Ghost Wars (111 page)

CHAPTER 17: "DANGLING THE CARROT"

1. Miller's background, outlook, and involvement with the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan Pakistan pipeline deal are from the author's interview with Miller, September 23, 2002, Austin, Texas (SC and GW).

2. In Unocal's 1994 10-K, the company explained its losses by saying that "the 1994 operating earnings reflected higher natural gas production, higher foreign crude oil production, stronger earnings from agricultural products, and lower domestic oil and gas operating and depreciation expense. However, these positive factors could not make up for the lower crude oil and natural gas prices, and lower margins in the company's West Coast refining and marketing operations." Two years later, in 1996, the company sold its refining and marketing operations to focus more exclusively on international exploration and development.

3. The company's 1996 annual report was titled "A New World, A New Unocal," and it detailed a major turnaround in the company's business strategy.

4. For a detailed discussion of the stranded energy reserves of the Caspian region and the dilemma faced by Turkmenistan in particular, see Ahmed Rashid's
Taliban: Militant
Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia,
pp. 143-56.

5. Ibid., p. 168.

6. Interview with Miller, September 23, 2002.

7. That the control tower was built on the wrong side is from Steve LeVine,
The Washington
Post,
November 11, 1994. LeVine quotes a Western diplomat as saying, "The builders warned them, but the Turkmen said, 'It looks better this way.' " Other colorful depictions of Niyazov's post-Soviet rule include Alessandra Stanley,
The New York Times,
November 23, 1995; Daniel Sneider,
The
Christian Science Monitor,
March 25, 1996; and Robert G. Kaiser,
The Washington Post,
July 8, 2002.

8. The numbers on trade between the United States and the Central Asian republics are from the testimony of James F. Collins, the State Department's senior coordinator for the new independent states, before the House International Relations Committee, November 14, 1995.

9. "Promote the independence . . ." is from the testimony of Sheila Heslin, former National Security Council staffer, before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, September 17, 1997. The assistance of the U.S. ambassador and others in the government to Unocal is from the interview with Miller, September 23, 2002, and American government officials. For an examination of U.S. energy strategy in the region, see Dan Morgan and David Ottaway,
The Washington
Post,
September 22, 1997.

10. Interview with a senior Saudi official.

11. Author's interview with Benazir Bhutto, May 5, 2002, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (GW). Bhutto would only say that Bulgheroni's Bridas visited her "through one of the Muslim Arab leaders." In a separate interview, however, Turki said that he was the one who made Bulgheroni's introductions with the Pakistani leadership.

12.
Platt's Oilgram News,
October 23, 1995.

13. Dan Morgan and David Ottaway,
The
Washington Post,
October 5, 1998. Kissinger quoted Dr. Samuel Johnson, who was commenting on a man who had wed for a second time immediately after the end of a miserable first marriage.

14. Robert Baer,
See No Evil,
pp. xix and 244.

15. Raphel's views on the pipeline and her activities in support of it are from interviews with a senior Clinton administration official. "We were all aware that business advocacy was part of our portfolio," the official said. "We were doing it for that reason, and we could choose Unocal because they were the only American company."

16. Simons's background, his tenure as ambassador, and his perspective on the pipeline are from the author's interview with Tom Simons, August 19, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

17. Ibid. More than half a decade after the fact, Bhutto spoke with indignation about those who invoked her husband's name to get her to change sides: "They started saying my husband is interested [in Bridas] and that's why I'm not going to [cancel the MOU with Bridas], which made me really, really upset because I felt that because I am a woman, they're trying to get back at me through my husband. But nonetheless, the fact of the matter was that it had nothing to do with my husband. It had to do with an Arab leader. It had to do with the country he represented. And the fact that [Bridas] had come first. I mean, they're wanting us to break a legal contract . . ."

18. Interview with a Pakistani government official.

19. Interviews with Bhutto, May 5, 2002, and Simons, August 19, 2002. Despite the contentious nature of the meeting, Bhutto and Simons provided similar accounts, with neither one attempting to mask just how poorly it had gone. Simons described it as "a disastrous meeting," and Bhutto called it "a low point in our relations with America."

