revolutionaries.”
“No, they’re not,” I replied with a smile.
The intelligence Abu Jandal gave was disseminated across the intelligence and military communities. It was celebrated as a major success. Edmund Hull, Barbara Bodine’s replacement as ambassador to Yemen, called Bob and me into his office and told us: “Congratulations. The Abu Jandal interrogation has caused General Musharraf to accept that al-Qaeda is behind 9/11, and to join the coalition. Well done. That’s a huge success.”
The Abu Jandal 302 to this day is viewed as the most successful interrogation of any al-Qaeda operative. It was immensely valuable in the war in Afghanistan; it was crucial to successful interrogations of many future al- Qaeda operatives that we apprehended; and it provided much of the basis for our knowledge of al-Qaeda. It is still used in interrogating and prosecuting al-Qaeda operatives. (I can talk about Abu Jandal in greater detail than I can about other detainees because his 302 was declassified by the Senate Judiciary Committee.)
The information gained about al-Qaeda’s capabilities, communication systems, and training was eagerly digested by the military community. The war against Afghanistan was delayed so that the information could be best used. Our team was brought to Bahrain to brief military officials, most prominent among them Vice Adm. Charles “Willy” Moore, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. We briefed the admiral on everything Abu Jandal had revealed to us. Our briefing ended late in the day, and we had to spend the night in Bahrain. We intended to fly back to Yemen the next morning. It was the first free evening we’d had in weeks, so we went to a restaurant for dinner.
As we walked out of the restaurant, a group of young men who had congregated in a parking lot nearby started to yell at Bob and another FBI colleague who were walking ahead of the rest of us. The young men grew more and more belligerent, finally grabbing Bob and trying to push him into one of their cars. He resisted, and my friend and FBI colleague Carlos Fernandez and I tried fighting back. But they outnumbered us, and we weren’t carrying any weapons.
From what they were shouting to each other in Arabic, I realized that they were disgruntled Shiite youths who were wannabe Bahraini Hezbollah operatives. They apparently did not like Bob; with his fair skin and blue eyes, he was the most Western-looking of all of us. Bahrain had experienced significant problems with the Shiite segment of their population.
“What are you doing, you fools?” I shouted at them.
“We are terrorists. We are Hezbollah.”
I knew then for sure that they were just bored kids with nothing to do. A real member of Hezbollah won’t call himself a terrorist.
I approached the one who appeared to be the gang leader. “I am Lebanese. I am the real Hezbollah from Lebanon. You’re interfering in my business. Go away.”
He froze, then tried to give me a hug. “Brother, you are one of us, we want to help you,” he said excitedly.
“No, you’re not. I appreciate your sentiment, but get out of here and take your buddies with you before you get into trouble.”
They let go of Bob, apologized, and started embracing me: “We are your Bahraini Hezbollah allies. Long live Hezbollah!” They were drunk.
“Okay, okay, go home now,” I shouted, pushing them off me. They ran to their cars, saluted, and drove off.
We flew back to Yemen the next morning.
“Now can we speak to Ahmed al-Hada?” I asked Qamish.
“Why? He’s just an old man. He’s got no direct connection to terrorism,” Qamish replied. “We’ve been through this before.”
“We have been through this before, but now is different.”
The Yemenis had been giving us the “he’s just an old man” line since the East African embassy bombings. The surviving Nairobi bomber, Owhali, had confessed to FBI interrogators that he had called Hada’s number in Yemen after the attack to let al-Qaeda know what had happened to him and to request a fake passport and money. Still, the Yemenis maintained that Hada was just an old man whose home was used.
“He’s not just an old man, my friend,” I said to Qamish. “Abu Jandal just told us that not only is Hada a member of al-Qaeda, but he is the father-in-law of Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.”
Hada was brought into the interrogation room in Sanaa and seated before us. Andre Khoury, Bob, and I introduced ourselves and read him the Miranda warning, explaining it to him. He waived his right to a lawyer and signed the Miranda document using a thumbprint, as he was illiterate and didn’t know how to write his name.
“As-Salamu Alaykum,” I began, and told him that we were investigating the terrorist attack on America.
“I don’t know anything about terrorism,” he replied, “I’m just an old man.”
“You don’t know anything about al-Qaeda?” I asked.
“No.”
“Okay, then, tell us about your son-in-law Khalid al-Mihdhar.”
“I don’t know anything about my son-in-law. I didn’t even know that that’s his name.”
“You don’t know your own son-in-law’s name? So how did your daughter get married?”
“One day men came to the mosque and asked about my daughter and said they wanted their friend to marry her.”
“And you agreed?”
“Yes.”
“And you never met or spoke to your daughter’s husband?”
“No.”
“You’re a disgrace,” one of the Yemeni officers present shouted at Hada, unable to contain himself. “How can you be a son of a tribe, how can you be an Arab? How do you claim to be Yemeni and say something like this? This is your daughter you are talking about. Your own flesh and blood. This is your honor.” Hada went red.
Andre chimed in: “No self-respecting Arab would do such a thing. What’s wrong with you?” Hada shrugged and didn’t say anything. It was very telling that protecting al-Qaeda was more important to him than his own reputation.
For several hours Hada maintained that he knew nothing. In order to catch him out, Andre and I began testing him about what we knew about him. We would ask him about a specific fact, acting as if we didn’t know the answer. He would reply, denying that he knew the answer. We would demonstrate that he did know the fact. Because Hada was extremely embarrassed to be caught lying, he would then concede that he did indeed know the information, and admit more details. For example, when he claimed not to know the identity and names of his sons-in-law, we showed him photographs of them. Only then did he acknowledge that he knew them and give us information about them. Sometimes we’d ask a question, not knowing the answer, but he’d think we were trying to embarrass and test him again, and so he would tell us what we wanted to know. We slowly built up information this way.
Ahmed al-Hada was originally from Thamar, Yemen. His brothers were well respected in the community, but he was considered the black sheep of the family, which was not financially well off. Hada’s son Abu Jaffar went to Afghanistan and joined al-Qaeda soon after bin Laden returned there from Sudan in 1996; he was a member of the Northern Group.
Around 1997, Abu Jaffar arranged the marriage of two of his sisters to two al-Qaeda operatives he had befriended in Afghanistan: Khalid al-Mihdhar and Ahmed Mohammed Haza al-Darbi. Both Darbi and Mihdhar traveled to Yemen to meet their future brides and got married in a double wedding ceremony attended by other al-Qaeda operatives. A few months later they returned to Afghanistan with their wives.
Hada’s other daughters also married al-Qaeda fighters. One of these sons-in-law was Mustafah al-Ansari, who used the alias Abed al-Kareem al-Maki. Mihdhar had introduced the family to Ansari. Like Darbi and Mihdhar himself, Ansari was a Saudi of Yemeni descent. We knew of him because he had been imprisoned in the Bayt Habra car theft incident, but we were not aware that he was related to Hada. Ansari was later killed while conducting an attack in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, against Western workers at an oil installation. The other of Hada’s al-Qaeda sons-in- law was Abed al-Wahab al-Maki, who was killed in 1999 in Juzor al-Molluk, Indonesia.
