Ghost Wars (118 page)

22. Interview with Shelton, October 31, 2002.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., and interviews with Clinton administration officials.

25. Interviews with U.S. officials.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid. The quotation is from an interview with a Clinton administration official.

28. Ibid. The quotation is from the interview with Shelton, October 31, 2002.

29. Interview with Shelton, October 31, 2002. Also based on interviews with multiple Clinton administration officials. "We had a force . . . predicate to do it" is from an interview with Thomas Pickering, April 24, 2002, Rosslyn, Virginia (SC). That Berger noted sixty-seven Americans dead from terrorism during Clinton's presidency and that he saw no political context or support for an American war in Afghanistan is from his testimony to the Joint Inquiry Committee, September 19, 2002. Clarke memo and March meeting from National Commission staff statement no. 8, pp. 5-6.

30. Shelton quotation is from interview, October 31, 2002.

31. Interviews with U.S. officials.

32. The account of this meeting is from multiple American and Afghan officials present or familiar with reports of the discussion.

33. Interview with Abdullah, February 26, 2003.

CHAPTER 28: "IS THERE ANY POLICY?"

1. Hired Lanny Davis:
The Washington Post,
February 6, 2000. Mahmoud's role is from interviews with Pakistani and U.S. officials. See also Michael Griffin,
Reaping the Whirlwind,
pp. 234-35.

2. Interviews with U.S. officials. Mahmoud's biography is also from Pakistani journalist Kamran Khan and Pakistani officials who worked with him.

3. Interviews with U.S. and Pakistani officials.

4. The information about the renditions of Arab Islamists is from interviews with U.S. and Pakistani officials. Officials from both sides recall that one of the suspects was a Jordanian with an American passport who eventually had to be released for lack of charges. "Actively considering" is from
The
Washington Post,
February 4, 2000.

5. That Clinton overruled the Secret Service is from Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon,
The Age of Sacred Terror,
pp. 317-18. Also, interview with Rick Inderfurth, May 7, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). The State Department itself documented the extraordinary expansion of al Qaeda-linked Kashmiri militants during Musharraf 's first year in office, in its report "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000," released in April 2001.

6. "First since Nixon" is from Dennis Kux,
The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000,
p. 356.

7. "We're going to show them . . . up in the air" is from the interview with Inderfurth, May 7, 2002.

8. Clinton on the plane is from Inderfurth, ibid. The scene on the tarmac is from Inderfurth, ibid.; and
The Washington Post,
March 26, 2000; and interviews with a Pakistani official who was present.

9. Interview with the Pakistani official quoted; all of the dialogue is from this official's recollection.

10. "Uncertain loyalties" is from Benjamin and Simon,
Age of Sacred Terror,
pp. 317-18.

11. Berger's recollections, ibid. Also, interview with a Pakistani official, and National Commission staff statement no. 5, pp. 13-14.

12. "Danger that Pakistan . . . no one can win" is from
The Washington Post,
March 26, 2000.

13. Interviews with U.S. officials.

14. Ibid. The quotation is from the author's interview with an official.

15. "Vacillated" is from the interview with Hugh Shelton, October 31, 2002, Rosslyn, Virginia (SC). "May hold the key" is from Anthony Zinni's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, February 29, 2000.

16. "People who do that . . . that position" is from Barton Gellman,
The Washington Post,
December 19, 2001, and from interviews with a U.S. and a Pakistani official. Reports about Taliban and bin Laden from National Commission, staff statement no. 5, p. 10.

17. Tim Judah, "The Taliban Papers,"
Survival,
pp. 69-80. Judah's important article makes use of Pakistani foreign ministry papers discovered in that country's looted embassy in Kabul immediately after the fall of the capital in the autumn of 2001.

18. Ibid. If the Pakistani documents are accurate-and Judah's reporting leaves little doubt that they are-then some or all of the CIA, National Security Council, and State Department officials Mahmoud met in April must have delivered these threats to endorse Russian aerial attacks and U.S. missile strikes against Taliban targets.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid. Written testimony of Louis Freeh to the National Commission, April 13, 2004. Tenet and Musharraf from National Commission final report, p. 503.

