28 November 1998

Posted on November 28, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

The Washington Post reports that the CIA has launched its largest recruiting campaign since the Cold War, looking for linguists in Arabic, Farsi, Korean, Chinese and other languages increasingly in demand given the “proliferating new dangers” of the post-bipolar world.

“To increase the effectiveness of its campus recruiting, the CIA has narrowed its focus to 66 colleges and universities with which it either has—or hopes to develop—close recruiting ties. The list includes the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, Cornell, Maryland, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Howard, Grambling, Brigham Young, Texas A&M, Texas, Michigan, Ohio State, Purdue, Stanford and Berkeley.”

The exercise would be a bust for three reasons: One, that “native” speakers and people of color were often also turned away from the Agency because they could not get security clearances or were not the “type” of person that fit with the lily-white Agency. Second, the personnel and promotion systems of the Agency often mis-utilized skilled linguists, relegating them to translation and administrative tasks rather than prestigious case officers. And three, the emergence of machine translation, which seemed to suggest that the old, large pools of Russian linguists were no longer really needed.

In any case, the “high-demand/low-density” languages have never been fully subscribed and by 9/11, there were only a few dozen Arabic speakers focused on counter-terrorism and very few actually running the “war” against bin Laden.

18 November 1998

Posted on November 18, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

The CIA issues a compartmented top-secret report, “Further Options Available Against UBL” [Osama bin Laden], outlining covert and military actions that could be taken as a follow-on to the August 1998 cruise missile attacks (that were retaliation for the African embassy bombings).

White House staffers were still arguing for bombing a broad range of sites that would include al Qaeda camps and Taliban facilities in Afghanistan. Beyond air defenses and airfields, the Air Force said there weren’t any easy targets—that is, those which were outside urban areas or whose destruction would have significant effects. And the terrorist camps themselves were spread out and lacked critical facilities. Bomb damage assessments of the August strikes indicated no long-term effect.

According to Age of Sacred Terror (p. 284), national security advisor Sandy Berger was leery of bombing alone, believing that the odds of killing Osama bin Laden were low “and that a failure would make the United States look impotent and its target invincible.”

JCS Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton presented other military options, but his “$2 billion option” as the White House called it, was seen more as passive-aggressive refusal on the part of the Pentagon to engage in combat, piling on logistical and support requirements that turned every option into a major war. Secretary of Defense William Cohen also insisted that any special operations option—even of a small stealthy raid—include a “force protection” package. Ultimately the discussions fizzled into nothing.

17 November 1998

Posted on November 17, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

The CIA produces a top-secret intelligence report, “Usama Bin Ladin’s Finances: Some Estimates of Wealth, Income, and Expenditures,” that is unable to estimate the al Qaeda head’s wealth, nor where he was getting money from or how he moved it. The report said that bin Laden was getting financial support from his family in Saudi Arabia and other rich Gulf-based individuals.

In discussing the report, a National Security Council working group on terrorist finances asks the CIA to push again for access to a former al Qaeda official, Madani al Tayyib, who is in Saudi custody. The 9/11 Commission requests that the CIA use its back channels to see “if it is possible to elaborate further on the ties between Usama [sic] bin Ladin and prominent individuals in Saudi Arabia, including especially the Bin Ladin family.” (911 Commission, p. 122).

In September, Vice President Al Gore made a personal appeal to Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah for direct access to al Tayyib. Richard Clarke writes: “Upon learning that much of al Qaeda’s financing came from Saudi Arabia, both from individuals and from quasi-governmental charities, ‘We decided that we needed to have a serious talk with the Saudis as well as with a few of the financial centers in the region. We recognized that the Saudi regime had been largely uncooperative on previous law enforcement-focused investigations of terrorism … so we wanted a different approach … So we asked Vice President Gore to talk to the Crown Prince … We wanted to avoid a typical pattern of Saudi behavior we had seen: achingly slow progress, broken promises, denial, and cooperation limited to specific answers to specific questions … The Saudis protested our focus on continuing contacts between Usama and his wealthy, influential family, who were supposed to have broken off all ties with him. “How can you tell a mother not to call her son,” they asked. (Against all Enemies, pp. 194–195)

The United States never obtained direct access.

10 November 2000

Posted on November 10, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

CIA analysts brief the White House Small Group on their preliminary findings that the October attack on the USS Cole in Yemen was carried out by a cell of Yemeni residents with some ties to the transnational “mujahideen” network. According to the briefing, these local residents likely had some support from al Qaeda. The CIA concluded that it had little intelligence to prove outside sponsorship, support, and direction of the operation. (See 911 Commission, p. 194)

The report was later shared with the incoming Bush administration and it likely influenced their decision not to retaliate against al Qaeda, President Bush already expressing that he was done “swatting at flies.” But the conviction not to employ cruise missiles—and to approach terrorism in new ways, “anything but Clinton” (ABC) some described the new policy as being—also stalled any momentum towards understanding the al Qaeda threat. The CIA would scramble mightily to get White House attention with regard to al Qaeda, and though that inattention was later used to excuse the Agency and blame the White House for 9/11, it was, in fact, that November 10, 2000 report that is most instructive. The CIA just lacked hard intelligence—even if the Bush White House paid attention perhaps the plot would have never been uncovered.

