by Leon Panetta
Meanwhile, Petraeus and McRaven were stepping up the fight in their theater. In mid-December, cruise missiles slammed into Al Qaeda training camps in Yemen. I was grateful to see that we were getting more aggressive in Yemen, as I was deeply concerned about Anwar al-Awlaki. But I privately worried that cruise missiles were not the right tool. We needed more precision and better intelligence. What America would need against Awlaki was an armed drone. But that’s not what was in place.
Still, we were exerting precisely the pressure we had discussed a few months earlier with our military counterparts, and we were doing so across the region, denying Al Qaeda quarter and respite. But Al Qaeda was not only malevolent, it was cunning and resilient. We would not win easily, and not without scars and sacrifice, as we were soon reminded.
• • •
It was Christmas morning, and our family was gathered, as usual, in the house my father built in the Carmel Valley. Our family and my brother’s family enjoyed a traditional Christmas Eve dinner the night before and ended the night with ten games of bingo. Christmas Day began with mass, followed by a big breakfast and then presents—the same rituals we have observed in that house since I was a boy.
Breakfast had just ended when the house phone rang. It was Jeremy. “I am so sorry to interrupt your Christmas, Director,” he began. “But there was an attempted bombing of an airplane as it was landing in Detroit. There may have been a small explosion or fire. The plane is on the ground. Everyone is safe. The guy is in custody.”
The guy was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and he had boarded Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam after beginning his travels in Yemen. He passed most of the long flight without attracting much attention, but as the plane began its descent into Detroit, he complained of feeling sick and covered himself with a blanket. People sitting near him heard a noise and saw smoke and sparks. They jumped Abdulmutallab and wrestled him to the ground, preventing a bomb in his underwear from exploding. Had it gone off, the plane almost certainly would have been destroyed, killing hundreds, perhaps more—and on Christmas Day. It did not, so only he was hurt, but it was obvious that our systems for keeping terrorists and bombs off airplanes had failed.10
Months later, our technicians demonstrated for me a bomb similar to the one he had used. They gave me a pair of goggles and stood me in a bunker more than a hundred yards away. When the bomb went off, it rocked the bunker, and debris rained down over my head. I’m no bomb expert, but it was powerfully clear what would have happened to that airplane.
The incident caught the administration off guard, and we did not respond well, at least initially. President Obama was in Hawaii, and initially elected not to comment publicly on the near miss. Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano strangely proclaimed that “the system worked,” when plainly it had not.11 A review of Abdulmutallab’s history later revealed that the CIA was among the agencies that had failed; our files had information that should have placed him on a no-fly list, but the person responsible for handling that information hadn’t flagged it promptly, allowing Abdulmutallab to board the plane even though his own father had tried to warn us that he was dangerously unstable.
“John Brennan has asked us to come down to the White House and explain how this happened,” Jeremy told me the next day. Brennan chewed him out and was critical of the CIA’s lapse. We couldn’t do anything but take it. We took our lumps, and redoubled our efforts to tighten scrutiny.
We were lucky in this instance. Not only did alert passengers prevent a catastrophe but Abdulmutallab turned out to be an important source of information. Immediately after his capture, he was interrogated to determine whether he was part of a larger plot along the lines of 9/11. Those interrogations were done under the national security exception that allows federal agents to grill a suspect without warning him of his right to remain silent or to have a lawyer present. Abdulmutallab talked and gave up some information, though not much. Then, convinced that no larger plot was under way that day, the FBI read him his Miranda rights, and he stopped talking.
That became a cause célèbre, as conservative critics of the administration, led by the predictable Dick Cheney, seized on the decision to read him his rights as proof of Obama’s naiveté. Cheney released a statement roundly castigating the president: “As I’ve watched the events of the last few days, it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war.”12
Within the administration, the decision to read Abdulmutallab his rights was hotly debated afterward. Some, including me, argued that there was simply no constitutional way to arrest a person within our borders and indefinitely deny that person the rights afforded by the Constitution; others argued that we needed more flexible rules to protect the country from attack, that enemy combatants, even within the United States, were fundamentally different from criminals. Congress couldn’t resist getting in the act, with various members floating ideas for depriving anyone accused of terrorism of their most basic rights. Thankfully, the furor gradually subsided without any fundamental rejiggering of constitutional protections.
Less noted was what happened after Abdulmutallab was informed of his right to remain silent and to have a lawyer. After first shutting up, he then relented and talked at length. It was Abdulmutallab who revealed that Anwar al-Awlaki had personally sent him on his terrorist mission. And it was Abdulmutallab who told FBI agents that the person who made the bomb that he carried in his underwear that day was Ibrahim al-Asiri, brother of the young man who had tried to kill Prince bin Nayef. Those statements helped us better understand the workings of Al Qaeda in Yemen and ultimately led to Awlaki’s elimination. Importantly, investigators coaxed those admissions from Abdulmutallab without duress. He was not denied sleep or stripped naked, much less waterboarded. His confessions were the result of patient, clever interrogation of a suspect who had been read his rights and who nevertheless elected to cooperate with skillful questioners—proof that civil liberties and expert, aggressive investigations can and do coexist.
