Time Magazine
The
Untold Story of al-Qaeda's Plot to Attack the Subways
In an EXCLUSIVE BOOK EXCERPT,
author Ron Suskind reveals how officials learned about a cell that came
within weeks of striking in New York City with poison gas
By RON SUSKIND
Jun. 26, 2006
Two months had passed since 9/11,
and at the highest levels of government, officials were worrying about
a second wave of attacks. CIA Director George Tenet was briefing Vice President
Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in the White
House Situation Room on the agency's latest concern: intelligence reports
suggesting that Osama bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had met
with a radical Pakistani nuclear scientist around a campfire in Kandahar,
Afghanistan. Absorbing the possibility that al-Qaeda was trying to acquire
a nuclear weapon, Cheney remarked that America had to deal with a new type
of threat--what he called a "low-probability, high-impact event"--and the
U.S. had to do it "in a way we haven't yet defined," writes author Ron
Suskind in his new book, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's
Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11. And then Cheney defined it: "If there's
a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop
a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.
It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response." Suskind writes,
"So, now spoken, it stood: a standard of action that would frame events
and responses from the Administration for years to come."
In the following excerpt, Suskind
describes the government's reaction to information about a different WMD
threat: hydrogen cyanide gas. As in the rest of the book, he illuminates
the constant interplay and occasional tension between the "invisibles,"
the men and women in the intelligence and uniformed services actually fighting
the war on terrorism, and the "notables," high-level officials who "tell
us that everything will be fine, or that we should be very afraid, or both."
Suskind, who won the Pulitzer Prize as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal,
wrote the 2004 best seller The Price of Loyalty, an inside look at the
Bush Administration. In The One Percent Doctrine, Suskind finds that the
notables and the invisibles have at least one thing in common: a "profound
sense of urgency." TIME's exclusive excerpt:
In late May 2002, the NAtional
Security Agency had a gift for the CIA, and NSA Director Mike Hayden was
on the phone to deliver it. They had as precious a dispatch as any since
9/11.
It was a communication from a
designee of Osama bin Laden. The al-Qaeda chief had not used a cell phone
or satellite phone since 1998. He was very careful. A ring of deputies,
below the level of an Ayman al-Zawahiri or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, carried
messages for him. The United States had determined who some of them were.
They made calls, or sent e-mails, on bin Laden's behalf.
One such communication was passed
to a mysterious character in Saudi Arabia who--on the intercepted signals
intelligence--went by several aliases, the most compelling of which, translated
from Arabic, meant "Swift Sword." Two things were clear. Bin Laden seemed
to be alive and well and providing guidance from some location in the tribal
regions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border; and Swift Sword was al-Qaeda's
representative on the Arabian Peninsula. His hand seemed to be in several
places at once in the kingdom, guiding several cells of angry opponents
of the regime. The instructions from the top of al-Qaeda: Turn your operational
focus toward the overthrow of the Saudi government.
The illegitimacy of the Saudi
regime was a favorite subject for bin Laden. His dream was that it, along
with regimes in Egypt, Jordan and countries across the region, would be
overthrown, and that he would rule a restored Muslim empire, a caliphate,
stretching from Tehran to Cairo, from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic.
But this communication was not about grand designs and distant dreams.
It was an action plan for whom to kill and what targets to hit. Specifically,
kill members of the royal family, and destroy the oil fields.
The idea of sabotaging the Saudi
oil fields--the world's largest oil reserve--strikes directly at the heart
of the uneasy co-dependency of the gulf's oil-producing countries and their
avid customers in the developed world. Fifteen percent of U.S. oil comes
from Saudi Arabia. The strategic import of bin Laden's dictate was immediately
clear to U.S. policymakers. His goal was never the untenable idea of engaging
in a lasting struggle with America. It was, rather, to prompt the United
States to withdraw its support for various Arab regimes, particularly Saudi
Arabia, leaving them vulnerable to uprisings.
Tenet and his briefers informed
Cheney and President Bush of the intercepted communications. Then they
went to see Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bandar greeted the
delegation arriving at his palatial home in northern Virginia, Tenet and
his small band of deputies. They hugged. Tenet is a hugger. He and Bandar
have passed countless hours together, trust building, a Tenet specialty.
