Find, Fix, Finish (23 page)
Authors: Aki Peritz,Eric Rosenbach
Having identified and corroborated his importance through multiple sources, US intelligence began tracking Abu Amina’s movements and appointments via UAV and through his Thuraya satellite phone.
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On June 3 or June 4, US forces followed Abu Amina as he traveled to a meeting with Zarqawi, but lost his vehicle in traffic.
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On June 7 a UAV successfully tracked him as he drove to an isolated farmhouse outside the village of Hibhib near the city of Baquba.
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Abu Amina had also been observed performing a SDR before arriving at the building, as would occur before meeting a high-level member of AQI. For the first time in many months, Americans thought they might have Zarqawi in their sights. But they could not be sure.
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On June 3 or June 4, US forces followed Abu Amina as he traveled to a meeting with Zarqawi, but lost his vehicle in traffic.
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On June 7 a UAV successfully tracked him as he drove to an isolated farmhouse outside the village of Hibhib near the city of Baquba.
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Abu Amina had also been observed performing a SDR before arriving at the building, as would occur before meeting a high-level member of AQI. For the first time in many months, Americans thought they might have Zarqawi in their sights. But they could not be sure.
US civilian and military officials did not know who was in the building with Abu Amina. Compounding the dilemma, the video feed from the Predator overhead indicated there were women and children in the farmhouse, so any strike on the building would result in their grisly deaths.
After an agonizing debate in Baghdad and the main US military base in Balad over whether to or not to strike, the call was made to blast the house to smithereens. Commanders called in two nearby F-16s on routine patrol, but only one aircraft made the bombing run because the other was in the process of refueling.
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The F-16’s pilot set the fuse on the five-hundred-pound bomb to explode inside the house (rather than on contact) to collapse the structure, and then dropped a second bomb to complete the task.
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The F-16’s pilot set the fuse on the five-hundred-pound bomb to explode inside the house (rather than on contact) to collapse the structure, and then dropped a second bomb to complete the task.
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Unlike everyone else at the house, Zarqawi survived the blasts. US forces converged on the ruins to find the AQI head semiconscious and mumbling incoherently on the ground. Picking their way gingerly through the rubble, troops placed him on a stretcher. Zarqawi tried to get off to no avail, as his internal organs turned to jelly due to the over-pressurization waves caused by the high explosives.
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The last few fading images the leader of AQI ever saw were of US soldiers, guns at the ready, standing over him. The hunt for the most wanted man in Iraq was finally over.
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The last few fading images the leader of AQI ever saw were of US soldiers, guns at the ready, standing over him. The hunt for the most wanted man in Iraq was finally over.
The success resulted from organizational momentum, a high tempo of both behind-the-scenes intelligence analysis and special operations actions running up to this event. US Army Major General William Caldwell later described Zarqawi’s death as the culmination of “a very long, painstaking, deliberate exploitation of intelligence, information-gathering, human sources, electronic, signal intelligence that was done over a period of time.”
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Having identified Abu Amina, American civilian and military forces were able to triangulate and track his satellite phone.
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The operation also demonstrated the combination of rapid action with luck—had Zarqawi not been in the farmhouse, the US would have instead shredded its best lead—Abu Amina—and ended up with a building full of dead women and children. If Zarqawi had once again escaped harm, the military and intelligence professionals who helped construct and authorized the military strike would have needlessly shed the blood of innocents instead of being lauded as the men and women who brought down a hard-core terrorist killer in a brutal conflict zone.
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Having identified Abu Amina, American civilian and military forces were able to triangulate and track his satellite phone.
121
The operation also demonstrated the combination of rapid action with luck—had Zarqawi not been in the farmhouse, the US would have instead shredded its best lead—Abu Amina—and ended up with a building full of dead women and children. If Zarqawi had once again escaped harm, the military and intelligence professionals who helped construct and authorized the military strike would have needlessly shed the blood of innocents instead of being lauded as the men and women who brought down a hard-core terrorist killer in a brutal conflict zone.
A review of US attempts to destroy Zarqawi reveals several key points about contemporary counterterrorism operations. First is the continued importance of painstaking research, interrogation, and human intelligence. Even though the US possessed some of the most advanced technology in the world, Zarqawi evaded American forces for over three years after he became a high-value target. In the February 2005 SUV chase, a combination of technology and military rules of engagement allowed Zarqawi to get away.
As wars and counterterrorism operations become increasingly asymmetrical and focused on breaking down small cells, human intelligence will become even more important. Even within the US, it is tricky to locate and finish one individual. For example, the individual responsible for the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Eric Rudolph, managed to hide in rural North Carolina for several years before being caught by a local police officer.
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Small targets can evade detection easily. Human intelligence, broadly defined, decreases that advantage. Local sources can help officials attack cells from the inside out by guiding and directing a search that would otherwise prove impossible for outside forces. After all, before forces can fix or finish an objective, they need to first know where to look.
