Ghost Wars (119 page)

25. Larry P. Goodson,
Afghanistan's Endless
War,
p. 84. Human Rights Watch, "Crisis of Impunity," July 2001. The Human Rights Watch researchers reported that "the U.S. government was sufficiently concerned about the possibility of Pakistani involvement" in the capture of Taloqan "that it issued démarche to the Pakistani government in late 2000, asking for assurances that Pakistan had not been involved. The démarche listed features of the assault on Taloqan that suggested the Taliban had received outside assistance . . . including the length of preparatory artillery fire [and] the fact that much of the fighting took place at night." The CIA's $30 million estimate is from National Commission staff statement no. 15, p. 11.

26.
The Washington Post,
October 13, 2000; October 15, 2000; and June 19, 2001. What the CIA later concluded is from interviews with U.S. officials.

27. No specific tactical warning is from " Terrorist Attack on USS
Cole:
Background and Issues for Congress," Congressional Research Service, January 30, 2001. The Pentagon analyst resignation is from
The Washington
Post,
October 26, 2000; and
The New York
Times,
October 26, 2000. Benjamin and Simon are from
Age of Sacred Terror,
p. 324. Zinni defended himself in testimony before a Senate subcommittee on October 19, 2000; see
The Washington Post,
October 20, 2000.

28. Sandy Berger testified to the Joint Inquiry Committee on September 19, 2002, that "when we left office, neither the intelligence community nor the law enforcement community had reached a judgment about responsibility for the
Cole.
That judgment was reached sometime between the time we left office and 9/11." National Commission staff reported that "the highest officials" of the Bush Administration received "essentially the same analysis" as the Clinton Cabinet did late in the year, showing that individuals linked to al Qaeda had been involved, but that proof of bin Laden's role was lacking. The State Department's annual report on global terrorism, culled from CIA and other intelligence community reports and published in April 2001, found "no definitive link" between the
Cole
attack and "bin Laden's organization." Berger and other Clinton officials cite the lack of a proven link as one reason that they did not launch military action against bin Laden or the Taliban before leaving the White House. However, interviews about the Massoud covert action proposal and other subjects debated during the late autumn of 2000 seem to make clear that for a variety of reasons, including unsettled national politics and a desire not to preempt the next president's options, Clinton and Berger had little interest in a parting military shot. Even without the establishment of definitive responsibility for the
Cole
attack, they might have found other ways to justify an attack if they had wanted to launch one. The Bush administration's early hesitancy about bin Laden and its causes are described in chapters 30 and 31.

29. Interviews with U.S. officials. All quotations are from the author's interviews.

30. The thirteen options and the quotations from Clarke and Shelton's operations chief are from the Joint Inquiry Committee's final report, pp. 279 and 305-6. Albright quotation from her written testimony to the National Commission March 23, 2004.

31. Ibid.

32. From Black's testimony to the Joint Inquiry Committee, September 26, 2002.

33. Interviews with five U.S. officials familiar with the CIA's plan. The account of the plan's development in the next seven paragraphs is from those interviews.

34.
The New York Times,
January 16, 2001, first described the December 20 principals' meeting. That account emphasized discussions at the meeting about who was responsible for the
Cole
bombing. That the meeting also formally rejected the plan backed by Clarke and the CIA for covert aid to Massoud is from interviews with U.S. officials. "Roll back" from National Commission staff statement no. 8, p. 8.

35. "A bit . . . a capture operation" is from an interview with an intelligence aide to Massoud.

36. According to the interview with Schroen, September 19, 2002, Washington D.C. (SC), the seventh and last CIA liaison team to reach the Panjshir before September 11 exited during the early winter of 2001 when the helicopter was put into storage.

37. "You replay . . . formidable adversary" is from Clinton's response to a question during a speech at the Washington Society of Association Executives in October 2001, as quoted in
USA Today,
November 12, 2001.

CHAPTER 30: "WHAT FACE WILL OMAR SHOW TO GOD?"

1. That Bush never spoke in public about bin Laden or al Qaeda is from a search of the Lexis-Nexis electronic news database. It is conceivable that the author missed something, but the database is very extensive. The party platform is from
www.rnc.org
. "If a country is hosting . . . intelligence briefings" is from Bulletin Broadfaxing Network, Inc.'s transcript of a Fox News interview with Bush, October 12, 2000.

