500 Days (22 page)

Before Kobilica could close the door, two more uniformed officers appeared. They instructed her to stay at home with her daughters until Bensayah returned. She agreed. The two men took up positions in front of the apartment building, standing sentry.

The plan to question Bensayah had been set in motion days before. Since the 9/11 attacks, authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina had been working with the Americans to root out terrorist sympathizers. During the Bosnian War, the country had become a magnet for jihadists, as large numbers of them joined the battle in defense of fellow Muslims. After hostilities ended, many remained, often taking jobs with Muslim charities that American intelligence believed were fronts used to funnel cash to terrorists.

For six years, the Bosnians had looked the other way as their country emerged as a haven for Islamic fundamentalists. But Bush’s “with us or against us” edict
had shaken the Federation government into action. A new counterterrorist unit was formed, which immediately launched a headlong assault on the terrorist threat in Bosnia. Over the previous few weeks, a coterie of law enforcement officials had pulled up in SUVs every few days at homes and offices around the country, quietly conducting arrests and searches. That had culminated two weeks earlier with a significant raid on Visoko airfield, northwest of Sarajevo; armored fighting vehicles, Humvee jeeps, and attack helicopters descended on the landing strip that American intelligence had identified as a hub for organizations providing support to al-Qaeda. Calls intercepted at a listening post in neighboring Croatia had fueled concern that Visoko was about to be used as a launch site for another airborne attack, this time against the American embassy or military bases in Sarajevo.

In the crackdown, information emerged about an Algerian known to law enforcement only by the nickname “Abu Maali.” The intelligence suggested that this man—a veteran of conflicts in Algeria, Afghanistan, and the Balkans—worked closely with al-Qaeda. Bensayah was the prime suspect; the Americans had evidence that he had placed as many as seventy calls to Abu Zubaydah, identified by the CIA as a top al-Qaeda operative. In one intercepted conversation with Zubaydah after 9/11, the Americans told the Bosnians, Bensayah had discussed passport procurement. But the Bosnians had only the assurances of United States embassy officials that Bensayah associated with terrorists. If they were going to arrest him, they needed their own evidence.

•  •  •  

The police returned Bensayah to his home just before 1:30
P.M.
, this time with a show of force. Almost forty officers arrived, parking their vehicles haphazardly around the street, then milling about for ten minutes until one of them informed Bensayah and Kobilica that they had come to search the apartment. There was no Arab interpreter present, so Kobilica did all the talking.

“Can we observe?” she asked.

“Yes,” one of the officers replied. “But don’t talk to each other.”

The police began by searching a small room with a couch. There wasn’t much to examine there, so they moved on to the bedroom. They checked the floor, opened all of the drawers and closets, and dug through the couple’s clothes.

The telephone rang. On the line was a friend of Kobilica, sounding distressed. “I just heard on the news that Belkacem was arrested!” the friend said.

That was odd. He was home, and this was about immigration. Why was any of that newsworthy?

“There are just some questions about his citizenship papers,” Kobilica said.

“That’s not what they said on the news. They said that Belkacem was connected to terrorism!”

Kobilica thanked her friend, hung up, and approached the nearest officer. “They are saying on the news that this has something to do with terrorism,” she said. “What is all this about?”

“It has nothing to do with terrorism,” the officer replied. “This is just an investigation relating to your husband’s citizenship.”

Just before 3:30, the couple asked if the search could be interrupted to allow for afternoon prayers. The police agreed. The prayers lasted longer than usual; the two had missed the noon session, so they doubled up on their devotions this time. The search resumed as soon as they were finished.

The police returned to the bedroom closet. About twenty books were stacked inside, and an officer inspected each one. A number of boxes were also stored there, and those were moved into the bedroom. An officer prepared to look inside the first.

“No!” Bensayah blurted out in Arabic. “Do not open that box. It contains items that are not mine. They belong to other men who have left the country. They asked me to keep their things safe for them until they returned.”

Ignoring the protests, the officer opened the box and pulled out a fax machine. When she saw it, Kobilica whipped around on her husband, furious. This device communicated by
telephone.
Who knew what calls the men who owned it may have made?

“What are you doing with this?” she barked. “Why would you store something like that from someone you don’t know?”

“Don’t talk to him!” one officer snapped. Kobilica was escorted into the living room, away from Bensayah.

Searching through more boxes, an officer found about seventy books. While flipping through the pages of one, he saw a slip of paper with numbers on it. He pulled it out of the book and held it aloft.

•  •  •  

Soon after, the police emerged from the bedroom and turned their attention to the living room. An officer saw the remote control for the television, picked it up, and held it out to Kobilica.

“What’s this?” he said, suspicion in his voice.

Kobilica blinked. “It’s the television remote control.”

The officer nodded. “All right,” he said.

One of the searchers standing near the television noticed a book entitled
The Tragedy of Immorality.
He opened it and saw handwriting on the pages.

“Whose book is this?” he asked.

“It’s mine,” Kobilica responded.

“What’s all this writing?”

“It’s mine. It’s the answers to scores of personality tests that I saw in the newspaper.”

The officer continued to look through the book. Kobilica thought nothing of it.

•  •  •  

As each belonging was seized, the police recorded it on a receipt for the couple. The paper with the numbers on it was listed as the ninth item. The book,
The Tragedy of Immorality,
was thirteenth. The description of that entry said that it included two sheets of paper with Arabic letters. There was no mention of numbers. None of the officers could read Arabic.

