redacted]. “The only reason they let you in for forty-five minutes was to cover their ass down the road. They didn’t expect you to have any success in so little time, so they thought they’d give you access, and then, when asked, they’d say they had tried everything, even giving one of the FBI’s top interrogators access, but the terrorists were not cooperating. But you messed up their plans, so they had to deny that you got intelligence.”
[1 word redacted] don’t believe this theory, and [1 word redacted] believe that Samantha, who had enabled [1 word redacted] to conduct the interrogations, was a good CIA officer. When [1 word redacted] worked at different locations, [1 word redacted] came across some top CIA officials who were professional and talented and did the right thing. [1 word redacted] believe Samantha fit into this category, and that she tried to do the right thing but ultimately failed because the steamroller was more powerful than anyone in the field.
Headquarters instructed [3 words redacted] to [1 word redacted] Binalshibh [2 words redacted] to see if they could get access to him again. [3 words redacted] were told to return to Yemen to work with the fusion cell on disrupting the plot that [1 word redacted] had told [1 word redacted] about. The problem for us was that, after 9/11, the CIA had control of operations the FBI conducted overseas. According to Langley, the threat of an oil tanker explosion didn’t exist: in their eyes, [1 word redacted] had told lies.
25. The Crystal Ball Memo
“Switch on your TV.” Col. Scott Duke, the marine in charge of the fusion cell in Yemen, was on the other end of the line. His voice was raised, and I could hear anger and emotion in his tone.
“What’s wrong?”
“They did it,” he replied. “An oil tanker is on fire off the coast of al-Mukalla. We could have stopped it if only they’d listened to us. If only they had listened to us…” I switched on the television and watched smoke billowing from an oil tanker at sea. Below the shot was a caption: “Breaking News: Explosion on Oil Tanker off the Coast of Yemen.”
We ended the call and I switched off the television and stared out the window for a few minutes. There is no way to describe the feeling of knowing you could have stopped a terrorist attack if only your government had supported you. It was that terrible feeling again.
Hours later my phone rang. This time it was Andy Arena, the senior FBI official who had refused to link Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. “Ali,” he said with panic in his voice, “I need to confirm something. How widely did [1 word redacted] distribute [1 word redacted] memo warning of an attack off the coast of Yemen?”
“It was distributed across all U.S. government agencies through the DoD channels,” I replied.
“I just got off the phone with Pat D’Amuro,” Andy said. “He’s sickened that the attack went ahead exactly as [1 word redacted] had predicted in the memo, right down to an oil tanker off the coast of al-Mukalla—sickened that the warning wasn’t listened to. He wanted to confirm that the memo had been widely distributed.”
The memo had been put together with the help of the joint military and fusion cell. In a meeting with representatives from all U.S. agencies in Yemen, as well as the U.S. ambassador, Edmund Hull, Colonel Duke had asked for permission to intervene to stop the plot. The CIA [3 words redacted] had opposed [1 word redacted] analysis.
One crew member was killed in the October 6 attack on the
After the phone calls with Duke and Andy, I went with Bob to the U.S. Embassy for a meeting in Ambassador Hull’s office. Members of the fusion cell, State Department officials, and the CIA [1 word redacted] were gathered. I noticed that the [1 word redacted] looked agitated as I walked into the meeting with Stephen Gaudin, who at the time served as a permanent detailee to the fusion cell.
“I just returned from a meeting with Yemeni officials,” the ambassador said, “and they told us that they believe the attack was an accident and not a terrorist attack.” We were told that at the moment we had to go along with the Yemenis’ verdict on the issue, and we were not to write reports saying it was a terrorist attack.
“On what basis are they saying that it’s an accident?” Stephen asked.
“They looked into it. That’s their position.”
Stephen and I left the meeting with Colonel Duke, who muttered, “Accident my ass” on the way out.
“Like they said the USS
“This cover-up won’t work,” Duke said.
“The truth will come out soon. The direction of the explosions, residue, witnesses—exactly like the
For three days the official position was that it was not a terrorist attack. We could not call it one, nor could we refer to the memo [1 word redacted] had written before the attack, predicting it.
But on the third day a team from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service began testing the boat and found residue of TNT and other explosives. After an examination of the blast area, it was clear that the tanker had been attacked, and NCIS reported it up their chain of command. The director of the FBI assigned an FBI bomb team to investigate as well.
We investigated the attack with the Yemenis and found that what had happened conformed precisely to the information [1 word redacted] had given [1 word redacted]: two al-Qaeda suicide bombers, one of them [2 words redacted], whom [1 word redacted] had mentioned to [1 word redacted] by name, pulled up alongside the
The memo [1 word redacted] had written became known in government circles as the “crystal ball memo,” because it was so utterly and unanswerably accurate.
The joint military-FBI fusion cell had worked out that there were two separate cells operating in Yemen: one sent by Nashiri specifically to attack the
We learned that the local al-Qaeda cell had come up with a plan to target foreign embassies in Sanaa and planned to hit the U.S., British, German, French, and Cuban embassies. The Cuban Embassy was a target because of the detention of operatives at Guantanamo Bay. Apparently the al-Qaeda leadership wasn’t aware that the facility is owned and operated by the United States and has nothing to do with the Cuban government.
The local cell’s attack was to take place on August 13, 2002. Having cased the embassies, operatives had decided to hit the British and German with car bombs; the French and Cubans with explosives left nearby; and the U.S. with a missile, as it was deemed too well protected to be attacked with car bombs or bags of explosives. Three days before the operation, explosives expert Salman al-Taezi was adding to the missile’s capacity and asked Walid Ashibi, the chief operative for the Yemen cells, to hold it while he did some rewiring. Ashibi trudged across the carpeted room. As soon as he touched the missile, the static energy that had accumulated from his traverse of the carpet caused the missile to light, and it shot right through Taezi, killing him instantly. The ignition also sent a huge shock though Ashibi, and he ran out of the apartment screaming and collapsed in the hallway. He died moments later.
Furqan and his brother, another operative, had both been resting next door. When they heard the explosion, they ran barefoot out of the building and down the street, screaming hysterically. That was the end of the planned al-Qaeda attack on the embassies.
But Furqan and the other members of the cell were still operational in Yemen.
We worked closely with our friends Colonel Yassir and Major Mahmoud, the two Yemeni PSO officials, to track down the local cell. Furqan often hid in the home of Abu Saif, Nibras’s uncle. The Yemenis raided the home of Abu Saif, who was killed in a gun battle resisting arrest. In his house was evidence related to al-Qaeda and the local cell. We also found the suicide will that Nibras had left.
After the static energy fiasco, Furqan and his brother Abu Bakr (another local operative) had visited Abu al- Shahid al-Sanani, one of the