2.
National Journal,
May 4, 2000. Also recounted by Elaine Sciolino in
The New York
Times,
June 16, 2000.

3. All quotations in this paragraph are from Sciolino,
The New York Times,
June 16, 2000.

4. Interview with former senator David Boren, September 16, 2002, Norman, Oklahoma (GW).

5. Ibid. All quotations are from Boren's conversation with Bush.

6. "An undetermined period . . . a later period" is from
The New York Times,
January 19, 2001.

7. "We are grateful . . . weapons of mass destruction" is from a Federal News Service transcript. The visit took place on March 20, 2001.

8. "Number one . . . the threat was" is from Berger's testimony to the Joint Inquiry Committee, September 19, 2002. What Berger said to Rice is from interviews with U.S. officials. See also Barton Gellman,
The
Washington Post,
January 20, 2002, and Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon,
The Age of Sacred
Terror,
pp. 328-29.

9. That Clarke's office described the al Qaeda threat as "existential" is from Benjamin and Simon,
Age of Sacred Terror,
pp. 328-29. The CIA's annual threat assessment, delivered by Tenet, had also emphasized the primacy of the missile threat from rogue and hostile regimes; until 2001 this was the danger Tenet listed first in his public briefing. In testimony delivered on February 7, 2001, for the first time the CIA director listed al Qaeda first. Armitage's quotation is from the Joint Inquiry Committee's final report, p. 39.

10. Excerpts from this January 25 memo have been quoted in at least three published reports. Gellman,
The Washington Post,
January 20, 2002, cites "sleeper cells" and "a major threat in being." Benjamin and Simon, in
Age of Sacred Terror,
cite "urgently needed" and "this is not some little terrorist issue." See also National Commission staff statement no. 8, p. 9.

11. See note 10. The idea of "making a deal" with Musharraf and trading military rule for help on bin Laden was not described in the other published accounts of these exchanges; it is from interviews with U.S. officials.

12. "Was out there . . . lower on the list" is from Benjamin and Simon,
Age of Sacred Terror,
pp. 335-36. Rumsfeld's recollection is from National Commission, staff statement no. 6, p. 11.

13. Discussions of armed Predator testing and the "sensor to shooter" quotation are from interviews with U.S. officials. The missile struck the turret is from
The New York
Times,
November 23, 2001, quoting a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., press release issued at the time of the test.

14. Interviews with U.S. officials. See also Gellman,
The Washington Post,
January 20, 2002.

15. Interviews with U.S. officials. See also National Commission staff statement no. 7, p. 6.

16. Ibid. "Oh these harebrained . . . a disaster" is from an interview.

17. In an extensive interview about U.S. policy toward Afghanistan on March 27, 2001, Eastham was asked to summarize U.S. policy toward the Taliban. "We have contacts with all the factions in Afghanistan," he said. "That includes the Taliban. We talk to the Taliban when we get the opportunity and when we have things to say, just as we talk to the representatives of the Northern Alliance, and just as we talk to representatives of the former king, of Afghan groups outside Afghanistan. We try to maintain contacts with all parts of Afghanistan."
The News Hour with
Jim Lehrer,
March 27, 2001. Clarke, Rice, and Hadley from National Commission, staff statement no. 5, p. 15.

18. Interviews with U.S. officials.

19. Ibid. "The prospect . . . fracture the Taliban internally" is from "Afghanistan: The Consolidation of a Rogue State" by Zalmay Khalilzad and Daniel Byman,
The Washington
Quarterly,
Winter 2000.

20. The Republican platform said that the United States "should engage India" while being "mindful" about its relationship with Pakistan. Bush appointed Blackwill as his ambassador to India. Once in New Delhi, Blackwill pushed for a tougher U.S. policy toward Musharraf.

21. Letter exchange and Stalin quote are from an interview with a Pakistani official.

22. "We find practical reasons . . . refuse to cooperate" is from documents recovered in Pakistan's embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, after September 2001 and reported as "The Taliban Papers" by Tim Judah in
Survival,
Spring 2002, pp. 69-80. "Worst of both worlds" is from an interview with a Pakistani official. Quotations from Bush's letter from written testimony of Colin Powell to the National Commission, March 23, 2004.