After brief cordialities, Tenet
got down to business. He leaned forward. A concerned look crossed his wide
mug. "Bad news," Tenet said. "Bin Laden has changed his focus. Now it's
you. It's Saudi Arabia."
Bandar was grim. "Scotch?"
He got some. And they drank Johnnie
Walker Blue Label as Tenet delivered the bad news. He described the intelligence.
"Can we see the cable?" Bandar
asked.
"Can't," Tenet said. "But I'll
tell you everything you need to know."
It was the start of a secret shift
in relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, getting the Saudis
off the sidelines and on the field. Bush's meeting with the de facto Saudi
ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, a month earlier, hadn't done it, nor had
a stream of U.S. dignitaries arriving in Riyadh, exhorting the Saudis to
allow the Americans to interview the families of the 9/11 terrorists or,
at least, to provide access to bank accounts that might yield leads to
terror financiers. It was fear that moved the Saudis. The oil fields, the
function of every equation, were targeted. The House of Saud was under
direct attack.
Bandar poured a second glass.
"Where do we begin?"
The King Fahd Causeway, connecting
the countries of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, is seen by many Saudis--both
religious and not--as an illicit passage.
It is steel and concrete as metaphor--tied,
on one shoreline, to a truce struck between the Saudi ruling family and
religious traditionalists in the kingdom. The Sauds get virtually limitless
wealth, a healthy chunk of which they share with their dour clerical partners
and their Wahhabist accountants. In exchange, the royals receive a stamp
of religious approval, as the true protectors of the Holy Sites of Mecca
and Medina, as well as an understanding that 25,000 or so members of the
royal family can do, more or less, anything they please, while the country's
27 million citizens live under strict religious laws mandating traditional
dress, shrouding of women, prohibitions against the consumption of alcohol
or premarital sex. Adultery carries a death sentence.
For such indulgences, and countless
others, you cross the bridge to the island principality of Bahrain--a country
of almost 700,000, with high-rise hotels, a playboy king, a base for the
U.S. Fifth Fleet, and significant cash flow from its role as a discreet
"service provider" for Saudi Arabia. The lives of Saudis, and Bahrainis,
are thoroughly framed by this arrangement, and its attendant hypocrisies.
And both suffer the presence of its by-product: groups of stealthy, violent
religious purists, graced with many opportunities to feel self-righteous.
One such group was traveling across
the King Fahd bridge toward Bahrain on Feb. 13, 2003, when they were picked
up by Bahraini police. The United States, specifically the CIA, was behind
the arrest. The NSA had picked up calls and e-mails from a cluster of Bahrainis
that were troubling--boastful talk of what should be done to infidels,
and some problem phrases, such as picking up "honey pots." "Honey" is often
terrorist code for destructive items.
The Bahraini group consisted of
five men: two gunrunners of a traditional criminal stripe, and three men
with strong jihadist credentials. All were put through the basics of law
enforcement procedure that are not necessarily common in their part of
the world. Their belongings--cars, cell phones, wallets--were held in a
secure place, used to glean further leads, and their apartments were searched.
One of the jihadists, Bassam Bokhowa,
an educated fiftyish professional, with computer skills, had visited an
apartment in Saudi Arabia. And there, a joint Saudi-U.S. counterterrorist
unit, formed after the meeting with Bandar in his study, found a computer.
The contents were dumped onto a separate hard drive, which was sent to
the United States for imaging--a way to suck out digitalia, encrypted or
not.
That's where they found it: plans
for construction of a device called a mubtakkar. It is a fearful thing,
and quite real.
Precisely, the mubtakkar is a
delivery system for a widely available combination of chemicals--sodium
cyanide, which is used as rat poison and metal cleanser, and hydrogen,
which is everywhere. The combination of the two creates hydrogen cyanide,
a colorless, highly volatile liquid that is soluble and stable in water.
It has a faint odor, like peach kernels or bitter almonds. When it is turned
into gas and inhaled, it is lethal. For years, figuring out how to deliver
this combination of chemicals as a gas has been something of a holy grail
for terrorists.
Ramzi Yousef plotted to release
the gas into the ventilation system of the World Trade Center prior to
bombing the place in 1993 and couldn't quite manage it. The famous chemical
attack by the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo on the Tokyo subway in March
1995--the release of sarin gas that killed 12 people and sent about 5,000
to area hospitals--was followed, two months later, by an attempted cyanide
gas attack by cult members. A small fire, set in a Tokyo restroom that
ventilated onto a subway platform, was designed to disperse the gas and
was extinguished by alert subway guards.
