Islamists who had pledged fealty to him. For the duration of the 444 days, the United States under Jimmy Carter seemed powerless to respond, and the forces of political Islam appeared to be on the rise.
Sixteen days after the attack on the embassy, on November 20, the destruction of a holy place shook the Islamic world when extremists seized al-Masjid al-Haram and took pilgrims hostage. The mosque surrounds the Kaaba, which is said to have been built by Abraham and is the place that Muslims turn to face when they pray five times a day. It is considered the first house of worship and the holiest site in Islam. The extremists declared that the Mahdi, the redeemer of Islam, had arrived—it was one of their leaders—and called on Muslims to obey him. Using the Grand Mosque’s loudspeaker system, which could be heard throughout Mecca, they announced that the Saudi leadership had been corrupted by the West and demanded that the monarchy be replaced, that all ties with the West be cut, and that a stricter version of Islamic law be introduced into the country.
It took two weeks for the mosque to be fully retaken, and hundreds of pilgrims and Saudi troops were killed in the process. Afterward, the Saudi monarchy made concessions to radical clerics, imposing stricter Islamic laws on the population. In a sense, the extremists won.
Khomeini and other leaders, paradoxically, blamed the United States for what had happened, and anti- American riots broke out in several countries, including Pakistan, the Philippines, Libya, and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was seized by a mob and burned to the ground, and the same happened in Tripoli, Libya.
The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan was the final momentous event of 1979. The Soviets had been active in the country since the establishment of a Marxist-leaning Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the spring of 1978. When the Marxist government could no longer contain the Afghan mujahideen, who wanted a religious state, Soviet troops entered Kabul to prop up their allies.
Muslims across the world rallied to protect the country from the Soviet “infidel” invaders. The invasion, and the creation of a new enemy for radical Muslims, served Egypt and Saudi Arabia well; both countries saw a chance to offload their domestic extremists by supporting their traveling to Afghanistan to join the jihad. Together the two countries poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan to support the mujahideen. The United States, eager to fight communism, also provided covert funding and training for the fighters.
One of the most influential figures in the Afghan jihad was Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian cleric. A student of Qutb, Azzam had been a lecturer at King Abdul Aziz University, in Jeddah, before moving to Pakistan in 1979 to teach at the International Islamic University in Islamabad and to be closer to Afghanistan. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Azzam issued a fatwa, entitled “Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Faith,” in which he declared that it was a
Azzam’s slogan, “Jihad and rifle alone. No negotiations. No conferences and no dialogue,” gives an indication of his worldview. His speeches influenced bin Laden—who had been a student at King Abdul Aziz University when Azzam was there—to join the mujahideen. Other top terrorists, including Ramzi Yousef, were also swayed by Azzam’s arguments and appeals. Azzam had established Makhtab al-Khidmat to facilitate the movement of mujahideen to Afghanistan. He arranged guesthouses and training camps to prepare recruits for battle, opened fund-raising and recruitment branches around the world—including the one in Brooklyn—and himself recruited thousands of individuals to fight.
“Thousands of young Arabs traveled to Afghanistan,” I told John, as we finished discussing what had happened in 1979. “Many were inspired by the ideology outlined by Azzam and other similar-minded clerics. Others were disenchanted with the oppressive regimes and lack of opportunity back home and sought an adventure. Most Muslims who came just provided muscle. Bin Laden’s advantage, of course, was that he brought his own funding, which drew others to him and bought their loyalty.”
The dessert dishes had long been cleared by the waitress, but John was keen to continue chatting and getting to know me on a personal level. When that conversation finished, we looked at our watches and saw that it was past 1:00 am.
It turned out that it wasn’t uncommon for John to be in the office late at night, and it often seemed that he never slept. He was usually in the office before anyone else, and he was the last one at his desk at night. And when he did leave in the evenings, it was to entertain foreign law enforcement and intelligence officials who were visiting or to take colleagues out to discuss work.
If John didn’t have a dinner to go to, he would walk around the office to see who was there. He often stopped at my desk and invited me out. After a few weeks of finding me always there, he just started calling me at my desk; he’d tell me to meet him outside for dinner, and we would continue our discussions wherever we’d left off the last time.
John had a few favorite restaurants, and his choice was determined by what kind of food he was in the mood for and what time of night it was. For steak, he loved Cite, on West Fifty-first Street. If it was very late, we would head to 1st, on First Avenue. (He would tell me that it was “the place where all the good chefs in the city go after- hours.”) If he was looking for a more social evening, he’d choose Elaine’s.
A place John especially liked taking officials from other countries was Bruno’s, owned, “ironically,” as John liked to say, by an Albanian. “The best Italian food in the city, and the guy’s Albanian.” There was a table on the second floor that the manager would reserve for John if he knew he was coming. An exceptional Israeli piano player usually played Frank Sinatra songs, but when John had guests he would take requests from our group.
During the investigation into the 1998 East African embassy bombings, we were entertaining Tanzanian officials, and John asked the piano player for “an African song.” Without pause the pianist started playing the 1920s Solomon Linda tune “Mbube” (“The Lion Sleeps Tonight”), more or less as rendered in the Disney film
John always tried to make foreign officials feel at home, so if there was a good restaurant in New York that served food from their countries, we went. In 1999, we were working with Saad al-Khair and his fellow Jordanian intelligence officers on the Millennium Operation, the investigation that thwarted a terrorist plot to attack American and Israeli targets in Jordan on and around January 1, 2000. We took the Jordanians to a place called Cedars of Lebanon. The restaurant’s live band often played traditional Arabic songs, which our visitors loved.
John understood the importance of personal relationships. Foreign law enforcement and intelligence officers could make life either difficult or easy for us, depending upon how cooperative they were. John endeared himself to them. When a British official’s wife had cancer, John spent time researching the best hospitals in New York and helped the couple plan their trip. In turn, officials treated him and his team well when we traveled to England.
Most of our counterparts came to adore John. A phone call from him achieved much more than official cables. I saw this firsthand when I was in England taking part in Operation Challenge, the investigation that disrupted al-Qaeda and EIJ activity there. The relationship was one of honesty and friendship, not diplomatic niceties. One evening when our colleagues from Scotland Yard were visiting, John raised his glass during dinner and told them, “Unless you get your side to help more, the queen’s going to end up living in Northern Ireland.” No offense was taken—they knew John spoke from the heart, out of genuine concern for us all—and we got the help we wanted.
The bureaucracy didn’t always understand the importance of John’s dinners and entertaining and sometimes refused to give funding approval. In those cases John would just put the dinner on his own credit card. I learned to do the same, telling others, as John had told me, “We’re not in the bureau to save money, we’re here to save lives.”
As the bureau began investigating bin Laden and al-Qaeda, agents began uncovering an American contingent with ties to the group. It wasn’t only bin Laden who saw Azzam as his mentor; several Americans fell under Azzam’s spell when he toured the United States in the 1980s to raise funds for the mujahideen and recruit believers to go to Afghanistan. Among the Americans lured were Wadih el-Hage, Essam al-Ridi, and Ihab Ali.
El-Hage was born in Lebanon to a Christian family but raised in Kuwait, where his father worked. There he began hanging out with Muslim friends, who introduced him to the Quran and to the faith, and eventually he converted to Islam. His family was outraged by the conversion and shunned him. The Kuwaitis who sponsored his conversion sent him to the United States to be educated.
When the Soviets invaded Pakistan, el-Hage, inspired by Azzam’s sermons, left the United States and went to Pakistan to aid his Muslim brothers. Taking the alias Abed al-Sabour al-Lubnani (the Lebanese) and serving as an