• • •
Less than a week after the Christmas Day attempt, we were hit again, this time with much more tragic results.
Throughout the fall of 2009, CTC had briefed me during the CT-ME update on a tantalizing lead. A Jordanian doctor named Humam al-Balawi had inserted himself into the top ranks of Al Qaeda in Pakistan and was offering to help us find none other than Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who was second only to bin Laden in the Al Qaeda leadership. Balawi had been a minor celebrity of the jihadist underground, writing under an assumed name and posting Internet pieces that encouraged martyrs and generally railed at the West. Jordanian officials tolerated it for a time, but when Balawi seemed to drift from commentary toward possible action, they arrested him and subjected him to a rough interrogation at the kingdom’s infamous security headquarters.
While in their custody and immediately after his release, Balawi appeared to rethink his jihadist inclinations and responded warmly to encouragement by his Jordanian handler, a highly respected intelligence officer. Balawi left Jordan for Pakistan in the spring of 2009. There, he was to attempt to infiltrate Al Qaeda, a mission that would allow him to redeem his family name with a demonstration of loyalty to his king and country. The promise of a significant reward also sweetened the pot.
Balawi made it to the tribal areas of South Waziristan, and after a few months of cautious but growing contact with local terrorists, the Pakistani Taliban invited him to come live with some of its leaders. We briefly worried that he might have been killed that summer, but no harm came to him, though he disappeared for a time.
When he resurfaced, Balawi produced a short video that created a whirlwind of activity in Washingto
n and Amman. In it, he was shown sitting near a top associate of bin Laden’s, incontrovertible evidence that Balawi had, in fact, inserted himself into the innermost reaches of Al Qaeda. A few weeks later he followed that up with an even more astonishing report: He had just met Zawihiri himself—the Egyptian terrorist needed medical attention, and Balawi was a physician. Balawi’s account included a number of details about Zawihiri’s medical and personal history; they were consistent with other information, and there seemed no doubt but that Balawi had secured the confidence of one of the most wanted men on earth.
This was a very big deal, and I personally briefed the president about our new lead. He shared the enthusiasm that our officers felt, though he, like many of our top people, wanted to know more about Balawi. What motivated him? How had he been so successful at infiltrating a notoriously suspicious terror group? I told Obama that we were pursuing those questions, and as we did, I kept in close touch with John Brennan, both to keep the White House informed and also to seek his counsel.
One thing that all our people agreed about was that we needed a face-to-face meeting with Balawi. He was amenable, though he had several conditions. He insisted that his Jordanian handler be present, and he initially proposed locations that we rejected as too dangerous. Instead, his Jordanian handler proposed, with our support, that the meeting take place at the U.S. base in Khost, Afghanistan. Security was tight, so he could do so without being observed by spies on the periphery of the facility, and it was safely under our control. After some hesitation, Balawi agreed to a plan whereby one of our people would pick him up and deliver him for a debriefing at the base.
Then another round of hiccups ensued, as he missed one scheduled meeting time after another. As the year drew to a close, we didn’t know precisely what to expect when we finally met Balawi in person. In the predawn dark of December 30, a sharp rap on the door of my room from a member of my security detail brought the answer crashing home.
It was Amy, my former briefer and now one of the senior aides in my office, on the line. Her voice was trembling. “I need to talk on a secure line,” she said. “There’s been an attack in Afghanistan, and some of our officers have been hit.” She called me back on my secure line and told me that our meeting with the source had gone terribly wrong and that he likely had been wearing a suicide vest.
Jeremy raced in to the office, and I stayed on the phone with him much of the morning. The initial reports were gruesome—some killed, others maimed, some in surgery. Fragments and body parts everywhere.
I was so staggered that at first I didn’t put it together with Balawi, but as I conferred with Jeremy and Steve Kappes and we received the reports coming from the field, it became clear that Balawi, whom we’d imagined as our double agent, in fact had been working with Al Qaeda. We had been so excited by the prospect of inserting an agent into the highest ranks of our enemy that we let down our guard. Treated as a visiting dignitary rather than as a possible attacker, Balawi, unsearched, was waved through to the inner compound, where more than a dozen officers eagerly looked forward to greeting this electrifyingly significant asset. Instead, as he stepped out of the car and the security officers ordered him to show his hands, he blew himself to pieces. The specially made suicide vest ripped through the semienclosed area.
By midafternoon, the toll was clear: Seven CIA officers had been killed in the explosion. The Jordanian case officer died too, as did the driver of the car.
As the magnitude of the tragedy became clear, I called those who I believed needed to hear the news directly from me: Dennis Blair, then still the director of national intelligence; Vice President Biden; Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and the president of the United States.
“This guy turned out to be a double agent,” I began. “We lost seven people.”
Obama was quiet at first. He expressed his sorrow, offered to help any way he could. Just days after the Christmas bomber had nearly brought down an American airliner, the president was understandably concerned that we were experiencing something larger. I promised him we were investigating as we spoke and would report anything we learned to him. He thanked me, again expressed his regrets, and we hung up.