Terrorism experts inside many
governments have been on the lookout for reports of a solution to these
engineering hurdles. Now, the CIA had found it. Mubtakkar means "invention"
in Arabic, "the initiative" in Farsi. The device is a bit of both. It's
a canister with two interior containers: sodium cyanide is in one; a hydrogen
product, like hydrochloric acid, in the other; and a fuse breaks the seal
between them. The fuse can be activated remotely--as bombs are triggered
by cell phones--breaking the seal, creating the gas, which is then released.
Hydrogen cyanide gas is a blood agent, which means it poisons cells by
preventing them from being able to utilize oxygen carried in the blood.
Exposure leads to dizziness, nausea, weakness, loss of consciousness and
convulsions. Breathing stops and death follows. (Since blood agents are
carried through the respiratory system, a gas mask is the only protection
needed. If one is exposed to blood agents, amyl nitrite provides an antidote,
if administered quickly enough.)
In a confined environment, such
as an office building's ventilation system or a subway car, hydrogen cyanide
would cause many deaths. The most chilling illustration of what happens
in a closed space comes from a 20th century monstrosity. The Nazis used
a form of hydrogen cyanide called Zyklon B in the gas chambers of their
concentration camps.
When the plans were discovered
on Bokhowa's hard drive, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the CIA's operational chief
for WMD and terrorism, and his counterpart, "Leon," who heads the analytical
side of that same division, went into something just shy of a panic. Leon
instantly pulled together a team to make a model of the device that he
could eventually test.
At 5 p.m. in Tenet's conference
room in early March, Leon waited until everyone was seated. He pulled from
a bag a cylinder, about the size of a paint can, with two Mason jars in
it. He placed it in the center of the large mahogany conference table,
sat back down in his chair. People had heard various things about the recent
discovery of a delivery system.
But seeing it was something else.
"Oh, s___," Tenet whispered after
a moment.
John McLaughlin, Tenet's deputy,
sat forward in his chair--thinking of how easily it might be transported
in a backpack, a suitcase, a shopping bag, and how innocuous it looked.
The room fell silent.
"The man's got to see this," Tenet
said, and called the White House to clear a few extra CIA briefers for
the next morning's presidential briefing.
Tenet entered the Oval Office
first, to prebrief Bush for four or five minutes. This was common practice:
a short confidential primer from Tenet, so Bush could be authoritative
and updated when others arrived.
The CIA briefers were summoned
from the waiting area. One of them placed the mubtakkar on a low table
in the sitting area. Bush looked at it. Cheney and the others were seated.
The President picked it up--felt its weight. "Thing's a nightmare," he
said quietly, almost to himself, and put it down. A CIA briefer went through
a dissertation on the device, the technical problems it solved, its probable
uses and the long road of trial and error leading to this moment. Everyone
just sat in the Oval Office, looking at it--thinking about the era and
its challenges, and saying nothing.
After the Oval Office briefing,
Bush ordered alerts sent through the U.S. government. Tenet held meetings
with the intelligence chiefs. Rolf and Leon showed the device to the relevant
people in law enforcement and other intelligence services. The word had
to be spread. The device was unstoppable--for people walking onto subway
cars, railroad trains or through crowded, enclosed areas of any kind. Selective
awareness, under intense standards of secrecy, seemed to be the only response.
In the world of terrorist weaponry,
this was the equivalent of splitting the atom. Obtain a few widely available
chemicals, and you could construct it with a trip to Home Depot and then
kill everyone in the store.
Bahraini police found a phone
number in Bokhowa's records that led to an address in Saudi Arabia. Three
men were arrested in Riyadh. They were part of a diffuse community of radical
Islamic activists in the kingdom. Beyond their connection to the Bahrainis,
the Saudi trio was connected to another threesome of jihadists in the kingdom.
They were arrested as well. All of these actions were handled under the
supervision and encouragement of the CIA, which had large stations in both
countries. This investigation was now a priority. Finding the mubtakkar
designs in Bokhowa's computer had ensured that.
