Ghost Wars (103 page)

9. The Bangkok meeting and Hart's cabling are from interviews with Hart, November 12, 26, and 27, 2001. See also Crile,
Charlie Wilson's
War,
pp. 125-26. The January 1982 cable is cited in Robert M. Gates,
From the Shadows,
p. 251. Gates reports that CIA director William Casey read this cable from Hart. Unbeknownst to the CIA, during the same month that Hart cabled seeking more and better weapons, the KGB Residency in Kabul reported to the Politburo that "the counter-revolutionary forces have managed to keep their zones of influence and to attract a considerable part of the population into the struggle against the existing regime." See Mitrokhin, "KGB in Afghanistan," p. 132.

10. Interviews with former CIA officials. Typical was the observation of Fred "Fritz" Ermath, a former CIA Soviet analyst, who said, "The Kermit Roosevelts, the Cord Meyers were gone. . . . The old guys were hearts and minds guys. . . . But they were gone, see? And I think this generational shift, again with the Vietnam experience as part of the saga . . . The new guys said, 'Well, we're going to stick to our operational meaning, and what we can do is deliver mules, money and mortars.' "

11. The bounty idea is from interviews with Hart, November 12, 26, and 27, 2001. It is not clear whether the system was ever implemented by ISI.

12. Mary Ann Weaver,
Pakistan,
p. 57.

13. Ibid., p. 61.

14. "Devout Muslim, yes," is from Mohammed Yousaf,
Silent Soldier,
pp. 99-100.

15. "Afghan youth will fight," is from "Memorandum of Conversation," President Reagan and President Zia-ul-Haq, December 7, 1982, released by the Cold War International History Project.

16. Mitrokhin, "KGB in Afghanistan," pp. 151-52. Mohammed Yousaf and Mark Adkin,
The Bear Trap,
p. 49.

17. Dennis Kux,
The United States and Pakistan,
1947-2000,
pp. 256-57.

18. "Your Meeting with Pakistan President . . ." Memo from Shultz to Reagan, November 29, 1982, and "Visit of Zia-ul-Haq," from Shultz, also dated November 29, 1982, both released by the Cold War International History Project.

19. The CIA's analysts understood Zia's ambivalence about the United States. In a special estimate prepared on November 12, 1982, the CIA reported, "Islamabad is aware that only the United States can offset Soviet pressures and provide Pakistan with the sophisticated weapons it believes it needs." Yet "the Pakistanis continue to doubt the reliability of U.S. commitments and U.S. steadfastness in time of crisis." See "Special National Intelligence Estimate on Pakistan," November 12, 1982, released by the Cold War International History Project.

20. Interviews with Hart, November 12, 26, and 27, 2001, and with Yousaf, June 1992, Dusseldorf, Germany (SC). A retired Pakistani brigadier general at the time of the interviews, Mohammed Yousaf is the coauthor of
The Bear Trap,
a detailed account of the ISI's Afghan operations between 1983 and 1987.

21. ISI telephone codes are from the author's 1992 interviews with Yousaf, June 1992. ISI rules about CIA contact with Afghans are from Hart, November 12, 26, and 27, 2001, and other U.S. officials familiar with the liaison. Yousaf said that he and Akhtar were blindfolded while visiting the United States. A U.S. official interviewed in 1992 said he "wouldn't steer you away from that. We do have sensitive facilities."

22. Yousaf,
Silent Soldier,
pp. 25-27. Akhtar's professional information is on pp. 27-32.

23. The size of the ISI Afghan bureau is from Yousaf and Adkin,
Bear Trap,
pp. 1-3. How ISI was perceived is from interviews with Yousaf and other ISI and Pakistan army generals.

24. Published estimates of U.S. covert aid between fiscal 1981 and 1984 include Barnett R. Rubin,
Refugee Survey Quarterly,
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 1996. These estimates were confirmed in interviews with several U.S. officials. Fiscal year 1984 was an unusual, complicated year because surplus Pentagon funds were added to the pipeline at the last hour. The Soviet figures cited here are from Larry P. Good-son,
Afghanistan's Endless War,
p. 63.

