Enemies: A History of the FBI (92 page)

12.
“After the bombing in 1998”:
Mohamed guilty plea,
U.S. v. Ali Abdelseoud Mohamed
, Oct. 13, 2000.

13.
After all the trials:
Fitzgerald’s grand jury originally handed up a secret indictment in
U.S. v. Bin Laden
on June 8, 1998, charging bin Laden with “conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States.” It was a misfire. Fitzgerald had used a copy of el-Hage’s computer files to link al-Qaeda to the killing of American troops in Somalia during the “Black Hawk Down” battle of Mogadishu five years before. The charge was unsupported by the evidence, and it would have to be redrawn. Though the sealed indictment gave the United States the theoretical power to disrupt or destroy al-Qaeda anywhere in the world, it had little effect in the world outside the court house.

14.
“It’s like telling the FBI”:
Hill testimony, Joint Inquiry, Oct. 8, 2002.

15.
“Here were the ground rules”:
Fitzgerald testimony, Senate Judiciary Committee, Oct. 20, 2003. FISA actually imposes few restrictions upon intelligence and law enforcement coordination. But the FBI nonetheless developed a Byzantine system in which “dirty” teams of intelligence investigators and “clean” teams of criminal investigators worked the same terrorist cases. “This became so complex and convoluted,” said one top FBI official, Michael Rolince, “that in some FBI field offices, agents perceived ‘walls’ where none actually existed.”

16.
“Did we have a war plan?”
and
“the hardest thing”:
Watson testimony, Joint Inquiry, Sept. 26, 2002. Watson was perhaps the only senior official at the FBI who heeded a call to arms issued on Dec. 8, 1998, a month after the indictment of bin Laden. George Tenet, the director of Central Intelligence, had issued a directive that he intended to resound throughout the government of the United States. “We must now enter a new phase in our effort against bin Laden,” it said. “Each day we all acknowledge that retaliation is inevitable and that its scope may be far larger than we have previously experienced. We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort.” An aide faxed the memo to the leaders of the American intelligence community, but it had little palpable effect. Those same leaders had convened with Tenet and resolved that unless they made “sweeping changes,” the United States was likely to suffer “a catastrophic systemic intelligence failure.” The date of that report was Sept. 11, 1998.

17.
“There is a problem”:
The author interviewed Clarke and reported highlights of his briefing in a profile in
The New York Times
on Feb. 1, 1999, at about the time Clarke delivered his seminar to the FBI.

18.
“We had neither the will”:
Freeh,
My FBI
, p. 296.

19.
a chemist known to the CIA:
The chemist in Malaysia also signed letters of introduction for an Algerian with a French passport named Zacarias Moussaoui, who entered the United States as his patron’s business representative and promptly enrolled at the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma.

20.
“to prevent and effectively respond”:
Freeh testimony, “Threat of Terrorism to the United States,” written submissions to Senate Appropriations, Armed Services, and Intelligence committees, May 10, 2001.

21.
“Implement a system”:
Reno testimony, 9/11 Commission, April 13, 2004.

22.
“You guys aren’t on life support”:
Freeh,
My FBI
, p. 280.

23.
“Musharraf laughed”:
Freeh,
My FBI
, p. 287. The account of the informant’s approach to the FBI’s Newark office in April 2000 is in a 9/11 Commission report dated April 13, 2004.

24.
“FBI investigation and analysis”:
Turchie testimony, House Subcommittee on National Security, July 26, 2000.

25.
“The celebration was held”:
Mary Jo White, “Prosecuting Terrorism in New York,” address to the Middle East Forum, New York, Sept. 27, 2000.

44.
A
LL
O
UR
W
EAPONS

  
1.
“We can’t continue in this country”:
Kean public statement to reporters and witnesses, 9/11 Commission hearings, April 13, 2004.

  
2.
“Some connected the dots”:
Burger oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  
3.
“Hello, Cathy. This is Bob Hanssen”:
Kiser oral history, FBI/FBIOH.

  
4.
it was Hanssen:
U.S. v. Hanssen
, affidavit in support of arrest, United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Crim. 1-118-A.

  
5.
“Any clerk in the Bureau”:
Hanssen debriefing cited in William Webster et al., “A Review of FBI Security Programs,” Department of Justice, March 2002.

  
6.
“bastard stepchildren”:
Williams cited in Eleanor Hill, “The FBI’s Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to Sept. 11, 2001,” Joint Inquiry, Senate and House intelligence committees staff report, Sept. 24, 2002.

