The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS (3 page)

A senior Agency officer named Joan Dempsey—who had just finished a stint as Tenet’s chief of staff—handed me a letter that she said needed to be signed right away and sent to the secretary of defense. The subject, an intelligence community technical issue, was incomprehensible to me, but she assured me it was no big deal and I should simply have the guys down the hall crank up the machine and affix the “George J. Tenet” signature to the letter she had drafted. Trusting her judgment, I did just that and put a copy of the resulting letter in Tenet’s thick pile of materials to read at
home that night, telling him in a note that I had sent the letter to the “SECDEF.” The next morning I got the letter back with Tenet’s distinctive scrawl all over it. At the top he had written, “Never ever, ever, ever…,” and the
ever
s continued across the top of the page… down the right side, upside down across the bottom, and up the left-hand margin. After the final
ever
, he’d written, “autopen a letter to a cabinet member!”

Properly chagrined, I affixed a Post-it note to the letter: “Your instructions are not clear to me. Would you please clarify?” I put it in the night’s reading file. He accepted my riposte in good humor, which tells you a great deal about the kind of boss he was.

My third responsibility was to make sure that when Tenet was scheduled to have a meeting he had everything he needed in advance. This was perhaps the toughest part of the job, because some materials that came forward from lower levels of the Agency and intelligence community were poorly written, badly argued, confusing, or just too long. So I would have to rewrite a lot of stuff on the fly—particularly talking points for his use at White House meetings. Often I did a good job, but sometimes not. Once he read a page of talking points and, not thinking much of it, asked, “Who was the idiot who wrote this?” I raised my hand and said, “That would be me.”

The final part of the job was to do whatever else he asked of me. I was a messenger, a deliverer of good news and bad, a source of information on morale in the building, a traveling companion, the butt of many jokes, and the participant in much humor. Tenet once threatened to give me as a gift to a world leader who had a special interest in young men, going so far as to quickly leave a dinner with the leader while I was visiting the restroom. Luckily I jumped into the last car as the director’s motorcade left the presidential palace. On another occasion, in a large meeting in the director’s conference
room, we were discussing a request from another foreign leader for six helicopters as “payment” for operational support that that country had just undertaken on behalf of the Agency. Tenet responded to the leader’s request by saying, “How about we give him three helicopters and Morell?” The room exploded in laughter.

But I had my moments. Tenet was in his office with his senior leadership team late one morning, just before leaving for a particularly important testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee—to explain how CIA had failed to predict India’s May 1988 test of a nuclear weapon. Tenet asked for one piece of advice from everyone and started around the room. I quickly calculated that I would be last, but I didn’t know if Tenet planned to ask me, since I was the most junior officer in the room. But when the circle ended with me, Tenet did ask, “Any thoughts?” I said, “Pull up your zipper!” I had noticed when we entered the room that his fly was down. The room broke into laughter, and Tenet said, “Finally, a fucking piece of advice that is actually useful.” Tenet had a way with colorful language.

* * *

The global array of problems that the director of central intelligence had to worry about was mind-boggling. At the start of each calendar year, the Agency’s director was obliged to appear before the Senate and House intelligence oversight committees and lay out what concerns him. In January 1998 Tenet did just that, and he had no shortage of things to discuss. Each of the five main areas of challenge he talked about was suddenly something on which I had to quickly come up to speed. At the top of his list of worries were transnational issues that threatened all Americans. Included in this category were the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international terrorism, drug trafficking, information warfare (what we would call
cyber warfare today), and, interestingly, the fallout from a financial crisis that had befallen Asia.

Close behind those worries was a second major category—the threat posed by major powers like Russia and China. The two traditional foes of the United States were on very different trajectories—Russia down and China up—and both were trying to navigate difficult political and economic transformations. Next was the threat from rogue nations like Iraq, North Korea, Libya, and Iran. Fourth on Tenet’s list were regional trouble spots like the Middle East, South Asia, and Bosnia. And finally he mentioned humanitarian emergencies caused by natural disasters, ethnic conflict, and foreign government mismanagement—any one of which could suddenly place heavy demands on US military and economic resources.