25. Details of the weapons systems and financial details are from Yousaf, June 1992; Hart, November 12, 26, and 27, 2001; and other U.S. officials familiar with the pipeline during these years. Yousaf and Adkin describe many of these purchases in
The Bear
Trap.
The Turkish incident comes from interviews with Yousaf. Hart recalled that the CIA paid the Chinese about $80 for a Kalashnikov copy that probably cost them about $12 or $15 to make. Because the Chinese enforced the greatest quality control in their manufacturing, over time most of the CIA's covert purchases shifted toward Beijing. State-owned Chinese ships always seemed to steam into Karachi on just the date they were due, and the assistant Chinese defense attaché from the Islamabad embassy would invariably be standing at dockside, clipboard in hand.

26. Interviews with Hart, November 12, 26, and 27, 2001, and Yousaf, June 1992.

27. See Chapter 7 for a more detailed account of this issue.

28. "The Secretary's Visit to Pakistan: Afghanistan," cable from U.S. embassy, Islamabad, to Secretary of State, June 1, 1983, released by the Cold War International History Project.

29. A copy of the letter was obtained by the author. Hart's trip into Afghanistan is from interviews with Hart, November 12, 26, and 27, 2001. He is the only source for the account of the trip. At least two other D.O. officers, including a later Islamabad station chief, also made unauthorized trips into Afghanistan during the Soviet phase of the war, according to U.S. officials familiar with the trips.

CHAPTER 4: "I LOVE DOSAMA"

1. This account of Badeeb's trip to Pakistan and his meeting with Zia is from the author's interview with Ahmed Badeeb and Saeed Badeeb on February 1, 2002, in Jedda, Saudi Arabia (SC). The interview lasted approximately two hours and was conducted in English. Subsequently, Ahmed Badeeb supplied to the author videotapes of two days of interviews he gave early in 2002 to an Arabic language satellite news service based in Lebanon, Orbit Television. The author employed a Washington, D.C.-based firm to translate these Orbit interviews from Arabic into English. Some of the quotations of Badeeb in this chapter, such as the account of his visit with boxes of cash to Pakistan, are from the author's interview. Other quotations are from the Orbit interviews, as rendered into English by the translation service. The distinctions are indicated in the footnotes. That Badeeb attended college in North Dakota is from an interview with a U.S. official.

2. Interview with Nat Kern, January 23, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). Kern maintains close contacts with the Saudi government as the editor of a newsletter about oil markets and Middle East politics. The quote from Turki is attributed by Kern to his business partner, Frank Anderson, a retired clandestine officer in the CIA's Near East Division and at one time director of the D.O.'s Afghanistan task force.

3. Nawaf Obaid, "Improving U.S. Intelligence Analysis on the Saudi Arabian Decision Making Process," master's degree thesis, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1998. "Both believed fervently" is from Mohammed Yousaf,
Silent
Soldier,
p. 87.

4. The Saudi air cover over Karachi is from the Badeeb interviews with Orbit.

5. The history of GID is from interviews with Saudi officials; with Nat Kern, January 23, 2002; a telephone interview with Ray Close, a former CIA station chief in Jedda who subsequently worked as a consultant to Prince Turki, January 10, 2002 (SC); and David Long, a former U.S. diplomat who also later worked for Prince Turki, January 22, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). By one account GID provided Sadat with a regular income during 1970 when Sadat was Egypt's vice president. See Bob Woodward,
Veil: The Secret Wars of the
CIA, 1981-1987,
p. 352.

6. Alexei Vassiliev,
The History of Saudi Arabia,
p. 213, quoting the British Arabist Gertrude Bell. Vassiliev's history, translated from the original Russian, draws heavily on original Arabic and Ottoman sources as well as the accounts of travelers; it is the principal source of the pre-twentieth-century Arabian peninsula history in this chapter.

7. The author owes the observation that Saudi Arabia was the first modern nation-state created by jihad to the anonymous author of a survey of the kingdom published in
The Economist,
March 23, 2002.

8. The demographic statistics are from Vassiliev,
History of Saudi Arabia,
p. 421.

9. The quotations are from a speech Prince Turki gave on February 3, 2002, in Washington, D.C.; it was transcribed and published on the World Wide Web by the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Prince Turki also spoke briefly about his time at Lawrenceville during an interview with the author, August 2, 2002, in Cancun, Mexico (SC).

10. That Clinton did not know Turki at Georgetown and only met him after taking office is from interviews with senior Saudi officials and with Kern, January 23, 2002.

11. Quotations are from Turki's speech on February 3, 2002.

12. Ibid. The assassination of Turki's father is from Vassiliev,
History of Saudi Arabia,
pp. 394-95.

13. Interviews with Saudi and U.S. officials.

Government budget statistics are from
The
Economist,
March 23, 2002. GID's computer expansion is from interviews with U.S. officials and
Business Week,
October 6, 1980.

