Morocco asked my country for help against pirates. The United States agreed, and Morocco was one of the first countries to ever make a treaty with the United States, and we’ve had a proud friendship since. Today the United States is asking Morocco for help, and it’s been nice to see how warmly you’ve returned the favor.”
The toast was cheered by the Moroccans, who seemed touched by the reminder of the friendship. I was sitting next to Debbie and said, “No one knows how to make toasts and win friends like John.”
After that first conversation Kherchtou began opening up more. To continue to make him feel comfortable, we stayed away from asking for sensitive information about al-Qaeda and instead focused on his life, his family, his travels, and his aspirations, building a relationship with him. He was naturally talkative, and on safe topics he engaged well. Pat Fitzgerald, for his part, expertly established rapport with him and reeled him in.
After a few hours of conversation, we took Kherchtou out to a pizza place in Rabat for a change of scenery. He was interested in the United States and we told him what it was like living there. We gently broached the subject of his going into the Witness Protection Program if he cooperated with us, and we explained the benefits to him. He was especially interested in hearing about the satellite television options in America after I told him about the availability of channels in Arabic.
As we were leaving the pizza place, he seemed to be deep in thought and had a confused look on his face. “Is everything okay?” I asked. He shook his head. I could tell from his eyes that he was nervous. “Look,” I told him, “I can tell you’re nervous being with us. But let me tell you something: I’m nervous, too.”
His eyes opened wide. “Why?” he asked.
“Well, I can’t believe that I was just sitting and eating pizza with an al-Qaeda guy.”
He laughed. “Not anymore. I’m not an al-Qaeda guy anymore.”
“That makes me feel better,” I told him with a smile, “and that means you’ll be happy to work with us.” I put my arm around him and we both laughed.
Back at the safe house, Kherchtou began discussing terms for cooperating. “Will I go to jail?” he asked.
“We can’t make any promises,” Pat told him, “but here’s what you need to do. You will fly to the United States and plead guilty to being a member of an organization dedicated to killing Americans, but you will become a cooperating witness, and a judge may decide to not sentence you. I will ask the judge to show you leniency because you’re helping us.”
Pat did some questioning to ascertain whether Kherchtou would be a good cooperating witness. I paid close attention and learned many techniques, such as how to play your cards close to your chest and lull someone into a false sense of security and then trap him on small details. While interrogation techniques are taught at the FBI Academy, being in a classroom is very different from being in an interrogation room and seeing an expert questioner at work. With Pat I saw, firsthand, how to use what you know to your advantage. We told Kherchtou that under the Witness Protection Program he would be given a new identity to ensure that no al-Qaeda agents or sympathizers could find him. And in the program he could lead a new life, enjoying all the good things America had to offer.
“Okay,” he replied simply. And with that he began telling us all about al-Qaeda, how it operated, how they recruited, training camps they used, what bin Laden did daily, and so on. We started debriefing him by asking him to tell us about his path to al-Qaeda, which would teach us about their recruitment as well as their training process. He told us that after high school he had gone to a catering school and had worked in France and Italy. In Milan he had attended an Islamic center, where he was encouraged to travel to Afghanistan. He trained for combat, met bin Laden, and joined the organization.
“What happens in al-Qaeda guesthouses?” I asked.
“On entering the guesthouse you give in all your valuables—your money, passport, and all forms of ID—and they give you a nickname, usually linked to where you’re from. They tell you that you’re giving in all your valuables and ID so that if you’re killed or caught, your captors won’t know who you are.” He said that his nickname was Abu Zaid Maghrebi and that he had also picked up the alias Abu Talal.
“What camp did you train in?”
“Al-Farouq.” The camp turned out many of al-Qaeda’s premier fighters.
“What did you learn there?”
“How to use regular firearms, antiaircraft weapons, and other basic guerrilla warfare skills.”
“Who were your trainers?” I asked, and thus the debriefing went. After al-Farouq, Kherchtou had attended the Abu Bakr Sadeek camp, also located near Khost. It was run by Khalid al-Fawwaz—we were very familiar with him from Operation Challenge. With Kherchtou at Abu Bakr Sadeek was Odeh, operating under the alias Marwan.
Kherchtou went on to tell us about how he was trained, at one point, by Ali Mohamed, Zawahiri’s man in the U.S. Army. Abu Hafs had told him in advance that “Abu Mohamed al-Amriki is very strict, and you have to be patient with him. He often uses bad words and is not an observent Muslim, but he’s very skilled.”
Kherchtou was later sent to Kenya to learn how to fly, so that one day he could become bin Laden’s personal pilot. While in Nairobi attending flight school, he helped operatives who were passing through Kenya on their way to Somalia and other locations. Sometimes on trips between Nairobi and Khartoum he was given money to take to operatives in Kenya; the largest sum was ten thousand dollars.
Kherchtou filled in for us where Junior had left off. This was 1999, and Junior had left in 1996. Those were important years for al-Qaeda, so the information Kherchtou gave us was priceless.
On September 21, 1999, we flew with Kherchtou to the United States, and other agents were waiting for us at the airport. We took Kherchtou to an undisclosed location, and I went home, exhausted. As soon as I got there, the phone rang. An FBI agent was calling from the site. “Ali, Joe wants to speak to you—he’s insisting.”
“Okay, put him through.”
“Hi. Ali?” I heard Kherchtou’s voice.
“Hi, how are you?”
“I’m good, but where are you?”
“I’m at my home, resting.”
“But these people are asking me questions and talking about plans for me, and I want you to be here to advise me.”
“My friend, I need to get some rest and see my family tonight. I’ve been away from them for a while. But tomorrow I will come and see you.”
The next day I drove to the safe house. As I walked through the door Kherchtou jumped up and greeted me with a big hug. He was clearly nervous about being in the United States and was unsure how things would work out. I was a friendly face he had come to trust.
We chatted and discussed the trials for the East African embassy bombings, for which he would serve as a witness. I also gave him a copy of the writings of the Lebanese American poet and writer Kahlil Gibran, whom we had discussed a few days earlier. His face lit up. “Thank you, Ali, so much.”
Kherchtou went on to serve, alongside Junior, as a star witness in the East African embassy trials, ensuring the conviction of four al-Qaeda terrorists—men he had previously worked with. Because of his cooperation, he was not sentenced; as we had promised, he was indeed put in the Witness Protection Program.
The last time I saw him was immediately after the USS
“I know, but you can help from here,” I told him. “Keep telling us anything you think of.”
7. Millennium Plot
After 1996, when he was back in Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden focused on remodeling al-Qaeda. In Sudan, the group had primarily acted as a sponsor of terrorism through bin Laden’s business enterprises. Now bin Laden worked specifically and in detail on building al-Qaeda into an international terrorist organization that launched attacks under its own name. He built a network of safe houses and training camps across Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the group acquired a more intricate structure and became better organized.
At the same time, bin Laden still tried to use non–al-Qaeda groups to further his aims. He recognized that al-Qaeda’s stated goal of expelling infidels from the Arabian Peninsula had limited appeal to many of the would-be