That was quite a list, and the director could not afford to ignore any part of it. But I can tell you there was one entry on that parade of threats that dominated his days and thus mine—and that was international terrorism. This was a revelation to me. Throughout my prior time at the Agency I had had little involvement in that arena, and the vast majority of my colleagues at Langley would have told you that counterterrorism—or “CT”—was not a front-burner issue. But Tenet didn’t see it that way. For years before 9/11, the terror threat was the single issue that would keep him up at night. He was focused on it, laser-like.

The counterterrorism arena had a dizzying array of bad guys—Lebanese Hezbollah, responsible for several mass attacks against the United States and for more American fatalities than any terrorist group prior to 9/11; Egyptian terrorist groups al-Gama‘a al-Islamiyya and the Islamic Jihad, the latter responsible for the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981; Palestinian groups responsible for multiple attacks against Israel; and many
others outside the Middle East—ranging from the Irish Republican Army in the United Kingdom to the Sendero Luminoso or “Shining Path” in Peru. But the one group on which Tenet was intensely focused—and the one that caught my attention as I read and listened—was a group called “al Qa‘ida,” under the leadership of a man named Usama bin Ladin.

* * *

Bin Ladin was born in 1957 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the son of one of the kingdom’s richest men. Usama, meaning “lion,” attended King Abdulaziz University. While he took practical courses in construction engineering and business administration, undoubtedly under pressure from his family, his true passion was religion, studying the Koran and what it meant for how Muslims should live their lives. At school, Bin Ladin became close to members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic organization intent on imposing Koranic law throughout Muslim societies. He loved poetry, black stallions, and soccer. He was an avid follower of English football.

After college Bin Ladin was drawn to the war in Afghanistan. He felt a religious duty to support the Afghan freedom fighters, and he went to South Asia in the early 1980s. As he traveled back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan, his role was one of funding and organizing the flow of foreigners into Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. (Despite many stories over the years to the contrary, CIA never worked with Bin Ladin in the Agency’s own efforts to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.) Bin Ladin’s time in South Asia convinced him that ideologically motivated insurgents can defeat a much better-equipped and -trained military force. It was the defining experience of his life.

Bin Ladin had two advantages as he moved through life—a
piece of his family’s wealth, which helped him in his early years, and, even more important, charisma. His personality was magnetic. This was not an American-style appeal consisting of a dominant personality that could take over a room. It was an Arab-style charisma made of a soft-spoken, poetic voice and a gentleness of movement in the manner of the Prophet Muhammad.

* * *

CIA’s interest in Bin Ladin began during his time in Sudan, from 1991 to 1996, when he combined business ventures with jihad. Bin Ladin established terrorist training camps in Sudan and financed the travel of hundreds of Afghan War veterans to Sudan to attend those camps. In late 1992, Bin Ladin financed the bombing of a hotel in Aden, Yemen, housing US servicemen, and in 1996 he sent his operatives to Somalia to work as advisors to the warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, responsible for the tragedy commonly referred to as “Black Hawk Down.” These were Bin Ladin’s opening salvos against the United States, but we learned of his role only years later. We also learned later that during this time Bin Ladin acquired what would be an enduring interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

Bin Ladin’s early activities create an interesting dichotomy. As far as most Americans are concerned, the fight against al Qa‘ida began in 1998 in East Africa or on 9/11. But from Bin Ladin’s perspective, he had been at war against the United States dating back to 1992.

CIA knew that Bin Ladin relocated to Afghanistan from Sudan in late 1996, taking many operatives with him. What we did not know at the time was whether Bin Ladin was just a financier of terrorists or the head of a terrorist organization himself. Because his name was popping up in the intelligence so much, CIA decided
to find out. The Agency in 1996 created a special unit to follow Bin Ladin, called Alec Station. Unlike a typical CIA station, this one was based in the United States, within driving distance of CIA headquarters. (The code name Alec was taken from the unit chief’s oldest son.) Its initial objective was to find out who Bin Ladin really was.