•  •  •  

About that same time, Muhamed Be
ić, the interior minister for the Federation government, was standing before a group of reporters in Sarajevo.

A man named Belkacem Bensayah had been arrested in nearby Zenica on terrorism charges, Bes˘ić said. Police had discovered a slip of paper at his home with the phone number of Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaeda member.

The evidence, though, was curious. In court, the government would identify item thirteen on the receipt list—
The Tragedy of Immorality
and the two sheets of paper—as the one containing the Zubaydah phone number. But none of those papers had numbers on them. The one that did, number nine, was never identified as suspicious.

•  •  •  

Erin O’Connor stayed home sick from her job at NBC for a few more days.

Her flulike symptoms and rashes had grown worse the week before. She had been unable to shake the fear that she had been exposed to anthrax from the powder-laced letter addressed to her boss, Tom Brokaw. So, she had called the FBI and the New York City Police Department, and had gone to see a doctor, asking repeatedly, “Could this be anthrax?” Each time, the answer was no. A bite from a brown recluse spider maybe, but not anthrax.

She returned to work on Monday, October 8, and Brokaw asked her how she was doing. “I’m actually feeling quite a bit better,” she replied.

Soon after, O’Connor went to the restroom with two coworkers. When they
came out, one of the employees immediately tracked down Brokaw. They had just seen O’Connor’s skin, she told him.

“It’s a scabrous mess,” she said.

Brokaw approached O’Connor. “We’ve got to get additional medical care for this.”

He needed to find Kevin Cahill, Brokaw decided, his family’s doctor and an expert in infectious disease. Cahill would know what to do.

•  •  •  

The crowd of administration officials took their seats around a conference table in Room 6320 at the State Department.

It was the first meeting of the interagency group formed to devise a system of justice for captured terrorists. The room was filled with lawyers from the State Department, the White House counsel’s office, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and all the other departments involved in national security policy.

Pierre-Richard Prosper, the ambassador-at-large who headed the group, opened the meeting at 9:30
A.M.

“Thank you all for coming here,” he said. “I really appreciate your time and attention to this important subject. I’ve been asked to convene this group so we can consider what the right way to try these war criminals might be. We want to look at all the options and eventually make a recommendation to the White House.”

The questions to be resolved were myriad, Prosper said. How would they deal with the terrorists? How would they prosecute them? For what? And where were the terrorists going to be detained?

Prosper described his experience working with an international war crimes tribunal, suggesting that model might offer some idea for how to proceed. Another option, of course, was the criminal courts, but Prosper said he was skeptical.

“From a logistical standpoint, can the federal courts in New York handle this?” he asked. “There are potentially hundreds of cases involved. And do we want to put judges and juries in harm’s way?”

The other officials around the table chimed in, at first asking more rhetorical questions than providing answers. One mentioned that the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department needed to craft an opinion about the president’s authority in this area, particularly when it came to the possibility of convening military commissions. That job was handed to Pat Philbin, an old friend
of John Yoo’s who had been hired in the Justice Department office days before September 11.

After about an hour of discussion, the meeting broke up. There was a lot of work to be done, Prosper said.

•  •  •  

At the CIA, relief. There wasn’t some terrorist spy in the White House.

The calls in the Libyan records handed to Bonk by Moussa Koussa had been placed by an NSC staffer from the Middle East who knew people in Afghanistan. There was no reason to investigate, officials decided; lots of people in the White House had known about the calls.

The issue was shelved. But the lesson remained—a call to a suspicious number might be perfectly innocent.

•  •  •  

With the war under way, retired general Wesley Clark wanted to return to the Pentagon for a visit. Two weeks earlier, a general with the Joint Chiefs of Staff had told him that the administration was planning to attack Iraq after hitting Afghanistan. Clark wanted an update.

He arrived at the general’s office. “So,” he asked, “are we still going to war with Iraq?”

“Oh, it’s worse than that.” The general grabbed a piece of paper off his desk. He had just received the document from the office of the secretary of defense.

“This is a memo about how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years,” he said, “Starting with Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off, Iran.”

Amazing. “Is it classified?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well,” Clark said, “don’t show it to me.”

•  •  •  

“It could be anthrax. It looks like what I’ve seen in Africa before.”

The words from his doctor, Kevin Cahill, were the first confirmation to Tom Brokaw that his assistant could have been the victim of a biological attack. Cahill said that he was sending O’Connor for some biopsies. Then they might know for sure if she had been exposed to the deadly pathogen.

The news terrified O’Connor. She had a toddler at home and had been with the child day after day, possibly carrying anthrax—on her skin, on her clothing,
anywhere. Could she have infected the youngster? There had to be
someone
who could tell her what to do to help keep her family safe.

Brokaw grew tired of waiting. He knew where to find anthrax experts and decided to open a back channel to them. He called Fort Detrick in Maryland and spoke with two officials there, giving a short description of what was happening to his secretary.

“I need some help,” he said. “We’re not getting any straight answers. You’re supposed to be the leading authorities in this country on biological warfare and weaponry. Could you talk to my secretary?”

Yes, one of the officials said, they would love to talk to her. Brokaw put O’Connor on the phone. The scientists asked her about where she had been the week before, what her skin looked like, and how she was feeling. Then Brokaw got back on the phone.