2 November 1999

Posted on November 2, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

The 24/7 millennium threat surge begins at the CIA and throughout the intelligence community. The threat of a terrorist attack over the millennium celebrations, together with any threats associated with the Y2K computer rollover, become the top priority for the entire intelligence community.

The CIA creates an elaborate disruption campaign against al Qaeda and other cells of terrorists, particularly in Jordan and Lebanon, and indeed Jordanian officials arrested a number of terrorists linked to al Qaeda.

Between November and the millennium, the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center and other elements of the government’s counter-terror apparatus worked overtime and on supplemental budgets, both of which would have profound effects later on activities in 2000 as more secure funding was sought and the primary counter-terrorism personnel adjusted to “normal” schedules.

Did the millennium itself justify the resources? And did the government pay the price for its focus on stopping a single terrorist strike (and then relaxing once it did)? One will never know, but the effect of anniversary warnings—whether it be July 4th before 9/11, or September 11th—ever since has served to focus more attention on tactical and short-term interdiction rather than the big picture.

31 October 2000

Posted on October 31, 2020November 3, 2020 by William Arkin

President Clinton signs additional covert action authorities for fighting al Qaeda, including expanding the number of individuals who were subject to capture operations. The formal presidential “findings,” a series of six Memorandum of Notifications, built upon previous (July 1999) covert action authorities already granted to the CIA.

Authority to undertake capture operations are specified by individuals and by country as to what assistance and circumstances the Agency can seek foreign government (and foreign organization) help. There are no “lethal” authorities per se, though obviously in 1998, cruise missile attacks against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda sought to kill the leader.

CIA Director George Tenet is also instructed to develop additional capabilities beyond those already granted in 1999, such as strengthening relationships with the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and Uzbek groups in Afghanistan. Another Memorandum calls for covert action to fight the expansion of al Qaeda into Lebanon.

26 October 2000

Posted on October 26, 2020October 30, 2020 by William Arkin

The Military Intelligence Board (MIB) meets and discusses the issue of “need to know.”

The board (made up of senior directors of the Defense Department intelligence components) coordinates activities of the defense intelligence community, sets policies, and coordinates allocation of intelligence assets.

According to the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, a top secret-level Senate Intelligence Committee inquiry, the DIA representative said that most of military intelligence had moved away from “need to know,” the doctrine of restricting the circulation of intelligence, even inside classified systems, to protect “sources and methods” regarding the origins of the intelligence. In most cases, this also facilitated the creation of then emerging networks and information architectures that allowed analysts to openly share information, or at least to query other-agency databanks, to find intelligence hidden within the vast American collection machine.

The board took note of that fundamental difference with the CIA, which adhered to the principle of need to know “as a foundation” and rarely shared raw intelligence with the defense agencies. According to the partially declassified Joint Inquiry, “the DIA attendee concluded that the defense intelligence community would not be able to bridge the gap with CIA on this information sharing issue.”

It was an important pre-9/11 discussion because, after the attacks, the CIA and FBI blamed “The Wall” between intelligence and law enforcement—a Clinton administration rule—that sought not to contaminate investigative material so that it was unusable in a court of law, and also segregated intelligence that could not be divulged in court from influencing an investigation if the intelligence could not be part of grand jury and legal proceedings.

Both agencies used The Wall to justify not sharing, but that was never its intent, particularly when it came to time sensitive information that was immediate use, such as in stopping a terrorist attack. Lost in the post-9/11 blame game was the cultural reason for not sharing.

20 October 2000

Posted on October 20, 2020October 20, 2020 by William Arkin

Ali Mohammed pleads guilty. Surely one of the strangest sub-plots of 9/11.

Mohammed was the only al Qaeda operative known to have successfully infiltrated the U.S. military and intelligence community before 9/11. Along the way, he was an Egyptian Army officer who learned to speak English and Hebrew, attended foreign officer training at Ft. Bragg, was recruited by the CIA, joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, was dropped by the CIA, entered the U.S. despite being on a watchlist and again was engaged by the CIA, married an American woman and moved to California, enlisted in the U.S. Army, joined special forces back at Ft. Bragg, taught Middle East and radicalism courses to the Army, took leave to go and fight in Afghanistan, returned to the Army and secretly trained radicals in New York who were later implicated for the November 1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, wrote the al Qaeda training manual “Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants,” got an honorable discharge from the Army (after all that), joined the Army Reserve, continued work for al Qaeda from his home in Santa Clara, California, became an informant to the FBI, helped Osama bin Laden leave Afghanistan in 1991, worked to settle bin Laden in Sudan, trained al Qaeda recruits, returned to Afghanistan to provide explosives and tradecraft training, helped to set up the al Qaeda cell in Kenya that would blow up the Embassy in 1998, hosted Zawahiri on a fundraising tour of American mosques, continued to work for the FBI, provided Army intelligence with information on camps in Afghanistan, fought with fighters loyal to Farah Aideed in Somalia, scouted targets for bin Laden in Kenya and Tanzania, helped bin Laden move back to Afghanistan, was secretly arrested after the African embassy bombings, and becomes an informant (again) for the government.