• • •
The explosion at Khost was one of the largest losses of life in the history of the CIA. I had been director for nine months, and suddenly the agency for which I was responsible was profoundly shaken. Men and women bound by common patriotism and dedication to service grow very close, and those who died in Khost had affected many, many colleagues. I returned to Washington immediately, reaching out to families and employees at all levels of the CIA even as I asked myself the same hard questions many of them were confronting. I too had been swept up in the promise of this extraordinary source, had allowed myself to jump ahead to the capture or elimination of a potent enemy. Had I missed clues that should have warned me and others earlier? For days I was tormented by the thought that I had let my colleagues and agency down.
But my job was not to wallow. It was to comfort those who were suffering and to press ahead despite our grief. At our first staff meeting following the explosion, I asked that we honor our colleagues with a moment of silence. There in my office sat the senior leaders of the agency, those who I had come to know over the past ten months, who had joined me every morning in this conference room at this hour. We had come to trust one another. Now we had suffered together. Some cried silently. All looked downward. Then I spoke briefly:
“When you are at war,” I said, “there are risks that you take, but we are a family—we have to be a family. We now have to pull together to not only deal with the pain of this loss but also to pull together that we fulfill the mission. We hit them hard this past year, and they’re going to try to hit us back. But we have to stay on the offensive.”
The next day, I stood in the bitter cold at Dover Air Force Base to welcome home the bodies of our colleagues. The senior CIA team was there, as was General Jim Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs. With so many victims, the families were forced to gather in a multipurpose room because they overflowed the base’s chapel. As I introduced myself and expressed my condolences to the families, not one voiced anger. Not one person questioned the security arrangements or demanded an investigation or complained. Their loved ones had chosen this work, entered it with full appreciation of the dangers involved, and yet entered it nonetheless. To a family, each of them voiced the pride they felt in their husbands and wives, sons, daughters, parents. And without exception, they asked me to be sure to take the fight to those who had killed their loved ones. I promised that I would.
And of course we had wounded colleagues as well. I visited them at Bethesda Naval Hospital, some with mangled limbs, many with serious head wounds, all badly hurt. One young man asked me about his colleagues, and I told him several had died, only just then realizing that his family had been sheltering him from the news. He stared blankly; I prayed that the revelation would not hamper his recovery. Another of the injured, our deputy chief of station for Afghanistan, I knew from the CT-ME updates. He too was badly hurt, but surrounded by family grateful to still have him. Still another one of our officers greeted me with a smile and told me he knew my son from Afghanistan. “Please give my regards to Jimmy,” he said. Every one of our wounded officers returned to duty.
We quickly learned the details of Balawi’s betrayal, in part because his terror allies released videos boasting of their role in Balawi’s attack, praising him for his martyrdom, and featuring Balawi himself denouncing the United States and vowing that his death would bring vengeance. Hakimullah Mehsud, a cousin of Baitullah Mehsud’s who had taken over when the latter was killed, had helped train Balawi for his mission, and said it was done specifically in retaliation for the killing of his cousin. Sheikh Said al-Masri, Al Qaeda’s number three leader, supplied logistical support and money, and crowed afterward about Balawi’s “successful epic.”
; I commissioned a special study of the episode, not to affix blame but rather to ensure that we might learn from it. Internally, that caused some anxiety, as officers and supervisors worried either that they might be unfairly singled out or that the agency might try to heap all responsibility on the officers who died, blemishing their sacrifice. In the end, we concluded that some agency officers did miss red flags, and were nearly blinded by their belief that we were dealing with an exceptionally valuable source. Still, it was hard to find that those failings merited disciplinary action. At the same time, I was determined that the agency not become paralyzed or overcautious. There are certain risks that can’t be eliminated in the work of espionage and counterterrorism, and retreat to safety would mean the end of our effectiveness. I need not have worried. The officers of the CIA rose bravely and dramatically to the occasion.
We shook sources, worked overtime, scoured electronic intelligence and surveillance. Al Qaeda members scrambled for safety, unsure who to trust or where to hide. A few weeks after the bombing, U.S. officials spotted a senior Taliban leader involved in the Khost attack. He survived, but the United States was on his trail.
The president came to Langley on February 5 for a memorial service for the Khost victims, and I joined him for the solemn duty of saying good-bye to our fallen heroes. Steve Kappes had arranged for an Irish tenor to sing “Danny Boy,” and each of the officers was eulogized by a friend from within the agency. With snow falling outside the tent in which families and colleagues gathered, the president spoke movingly, addressing the families, speaking most earnestly to the young children who had lost parents. And he addressed the larger CIA family as well, urging its officers to continue their work in tribute. “There are no words that can ease the ache in your hearts,” he acknowledged. “But to their colleagues and all who served with them—those here today, those still recovering, those watching around the world—I say: Let their sacrifice be a summons. To carry on their work. To complete this mission. To win this war, and to keep our country safe.”13