  
7.
sixty-eight thousand counterterrorism leads:
Hill, “The FBI’s Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication.” FBI headquarters also fumbled when a leading agent in the
Cole
investigation, Steve Bongardt, learned through a misdirected e-mail that one of the original members of the al-Qaeda cell in Yemen, Khalid al-Mihdhar, had received a renewed visa to re-enter the United States. On Aug. 29, 2001, his superiors told him to stand down: it was not his case. “Someday somebody will die,” he wrote in a message to his overseers, “—and Wall or not—the public will not understand.” Al-Mihdhar was one of the 9/11 hijackers.

  
8.
“flying an airplane”:
Samit testimony,
U.S. v. Moussaoui
, March 20, 2006.

  
9.
“criminal negligence”:
Samit testimony,
U.S. v. Moussaoui
, March 20, 2006. Moussaoui had been recruited by al-Qaeda. He was being held in reserve for a second wave of attacks.

10.
She received a despondent e-mail:
Kiser’s e-mails to Samit and his responses were reported by the Joint Inquiry and the 9/11 Commission, although neither agent was identified by name. Kiser recorded an oral history for the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI in October 2009, in which she detailed the correspondence. “It was awful,” she said. “We all knew … And we didn’t even know about the Phoenix memo. Because those idiots in ITOS [the FBI’s international terrorism section] didn’t let anybody know. Dale Watson didn’t even know about the Phoenix memo. We would’ve done a scrub on these flight schools! And that would’ve scared these guys! And would they have done something else? Probably. But it wouldn’t have been the magnitude of what we experienced.”
   “You had kind of connected the dots,” her interviewer said.
   “I did,” she said. “A small cadre of agents connected those dots.”

11.
“I didn’t think the FBI”:
Clarke testimony, 9/11 Commission, April 8, 2004. White House terrorism chieftain Clarke had no faith that the FBI would ever provide any reporting on al-Qaeda. “The Phoenix memo, the Minnesota case, whatever,” he said. “Not just a few hints were missed.” The failures went back for many years.
   “I know the abuses the FBI engaged in—in the 1950s and 1960s—” he said, but “by the 1980s or 1990s we should have recognized the need for domestic intelligence collection.… It doesn’t mean you become a totalitarian state if you do a good job of oversight and control. We needed to have a domestic intelligence collection and analysis capability, and we did not have it.”

12.
“We got the passenger manifests”:
Clarke,
Against All Enemies
, pp. 13–14.

13.
“I told Bob”:
George W. Bush,
Decision Points
(New York: Crown, 2010), p. 8.

14.
“Round up the evildoers”:
Bush address at FBI headquarters, Oct. 10, 2001.

15.
“hold until cleared”:
The policy, its consequences, and the delays in informing Mueller are documented in “The September 11 Detainees,” Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice, April 2003.

16.
“Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department”:
John Ashcroft, “Remarks for the U.S. Mayors Conference,” Oct. 25, 2001.

17.
“We are going to keep America free”:
General Michael V. Hayden, “What American Intelligence and Especially the NSA Have Been Doing to Defend the Nation,” address at National Press Club, Jan. 23, 2006.

18.
“turned on the spigot of NSA reporting”:
Hayden, address at National Press Club, Jan. 23, 2006.

19.
“free from the constraints”:
John Yoo, “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States,” Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, Oct. 23, 2001; declassified March 2, 2009.

20.
“We sent a message to the FBI”:
Lamberth address, American Library Association, June 23, 2007.

21.
“The thought of regularly sharing”:
Mueller speech, Stanford Law School, Oct. 18, 2002.

22.
“The other day we hauled”:
Remarks by President Bush, Republican luncheon, Hyatt Regency Hotel, Greenwich, Conn., April 9, 2002.

23.
“a national treasure”:
General Dunleavy quoted in “A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq,” Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice, Oct. 2009.

24.
“I asked him his name”:
Soufan testimony, Senate Judiciary Committee, May 13, 2009.

25.
“We don’t do that”:
D’Amuro’s discussions with Mueller are cited in “A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq,” Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice, Oct. 2009.

26.
“They told me, ‘Sorry’ ”:
Transcript, Combatant Status Tribunal Review, Guantánamo Bay, March 27, 2007.

27.
From
“a piece of al-Qahtani”
to
“as soon as possible”:
“A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq,” Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice, Oct. 2009.

28.
“ongoing, longstanding, trench warfare”:
Ibid.

45.
“I
F WE DON’T DO
THIS
, PEOPLE WILL DIE
”