Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda (41 page)

“More than anyone else, Yazid possessed links”: Stuart Levey, “Loss of Moneyman a Big Blow for Al-Qaeda,”
Washington
Post
, June 6, 2010.

“The guys who are doing the weapons transfers?”: Author interview with a U.S. military officer, 2010.

“Take him out, and suicide bombings from that network”: Author interview with a U.S. military officer, 2010.

“They are very proud”: Author interview with a Central Command intelligence officer, Tampa, Fla., April 2010.

“When a person moves, that’s when we can get them”: Author interview with a Special Operations officer, 2010.

“You have to take the people with specialized experience off the battlefield”: Author interview with Michael Leiter, McLean, Va., November 4, 2010.

“We by ourselves don’t really pursue the threat of terrorism”: Author interview with Major General Samuel T. Helland, USMC, Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, December 2004.

“is a model of how we can deter terrorists”: Author interview with Lieutenant General Douglas E. Lute, USA, Washington, D.C., 2005.

“It is a deterrent mission”: Author interview with a senior Pentagon planner, Arlington, Va., 2005.

“The successes we enjoy, and the gains”: Author telephone interview with Admiral Timothy J. Keating, USN, August 2009.

“In general, the Joint Special Operations Task Force–Philippines”: Quoted in Thom Shanker, “U.S. Military to Stay in Philippines,”
New York Times
, August 20, 2009.

“Help the Philippines security forces”: Quoted in ibid.

“We are determined to stay until we finish this menace”: Author interview with Major Shazad Saleem, South Waziristan, Pakistan, June 2010.

“We want to keep a low signature”: Author interview with a senior Pakistani military officer, Pakistan, 2010.

“This is the most complex operating environment I’ve ever dealt with”: Author interview with Colonel Kurt Sonntag, USA, Peshawar, Pakistan, June 2010.

“settling down and maturing”: Author interview with Lieutenant General Tariq Khan of the Pakistani Army, Peshawar, Pakistan, June 2010.

“the bombers often had been child brides of terrorists”: Author interview with Lieutenant General Mark P. Hertling, Arlington, Va., June 21, 2010.

“It’s a brute-force effort”: Author interview with a defense intelligence officer, Arlington, Va., September 2010.

“We can unravel that”: Author interview with a U.S. military officer, April 29, 2010.

“Another major breakthrough”: Author interview with a U.S. intelligence officer, April 29, 2010.

“We can go into an interrogation”: Author interview with a U.S. military officer, April 29, 2010.

“Knowing about a missing toe”: Author interview with a U.S. intelligence analyst, April 29, 2010.

“The bad news is, we don’t know how to manage all of the information yet”: Author interview with Major General James O. Poss, USAF, Arlington, Va., 2010.

“Today, an analyst sits there and stares at ‘Death TV’”: Speech by General James E. Cartwright, New Orleans, La., November 2010.

“If you look at it from a network standpoint”: Author interview with John Tyson, Arlington, Va., May 19, 2010.

8. THE RISE OF HOME-GROWN EXTREMISM

“He’s not Jack Bauer”: Juan Zarate, remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “The Changing Terrorist Threat and NCTC’s Response,” Washington, D.C., December 1, 2010.

“We have to be honest that some things will get through”: Michael Leiter, “The Changing Terrorist Threat and NCTC’s Response,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., December 1, 2010.

“Since I was fifteen”: Quoted in Colin Miner, Liz Robbins, and Erik Eckholm, “Bomb Plot Foiled at Holiday Event in Portland, Ore.,”
New York Times
, November 28, 2010.

American Muslims were better assimilated culturally and economically: Mark A. Randol and Jerome P. Bjelopera, “American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat,” Congressional Research Service, December 7, 2010.

a wide-ranging report issued in August 2007: Al Baker, “New York City Police Report Explores Homegrown Threat,”
New York Times
, August 16, 2007.

“I have a better understanding of radicals in London”: Remarks by Michael Leiter, Washington, D.C., February 24, 2010.

“It is difficult to understand”: Author interview with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Washington, D.C., March 21, 2011.

“We have a good capability to detect and disrupt”: Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, Testimony Before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, January 20, 2010.

“Counterterrorism in newspapers is about plots”: Philip Mudd, comments on panel on “Domestic Intelligence,” hosted by Bipartisan Policy Council, Willard Hotel, Washington, D.C., October 6, 2010.

“There was no doubt in my mind”: Author interview with Jim Davis, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Denver, Colo., 2010.

“He thought he could talk his way out of this”: Author interview with Steve Olson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Denver, Colo., 2010.

“He felt somewhat of a misfit”: Author interview with Eric Jergenson, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Denver, Colo., 2010.

In a 2007 PowerPoint demonstration: Scott Shane, “Wars Fought and Wars Googled,”
New York Times
, June 27, 2010.

