The Black Banners

brothers,” in the words of Abu Jandal. He returned to Afghanistan as soon as he was released, and his al-Qaeda brothers saw a changed man. He had become bitter and had developed a deep loathing for the Yemeni government. He already hated the United States: the emir of an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, he had lost a few of his men when the camp was bombed by the Americans in retaliation for the 1998 East African embassy attacks.

Khamiri and other al-Qaeda members tried to pressure bin Laden into launching a big operation in Yemen as punishment for their incarceration. “The brothers in Yemen are frustrated and need to do something. If you don’t authorize it, they’ll do it alone,” Khamiri warned bin Laden.

“Have the brothers be patient,” bin Laden replied. “An operation in Yemen is coming, and you will be involved. You need to be patient and discreet.”

Khamiri returned to Yemen to help plan the operation and regularly visited the operatives who were still in jail. He spent a good deal of time speaking to Khallad, and to Khallad and Muhannad bin Attash’s younger brother Abdul Aziz bin Attash (al-Bara). Although al-Bara’s sentence was up, because of his family’s close ties to bin Laden, the Yemenis continued to hold him, citing national security reasons. They thought that he could be a future bargaining chip with bin Laden. “Don’t worry,” Khamiri told al-Bara, “the sheikh understands our concerns. Some kind of action is coming.”

In the summer of 2000 Khamiri sent al-Bara a letter saying that bin Laden and Saif al-Adel had asked him to no longer visit him and their other al-Qaeda brothers in prison; he had to remove himself from “suspicious activities.” Khamiri concluded, “Soon you will hear the good news.” It was a clear message that he would be involved in an operation.

Al-Bara smiled and burned the letter—while sitting in his Yemeni prison cell.

October 12, 2000. The darkness of the night was only beginning to retreat as I drove my car from my apartment in Brooklyn to the FBI offices in Manhattan. It was around 6:00 AM, and it wasn’t unusual for me to be awake and on my way to the office at that early hour. The hours before daybreak were in many ways my favorite part of the day. New York was silent and peaceful, traffic and honking almost nonexistent. Not only did the quiet remind me, somehow, of my years in rural Pennsylvania, but it also gave me time to think clearly and without interruption before things started getting busy.

I was midway through my drive, deep in thought on a case I was working on—and almost exactly in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge—when my cell phone rang. It startled me. A call at this hour meant that either something was wrong or a friend in the Middle East had forgotten the time difference. Having recently worked in Jordan to thwart the millennium attacks, I half-expected phone calls at early hours from the Middle East. But it wasn’t someone from Jordan on the phone; it was Kevin Cruise, supervisor of the I-45 squad, dedicated to the investigation into the East African embassy bombings.

“Did you hear what happened?” Kevin asked, skipping a hello and other niceties.

“I heard on NPR earlier,” I began cautiously. “Israel bombed Arafat’s headquarters. We probably need to take precautions…” As the words came out, I knew something else must have happened. That alone wouldn’t warrant a 6:00 AM call.

“Not that,” he interrupted, not allowing me to finish my sentence. “A navy ship in Yemen was bombed. There are a lot of casualties, and some sailors are missing.”

“Yemen?” I asked. “Why on earth do we have a navy ship in Yemen?”

Yemen was well known in the intelligence community to be full of radical Islamists, including al-Qaeda members. Radical Islamist fighters developed a close relationship with the Yemeni authorities during the country’s civil war, when President Ali Abdullah Saleh reportedly used Arab mujahideen veterans of the Afghan-Soviet war to help him lead the North to defeat the socialist South. In return for the mujahideen’s help, the government turned a blind eye to radical Islamist activities in the country as long as they weren’t directed against the government or didn’t harm the country’s interests.

As a result al-Qaeda sympathizers could be found throughout Yemeni institutions, including in the intelligence services. Some would help terrorists obtain visas and fraudulent documents, or tip them off when foreign governments were looking for them. Many non-Yemenis involved in the 1998 East African embassy bombings, for example, used fraudulent Yemeni passports to hide their real identities.