21. Interview with a Pakistani official who talked with Mahmoud during the spring of 2000. U.S. officials said they did not start to pick up on Mahmoud's reported religious conversion until the next year.

22. From an interview with the same Pakistani official.

23. Interviews with U.S. officials.

24. Ibid.

25. At least $3 million from accounts of the National Commercial Bank is from testimony of Vincent Cannistraro, House International Relations Committee, October 3, 2001;
Boston Herald,
October 14, 2001. That IIRO gave the Taliban $60 million is from its secretary-general, Adnan Basha, quoted in
The Washington Post,
September 29, 2001.

26. Sheehan's cable suppressed is from Benjamin and Simon,
Age of Sacred Terror,
pp. 294-95.

27. "Allegations . . . enforced consistently" is from the State Department's report "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2000," April 2001. The conclusions of American investigators are from National Commission staff statement no. 15, p. 10.

28. Interview with Prince Turki, August 2, 2002, Cancun, Mexico (SC). "Did not effectively . . . liaison services" is from the Joint Inquiry Committee's final report, p. xvii.

29. What Massoud believed in the summer of 2000 is from interviews with several of his senior aides. Massoud's supply lines are described in detail in "Afghanistan, Crisis of Impunity," Human Rights Watch, July 2001. The figure of $10 million from India is from an interview with a U.S. official familiar with detailed reporting about Massoud's aid. That figure is an estimate for one year of assistance from India in the 2000 time period. Ismail Khan's escape from a Kandahar prison is from Larry P. Goodson,
Afghanistan's Endless
War,
p. 84. He had been held by the Taliban since 1997. Assistant Secretary of State Rick Inderfurth, testifying before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommitee in July 2000, also cited the April assassination of the Taliban-appointed governor of Kunduz as evidence of gathering dissent.

30. Interview with Abdullah, May 8, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (GW). Also, interview with a senior intelligence aide to Massoud.

31. Interview with Danielle Pletka, March 27, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW). Earlier in 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented Congress with a twenty-four-page statement titled "America and the World in the 21st Century." She devoted one sentence to Afghanistan and did not mention bin Laden by name.

32. Interviews with U.S. officials. The State Department provided several hundred thousand dollars during 2000 to aid efforts at political negotiations organized from exiled King Zahir Shah's offices in Rome. Squabbling among royal factions and slow progress disillusioned State officials, however, and the stipend was reduced the following year.

33. "Remarks by Karl F. Inderfurth," at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Tellingly, the hearing was entitled "The Taliban: Engagement or Confrontation?" The Congress as well as the Clinton administration could not make up its mind about that question.

34. Interviews with U.S. officials, including Gary Schroen, November 7, 2002, Washington D.C. (SC).

35. Ibid.

36. Interview with Hamid Karzai, October 21, 2002, Kabul, Afghanistan (SC).

37. Interview with Afrasiab Khattak, May 23, 2002, Islamabad, Pakistan (SC).

38. Interviews with U.S. officials.

39. Ibid. The accounts of internal debates about travel to the Panjshir in this section are drawn primarily from interviews with four officials familiar with them.

40. Interview with a senior intelligence aide to Massoud.

41. Ibid.

CHAPTER 29: "DARING ME TO KILL THEM"

1. Details of discussions about new options in the hunt for bin Laden are from interviews with multiple U.S. officials. Berger testified about the memo he wrote to Clinton and dated it as February before the Joint Inquiry Committee on September 19, 2002.

2. Interviews with multiple U.S. officials. Clarke operated in a series of bureaucratic coalitions, and his ability to create policy or programmatic change on his own was limited. George Tenet was exceptionally alert to the al Qaeda threat, aggressively warned the White House about specific threat intelligence, and pushed for strong disruption efforts from the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. Tenet's role in key policy debates after 1998-whether to covertly arm the Northern Alliance, whether to arm the Predator-is less clear. Allen's comment is from National Commission staff statement no. 7, p. 5.

3. Details of the Eagle program are from an interview with Dewey Clarridge, December 28, 2001, Escondido, California (SC). Other CIA officials confirmed his account. A search of electronic news databases turned up no previously published account of the Eagle. Clarridge does not discuss it in his memoir.

