Silence.
“What’s his passport number? Do you have his date of birth?”
Silence.
Steve and the team were desperate for any information. A name alone isn’t much help when you are trying to search for someone about whom you know nothing—someone who could be anywhere in the world.
[1 word redacted] refused to provide any information, and eventually he, Dina, and Maggie left.
For the next few weeks and months, Steve contacted Dina, asking for more information. Each time, she told him that, according to the “rules,” she couldn’t share information with him. He protested up the chain of command—to headquarters—but was told to “stand down.” (After 9/11, [1 word redacted] told investigators that he had asked if he could share the information with the FBI, but that his superiors in the agency had never responded.)
It wasn’t only Dina who misunderstood the rules regarding information sharing. The problems were right across the U.S. government, and they were to the point of being absurd. In February, Steve had been at a meeting in Yemen with Yemeni officials and Howard Leadbetter, who was on a thirty-day rotation as the FBI commander. At some point Leadbetter asked Steve to step out of the meeting while he spoke to the Yemenis about some intelligence.
“Come on, if the Yemenis can know it, I can know it,” Steve said.
“Sorry.”
One day in Sanaa—we had been there for about a week—we were told that we were to be evacuated from Yemen. New, verified threats had surfaced that all those in residence would be assassinated—Bob McFadden and I, the ambassador, the [3 words redacted], and the defense attache. We shredded all our documents, packed up all our gear, and boarded cars to head for the airport.
But the gates of the embassy wouldn’t open. The head of the Marine Security Guard (MSG), responsible for guarding the embassy, apologetically told us that he had received a call from the State Department’s regional security officer, who said that Ambassador Bodine had ordered that the gates not be opened until she had spoken further about it with the deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage. “I’m sorry, it’s nothing personal, but these are my orders,” the MSG head told us. We had a good relationship with the marines. They had asked us to help them in their drills to secure the embassy, and so we often trained with them. We took turns on guard duty. With all nonessential personal gone from the embassy, they needed all the help they could get. We had readily pitched in, and a friendship developed between us. But here they had no choice: the ambassador was their boss.
Mary Galligan, who was doing the thirty-day rotation in charge of the FBI contingent, and Steve Corbett, NCIS on-ground commander, went to speak to Ambassador Bodine, who told them that the message sent by everyone’s leaving the embassy would be damaging to our relationship with the Yemenis. However, she told Mary and Steve, if Bob and I stayed, she’d let everyone else leave. That way, she reasoned, the Yemenis would take comfort: she knew that they liked us.
Bob and I were prepared to accept this deal, and Mary conveyed that to FBI headquarters. “No, one team, one fight,” the message came back. In addition, they reported that Bob and I were on the top of the target list for the terrorists, who knew that we were the ones spearheading the investigation and interrogating their operatives.
The director of the FBI called the secretary of state and explained the situation. The secretary intervened, and Ambassador Bodine was ordered to unlock the doors and let us leave. We flew to Fort Dix, where John O’Neill and Kenny Maxwell were waiting for us, and we drove with them back to New York City.
It was frustrating to be out of Yemen. Despite the threats, we had made important progress in the
Then there was the lingering issue of Khallad and Malaysia. We kept asking the CIA about it, and they continued to insist that they didn’t know anything about it. We wanted to try to investigate that further. Because of all these questions and issues, we kept pressing headquarters to grant us permission to go back.
In August we got the green light and returned to Yemen to meet with their officials to discuss terms for the FBI and NCIS team to return in safety to the country. I went with Kenny Maxwell and other officials to Sanaa to speak to the Yemenis. It was Kenny’s first time in Yemen.
Ambassador Bodine was pleased to see the FBI reengaging in Yemen, and she offered the assistance of the mission to accomplish this goal. The long gun issue was still a point of contention, but by now no one could ignore the true nature of the threat. Bodine agreed that long guns could be carried, but only by agents from the Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), who would guard us.
The second item on the agenda was to find a secure location for the team to be based. Ambassador Bodine’s deputy showed us an apartment in the Russian City area of Sanaa. Playing the tour guide, he pointed to a room where “you sit on the ground, talk about your day, and chew qat.” We explained to Kenny that qat is an addictive drug, illegal in the United States but common in Yemen. About the fifth time the State Department official had mentioned, in utter seriousness, how convenient the apartment was for chewing qat, Kenny couldn’t contain himself. He looked at the official, then at me, disbelievingly, and said without a trace of emotion, “Isn’t that wonderful.” Here we were, trying to restart the investigation into the murder of seventeen U.S. sailors, and the guy kept talking about the pleasures of chewing qat. “Welcome to Yemen,” I said to Kenny with a sad smile as we walked out.
Kenny is a big Irish guy, a former state trooper, and he comes from a long line of law enforcement officials. He’s straitlaced and absolutely focused on the job, and while he has a sense of humor, when the topic is national security he won’t mess around. After meeting with the Yemenis, we returned to New York, and John O’Neill came over to JTTF and asked Kenny how he had enjoyed his first visit to Yemen. Kenny replied, “John, I don’t know what you’ve been talking about with regard to problems with the ambassador. She strikes me as such a wonderful lady. She asked me to teach a class in Santa Barbara”—Ambassador Bodine’s hometown. John gave him the finger, grinned, and walked out.
John’s last act in the FBI was to sign an order for our return to Yemen. The last time I saw him was on August 22, 2001, his last day at work.
He had decided to leave the bureau because of mounting frustration with the way things were being run. He was upset that headquarters wasn’t more forcefully supporting our efforts to investigate the
John also had an investigation hanging over his head. In July, while attending an FBI conference, he received a page and removed himself to another room to take it. Thinking he’d be back in a few minutes, he had left his briefcase in the room full of FBI officials. His call took longer than expected, and when he returned, the other agents had left and his briefcase was missing. It contained some classified e-mails and a sensitive report on national security operations in New York. The director of the FBI and the attorney general were notified.
The briefcase was found a few hours later, and while some personal items had been stolen, none of the documents had been removed. A fingerprint analysis revealed that the documents had not been touched. Nonetheless, the Justice Department ordered a criminal inquiry.
The lack of support that the bureau gave him on this issue, coupled with everything else, made him feel that it was time for him to leave. He had been offered a well-paying job as the head of security for the World Trade Center. It was a sad decision for him, as he loved the bureau and the work we did.
John and I walked to Joe’s Diner, across the street from our offices, and John ordered a ham and cheese sandwich. “You don’t want to change your infidel ways?” I joked, pointing to the ham. “You’ll go to hell.”
I told John that I was planning to propose to Heather, my girlfriend. In the past, John had been critical of marriage. It probably didn’t help that his own personal life was tangled and messy. But this time there were no anti-marriage barbs from him. Instead he simply said: “She has put up with you all this time. She must be a good woman.”
John then showed me an e-mail he had written to Lou Gunn, whose son, Cherone, was killed on the USS