Yemen is a convenient place for a terrorist base, as it has a weak central government and tribes that in many ways operate as autonomous minigovernments. Some tribes are sympathetic to extremists, and others are willing to aid terrorists for reasons ranging from monetary reward to help in battles with rival tribes. The weak central government also means that the country’s borders are largely unsecured, allowing terrorists to enter and leave easily. To top it off, the country has a thriving arms market, giving terrorists access to the weapons and explosives they need.

“We’re looking into that,” Kevin replied to my question. “Just get in as fast as you can.” In situations like this, Kevin was curt and to the point. A former military man, he was efficient in emergency situations. He was a devout Catholic, a family man, and someone committed to the truth. I remember him telling me after 9/11, when the bureau was being incorrectly blamed for not stopping the attacks (before the 9/11 Commission told the real story), that he felt that people in church were looking at him differently. It saddened him that the American people were being misled and that the FBI’s reputation was being smeared.

“I’m on my way,” I told Kevin. Why on earth do we have a navy ship in Yemen? I said out loud to myself after hanging up. The question kept repeating itself in my mind as I hurried toward the office.

Ten minutes later I pulled up outside the NYO. I parked my car across the street in what was a no-parking zone, not wanting to waste the time looking for a spot and for once not caring whether I’d get a ticket.

Details of the attack were filtering in: at 11:22 AM Yemen time, the USS Cole, a navy destroyer weighing 8,300 tons and carrying almost 300 sailors, was making a routine fueling stop in the Port of Aden. Suicide bombers pulled alongside the destroyer in a small boat and blew themselves up. At this point 12 sailors were confirmed dead and many more were reported injured. News of deaths and casualties was still coming in, and the numbers were expected to rise.

Details of the attack were first sent in by Col. Robert Newman, a military attache based in Sanaa. He saw and felt the explosion firsthand and alerted the embassy. The explosion was so powerful, Newman later told me, that it was heard as far as two miles away. The first ship on the scene to provide aid to the Cole was the British Royal Navy’s HMS Marlborough, which was in the vicinity. Sailors with the gravest injuries were flown to a French military hospital in Djibouti before being transferred to a U.S. hospital in Germany. Rescuers and crew members focused on trying to stop the Cole from sinking, a very real danger.

Marines from the Interim Marine Corps Security Force, based in nearby Bahrain, arrived soon after to secure the area around the ship. They didn’t know if a second attack was planned and were taking no chances. They were followed by a U.S Marine platoon, which helped secure the Cole itself. The marines also secured a nearby hotel, the Movenpick, where U.S. troops, investigators, diplomats, and the press would be staying when they arrived.

At the office I found the answer to the question I had been asking myself on my way in: the Cole needed to refuel in Aden because it was making a 3,300-mile transit from the Mediterranean, where it had last refueled.

Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, had been used for several years as the refueling port for U.S. vessels, but in January 1999 it was dropped in favor of Aden. The Eritrea-Ethiopia War (1998–2000) had made Djibouti less appealing to the United States, although in intelligence reports it was never ranked as being as dangerous as Aden. The real reason for the switch was that while Yemen had supported Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War, the Clinton administration had launched a major diplomatic initiative aiming to bring Yemen into the U.S. orbit. Trusting Yemen with hosting U.S. ships, along with the economic benefits that hosting provides, was part of that effort. The State Department and its country team in Yemen concurred that the security situation in Aden was acceptable.

While the diplomatic corps supported the move, security agencies warned against it. An intelligence report by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s Multiple Threat Alert Center (MTAC) warned that security in Aden was tenuous and that the central government had little or no control. Nor would this be the first time that radical jihadi terrorists were responsible for plotting an attack against a U.S. target. In December 1992, during the Yemeni Civil War, when Ali Abdullah Saleh was using Islamic militants to help the North defeat the South, terrorists bombed the Gold Mohur Hotel, aiming to hit U.S. Marines who were en route to Somalia to take part in Operation Restore Hope.