3 January 2000

Posted on January 3, 2021January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

The Navy destroyer USS The Sullivans (DDG 68) makes a port call in Aden, Yemen, part of a U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) military initiative to improve diplomatic relations with the Sana’a government under President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Not known until the USS Cole was attacked on October 12 in a subsequent port call was an unsuccessful attempt by al Qaeda to attack the ship on January 3. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, now held at Guantanamo Bay, was the local organizer behind the operation, probably masterminded by al Qaeda operative Walid bin Attash (“Khallad”), also a Yemeni. The small skiff loaded with explosives sank not far offshore as it was launched to attack the USS The Sullivans. Had the plot been discovered by U.S. intelligence, the foolish program to curry favor with the Saleh government probably would have been stopped, or at least greater force protection measures would have been applied to protect the USS Cole when it subsequently visited.

29 December 1992

Posted on December 30, 2020January 30, 2021 by William Arkin

Probably the “first” direct attack by al Qaeda on the United States occurs in Yemen.

Two hotels that cater to westerners are attacked, one at the Movenpick and the other at the Gold Mohur. Though directed at U.S. military personnel staging for operations in Somalia, the bombs kill one Australian tourist. In fact, the U.S. military are staying at a completely different hotel and the attack is barely noticed in Washington.

Two Yemenis, later found to have trained in Afghanistan, are eventually arrested, having been injured in the blast. Osama bin Laden claimed responsibility for the attack in 1998.

22 December 1989

Posted on December 22, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Osama bin Laden approaches Prince Turki bin Faisal al Saud, head of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, with a plan to use Arab mujahedin from Afghanistan to overthrow the Marxist government in South Yemen.

Turki rejects his proposal, but bin Laden reportedly organizes fighters anyhow under the al Qaeda flag, and then (working with tribal leaders) makes a series of attacks in South Yemen. The attacks are so damaging and threatening that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh travels to Saudi Arabia to ask King Fahd to get bin Laden under control. The King then himself instructs bin Laden to stay out of Yemeni affairs, and Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz al Saud (then the minister of the interior) demands bin Laden’s passport.

Less than a year later, Iraq invades Kuwait and bin Laden’s views of Saudi Arabia are forever transformed, with King Fahd inviting U.S. military forces to deploy to Saudi soil—a sacrilege to bin Laden that represents a new set of “crusaders” entering the lands of Islam.

9 December 2000

Posted on December 9, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

Another missed opportunity occurs to expose the 9/11 plotters. Fahd al-Quso, an al Qaeda operative, is arrested in Yemen. In addition to being involved in the bombing of the USS Cole in October 2000, al-Quso was at a January 2000 meeting in Malaysia also attended by Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, the San Diego duo who would go on to become hijacker “musclemen” on 9/11.

The FBI tries to get direct access to al-Quso after his arrest but is thwarted by the government of Yemen. (He is finally interrogated days after 9/11 and reveals his presence in Malaysia in January 2000.)

The CIA write in a December 2000 cable it had learned that al-Quso had received $7,000 from someone named Ibrahim, which he delivered to “Khallad” in Southeast Asia. They incorrectly identify this “Khalled” as Khalid al-Mihdhar. Khallad turns out to be Walid Muhammad Salih bin Mubarak bin Attash, currently in Guantanamo detention camp, and a close associate of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

27 November 1993

Posted on November 27, 2020December 23, 2020 by William Arkin

An American diplomat, on his way to a Thanksgiving reception, is kidnapped in Yemen, the first known kidnapping of a diplomat in Yemen. Reporting on the kidnapping describes “the country south of Saudi Arabia” as “faction ridden” and ascribed the hostage taking to “a squabble between competing factions.” The press reported that “conservative” North Yemen and formerly Marxist South Yemen united to create the latest version of the country. Interior ministry officials said the diplomat—Haynes R. Mahoney—had been taken to Marib, which the news media described as “oil rich,” its only seeming geopolitical frame of reference.

“There has been little activity in Yemen by radical Muslim fundamentalist groups that might strike at American targets in response to President Clinton’s meeting on Wednesday with the novelist Salman Rushdie,” the New York Times said, the narcissistic frame of reference virtually oblivious to the emergence of radical Islam.