But getting action from the Saudis,
even now, nine months after Tenet had delivered his warnings to Prince
Bandar, was anything but easy. Interrogations commenced. CIA operatives
could only stand on the sidelines. The questions posed to the prisoners--both
the Bahraini group and the two sets of captives in Saudi Arabia--were pointed.
Yet compared with what was happening to captured al-Qaeda men Abu Zubaydah
or Ramzi Binalshibh at "black sites," these interrogations were polite,
respectful. The captives were all religious men. Day after day, they praised
Allah and talked about their bonds of religious commitment to one another.
This is a problem, said one CIA operative on the case. "Some of these guys
are looked at almost like clergy. It's hard to interrogate clergy."
Bokhowa was especially savvy.
He was too old to be a courier; he was more an analyst than an operator.
He had highly placed friends in the country's community of Islamic activists.
If there was a wider plot here, it remained out of sight. The Bahraini
trio and the two Saudi trios were clearly tied to one another, but where
they fit in a broader array of the region's jihadists was unclear. They
did not seem to be tightly connected to several other Saudi cells that
were being tracked by the U.S.-Saudi intelligence teams. Nor did they seem
connected to the mysterious Swift Sword, who had appeared numerous times
on cables picked up by the NSA and seemed to be running matters on the
peninsula.
The President, each morning, would
ask Tenet, "What've you got on the mubtakkar?"
Tenet would reply, "Not much more,
but we're doing anything we can to pin down who these guys are."
In the middle of March, as the
invasion of Iraq directed the energies and focus of the Administration,
CIA chiefs huddled in Langley. They simply had no context for either the
trio in Bahrain or the ones in Saudi Arabia. The White House and CIA pressed
officials in both countries with a single message. We're on the case. Just
don't let these men go free.
It has been generally acknowledged
that the United States has never had any significant human sources--or,
in intelligese, humint assets--inside al-Qaeda.
That is not true.
It was, in fact, not true by early
2003. There was a source from within Pakistan who was tied tightly into
al-Qaeda management.
Call him Ali.
Ali was, not surprisingly, a complex
character. He believed that bin Laden might have made a mistake in attacking
America. This was not an uncommon sentiment among senior officials in the
organization. It is, in fact, periodically a point of internal debate,
according to sigint--signals intelligence--picked up in this period. Bin
Laden's initial calculation was that either America wouldn't respond to
the attacks or that its response would mean the U.S. Army would soon be
sinking in an Afghan quagmire. That, of course, did not occur. U.S. forces--despite
the mishap of letting bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and most of the organization's
management escape--had managed to overthrow the Taliban and flush al-Qaeda
from its refuge. The group was now dispersed. A few of its leaders and
many foot soldiers were captured or dead. As with any organization, time
passed and second-guessing began.
That provided an opening. The
disgruntlement was enough to begin working a few potential informants.
It was an operation of relationship building that reflected traditional
European spycraft. Build common bonds. Show sympathy to the sources' concerns.
Develop trust. While al-Qaeda recruits were ready for martyrdom, that was
something its more senior officials seemed to have little taste for. As
one CIA manager said, "Masterminds are too valuable for martyrdom." Whatever
Ali's motivations, his reports--over the preceding six months--had been
almost always correct, including information that led to several captures.
Now, in late March 2003, the CIA
was in a jam. The Saudis were complaining that they couldn't hold prisoners
without some evidence of wrongdoing. The trio directly connected to the
Bahrainis, they could hold for only a few more weeks. The other trio, they
had already released. They had nothing on them.
It was time to call on Ali.
His handler contacted him through
an elaborate set of signals, and a meeting was set up. CIA operatives mentioned
to him the names of the captives in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and the existence
of the mubtakkar designs.
Ali said he might be able to help.
He told his CIA handlers that a Saudi radical had visited bin Laden's partner
al-Zawahiri, in January 2003. The man ran the Arabian Peninsula for al-Qaeda,
and one of his aliases was Swift Sword. Ali said the man's name was Yusef
al-Ayeri. Finally, the United States had a name for Swift Sword.
This brought elation--a mystery
solved, a case cracked--and then screams of pain. Al-Ayeri was in the Saudi
group that had been released. They had had him. The Saudis let him go.