4. Karem's background and role are from an interview with James Woolsey, February 20, 2002,Washington, D.C. (SC). See also
Aviation Week and Space Technology,
December 14, 1987; May 23, 1988; and June 20, 1988, for details of Amber's early history and design characteristics.
Popular Science,
September 1994, provides a history of the Predator to that point, including an account of Karem's role.

5. Interview with Thomas Twetten, March 18, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). Interview with Woolsey, February 20, 2002. The information on Navy funding is from
Aerospace
Daily,
January 28, 1994. Between its birth as Amber and its operational debut as Predator, the prototype drone was also called the Gnat.

6. Interviews with Woolsey, February 20, 2002, and Twetten, March 18, 2002. Interview with Whit Peters, May 6, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC). The Air Force announced that the Eleventh Reconnaissance Squadron would operate Predators in July 1995,
Aerospace
Daily,
July 31, 1995.

7. Twenty-four hours, five hundred miles, twenty-five thousand feet, and the Sony camera are from
Popular Science,
September 1994. The pilot profiles and roles of payload specialists in the van are from
Air Force Magazine,
September 1997, which profiled the Eleventh Reconnaissance Squadron. Also, interview with Peters, May 6, 2002.

8. Interview with Woolsey, February 20, 2002.

9. Debate about intelligence collection versus the kill chain is from interview with Peters, May 6, 2002, and interviews with multiple other U.S. officials. Navy test to link Predator to attack submarines is from
Defense Daily,
June 7, 1995. Laser targeting in Kosovo but not used is from the interview with Peters.

10. Interview with Thomas Pickering, April 24, 2002, Rosslyn, Virginia (SC). Interviews with multiple U.S. officials. What Clarke said is from an interview with a U.S. official.

11. Quotations from interviews with U.S. officials.

12. Barton Gellman first described the INF treaty debate in
The Washington Post,
December 19, 2001. The account here is also from interviews with U.S. officials.

13. Interviews with U.S. officials.

14. Interview with Peters, May 6, 2002. Interviews with other U.S. officials. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon,
The Age of Sacred
Terror,
pp. 322-23.

15. This account of the Predator proof of concept mission, including the scenes in the Langley flight center, is drawn from interviews with five U.S. officials familiar with the operation. All quotations are from author's interviews, except Clarke's exchange with Berger, from National Commission staff statement no. 8, p. 7.

16. Ibid. Benjamin and Simon provide an account of the autumn mission that includes the MiG incident, although they make no reference to the location of the flight center or the size and nature of the audience.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid. "The pilot will return" is from an interview with a U.S. official.

19. Interview with Peters, May 6, 2002. Interviews with multiple U.S. officials. Benjamin and Simon report that Peters resolved the problem in December 2000 by locating enough money to keep the Predator program going in Afghanistan.

20. Interviews with U.S. officials. Recalled one of these officials of the wind problem: "No matter how fast it was going, it would go backwards. So we had to stop. And the thought was, okay, we would begin again in March or April."

21. That there were long discussions of blast fragmentation patterns at Tarnak is from interviews with multiple U.S. officials. Tarnak's layout is from interviews and author's visit, October 2002.

22. Ibid. In 2001 the CIA watched as bin Laden moved his family and other civilians out of Tarnak and began to turn the compound into a military training camp. U.S. analysts concluded that bin Laden had finally realized he was being closely watched at Tarnak and it was not safe. In place of the laundry lines and children's swing he erected a military obstacle course and firing range.

23.
Newsweek,
April 8, 2002. Clinton made his comments in an interview with Jonathan Alter. "I don't care . . . people will die" is from Clinton's speech to the British Labour Party conference, October 3, 2002.

24. Interviews with U.S. officials. Also, Gellman,
The Washington Post,
December 19, 2001, and Benjamin and Simon,
Age of Sacred
Terror.
Said one White House official of Tenet's enthusiasm for the Predator images, "George, eventually, seeing the videotapes, decided this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And [now] it was his idea in the first place." Clinton's outlook and "strong and constant view" from an interview with a senior administration official who reviewed the subject with Clinton in 2003.