Find, Fix, Finish (7 page)
Authors: Aki Peritz,Eric Rosenbach
CHAPTER 3
THE SEARCH FOR MR. #3
We are at war.
—GEORGE W. BUSH, SEPTEMBER 12, 2001
T
he attacks on New York City and Washington DC, and the crash near the small town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, rocked America and its political leaders. With further terror strikes possibly on the horizon, Congress prepared to respond with legislation. But what were legislators responding to and what laws should they pass?
he attacks on New York City and Washington DC, and the crash near the small town of Shanksville, Pennsylvania, rocked America and its political leaders. With further terror strikes possibly on the horizon, Congress prepared to respond with legislation. But what were legislators responding to and what laws should they pass?
The White House, with the Pentagon still smoldering across the Potomac, provided a quick answer: on the night of September 12, the Bush administration handed Congress a forcefully worded document that called for unlimited preemptive authority to attack America’s enemies. Not only did it call for the authority to crush the terrorists involved in the attacks that had occurred the day before, but it also authorized the president to “deter and preempt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.”
To its credit, Congress balked at the unprecedented power grab and on September 14 responded by excising that phrase in its sweeping Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), allowing America to pursue al-Qaeda worldwide.
The final wording of the legislation was both short and vague. It authorized the president:
To use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
The AUMF is the primary legal infrastructure—along with a classified Presidential Finding that authorized the CIA to capture or kill al-Qaeda members—that undergirds America’s fight against al-Qaeda. But despite its ambiguities, this document did not authorize endless war or limitless executive authority. In fact, one could view the Bush administration’s prosecution of al-Qaeda not simply as a response to the terrorist attacks but also a reaction to, and restructuring of, blurry legal boundaries to accommodate the modern terrorist threat.
As Mieke Eoyang, defense policy adviser to the late Senator Ted Kennedy, remarked, “In the days after 9/11, people went ‘big and broad’ because we didn’t know what we wanted, what we needed.”
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Eoyang continued, “When Congress passed AUMF, they had no way of knowing how the Bush Administration would stretch that document.”
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Eoyang continued, “When Congress passed AUMF, they had no way of knowing how the Bush Administration would stretch that document.”
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In fact, the White House tried a final fast grab for authority after the Senate passed its version of the legislation. As Senator Tom Daschle recounted years later, “Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words ‘in the United States’ and after ‘appropriate force’ in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas . . . but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens.”
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FIRST STEPS3
The war was now on, and America’s major effort to disrupt and destroy al-Qaeda centered on the group’s leadership. This, of course, meant targeting Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who were chased by the CIA and Special Forces into the caves of Tora Bora as the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that had permitted al-Qaeda to operate uninhibitedly.
After 9/11 bin Laden and Zawahiri mainly provided motivation and strategic guidance. The day-to-day work of approving and organizing new terrorist operations as well as training recruits and inserting them into action fell to al-Qaeda’s operational commander—its number 3 in the public’s perception—the point of contact between the organization’s strategic and tactical wings.
The US initially had two interconnected objectives in its counterterrorism strategy: disrupting and dismantling al-Qaeda’s operations worldwide, and capturing or killing the leaders responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington. Tracking down the number 3 leader was the key to achieving both. As head of operations, he would know the details and the timing of future attacks, as well as the locations and identities of cells worldwide. And as the organization’s most active senior leader, he would be one of a few who knew the location of al-Qaeda’s top men.
Following the US invasion of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda’s operational commander became even more important as bin Laden and Zawahiri most likely took refuge in the mountainous, ungoverned area in the northwest of Pakistan. Fearing discovery by US and allied intelligence agencies, bin Laden and Zawahiri were reduced to issuing ad hoc video recordings and communicating via human courier to the rest of their global operation. As they focused on their own safety, the operational number 3 commander became responsible for planning, funding, and coordinating the attacks that would eliminate apostate regimes throughout the world and establish a new global caliphate.
Organizing al-Qaeda’s various cells required internal and external communication efforts, and communication meant vulnerability. Again and again, the US tracked al-Qaeda’s commanders through their communications systems—by cell phone, satellite phone, e-mail, landline, facsimile, and even face-to-face meetings.
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No medium was safe. To make matters worse for al-Qaeda in the early days of 2002, the US was offering millions of dollars in the form of bounties for information on its leaders’ movements and whereabouts; one good tip had the potential to yield more money than most families in South Asia would see in a lifetime. The pressure from the US put the number 3 man in a precarious position: the more active he was in directing operations, the more targeting information he provided potentially endangering himself and others. But the more he stayed hidden, the more the movement risked becoming paralyzed and irrelevant.