But what Ali would next tell his
American handlers would shape American policy and launch years of debate
inside the White House. He said that al-Ayeri had come to tell al-Zawahiri
of a plot that was well under way in the United States. It was a hydrogen
cyanide attack planned for the New York City subways. The cell members
had traveled to New York City through North Africa in the fall of 2002
and had thoroughly cased the locations for the attacks. The device would
be the mubtakkar. There would be several placed in subway cars and other
strategic locations and activated remotely. This was well past conception
and early planning. The group was operational. They were 45 days from zero
hour.
Then Ali told his handlers something
that left intelligence officials speechless and vexed. Al-Zawahiri had
called off the attacks. Ali did not know the precise explanation why. He
just knew al-Zawahiri had called them off.
Ali then offered insights into
the emerging structure of Islamic terrorist networks. The Saudi group in
the United States was only loosely managed by al-Ayeri or al-Qaeda. They
were part of a wider array of self-activated cells across Europe and the
gulf, linked by an ideology of radicalism and violence, and by affection
for bin Laden. They were affiliates, not tightly tied to a broader al-Qaeda
structure, but still attentive to the wishes of bin Laden or al-Zawahiri.
Al-Ayeri passed al-Zawahiri's message to the terror cell in the U.S. They
backed off.
Over the next days, teams of CIA
briefers, analysts and operatives were in the Oval Office. The President
and the Vice President sat in the two wing chairs, each with his back to
the fireplace.
"We need to figure this out,"
Bush said, "as long as it takes. We need to get our arms around this thing."
First, a nightmare delivery system--portable,
easy to construct, deadly.
And now, this--evidence of a truly
operational attack on American soil, the first since 9/11. Mubtakkars in
the New York subways? As the questions rose and swirled, in the back of
each person's mind ran disaster scenarios, continuous play, of panic underground
in New York.
The Vice President was intense.
"The question is why would Zawahiri have called them off? What does it
indicate about al-Qaeda's strategy?"
Bush cut him off. He was more
interested in Ali.
"Why is this guy cooperating with
us? That I don't understand."
The CIA analysts attempted answers.
Many of the questions were simply unanswerable.
Bush became focused on the players.
Now that the United States finally knew the identity of Swift Sword, how
did he fit? CIA analysts explained a triangle of relationships--and that
al-Ayeri had been captured and then released: "The Saudis didn't know what
they had." But having al-Ayeri's identity confirmed helped CIA establish
links between al-Qaeda's Saudi chief and the Saudi group that was still
in custody. The U.S. cell, whereabouts unknown, was linked to them both.
Bush, in tactical mode, pressed
them. "Who came to New York?" and "Are they still here, somewhere?"
The answer from the CIA briefers:
"We don't know."
As Bush dug deeper, Cheney moved
to reframe the discussion. Did al-Zawahiri call off the attack because
the United States was putting too much pressure on the al-Qaeda organization?
"Or is it because he didn't feel this was sufficient for a 'second wave'?"
Cheney asked. "Is that why he called it off? Because it wasn't enough?"
The destruction tape--still running,
unexpressed, in everyone's head--turned toward calculation. Ten subway
cars at rush hour--two hundred people in a car--another thousand trampled
in the underground in rush-hour panic as the gas spreads through the station.
As many dead as 9/11, with a WMD attack spreading a devastating, airborne
fear?
Not enough of a second wave?
"I mean, this is bad enough. What
does calling this off say about what else they're planning?" Bush blurted
out. His eyes were wide, fist clenched. "What could be the bigger operation
Zawahiri didn't want to mess up?"
In April 2003, while the world's
many eyes were trained on Iraq, and vivid images of U.S. tanks settled
along Baghdad streets, the CIA's analysts and operators were sending urgent
messages to the Saudis: something was coming.
The kingdom, with a subpar system
of telephone landlines, is the land of the cell phone. And not cell phones
that were being judiciously discarded and replaced, a technique of the
more skilled jihadist operative. Saudis love their "mobiles." That love
meant that the sigint was strong.
And deafening. The United States
started to discover proof of thousands of militants, sympathetic to al-Qaeda
and maybe bent on violence, operating inside Saudi Arabia. Since the warning
delivered to Prince Bandar the year before, cooperation between the CIA
and Saudi intelligence had broadened. There was still a kernel of distrust--the
United States would not show the Saudis its sigint cables--and actionable
intelligence it passed along often vanished when it reached the salons
of the royal family, whose interests were often inscrutably complex.
