The Black Banners

Bhatia is both a good friend and someone I’ve learned a great deal from.

Another person who deserves mention is Lawrence Wright—his dedication to pursuing the truth, put together brilliantly in his book The Looming Tower, is a lesson to every aspiring journalist. Barry McManus, Steve Kleinman, Stephen White, Philip Zelikow, Mark Pritchard, Karen Greenberg, Dan Benjamin, Tim Andrews, Mike Jacobson, and other friends also teach me a great deal. My thanks also go to Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who gave me my first job after I left the bureau, and to Dan Connolly at Giuliani Partners, a high-minded true friend.

I also owe a debt of gratitude to my colleagues at The Soufan Group: Mark Smith, Ahmad Khalil, Heidi Fink, Sandy Choi, Angie Hutcheson, John Waddell, Bud Aldridge, Jim McGee, Ray Mey, my friend Mohammed Hanzab, and all our instructors, language teachers, interpreters, and the whole team at the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies (QIASS)—I treasure your friendship. Michael Lomonaco and Tim Brown from the excellent Porter House are two caring friends, as well as excellent hosts. To Sayeed Rahman, Liora Danan, Jared Wigdor, and Samm Tyroler-Cooper, our research interns who helped with this book.

While most of those whom I’d like to thank I’m able to, some are sadly no longer with us. The seventeen sailors who died on the USS Cole are heroes, in every sense of the word, whom I will never forget; and neither should America. Lenny Hatton was a heroic FBI agent who died on 9/11, running into the burning twin towers to try to save lives. Finally, there’s John O’Neill, my boss, friend, and mentor—who understood the threat more than anyone else. He died in the twin towers, too. John, more than anyone else, this is for you.

A special thank you goes to my agent, Andrew Wylie, who has guided me through the writing process, and to the team at his agency. Starling Lawrence, my very capable editor at Norton, and his team—Louise Brockett, Rachel Salzman, Melody Conroy, Bill Rusin, Nancy Palmquist, Don Rifkin, Anna Oler, and everyone else—did a wonderful job, and I owe my deep thanks to them for believing in this project and guiding it to fruition. Janet Byrne, who worked alongside Star as a second editor: her stunning skills and amazing tenacity transformed the original material into this book.

My final thanks go to the heroes of the country who are today still on the front lines—across the military, FBI, CIA, NCIS, and other agencies—and who every day put their lives on the line for us. Thank you.

Principal Characters

Nasir Abbas: A commander of the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah who opposed the efforts of Hambali to tie the group to al-Qaeda. He later left the group, and I spoke to him in 2010 in Indonesia.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah (aliases: Saleh, [1 word redacted], and Abu Mohammed al-Masri): Headed al-Qaeda’s East African cells following the death of Abu Ubaidah on May 21, 1996, and was indicted for his role in planning the 1998 East African embassy bombings. He is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.

Abu Abdul Rahman al-Muhajir (alias of Muhsin Musa Matwakku Atwah): Al-Qaeda’s explosives expert and master bomb maker; indicted for the 1998 East African embassy bombings. He was reported by Pakistani officials to have been killed in 2006 by an airstrike in North Waziristan, a claim confirmed by U.S. officials through DNA testing.

Abu Bakar Bashir: Cofounded the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah with Abdullah Sungkar, and after Sungkar’s death in 1999 he took over the group. He supported Hambali’s relationship with al-Qaeda.

Abu Hafs al-Mauritani (alias of Mahfouz Ould al-Walid): Shura council member and the only person in al-Qaeda with religious training; headed the fatwa committee following the arrest of Abu Hajer al- Iraqi. Reports occasionally surface that he has been killed, but they have never been confirmed, and some analysts believe he is living in Iran.

Abu Hafs al-Masri: (alias of Mohammed Atef): Al-Qaeda’s military commander after the death of Abu Ubaidah in 1996. He was eventually killed in November 2001 by a U.S. airstrike on his hiding place; in the rubble of the house we found important evidence that became part of the DocEx program.