In October 2000, Mohamed entered a guilty plea on five counts of conspiracy. Thereafter in custody, Ali Mohammed’s life was a bit of a mystery, supposedly never sentenced and after 9/11, again a source for the CIA and FBI.

19 October 2000

Posted on October 19, 2020October 20, 2020 by William Arkin

A Frenchmen named Zacarias Moussaoui (who was arrested on August 16, 2001 in Minnesota and considered by many to be the “20th” 9/11 hijacker) shows up in Malaysia and stays at the same condo that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi stayed at in January before they flew to the U.S. (At the time, Malaysian police surveilled the condo and shared information with the CIA about the mysterious arrival of two jihadis.)

The CIA had already concluded that the owner of the condo, Yazid Sufaat, was associated with al Qaeda, but the January trip had been forgotten by October and Sufaat was no longer being watched. He provides Moussaoui with fake identification papers in anticipation of his undertaking flight training in Malaysia. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (p. 225), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) was dissatisfied with Moussaoui’s own terrorist plotting and recalled him to Pakistan, then directing him to go to the United States for flight training.

Moussaoui then received fake papers from Infocus Tech, a Malaysian company, stating that he was appointed Infocus Tech’s marketing consultant in the United States. He arrives in the U.S. in the beginning of 2001 and starts flight training in Norman, Oklahoma.

Moussaoui was a student at Airman Flight School until May 2001 but he is not believed to ever have actually crossed paths with any of the 9/11 hijackers. His initial arrest a month before 9/11 was for immigration violations, not terrorism related. Had the FBI or the intelligence community (IC) been able to “connect the dots”—al Qaeda connections, training in Afghanistan, direction from KSM, the same condo in Malaysia, flight school in the U.S.—perhaps the 9/11 plot could have been unraveled. The conventional history of 9/11 is that legal constraints impeded the sharing of information and that structural deficiencies in organization were to blame for very narrow mistakes made in Washington and around the IC. The truth is that incompetence, sloth, and disbelief masked the connections, only discovered after 9/11.

12 October 2000

Posted on October 12, 2020October 12, 2020 by William Arkin

In Aden, a small bomb-laden boat approaches the destroyer USS Cole at midship and the two suicide bombers detonate their explosives, killing 17 sailors and injuring at least 40 others.

The destroyer, en route to the Persian Gulf, was making a prearranged fuel stop, part of a Central Command (CENTCOM) initiative to improve relations with the Yemen government. The blast ripped a hole in the side of the USS Cole approximately 40 feet in diameter. The attack occurs without warning, and the Navy vessel was never warned to expect a terrorist attack.

The subsequent FBI investigation revealed that the USS Cole bombing followed an unsuccessful attempt on January 3, 2000, to bomb another U.S. Navy ship, the USS The Sullivans. In this earlier incident, the boat sank before the explosives could be detonated. The boat and the explosives were salvaged and refitted, and the explosives were tested and reused in the USS Cole attack.

The “story” of the aftermath, favorable to a supposedly do-no-wrong FBI, is later told in Lawrence Wright’s Looming Tower, and the attack becomes an emotional debating point in the Bush-Gore presidential election. The outgoing Clinton administration is reluctant to retaliate against al Qaeda—the clear perpetrator—because an election is just a month away. But the Bush administration also does not take any military action, told by the CIA that it did not have enough “proof” of al Qaeda direction.

Yemeni authorities establish that Tawfiq bin-Atash (known as Khallad), who had been a trainer at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan and worked as an Osama bin Laden bodyguard, was not only one of the commanders but that he had been present at the January 2000 meeting of al Qaeda operatives in Malaysia. Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, the San Diego duo who would go on to be “musclemen” on 9/11, were also present.

According to the 911 Commission Report (p. 191), back in Afghanistan, bin Laden anticipated U.S. military retaliation and ordered the evacuation of al Qaeda installations, fleeing to the desert area near Kabul, then to Khowst and Jalalabad, and eventually back to Kandahar. In Kandahar, he rotated between five to six residences, spending one night at each residence. In addition, he sent his senior advisor, Mohammed Atef, to a different part of Kandahar and his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, to Kabul so that all three could not be killed in one attack.

In writing his autobiography, George Tenet says that “neither our intelligence nor the FBI’s criminal investigation could conclusively prove that Usama bin Ladin and his leadership had had authority, direction, and control over the attack. This is a high threshold to cross… What’s important from our perspective at CIA is that the FBI investigation had taken primacy in getting to the bottom of the matter.” (At the Center of the Storm, p. 128).