20. The account of the Unocal-Delta expedition into Afghanistan is based on the author's interview with Miller, September 23, 2002, interviews with Delta's American representative, Charlie Santos, in New York on August 19 and 23, 2002, and again on February 22, 2003 (GW).

21. A copy of the Unocal support agreement was provided to the author. The agreement contained the caveat that "a condition for implementation of the pipeline projects is the establishment of a single, internationally recognized entity authorized to act on behalf of all Afghan parties." The word
entity
was deliberately used instead of
government
to give Unocal some wiggle room down the line.

22. In June, Santos returned to Kandahar without Miller and stayed for more than a week, to try one more time to get the Taliban to sign the support agreement. Finally, Santos got fed up and tore into one of the Taliban negotiators: "We've been sitting here for ten days, and you keep saying, 'Wait another day. Wait another day. Wait another day.' I'm going! This is bullshit! Forget this project!" With that he went out to his car and started to drive away. As he did, he saw one of the Taliban in his rearview mirror yelling for him not to go. After several more hours of negotiations, the Taliban at last agreed to sign a handwritten two-sentence statement saying that they supported the concept of the pipeline, but nothing more.

CHAPTER 18: "WE COULDN'T INDICT HIM"

1. Interview with Marty Miller, September 23, 2002, Austin, Texas (SC and GW).

2. Interview with Tom Simons, August 19, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

3. Interviews with several U.S. officials familiar with the CIA-ISI liaison during this period. Rana's professional background is from Pakistani journalist Kamran Khan. Rana's outlook is from interviews with U.S. officials and also an interview with his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Javed Ashraf Qazi (Ret.), May 19, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC). He recalled that ISI had come under "tremendous fire" in Pakistan because of the raid in Quetta in search of Kasi that had been based on faulty information.

4. Interviews with U.S. officials.

5. "All the way down to the bare bones" is from
The New York Times,
April 27, 1995. The portrait of Deutch here is drawn from multiple published sources and interviews with former colleagues of Deutch at the White House and the CIA. Moynihan's legislation was introduced in January 1995:
Los Angeles
Times,
October 8, 1995.

6. "A technical guy" is from
The New York
Times Magazine,
December 10, 1995. "From what I know" is from his confirmation hearing,
The New York Times,
April 27, 1995.

7. Twelve case officers in training and eight hundred worldwide is from Bob Woodward,
The Washington Post,
November 17, 2001, confirmed by interviews with U.S. officials. That this represented about a 25 percent decline from the Cold War's peak is from interviews with U.S. officials. See also testimony of George Tenet before the Joint Inquiry Committee, October 17, 2002. "California hot tub stuff " is from an interview with a Directorate of Operations officer who retired during this period.

8. Interview with Fritz Ermath, January 7, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

9. Portrait of White House terrorism analysis, Clinton's interest in biological terrorism, and policy review in the first half of 1995 are from interviews with former Clinton administration officials.

10. "U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism," June 21, 1995, redacted version declassified and publicly released. Context for the decision directive's issuance can be found in Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon,
The Age of Sacred
Terror,
pp. 229-30. Benjamin and Simon arrived in the White House counterterrorism office soon after the new policy took effect.

11. The UBL acronym as the ultimate sign of importance is from an interview with Anthony Lake, May 5, 2003, Washington, D.C. (GW). That the bin Laden unit was formally known as the bin Laden Issue Station is from the testimony of George Tenet, Joint Inquiry Committee, October 17, 2002. That the Counterterrorist Center's bin Laden unit began with about twelve people is from the National Commission's final report. That it was a "virtual station" and a management prototype is from interviews with U.S. officials. That the NSA had tapped bin Laden's satellite telephone during this period is from James Bamford,
The Washington Post,
June 2, 2002. The bin Laden issue station's startup was accompanied by classified White House directives that delineated the scope of its mission. Whether this initial document authorized active disruption operations against bin Laden's network is not clear. At least some authorities beyond normal intelligence collection may have been provided to the CIA by President Clinton at this stage, but the precise scope is not known.

12. "One of the most significant" is from "Usama bin Ladin: Islamic Extremist Financier," CIA assessment released publicly in 1996. Clarke quotations from his written testimony to the National Commission, March 24, 2004. See also National Commission staff statement no. 7, p. 4. "Let's yank on this bin Laden chain" is from the author's interview with a former Clinton administration official.

