The Black Banners

“Hold on,” I said. “If there is a problem outside, non–Arabic-speaking HRT guys are unlikely to help the situation but may find themselves new targets. Let me go out. I have a better chance of blending in with the Yemenis.” Bob agreed that that made sense, handed me a bulletproof vest, and said he was coming with me.

Before we left, HRT snipers took positions on the roof to cover us. Bob carried a radio to keep in touch with them. As a security precaution, we decided to take the stairs down; if anything happened, we didn’t want to be trapped in an elevator. As we started down, John called out to me, with a hint of nervousness in his voice, “Ali, be careful.” It was unlike John to publicly show anxiety.

The lobby was empty, and we ran through it and opened the hotel’s front door slowly. The street was eerily silent. There were no cars around and the roads appeared blocked off. The silence was only broken by an ambulance going by, although it didn’t have its siren on.

We saw a group of Yemeni security agents standing at the end of the street. They were not wearing uniforms but traditional Yemeni dress, and they were carrying AK-47s. They noticed us seconds after we spotted them, and started walking toward us. Right behind them was a car, moving at their pace. Driving it was a Yemeni whom I recognized as the former chief of police in Aden.

They came to a stop right in front of us. “What’s going on?” I asked the driver.

“Nothing,” he replied.

“What was the shooting we heard?”

“Nothing. There was just a wedding, and people were shooting in celebration.”

“Why did you close the streets?”

“Don’t worry.”

“The ambulance?”

“Don’t worry,” he said again, and drove off.

We reported the incident to headquarters. It was the tipping point for them, and they decided to evacuate everyone from the hotel. Everyone, “no exceptions,” we were told, had to leave. We packed all our gear, equipment, and weapons into trucks, and we went to the pier, where a team of marines were stationed. They had a small base there to monitor who boarded and left the Cole. Loading our stuff in boats, we headed out to the USS Duluth, a navy ship not far from the harbor.

Her captain and officers were waiting on deck to greet us. They were very hospitable; officers bunked together so that we would have rooms to sleep in. The plan was to stay on the Duluth for a couple of days while we monitored what was happening on shore. The Duluth moved constantly: since the attack on the USS Cole, no U.S. ships were permitted to remain stationary in the vicinity of Aden. We had to keep moving our satellite to keep in contact with FBI headquarters and took turns, day and night, positioning it.

Ambassador Bodine was annoyed when she learned that we had evacuated the Movenpick. She felt it was an unnecessary insult to the Yemenis. It implied, in her view, that we thought that the Yemenis were unable to protect us adequately. That was true, of course. The bombing of the Cole, along with the fact that there was a truck suited for a suicide bombing loose on the streets of Aden, was evidence of that. Not to her, however.

She registered a complaint through the State Department against John, whom she blamed for “unnecessarily” ordering the evacuation. Because of her complaints, Kevin Donovan, myself, and some other officials were called to the bridge of the Duluth to speak to senior officials in headquarters about John’s performance. Once the purpose of the call became clear to me, I got very frustrated. “Look,” I told them, “we’re working here nonstop day and night. Our lives are being threatened and yet we’re making important progress. John is doing a great job. What we need here from you is support, not criticism.”

One of the senior FBI officials responded apologetically: “We just needed to have this conversation because the State Department is complaining.”

A couple of days went by, and we decided that a few of us would head back to shore to check the situation, as we didn’t want the investigation to come to a complete halt. John, Kevin, and I, along with Bob Hickey and a few members of his hostage rescue team, were selected to return to the hotel. We climbed down a rope ladder to a waiting boat and began sailing back to Aden. As we approached the harbor, the HRT guys scanned the shoreline and hills for threats. They noticed a couple of men with binoculars on top of a rugged hill watching us as we pulled in. On shore, we asked the Yemenis if the men on the hill were security officials. They didn’t know anything about them.

The hotel was empty and silent. Previously the corridors had been filled with U.S. officials moving to and from meetings, and a constant buzz of activity was heard; now very few people were around. We found one room with military officials from CENTCOM. We didn’t know if they had stayed or come back.

We spoke to Yemeni officials and evaluated the security situation on the ground. While we planned to return to the Duluth that evening, we were worried about the men we had spotted watching us with binoculars, as they could be al-Qaeda operatives planning to strike. We consulted Department of Defense officials, who said that it would not be safe to head back to the Duluth in a boat. Instead they said that a helicopter would be sent from the USS Tarawa, the command ship of the three-vessel amphibious readiness group of which the Duluth was a part, and that it would take us to the Duluth.

We needed permission from Ambassador Bodine, but she vetoed the decision. She refused to give the helicopter from the Tarawa a country clearance to come pick us up. We had come in a boat, she maintained, and we could leave in one. The Yemenis had told her that they didn’t like military helicopters flying into and out of Aden, and she decided that it was unnecessary. Her decision angered military officers, who felt she was risking U.S. lives.

On the DoD’s recommendation, we decided to stay in the hotel until the situation was resolved. Stuck there for the night, we went in search of food. Most hotel staff had departed for security reasons, but the few left managed to make us something. Although the hotel was empty, we still bunked with roommates for security reasons.

Early the next morning we were told that Ambassador Bodine had been overruled by her superiors in the State Department. They had ordered her to give us permission to take a helicopter back to the boat, and she reluctantly signed the authorization. The plan was to fly us first to the Tarawa; from there we would get to the Duluth in a boat. We prepared to take off from the Aden airport, the pilot aiming out to sea. It should have been a simple ride. But as soon as we were airborne, the helicopter’s alert siren went off. We were being “painted”—a missile system was locked in on us. The pilot swung into action and began emergency evasive maneuvers. He kept changing the direction we were flying in to try to lose the lock. There was silence in the cabin as we all held our breath and held on to the straps tightly (as if they would save us if a missile hit). After a series of maneuvers, the system stopped blinking red. The pilot had successfully evaded the lock. Seconds later we were out on the ocean heading toward the Duluth. We had no idea whether it was the Yemeni military or al-Qaeda locking on us. We didn’t know if it was a test or a warning, or if someone was really trying to shoot at us. It was a terrifying experience, and I learned then firsthand what it means when people say they’ve seen their life flash before their eyes.

We arrived at the Duluth flustered and angry. On the boat, military personnel were tracking the incident. They told us that it was the Yemenis who had painted our helicopter—the first time it had happened, as the U.S. military had been flying helicopters into and out of Aden without problems till then. From then on, painting became standard Yemeni practice, and not only for helicopters. Whenever a U.S. plane landed in Yemen—and they were constantly coming in and out, bringing supplies, personnel, and equipment—it would be painted. And whenever a U.S. plane is painted, the pilot, not knowing whether it’s a “friendly” procedure or an actual threat, has to go into standard emergency procedures to evade the missile lock.

Part of the emergency procedure for planes is to shoot flares. This helps to throw any incoming missiles off course, as the missile follows the flare rather than the plane. To all but the most experienced, flares look like small missiles, so when a U.S. plane came in and responded to the painting with flares, it seemed to the local Yemenis that the United States was shooting at them. The cycle of suspicion and mistrust worsened.

I was once at the airport with the local U.S. military attache, Colonel Newman, when a C-130’s flares came directly at the airport, creating confusion and panic. The general who headed the military at the airport demanded to see us and angrily asked: “What’s going on? You’re making us look bad.”