according to the Associated Press, September 15, 1998.

  20. Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, confirmed the existence and conclusions of these opinions in testimony before the Joint Inquiry Committee on September 19, 2002. “We received rulings in the Department of Justice,” Berger said, “not to prohibit our ability-prohibit our efforts to try to kill bin Laden, because [the assassination ban] did not apply to situations in which you’re acting in self-defense or you’re acting against command and control targets against an enemy, which he certainly was.”

  21. The summary of the debate over law enforcement approaches to bin Laden is from interviews with multiple Clinton administration officials. Albright and Cohen quotations are from their written testimony to the National Commission, March 23, 2004.

  22. Ibid. See note 14. Pentagon order from National Commission, staff statement no. 6, p. 5.

  23. “Written word … kettle of fish and much easier” is from an interview with a U.S. official involved. In testimony before the Joint Inquiry Committee investigating the September 11 attacks, Cofer Black, who led the Counterterrorist Center after 1999, said in a statement, “Operational flexibility: This is a highly classified area. All I want to say is that there was a ‘before’ 9/11 and ‘after’ 9/11. After 9/11 the gloves come off.” Divided planning in Pentagon from National Commission, staff statement no. 6, p. 5. Clinton’s changing language from final report, pp. 126-133.

  24. “Unless you find him … get the job done” is from an interview with a Clinton administration official involved.

  25. “It was no question” is from Berger’s testimony before the Joint Inquiry Committee, September 19, 2002. “Any confusion” is from National Commission staff statement no. 7, p. 9.

  26. Douglas Frantz, The New York Times, December 8, 2001.

  27. Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind, p. 207.

  28. Ibid., p. 208. The letter was solicited by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on South Asian affairs.

  29. Interviews with multiple State Department officials from this period. Inderfurth summed up the department’s policy in an interview: “The United States had been very involved, as had others, during the period of ‘79 through ‘89, choosing sides. What was needed now was not to choose sides but to get all parties to talk, and if we had chosen sides, our ability to press all sides to actually sit down would have been impaired. A lot of people that had dealt with Afghanistan over the years said, look, the Northern Alliance and those involved are virtually no better than those they’re opposing.” Inderfurth said he personally had the view that Massoud’s alliance could not possibly be as bad as the Taliban, and a
mong his colleagues “there would be people who would concede the point.” The consensus within the State Department was, according to Inderfurth, “Look, we’ve gone down that road before. We do not want to become an active participant in the civil conflict; we want to try to bring them together.”

  30. Statement by Karl F. Inderfurth, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, October 8, 1998.

  31. Quotations in this paragraph are from Clinton’s speech at Georgetown University, November 7, 2001. “Painful and powerful … community” is from Clinton’s speech to the British Labour Party conference at Blackpool, England, October 3, 2002. Arguably, both the Irish Republican Army and the Zionist movement that emerged after World War II achieved important political goals through terrorist violence-as did the Palestine Liberation Organization.

  32. “Fanatics … value of life” is from Clinton’s Blackpool speech, October 3, 2002.

  33. “Take Mr. bin Laden” is from USA Today, November 12, 2001. “Reduce the risks … in the future” is from Clinton’s Blackpool speech, October 3, 2002.

  34. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy . “A challenge … solved,” p. vii. “A war that cannot be won … to some degree controlled,” pp. 217-18. The account in this section of the debates between Pillar on the one hand and Clarke’s aides Simon and Benjamin on the other is drawn in part from multiple officials in several departments. Skepticism is due when participants seek to characterize their positions about a catastrophe like September 11 in the light of hindsight. In this case, however, it is possible to document the views of Pillar, Simon, and Benjamin without such colorizing. After he left the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center in 1999, Pillar spent a year at the Brookings Institution where he synthesized his views and experiences into a book that was written and published just before the events of September 11. In the same period, after they left the White House, Simon and Benjamin collaborated on an article in the security journal Survival about terrorism and al Qaeda. In documenting their competing views here, I have relied solely on language composed by the participants before they had the benefit of knowing about September 11.