Tenet called Prince Mohammed bin
Nayef, who runs the country's interior department for his father--the imperious,
religious Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, the country's chief of interior
and intelligence matters. Operators of the Middle East desk at NSC made
calls to mid-rung Saudi officials. Bob Jordan, the U.S. ambassador, was
asked by the State Department and White House to talk directly to contacts
in Riyadh. The United States didn't know the time or the place--but al-Qaeda's
Saudi army was gathering. There was another, companion message. A message
of pressing U.S. interest: Find al-Ayeri.
Since the Americans had identified
the elusive Swift Sword in March as Yusef al-Ayeri, the status of the al-Qaeda
operative had risen swiftly. A name will do that. It helps fix identity.
First, it was discovered that this al-Ayeri was behind a website, al-Nida,
that U.S. investigators had long felt carried some of the most specialized
analysis and coded directives about al-Qaeda's motives and plans. He was
also the anonymous author of two extraordinary pieces of writing--short
books, really, that had recently moved through cyberspace, about al-Qaeda's
underlying strategies. The Future of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula After
the Fall of Baghdad, written as the United States prepared its attack,
said that an American invasion of Iraq would be the best possible outcome
for al-Qaeda, stoking extremism throughout the Persian Gulf and South Asia
and achieving precisely the radicalizing quagmire that bin Laden had hoped
would occur in Afghanistan. A second book, Crusaders' War, outlined a tactical
model for fighting the American forces in Iraq, including "assassination
and poisoning the enemy's food and drink," remotely triggered explosives,
suicide bombings and lightning-strike ambushes. It was the playbook.
Once it became clear that the
writer wasn't some enthusiast looking to curry favor with al-Qaeda but
the organization's chief for the Arabian Peninsula, the writings took on
predictive import. Al-Ayeri was conducting a kind of cyberspace conversation
with bin Laden and al-Zawahiri.
And more specific conversations,
as well. Tucked inside the sigint chatter in April 2003 of possible upcoming
attacks inside the kingdom was evidence of a tense dialogue between al-Ayeri
and another, less senior operative in the gulf, Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi
al-Ghamdi, over whether the Saudi al-Qaeda operation had enough men, weapons
and organization to truly challenge and overthrow the Saudi regime. Al-Ayeri
said no, it was too soon, the organization had not yet matured, while al-Ghamdi
strongly recommended pushing forward. Al-Zawahiri, who managed the discourse,
sided with al-Ghamdi.
On May 6, the first inkling of
trouble surfaced: a gun battle in Riyadh between well-armed terrorists
and Saudi security forces. The Saudi government issued a most-wanted list--citing
19 insurgents, including al-Ayeri and al-Ghamdi, and adding photographs.
Six days later, explosions ripped through an apartment complex on the outskirts
of Riyadh, killing 35--including nine Americans--and injuring more than
300. War broke out in the streets of Riyadh, as Saudi forces clashed with
well-armed al-Qaeda soldiers.
Events were being monitored by
the hour inside the CIA. "Owning Iraq," a country in confusion, with its
oil wells shut down, was one matter. The overthrow of Saudi Arabia--the
true nexus of oil and Allah, producer of 25% of the world's exported petroleum
and, by some U.S. estimates, nearly all of the world's most far-reaching
terrorism--was entirely another. At a 5 p.m. meeting in mid-May, the CIA's
top management huddled. Tenet, that morning, had been grilled by Cheney
about the status of the CIA's investigation of the reputed mubtakkar cell
in the United States.
"What do we know?" Cheney pressed
CIA operatives. "This could be another 9/11. This one we can't miss."
Tenet's response was dispiriting.
He told Bush and Cheney that interrogations of both the Bahraini trio and
the Saudi trio still in custody had, thus far, yielded nothing. Saudi intelligence
said it was keeping track of the whereabouts of the trio that recently
had been let go. Short of al-Zawahiri, the only person who could potentially
identify the U.S. mubtakkar cell was al-Ayeri.