Abu Hajer al-Iraqi (alias of Mamdouh Mahmoud Salem): Kurd who fought in Saddam’s army and then alongside bin Laden in Afghanistan, where the two became close friends. Although he wasn’t a cleric, he memorized the Quran, and bin Laden appointed him head of al-Qaeda’s fatwa committee. From that perch he wrote justifications for al-Qaeda’s actions, including the killing of innocent civilians. He was arrested in Germany in September 1998 and extradited to the United States, where he was sentenced for participating in the 1998 East African embassy bombings.

Abu Jandal (literally, “father of death”; alias of Nasser Ahmad Nasser al-Bahri): Member of the Northern Group who was recruited to al-Qaeda in 1996 with the help of Muhannad bin Attash; rose within the organization to become bin Laden’s personal bodyguard. He is the brother-in-law of Salim Hamdan, who served as bin Laden’s driver and confidant; it was the al-Qaeda leader who encouraged the two to marry sisters. Abu Jandal had been arrested by the Yemeni authorities after the October 12, 2000, bombing of the USS Cole, but they only let us question him after 9/11, when another al-Qaeda operative, Fahd al-Quso, linked him to one of the 9/11 hijackers, Marwan al-Shehhi. NCIS Special Agent Robert McFadden and I interrogated him, and he identified many of the 9/11 hijackers and provided invaluable intelligence on al-Qaeda’s structure, operatives, and operations. To date that interrogation is viewed as the most successful in the war against al-Qaeda. Today he is free in Yemen.

Abu Ubaidah al-Banshiri (alias of Amin Ali al-Rashidi): A member of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad before joining al-Qaeda, he was bin Laden’s first deputy and then became the group’s first military commander. He drowned in 1996 in a ferry accident on Lake Victoria.

Abu Zubaydah (full name: Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn Abu Zubaydah; alias Daood): Independent terrorist facilitator who served as the external emir of the Khaldan training camp and was the partner of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby. We first came across Abu Zubaydah during the Millennium Operation in Jordan. He was captured in a shootout in March 2002 and flown to a secret location, where [3 words redacted] interrogated him. We gained important actionable intelligence from him, including his identification of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of 9/11. He also told us about Jose Padilla and Binyam Mohamed’s so-called dirty bomb plot. [2 words redacted] Abu Zubaydah when final control of his interrogation was given over to CIA contractors employing coercive interrogation techniques. Their techniques failed, and in secret memos they tried to claim [1 word redacted] earlier successes as their own. He is being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Salman al-Adani: Al-Qaeda operative tasked with being one of the suicide bombers for the January 2000 attack on the USS The Sullivans—which failed because Adani and his fellow suicide bomber, Taha al-Ahdal, miscalculated the tide and their boat got stuck in the sand. He later died after jumping into a sewer to try to save a boy who had fallen in.

Saif al-Adel: Senior al-Qaeda operative who is a member of the shura council and heads the organization’s security committee. After bin Laden’s death, he was appointed the interim leader of al-Qaeda. He held that position until June 16, 2011, when Ayman al-Zawahiri officially became its new leader. He remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.

Taha al-Ahdal: An al-Qaeda operative who, with Salman al-Adani, was one of the intended suicide bombers for the aborted January 2000 attack on the USS The Sullivans. He was killed while fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Alvin (not his real name): CIA chief of operations in Jordan during the Millennium Operation. He went on to become the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center Sunni extremists chief.

Hussein Ansi: Head of Yemen’s Political Security Organization in Aden while we were investigating the bombing of the USS Cole. He appeared to be sympathetic to al-Qaeda and often tried to frustrate our investigation. After two of the al-Qaeda members involved in the attack, Fahd al- Quso and Jamal al-Badawi, “escaped” from jail in April 2003, we pressured the Yemenis to look into Ansi’s