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No medium was safe. To make matters worse for al-Qaeda in the early days of 2002, the US was offering millions of dollars in the form of bounties for information on its leaders’ movements and whereabouts; one good tip had the potential to yield more money than most families in South Asia would see in a lifetime. The pressure from the US put the number 3 man in a precarious position: the more active he was in directing operations, the more targeting information he provided potentially endangering himself and others. But the more he stayed hidden, the more the movement risked becoming paralyzed and irrelevant.
However, the US initially faced several disadvantages. First, US analysts had only a rudimentary understanding of the organization, still needing to sort through information on key personnel and operations—to say nothing of what any given person actually looked like. Second, US military forces were trained in fighting conventional wars against conventional armies, and that was reflected in America’s force structure, chain of command, and combat regulations. Even when resourceful commanders were prepared to adapt to the new enemy, they remained ensnared within a massive bureaucracy that had been shaped around a different kind of threat. Finally, the US was constrained by concerns that had little relevance for al-Qaeda, including international law, questions of sovereignty, winning elections, and layers of bureaucratic oversight.
Over time, however, the balance shifted. Both civilian and military personnel became more seasoned in the tactics and organization of al-Qaeda, and began working more closely together to develop a template for tightening the noose around senior leaders. Military and intelligence personnel were freed from some of the legal and bureaucratic constraints that hindered them. This led to faster operations and enhanced cooperation with countries such as Pakistan and Yemen that put pressure on the safe haven that al-Qaeda’s commanders initially enjoyed. Fresh espionage sources and cutting-edge surveillance tools such as armed UAVs created an aura of insecurity around operational leaders and their entourages, forcing them to devote their time and energy to avoiding detection and rooting out security leaks. Eventually, the once coveted job of al-Qaeda’s operational commander seemed like a certain death sentence.
EARLY WINDFALL: MOHAMMAD ATEF (KILLED, NOVEMBER 2001)The first of bin Laden’s top lieutenants to be eliminated after 9/11 was Mohammad Atef (Abu Hafs al-Masri), an operational commander and trusted aide. Quiet, cautious, and determined, Atef was well-known to US intelligence at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He was a founding member of al-Qaeda and was widely believed to have had a major role in the 1998 suicide attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
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He had been on the FBI’s most wanted list for three years and had a $5 million price on his head.
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He had been on the FBI’s most wanted list for three years and had a $5 million price on his head.
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Atef was killed, along with his guard Abu Ali al-Yafi’i and six others, in an air strike on a house near Kabul on November 15, 2001, probably while attending a meeting with Taliban leaders. He was in his early- to mid-fifties at the time of his death—a thirty-year veteran of terrorist campaigns against the Soviet Union, Egypt, the US, and other “apostate regimes” around the world.
Atef began his career as an Egyptian policeman before falling sway to radical ideas. According to one of bin Laden’s sons who knew him personally, Atef became disgruntled with Egypt’s sclerotic political landscape and joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).
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At least one source claims he was expelled from the police force for suspected fundamentalism.
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Sources disagree as to whether he met EIJ’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, while still in Egypt
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or after he left to join the fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the mid-1980s.
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Either way, it was Zawahiri who introduced Atef to bin Laden. Atef went on to forge close ties with the organization during campaigns in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia
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and became the deputy military commander of al-Qaeda in Africa in the early 1990s, allegedly helping to organize and arm part of the anti-US forces in Somalia in 1992.
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He took the role of al-Qaeda’s military leader after the accidental drowning of Ali Amin Rashidi in 1994, and was in charge of its Afghan training camps until the time of the 2001 attacks, according to Egyptian security sources.
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Atef also appeared to be in charge of bin Laden’s physical security and conducted searches of journalists meeting bin Laden in 1998.
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At least one source claims he was expelled from the police force for suspected fundamentalism.
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Sources disagree as to whether he met EIJ’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, while still in Egypt
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or after he left to join the fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the mid-1980s.
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Either way, it was Zawahiri who introduced Atef to bin Laden. Atef went on to forge close ties with the organization during campaigns in Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia
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and became the deputy military commander of al-Qaeda in Africa in the early 1990s, allegedly helping to organize and arm part of the anti-US forces in Somalia in 1992.
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He took the role of al-Qaeda’s military leader after the accidental drowning of Ali Amin Rashidi in 1994, and was in charge of its Afghan training camps until the time of the 2001 attacks, according to Egyptian security sources.
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Atef also appeared to be in charge of bin Laden’s physical security and conducted searches of journalists meeting bin Laden in 1998.