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Small targets can evade detection easily. Human intelligence, broadly defined, decreases that advantage. Local sources can help officials attack cells from the inside out by guiding and directing a search that would otherwise prove impossible for outside forces. After all, before forces can fix or finish an objective, they need to first know where to look.
Still, despite the importance of developing human intelligence, the value of technology should not be underappreciated. Even though it may have failed at some key junctures in the search for Zarqawi, technology also proved invaluable to that search. Tip-offs and debriefings led US forces to Abu Amina, but technology helped track him. American technology taped his movements and intercepted his phone calls.
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The US watched from a distance as Abu Amina led them straight to Zarqawi. Humans provided the direction, but technology ensured that their information could be fully captured and exploited.
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The US watched from a distance as Abu Amina led them straight to Zarqawi. Humans provided the direction, but technology ensured that their information could be fully captured and exploited.
By keeping all necessary components within relatively small, autonomous units, the US could gather and act on raw intelligence before the trail it provided went cold. Still, the importance of Zarqawi’s case lies not only in the details but also the concept of organic integration. When potential terrorists organize into small units, they gain flexibility that makes them difficult to find, fix, or finish. The new, more nimble military intelligence groups, however, can return flexibility to the opposing force.
Of course, fixing and finishing Zarqawi did not mean that AQI had been crushed. The terror group’s campaign of unremitting violence against the US, Iraq, and civilians escalated dramatically through the rest of 2006 and into 2007. Only after various Sunni tribes rose up against AQI and the Shia militant group Jaysh al-Mahdi led by Moqtada al-Sadr suspended political violence in mid-2007 did the violent fever in Iraq break significantly and some semblance of fragile peace return to the war-torn country. Strategic, long-term calculations by various political actors would ultimately bring Iraq back from the edge of all-out conflict.
CHAPTER 7
BOJINKA REDUX
The Need for Good International Cop Work
D
uring the summer of 2005, London was on a knife edge. British citizens caught up in the nihilist ideology of al-Qaeda had twice attacked the bus and subway networks, killing dozens and bringing the horror and mayhem of international terrorism to the city’s 7.5 million residents. Even the decades-long struggle with the Provisional Irish Republican Army paled in comparison. Al-Qaeda changed the equation; the point was not just to scare the British people but also to cause carnage in the name of religious ideals. And, in a video released after the July 7 bombings, the plot’s ringleader, Mohammad Siddique Khan, promised more attacks:
uring the summer of 2005, London was on a knife edge. British citizens caught up in the nihilist ideology of al-Qaeda had twice attacked the bus and subway networks, killing dozens and bringing the horror and mayhem of international terrorism to the city’s 7.5 million residents. Even the decades-long struggle with the Provisional Irish Republican Army paled in comparison. Al-Qaeda changed the equation; the point was not just to scare the British people but also to cause carnage in the name of religious ideals. And, in a video released after the July 7 bombings, the plot’s ringleader, Mohammad Siddique Khan, promised more attacks:
Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world, and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security, you will be our targets, and until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment, and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight.
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Al-Qaeda’s follow-up plot to the gruesome July transit attacks was even more daring and complicated: to destroy several transatlantic airliners in midflight, over American cities using a concoction of homemade chemicals. These acts of terror would kill several thousand civilians, cost billions of dollars, strain the Anglo-American relationship, bankrupt several airlines, severely damage the global civil aviation system, and cause untold ripples on the global economy.
But it never happened. The complicated plot involving dozens of individuals in multiple countries—dubbed Operation Overt by British authorities—was thwarted through the intimate cooperation of Britain, Pakistan, and America, as well as the largest surveillance operation in British history. Over a thousand British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS; a.k.a. MI6) agents, British Security Service (BSS; a.k.a. MI5) agents, undercover Metropolitan Special Branch officers, Thames valley police officers, and other officials worked for over a year with their US counterparts to crush the plot and bring the planners to justice.
Operation Overt is an excellent example of how the US finds and tracks potential threats, as well as how allied intelligence services can work together. It serves as a model case for both the US and UK in the prevention of large-scale terrorist attacks by demonstrating the importance of careful multinational intelligence work, robust information sharing, intricate diplomatic maneuvers, and good fortune. Operation Overt also instructs that solid detective work, long nights at the office, and luck—and not flashy counterterrorism actions or brutal methods—still serve as the primary mechanisms that thwart many terrorist acts.
IN THE BEGINNING: BOJINKAA decade before Operation Overt, a group of disaffected individuals with no real connection to al-Qaeda hatched a similar plot in the Philippines known as Bojinka. Ramzi Yousef, the ringleader of the fizzled 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City, had fled to Southeast Asia and set into motion a plan to destroy in midair several commercial transpacific aircraft bound for American shores.
Proving that terrorism is often a family affair, Yousef and his co-conspirators lived in Doña Josefa Apartments in unit 603, a property owned by Yousef ’s uncle, Khalid Shaykh Mohammed (KSM).