25 October 2000

Posted on October 25, 2020October 30, 2020 by William Arkin

The Washington Times reports that the NSA issued a top-secret intelligence report on the day the destroyer USS Cole was attacked in Yemen—the alert warning that terrorists were planning an attack against the United States in the Middle East. It isn’t the first (or last) time that NSA was implicated in possessing intelligence that provided tactical warning but never got disseminated in time or sent to the right people.

Bill Gertz reports that the NSA report was not dispatched until several hours after the bombing. The report, according to officials who were familiar with the top-secret intelligence, stated that unidentified terrorists were involved in “operational planning” for an attack on U.S. or Israeli personnel or property in the Middle East. One official said the warning was specific as to an attack in Yemen. Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican and a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, agreed that the NSA report was specific. He investigated the NSA warning and later told Gertz that the warning “related specifically to Yemen.” (Breakdown, p. 51)

Is it true? What’s more important is that through 9/11 (and about 9/11) we just don’t know what intelligence NSA possessed or reported because the signals intelligence (SIGINT) agency evades deep scrutiny, even after disasters. And history is distorted, at least U.S. history, by the absence of much information on the substance of intelligence reporting: what the IC knows, what subject matters it collects on, what happens to the intelligence. Intelligence leaders are always ready to boast that intelligence on this and that saved lives, but the substance is really a black hole.

22 October 2000

Posted on October 22, 2020October 30, 2020 by William Arkin

The government in Yemen stonewalls after the attack on the USS Cole (see October 12), thereby confusing the collection of “evidence” that al Qaeda is responsible and impeding retaliation. There are many reasons—the election voting standoff between Bush and Gore, an impending change in administrations, disbelief in al Qaeda, and skepticism about the value of cruise missile attacks—that also ultimately stand in the way of an American “response,” but Yemen’s foot-dragging, and even lying, has a major impact.

Within the first weeks after the Cole attack, the Yemenis arrest two key figures in the attack. But they forbid the FBI investigators on the ground from participating in the interrogations. President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and CIA Director George Tenet all intervene to try to help but Yemen doesn’t budge. Ultimately, the 911 Commission concludes that because information from the suspects comes in that is secondhand, the U.S. could not make its own assessment of its reliability (911 Commission, p. 192).

Yemen would continue to be a haven for al Qaeda, even after 9/11. It would take the Arab Spring—and not anything about the American global war on terror—to finally unseat the first and only president of the country, Ali Abdullah Saleh. That has been followed by a never-ending civil war and Saudi (and Gulf state) intervention, turning the country into a humanitarian disaster and a basket case. Saleh was killed by a sniper in December 2017.

13 October 2000

Posted on October 13, 2020October 20, 2020 by William Arkin

Vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney urges swift retaliation for the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. “Any would-be terrorist out there needs to know that if you’re going to attack, you’ll be hit very hard and very quick. It’s not time for diplomacy and debate. It’s time for action.”

It is tantamount to approval for the Clinton administration to attack al Qaeda, even with an upcoming election.

The October surprise “norm” for a sitting president—if there is one—is to settle (or at least not exacerbate) pending foreign policy complications for an incoming administration, thereby not tilting the election one way or another. Bill Clinton himself inherited a losing hand in both Somalia and Iraq from George Bush the elder. Somalia would end up a disaster for the Clinton team and Iraq of course would dog the White House for the next eight years. And Barack Obama would hesitate to take stronger action against Russia in 2016, not wanting to tilt the election or tie the hands of an incoming Hillary Clinton administration.

Perhaps Cheney’s bluster was just pre-election posturing, but more important, the former secretary of defense believed that the implications of striking at al Qaeda was cost-free, that attacking—“very hard and very quick”—had no implications for blowback on the United States, that an attack on the U.S. itself wasn’t even conceived. Ultimately this belief was as much responsible for the new Bush administration’s slow development of a counter-terrorism policy in the nine months of 2001 before 9/11—that it just didn’t see al Qaeda as more than a run-of-the-mill terrorist organization.

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).