14. Interviews with U.S. officials.

15. Author's interview with Ahmed Badeeb and Saeed Badeeb, February 1, 2002.

16. Interviews with Saudi officials. The George quote is from the author's interview with Clair George, December 21, 2001, Chevy Chase, Maryland (SC).

17. Interview with Saeed Badeeb, February 1, 2002. That their father was a modestly successful merchant in Jedda is from an interview with a Saudi newspaper editor.

18. That the Saudis arranged contacts for the CIA at the
hajj
is from interviews with former U.S. intelligence officials. The "Safari club" is from Turki's speech, February 3, 2002.

19. "Memorandum of Conversation between HRH Prince Turki and Senator Bill Bradley," April 13, 1980, author's files.

20. That the agreement with the Saudis to match funding dollar for dollar was reached in July is from the unpublished original manuscript of Robert Gates's memoir, p. 13/31. That Bandar used to hold on to the funds and that CIA officers speculated he was doing so to earn the interest is from interviews with three U.S. officials with direct knowledge. Hart, the Islamabad station chief from 1981 to 1984, said in interviews that the Saudis were frequently late in paying their bills, although he did not comment on Bandar's role.

21. Badeeb quotes are from the Orbit interview. Yousaf 's quote is from Yousaf,
Silent
Soldier,
p. 88.

22. The account of the Taif conference and Badeeb's encounters with the mujahedin leaders and with Sayyaf is from the author's interview with Badeeb, February 1, 2002, and so is the following account of the relationship between GID and Saudi charities.

23. That Turki sometimes controlled where the charity funds could be directed is from an interview with Turki and with other Saudi officials. The Badeeb quote is from the author's interview, February 1, 2002.

24. Peter L. Bergen,
Holy War,
pp. 41-48, provides a carefully sourced account of the bin Laden family's origins and business success.

25. Interview with Turki, August 2, 2002. That Faisal set up a trust to ensure the safe passage of the bin Laden firm to the older sons is also from that interview.

26. Bergen,
Holy War,
pp. 47-48. Bin Laden's allowance is reported in National Commission staff statement no. 15, p. 3-4.

27. Author's interview with Badeeb, February 1, 2002.

28. The Badeeb quote is from the author's interview, February 1, 2002.

29. Interviews with U.S. officials.

30. See, for instance, the testimony of Cofer Black, director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center between 1999 and 2002, September 26, 2002, to Congress's Joint Inquiry into the September 11 attacks. "We had no relationship with him [bin Laden] but we watched a 22-year-old rich kid from a prominent Saudi family change from frontline mujahedin fighter to a financier for road construction and hospitals." CIA Director George Tenet testified under oath on October 17, 2002, that during the 1980s, "While we knew of him, we have no record of any direct U.S. government contact with bin Laden at that time."

31. "I loved Osama . . ." and "He was not an extremist at all . . ." are Badeeb quotes from the Orbit interviews.

32. Ibid.

33. Quotations are from Turki's speech in Washington, D.C., February 3, 2002. He provided this version of his interactions with bin Laden during the 1980s in several other interviews as well.

34. Badeeb, Orbit interviews. (See p. 609, note 1.) It was during the first day's Orbit interview that Badeeb talked most openly and expansively about his relationship with bin Laden and about bin Laden's relationship with the Saudi government. At the the start of the second day's session, Badeeb interrupted his interviewer to volunteer a "clarification" that bin Laden was not a Saudi intelligence agent and that Badeeb met with him "only in my capacity as his former teacher." The sequence raises the possibility that Saudi government officials saw or heard about the first part of the interview, were displeased, and asked Badeeb to issue this "clarification."

CHAPTER 5: "DON'T MAKE IT OUR WAR"

1. Contents of briefing to Reagan from Robert Gates's unpublished original manuscript, p. 23/33.

2. Interviews with former CIA officials. Also Mohammad Yousaf and Mark Adkin,
The Bear Trap,
pp. 193-95.

3. That McMahon wondered about the purpose of the covert war, Bob Woodward,
Veil,
p. 104. The Twetten quote is from Kirsten Lundberg, Philip Zelikow, and Ernest May, "Politics of a Covert Action," p. 12. The Directorate of Intelligence assessment is from "Afghanistan: The Revolution After Four Years," CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, July 1982; declassified July 1999; released by the National Security Archive.