Cheney was grim. The priorities
were clear, he intoned. Al-Ayeri--writing shrewd assessments of Iraq's
future, going head-to-head with al-Zawahiri, managing al-Qaeda affairs
in Saudi Arabia and, possibly, guiding the only operational WMD attack
in America--might be the most important active member of al-Qaeda. He must
be found. As things heated up in the kingdom, calls from the White House
and the CIA to the top of the Saudi hierarchy were urgent and clear: Make
sure al-Ayeri is captured, alive.
On May 31, a carful of young men
ran a Saudi roadblock near Mecca. As they passed, the driver threw a grenade
at the guards. Saudi security forces gave chase and cornered the men in
a building. A standoff took shape. The Saudis called in reinforcements.
Overwhelming force was applied to the situation. All the terrorists were
killed, including a man easily identified from pictures plastered across
the kingdom: Yusef al-Ayeri.
In the breast pocket of the bullet-riddled
body was a letter from bin Laden. It was an affectionate, personal letter,
six months old, congratulating the young man on his good work and on a
successful celebration of 'Id al-Fitr, the feast at the end of Ramadan.
The letter was now covered in al-Ayeri's blood.
The Saudis put out no press reports
in the days following the gunfight. It took several days before they notified
the United States. They never bothered to collect al-Ayeri's personal effects--his
cell phone, his address book, the registry of his car, or trace such clues
back to an apartment that might be searched.
The news hit hard at CIA. It soon
became a metaphor, a Chinese box displaying the dilemmas of the "war on
terror." The Saudis--like the Pakistanis, the Yemenis, the Sudanese and
so many "dark side" states allied with the United States in the battle--had
a way of often disappointing America. Beneath the warm handshakes and affectionate
words, there was always that nugget of distrust. Were our interests truly
aligned? What were they telling us; what were they withholding? All were
ruled by dictators, who, necessarily, view power and their own self-preservation
in ways that differ from a democracy.
The U.S., of course, had told
the Saudis about the mubtakkar discovery, and about the report of an operational
Saudi cell with chemical weapons in America. We hadn't told them exactly
how we knew. We never told them about Ali, the al-Qaeda inside source in
Pakistan, who fingered al-Ayeri. We couldn't because, deep down, we don't
trust our friends from Riyadh. As they do not trust us.
But in the urgent days of May,
the CIA let on to the Saudis that al-Ayeri might know about the mubtakkar
cell--and that he might be the only one. In postmortems that roiled through
Langley, that last part was seen, maybe, as a misstep. 9/11, with 15 of
the 19 hijackers from the kingdom, created the greatest fissure in the
long, dime-a-dance waltz between Saudi Arabia and America. The effect of
a second disaster--with chemical weapons and a clear link to Saudi Arabia--would
be unfathomable.
"It was a bad day. We wondered,
Was it an accident that they killed him, or not? The Saudis just shrugged.
They said their people got a little overzealous," said one of the top CIA
operatives who was fixated on al-Ayeri, hoping he might lead investigators
along a Saudi trail to the WMD attack cell in America. "The bottom line:
the missing link was dead, and his personal effects, which can be pretty
important, were gone. Like so much else when you're dealing with these
countries, you're never sure--Was it an issue of will or capability? Just
try to sort those two things out."
Tenet brought the bad news to
Bush and Cheney at the next morning briefing. Bush was angry. At the very
least, he told Tenet, tersely, someone should be sent to Riyadh to get
the Saudis to rearrest the trio that had recently been released. A few
days later, Mowatt-Larssen entered the chambers of Prince Nayef bin Abdul
Aziz, at the Royal Palace in Riyadh. He knew not to expect much. Meetings
with Nayef were often short and nonproductive.
Mowatt-Larssen dispensed with
pleasantries. "With al-Ayeri dead, we want you to rearrest the others and
hold them for as long as possible," he said, referring to the other trio.
Nayef nodded. "Fine."
"But," he added, "we cannot hold
people indefinitely when there is no hard evidence against them and no
charges." After a few more minutes of the lecture--about how important
due process and civil rights are to the Saudis--Nayef said they would hold
the men for only a few more months. "We're doing this because you are asking
us. But if you have any evidence against them, you better show it."
The meeting lasted five minutes.
Mowatt-Larssen smiled, a tight, tense smile, then thanked the Prince for
his extremely valuable time and cooperation.
FROM THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE,
BY RON SUSKIND. © 2006 BY RON SUSKIND. TO BE PUBLISHED BY SIMON &
SCHUSTER |