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The conspirators contemplated a variety of attacks, including assassinating US President Clinton and Pope John Paul II, as well as crashing a commercial plane into CIA headquarters, before settling on the idea of destroying multiple airplanes in flight over the Pacific.
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The attack would be known as Bojinka—a nonsense word they made up—and would be carried out in January 1995.
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The conspirators contemplated a variety of attacks, including assassinating US President Clinton and Pope John Paul II, as well as crashing a commercial plane into CIA headquarters, before settling on the idea of destroying multiple airplanes in flight over the Pacific.
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The attack would be known as Bojinka—a nonsense word they made up—and would be carried out in January 1995.
Yousef had already proven capable of creating and smuggling explosives onto an international flight. In December 1994, Yousef, traveling under an alias, had boarded Philippines Airlines Flight 434 from Toyko to Manila. Bringing explosive material on board in his carry-on luggage, Yousef constructed a bomb in the airplane bathroom, placed it under his seat, and deplaned at a refueling stop before the aircraft began the second leg of its journey.
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The subsequent explosion killed a twenty-four-year-old Japanese passenger, Haruki Ikegami, who had the misfortune to be sitting next to Yousef on the flight, and severely burned other individuals on board. The stricken plane’s pilot landed safely in Okinawa without further loss of life despite a gaping hole in the fuselage.
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The subsequent explosion killed a twenty-four-year-old Japanese passenger, Haruki Ikegami, who had the misfortune to be sitting next to Yousef on the flight, and severely burned other individuals on board. The stricken plane’s pilot landed safely in Okinawa without further loss of life despite a gaping hole in the fuselage.
For Yousef and his confederates, Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, the attack was a success. Yousef had succeeded in smuggling, assembling, and detonating a bomb on a commercial flight and could likely repeat the process. For its next attack, the trio decided to increase the bomb’s explosive power tenfold.
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In the early morning of January 7, 1995, a member of the terrorist group accidentally ignited a chemical fire in the apartment’s kitchenette, forcing the evacuation of the apartment complex. The police who responded to the scene found bomb-making equipment, bottles of liquid nitroglycerin, and computers with mysterious encrypted files in the apartment.
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The officers arrested Abdul Hakim Murad—who, incidentally, had received training from various American flight schools—when he returned to the scene.
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While Shah, who fled the scene, was caught in December in Malaysia,
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Yousef evaded capture and made his way to Pakistan. Unfortunately for him, in February, Pakistani commandos acting on a tip caught up with him at an Islamabad guesthouse and rendered him to the US for trial.
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The officers arrested Abdul Hakim Murad—who, incidentally, had received training from various American flight schools—when he returned to the scene.
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While Shah, who fled the scene, was caught in December in Malaysia,
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Yousef evaded capture and made his way to Pakistan. Unfortunately for him, in February, Pakistani commandos acting on a tip caught up with him at an Islamabad guesthouse and rendered him to the US for trial.
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Despite its failure, the plan provided a clear template for future attacks. Yousef’s December 1994 test run had shown that placing an incendiary device on an aircraft was relatively easy. The 9/11 attacks further proved that commercial aircraft could serve to cause mass death and widespread damage to civilian and military installations. This point was reaffirmed in 2001, when al-Qaeda-linked Richard Reid almost managed to detonate an explosive in his shoe during a transatlantic flight despite heavy post-9/11 security. After these attacks, al-Qaeda probably assessed that the mid-1990s plot—in which al-Qaeda had played no part—had fallen apart more because of the fickleness of fate than because of any inherent weakness in the plan. The key difference between the Bojinka test run and the 2006 plot was that the attackers would serve as suicide bombers.
The US first caught glimmers of the new Bojinka plot in 2005.
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US interrogators learned from a detainee—Abu Faraj al-Libi, who had taken over the number 3 slot following KSM’s detention in 2003
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—the first clues.
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This detainee provided the name of UK national Mohammed al-Ghabrah, who served as a banker of sorts to al-Qaeda and had a tangential relationship with the suicide attackers who struck London’s transit system in July 2005.
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Ghabrah, a chubby, unemployed Briton of Syrian descent, traveled to Pakistan to meet Abu Faraj al-Libi sometime in 2002, according to the US Treasury.
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Since Ghabrah was on a terror list, it could be reasonably assumed that both the US and the UK began conducting physical and electronic surveillance on him in order to learn about their plan.
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US interrogators learned from a detainee—Abu Faraj al-Libi, who had taken over the number 3 slot following KSM’s detention in 2003
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—the first clues.
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This detainee provided the name of UK national Mohammed al-Ghabrah, who served as a banker of sorts to al-Qaeda and had a tangential relationship with the suicide attackers who struck London’s transit system in July 2005.
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Ghabrah, a chubby, unemployed Briton of Syrian descent, traveled to Pakistan to meet Abu Faraj al-Libi sometime in 2002, according to the US Treasury.
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Since Ghabrah was on a terror list, it could be reasonably assumed that both the US and the UK began conducting physical and electronic surveillance on him in order to learn about their plan.
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