By 1997, Alec Station had its answer. CIA had learned and had told policy-makers that Bin Ladin was the head of a terrorist organization whose goal was the establishment of a global caliphate. And we had learned and reported that, to Bin Ladin, the United States was the key to his goal—and therefore the prime target or, as al Qa‘ida referred to us, the “far enemy.” To achieve his caliphate he had to drive the United States out of the Middle East and then overthrow what he saw as the US-supported apostate leaders currently sitting atop the countries in that region, al Qa‘ida’s so-called near enemies.

Not only did the intelligence make that known, but so did Bin Ladin himself, publicly. He announced his intentions to attack the United States with great clarity. In at least five public statements between mid-1995 and early 1998, Bin Ladin professed his hatred for America and everything it represents. He directly announced his intent to force us to retreat from the Muslim world. And he stated his plan to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction, which he called a “religious duty.” In international relations, sometimes the best indicator of what someone is going to do is what he tells you he is going to do. And, since it is a religious obligation in Islam to warn your enemies in advance, there was reason to pay particular attention to what he had to say. While the intelligence community did so, Bin Ladin’s public statements generated little interest among the American media—even though some of his pronouncements were made directly to US news outlets.

To put teeth behind his rhetoric, Bin Ladin, under the protection
of the Taliban, was increasing his capabilities. Al Qa‘ida built training camps in Afghanistan, attracting recruits from all over the world and turning out committed jihadists by the thousands. Bin Ladin built a document forgery capability and mechanisms to move money securely.

CIA was not just collecting information on Bin Ladin and his activities; it was actively trying to undermine him. Alec Station was working hard on a program to disrupt his finances, arrest the operatives he sent abroad, and bring him to justice. Thanks to Tenet, we were not sitting on our hands, but the rest of the Agency, with the exception of Alec Station, did not take al Qa‘ida as seriously as did its director.

Significantly, Alec Station, arguably one of the most important CIA operational units at the time, was led by an analyst. As a career analyst myself, I strongly believed that people from my career path could make enormous contributions. But I couldn’t get over that the leader of Alec Station—an officer by the name of Mike Scheuer—was not a trained operations officer and that few operations officers played a significant role in the unit.

Alec Station also did not get the support it needed to do its job. Part of this was due to Scheuer’s personality. He was a zealot. In the years before 9/11, I don’t think anyone knew more or cared as much about al Qa‘ida. His analytic assessments were always on the mark, but he also had a penchant for angering anyone who didn’t see things exactly as he did. Scheuer was constantly getting into fights with the FBI, the NSA, and his own bosses within the Directorate of Operations. (Mike got a chance to vent when he anonymously published a couple of books, but he eventually left the Agency bitter and questioning our commitment to the fight.) But I am convinced that the Agency did not give him enough support in part because Scheuer was an analyst. At the time there were strong divisions between the operational and analytic sides of CIA. When
I started in 1980, the two organizations were on different sides of the building and their officers ate in different cafeterias. There was a strong “not invented here” culture in the Directorate of Operations. I believe the DO, as we called it, rejected Scheuer because he was not one of its own.

The lack of support also reflected the fact that not all levels of management understood the source of the passion Alec Station’s officers brought to the job. And not all CIA managers understood that because the threat had not yet manifested itself. They could not see it and feel it (this was also an issue in the broader government and in the country at large). One of the analysts in Alec Station was once counseled that she was spending too much of her career on Bin Ladin.

Scheuer frequently complained about the lack of support. For example, he believed he did not receive the backing he needed from the Agency’s geographic operational units (the “owners” of our overseas stations), from other agencies in the intelligence community, or from foreign intelligence services. And Scheuer believed that his superiors in CIA did not push those organizations hard enough to be more forthcoming. Some of this was hyperbole, but some of it reflected reality. Scheuer was a frequent visitor to my office after a meeting in the director’s suite and would share his frustrations with me. I wondered to myself if an operations officer, as chief of Alec, would have received more support. I thought so, and would occasionally share this view with Tenet.