23. Interviews with Pakistani officials involved in the discussions. "We are losing too much . . . serious about this" is from an interview with a Pakistani participant in the discussions. Omar's letter to Musharraf is from Judah, "The Taliban Papers,"
Survival.

24. After the United Nations passed another round of economic sanctions against the Taliban late in December 2000, Pakistan's foreign minister sat down with his Taliban counterpart to work out how to evade the sanctions without calling too much attention to themselves. According to minutes of the meeting discovered by Tim Judah in Kabul, Mullah Omar's foreign envoy, Muttawakil, confessed that "the Taliban are not very optimistic of the new Bush administration," because they believe that Bush and Clinton are "like two hands of one person." The Pakistani minister mentioned his nervousness about Zalmay Khalilzad who had suggested Pakistan "should be declared a terrorist state." The Pakistani envoy assured the Taliban that his government "had no intention of downgrading the Afghan embassy" in Islamabad as U.N. sanctions required, although "it would be desirable to show some superficial reduction to exhibit compliance." In another cable discovered by Judah, which provided talking points for Pakistani ambassadors to use in defending the Taliban, the foreign ministry urged, "We should avoid any statements that may be offensive to the Taliban." Judah, "The Taliban Papers,"
Survival.

25. Statue descriptions are from Jason Elliot,
An Unexpected Light,
pp. 336-37. "We do not understand . . . are stones" is from Molly Moore,
The Washington Post,
March 2, 2001. According to Ramzi Binalshibh, several Saudis who were to become "muscle" hijackers on September 11 participated in the destruction. See National Commission final report, p. 527.

26. This account of Haider's visit to Kan- dahar is from interviews with Pakistani and U.S. officials. All quotations are from an interview with a Pakistani official.
Time,
August 12, 2002, provides a similar account of the meeting, which lasted about two hours, according to those interviewed.

27. Interviews with U.S. officials.

28. Ibid.

29. The surge in threat reporting during the first three months of 2001 is from interviews with U.S., Pakistani, and Saudi officials. Tenet's quotations are from the Joint Inquiry Committee's final report, Appendix, p. 38. Turki said in an interview that he was "inundated by warnings from the Americans. January, February, March.We'd get reports telling us, 'We suspect something is going to happen. Please keep on the lookout.' " Pakistani officials quoted Tenet similarly. Bin Laden's remarks about the
Cole,
videotaped that winter at an Afghan wedding where one of his sons married a daughter of his Egyptian commander Mohammed Atef, binding their families, were broadcast on al Jazeera on March 2, 2001. "In Aden, the young man stood up for holy war and destroyed a destroyer feared by the powerful." He described
Cole
as having sailed "to its doom" along a course of "false arrogance, self-conceit, and strength." Rice and Tenet's exchanges on draft CIA covert action authority is from National Commission staff statement no. 7, p. 7. Bush's recollection from the final report, p. 199.

30. Interviews with Pakistani officials. "Because we'd have a civil war" is from an interview.

31. Interviews with U.S. officials.

32. Tenet's visit to Islamabad is from interviews with U.S. and Pakistani officials. Some of the sources who described the visit did not attend all the meetings. The full agenda and scope of the discussions with Mahmoud remain unclear, but it is certain that Mahmoud did little in the aftermath to change ISI's policies and practices in Afghanistan. The exact date of Tenet's travel is also uncertain. His visit appears to have occurred in late March or April.

CHAPTER 31: "MANY AMERICANS ARE GOING TO DIE"

1. Otilie English began paid work as a Northern Alliance lobbyist on February 15, 2001. The letter to Cheney is from an interview with Haroun Amin, chargé d'affaires at the Afghan embassy in Washington, September 9, 2002 (GW). Information on Massoud's travels is from interviews with his aides. What Massoud believed that spring is from videotaped conversation with English and Elie Krakowski, June 2001 (hereafter "English video"), and transcript of videotaped conversation among Massoud, Peter Tomsen, Hamid Karzai, and Abdul Haq, also from June 2001 (hereafter "Tomsen video").