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Despite his size—at 6 foot 4, he was a tough, physically formidable figure—Atef was described as “a very quiet man,” “modest,” “devout,” “serious-minded,” and “disciplined.”
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Numerous observers commented on Atef’s intelligence, including bin Laden himself.
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According to one account, Atef was being groomed to take over al-Qaeda in the event of bin Laden’s death. In early 2001 Atef’s daughter married one of bin Laden’s sons in a move that was intended to seal his succession within the group.
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Numerous observers commented on Atef’s intelligence, including bin Laden himself.
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According to one account, Atef was being groomed to take over al-Qaeda in the event of bin Laden’s death. In early 2001 Atef’s daughter married one of bin Laden’s sons in a move that was intended to seal his succession within the group.
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Atef was concerned with operational security. In 1994, for instance, he refused to inform American double agent Ali Mohammed of the name and passport he would be using at any given time,
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and in 1998 he warned a Palestinian journalist not to photograph anyone at the camp other than bin Laden and Zawahiri for security reasons.
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As a strategist, Atef demonstrated a nuanced understanding of al-Qaeda’s enemies and world politics. While in Sudan, he conducted a study which concluded that aircraft hijackings were a bad idea, as they were engineered to allow the negotiation of hostages in exchange for prisoners rather than inflicting mass casualties.
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In another study, he analyzed the Taliban leadership, recognizing their common background and loyalty, but acknowledging their weaknesses as well.
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He speculated on the strategic role that the Afghan Arabs and Taliban could play in toppling the regimes of Pakistan and Iran,
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and concluded that strategic interests would lead the United States to favor an oil pipeline through Afghanistan in the near future.
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and in 1998 he warned a Palestinian journalist not to photograph anyone at the camp other than bin Laden and Zawahiri for security reasons.
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As a strategist, Atef demonstrated a nuanced understanding of al-Qaeda’s enemies and world politics. While in Sudan, he conducted a study which concluded that aircraft hijackings were a bad idea, as they were engineered to allow the negotiation of hostages in exchange for prisoners rather than inflicting mass casualties.
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In another study, he analyzed the Taliban leadership, recognizing their common background and loyalty, but acknowledging their weaknesses as well.
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He speculated on the strategic role that the Afghan Arabs and Taliban could play in toppling the regimes of Pakistan and Iran,
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and concluded that strategic interests would lead the United States to favor an oil pipeline through Afghanistan in the near future.
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A CIA Predator UAV initiated the attack on Atef from high overhead.
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The UAV’s pilot noticed a convoy of vehicles stopped at a ramshackle three-story structure near Gardez; operators observed several other pickup trucks, military vehicles, and guards idling in the parking lot. According to one report, the CIA knew that a secret meeting with Taliban leaders would be held at that location but not the time.
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With the arrival of the VIP convoy, the time was ripe to strike. The Predator relayed imagery of the location to CIA officers, who then coordinated with the military to call in strikes from Navy F/A-18s operating from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf.
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The planes arrived in position and dropped two or three GBU-15 smart bombs guided by infrared cameras in their noses. After the strike, the Predator surveyed the damage, firing Hellfire missiles into the target as survivors emerged, then circled again over the area to confirm the job was complete.
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According to one account, close to one hundred people were killed.
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The armed Predator had only been operational for about a month; this may have been one of the first strikes to target al-Qaeda leaders directly.
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The UAV’s pilot noticed a convoy of vehicles stopped at a ramshackle three-story structure near Gardez; operators observed several other pickup trucks, military vehicles, and guards idling in the parking lot. According to one report, the CIA knew that a secret meeting with Taliban leaders would be held at that location but not the time.
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With the arrival of the VIP convoy, the time was ripe to strike. The Predator relayed imagery of the location to CIA officers, who then coordinated with the military to call in strikes from Navy F/A-18s operating from an aircraft carrier in the Gulf.
26
The planes arrived in position and dropped two or three GBU-15 smart bombs guided by infrared cameras in their noses. After the strike, the Predator surveyed the damage, firing Hellfire missiles into the target as survivors emerged, then circled again over the area to confirm the job was complete.
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According to one account, close to one hundred people were killed.
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The armed Predator had only been operational for about a month; this may have been one of the first strikes to target al-Qaeda leaders directly.
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The loss of Atef was not just symbolic; he was a key source of experience, insight, and intelligence for al-Qaeda.
The successful tracking and elimination of a key al-Qaeda commander was a remarkable victory for the US, coming only two months after the attacks in New York and Washington and only one month after military operations began in Afghanistan. Atef was not a household name like bin Laden, but he was important within the organization as the mind behind much of al-Qaeda’s strategic and operational planning. And yet the strike may have been mostly luck.
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