“Can you tell me a way to save the oppressed?”: Andrea Elliott, Sabrina Tavernise, and Anne Bernard, “For Times Sq. Suspect, Long Roots of Discontent,”
New York Times
, May 16, 2010.

“sheikhs are in the field”: Ibid.

“Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun”: Michael Wilson, “Judgment Day in Two High-Profile Cases: Times Square’s Would-Be Bomber Is Defiant as He Gets a Life Term,”
New York Times
, October 6, 2010.

“As the pace of mobilization increases”: Author interview with Michael Leiter, McLean, Va., November 4, 2010.

“What we have seen is that the distance”: Michael Chertoff, Q-and-A response at panel hosted by Bipartisan Policy Council, Willard Hotel, Washington, D.C., October 6, 2010.

“That person said, ‘I am telling you this’”: Author interview with Steven L. Gomez, FBI, Washington, D.C., October 20, 2010.

“We are going to see the trend”: Author interview with Michael Leiter, McLean, Va., November 4, 2010.

9. “IS AL QAEDA JUST KLEENEX?”

“Brothers with less experience”: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,
Inspire
4 (Fall 2010): 57.

“The assumption was they were attempting to weaponize them”: Author interview with a senior Obama administration official, Washington, D.C., Winter 2011.

“The actual casualties of a given isolated attack”: Ibid.

“but that is not their approach”: Ibid.

“probably the most significant risk to the U.S. homeland”: Michael Leiter, House Homeland Security Committee, February 9, 2011.

“After Christmas, a discussion that had been out there”: Author interview with John Tyson, Arlington, Va., May 2010.

“AQAP now provides”: Jarret Brachman, House Homeland Security Committee, March 2, 2011.

“AQAP seems satisfied with disruptive attacks”: Author interview with senior intelligence official, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“I think part of the reason for some of the far-reaching measures”: Author interview with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Arlington, Va., January 11, 2010.

“In the early days, we were like a drunken octopus”: Author interview with senior military officer, Washington, D.C., 2011.

“We didn’t know they had progressed to the point”: John Brennan, White House briefing, Washington, D.C., January 7, 2010.

“Had that plane gone down”: Author interview with a senior American intelligence officer, 2010.

“He has been much more interested in figuring out analytically what happened”: Author interview with a White House adviser, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“Is Al Qaeda just Kleenex?”: Interview with an Obama administration national security official, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“The president is very clear in setting expectations”: Author interview with senior administration official, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“He gives homework assignments”: Author interview with a senior Obama administration official, Arlington, Va., January 2011.

“There is a conscious effort now to give him a structured brief”: Author interview with a senior U.S. intelligence officer, 2010.

“That is a very familiar point that he makes”: Author interview with senior administration official, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“Part of the way is just messaging”: Author interview with a senior White House adviser, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“When we kill somebody, there is going to be someone else to take their place”: Author interview with Michael Leiter, McLean, Va., November 4, 2010.

“We are not underestimating them today”: Author interview with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele A. Flournoy, Arlington, Va., December 7, 2010.

“Two Nokia mobiles, $150 each”: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,
Inspire
4 (Fall 2010).

“Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is now the most operationally active node”: John Brennan, remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C., December 17, 2010.

“We continue to treat it as worthy of serious concern”: Interview with an Obama administration national security official, Washington, D.C., 2011.

“In this era of this more complicated threat”: Michael Leiter, “The Changing Terrorist Threat and NCTC’s Response,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., December 1, 2010.

10. THE OBAMA STRATEGY

“Americans would expect no less of me”: Author interview with a senior U.S. official, February 2011.

“that got Kayani’s attention”: Author interview with a senior Pakistani official, February 2011.

“They gave us an hour and we spent fifty-five minutes on terrorism”: Author interview with former director of national intelligence Mike McConnell, Reston, Va., November 3, 2010.

he rapidly escalated the pace of the CIA’s attacks:
Long War Journal
, June 1, 2011,
www.longwarjournal.com
.

“It has been my practice since I took this job”: Author interview with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, aboard his airplane en route from West Point to Washington, D.C., February 25, 2011.

“A counterterrorism strategy that focuses on the immediate threat”: John Brennan, remarks to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C., December 2010.

“The more the political friction”: Author interview with Nick Rasmussen, Washington, D.C., March 31, 2011.

“In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I remember it very vividly”: Author interview with John Brennan, Washington, D.C., January 13, 2011.

“We’ve created an environment”: Author interview with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, aboard his airplane en route from West Point to Washington, D.C., February 25, 2011.

“These are all security officers so they’re not novices at this”: Author interview with Rand Beers, Washington, D.C., November 19, 2010.

“If the signature weapon for us is the Predator”: Author interview with Michael Vickers, Arlington, Va., August 26, 2010.

“One of the questions I asked myself”: Author interview with Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Arlington, Va., January 5, 2011.

“This is an area that we sort of put on the shelf”: Author interview with Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Arlington, Va., January 4, 2010.