13. The account in this chapter of internal U.S. deliberations surrounding bin Laden's expulsion from Sudan is based on interviews with eight senior American officials directly involved as well as Saudi and Sudanese officials. Among those who agreed to be interviewed on the record was former U.S. ambassador to Sudan Timothy Carney, July 31, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). Carney provided the chronology of the Emergency Action Committee's decision-making and cables to Washington. Benjamin and Simon, strongly defending White House decision-making during this episode, provide a detailed account in
Age of Sacred Terror,
pp. 244-45. "He says that . . . to kill him either" is from an interview with a former Clinton administration official. The plot against Lake probably originated with Hezbollah, not bin Laden, according to former officials. At one stage the plot became so serious that Lake moved out of his suburban home and authorized a countersurveillance effort aimed at detecting his assassins. This security effort required Lake to authorize secret wiretaps of all his telephones. In 1970, Lake was subject to a secret FBI wiretap by the Nixon administration after he resigned his job as Henry Kissinger's special assistant and then went to work for Democratic presidential candidate Edmund Muskie. In 1995, Lake sat at Kissinger's old desk in the Old Executive Office Building as he signed the papers authorizing wiretaps of his own phones. He looked up at the FBI agents, according to one account, and said, "You know, there's a certain irony to all this." The FBI agent reportedly replied in a deadpan tone, "Oh, we know, sir."

14. Interview with Carney, July 31, 2002.

15. Ibid.

16. Interviews with former Clinton administration officials directly involved in the discussions.

17. "An embassy is a tool" is from the interview with Carney, July 31, 2002.

18. That the dinner was on February 6, 1996, is from Barton Gellman,
The Washington
Post,
October 3, 2001. Carney, writing with Mansoor Ijaz, has also published a brief account of his participation, in
The Washington
Post,
June 30, 2002.

19. Gellman,
The Washington Post,
October 3, 2001, and Carney,
The Washington Post,
June 30, 2002; also Benjamin and Simon,
Age
of Sacred Terror,
pp. 246-47. The original document was published by
The Washington Post
in October 2001. Clinton administration officials confirmed its authenticity in interviews and described the document's origins in a series of working group meetings led by the National Security Council.

20.
Time,
May 6, 1996.

21. "We told the Americans" is from an interview with a Sudanese official. No "reliable evidence" is from the National Commission, staff statement no. 5, p. 3.

22. Interviews with U.S. officials involved. See also, National Commission staff statement no. 5, p. 4.

23. Ibid.

24. The contact with Egypt and Jordan is from an interview with a U.S. official. "To keep him moving" is from the interview with Lake, May 5, 2003. "[W]ere afraid it was . . . done anything to us" is from a speech by Clinton in October 2001 to the Washington Society of Association Executives, quoted in
USA Today,
November 12, 2001.

25. Interview with Prince Turki, August 2, 2002, Cancun, Mexico (SC).

26. "Never mentioned . . . send him away" is from "Hunting bin Laden,"
Frontline,
March 21, 2000. The Sudanese official's account from an interview with the author.

27. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, excerpts from
Al-Sharaq al-Awsat,
June 18, 1996. BBC translation.

28. Badeeb Orbit interview, early 2002. Original Arabic language tape supplied to the author by Badeeb. See notes to chapter 4.

29. Interviews with former Clinton administration officials. Benjamin and Simon,
Age of
Sacred Terror,
pp. 463-64. In June 1996, Carney visited Deutch and Tenet at CIA headquarters to discuss reopening the Khartoum embassy. By this time Carney was based in Nairobi and traveling occasionally to the Sudanese capital. Carney recalls that Deutch and Tenet were now ready to support reopening the embassy. Tenet said, by Carney's account, that "it was time to get the U.S. government back in, and we need to do it now." Carney said that in an election year, "I can't imagine the administration would want to take a chance that Sudan would somehow become a campaign issue" by taking the risk to reopen the embassy. Carney said, "Let's hold off until after the election and then do it." But Tenet, by Carney's account, replied, "No, we need to do it now." The embassy, however, remained closed.