Ghost Wars (107 page)

24. Interview with an Arab activist familiar with Azzam's visit with Massoud that summer. Olivier Roy,
Afghanistan: From Holy War
to Civil War,
p. 86, also describes Azzam's journey that summer. So did Daoud Mir, an aide to Massoud, in interviews, July 31 and August 8, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW). That Azzam compared Massoud to Napoleon is from Mir interviews. After meeting with Massoud, Roy writes, Azzam "endeavored to strike a balanced attitude" between Massoud and Hekmatyar.

25. The summary of the debates is drawn largely from interviews with two Arab participants. Al-Zawahiri's published writings make clear where he and bin Laden stood on theological questions.

26. Azzam is quoted by his son-in-law, Abdullah Anas, in
The New York Times,
January 14, 2001.

27. Multiple published accounts, including from Anas, ibid., describe a split among the Arab volunteers then in Peshawar after Azzam's death, and most accounts date to this period of bin Laden's emergence as the new head of al Qaeda, as he called the successor organizaton of Azzam's Office of Services. But the sequence of this split and takeover remains unclear. American intelligence dates al Qaeda's founding to 1988. Peter L. Bergen,
Holy War, Inc.,
p. 60, quotes the British military journalist and inveterate Afghan traveler Peter Jouvenal as seeing bin Laden rebuilding his base in Jaji in February 1989, months before Azzam's murder. "I witnessed them digging huge caves, using explosives and Caterpillar digging equipment," Jouvenal said. At the same time multiple accounts, including from the chief of staff of Saudi intelligence, Ahmed Badeeb, describe bin Laden leaving Pakistan with his family at some point during 1989 for his home in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. By late 1990, bin Laden is clearly back in Jedda, fomenting jihad in South Yemen. How all of these movements and activities by bin Laden overlap with the takeover and rebirth of al Qaeda under his leadership is not fully clear.

CHAPTER 11: "A ROGUE ELEPHANT"

1. Interviews with U.S. officials. Interview with Peter Tomsen, January 21, 2002, Omaha, Nebraska (SC). Also "Special Envoy to the Afghanistan Resistance," State Department action memorandum, April 19, 1989, declassified and released, March 23, 2000.

2. Interview with Tomsen, January 21, 2002, and with other U.S. officials.

3. Ibid. The CIA was under pressure from mujahedin supporters in Congress because of complaints from Afghan commanders about a sharp slowdown in weapons supplies. A Chinese factory dedicated to making rockets for Pakistani intelligence had burned down, and a major weapons depot in Rawalpindi had been destroyed, either by accident or sabotage. As a result, large shipments to Pakistan had been delayed at a time when the carnage at Jalalabad was draining ordnance supplies.

4. The author has seen a copy of the document.

5. The account of the shift in U.S. policy is drawn primarily from interviews with U.S. officials, including Tomsen, January 21, 2002. The policy is outlined in State Department cables from late 1989 and early 1990 that were reviewed by the author. Tomsen began to discuss his plans for the commanders'
shura
publicly in early 1990. Barnett R. Rubin,
The Fragmentation of Afghanistan,
pp. 247-80, provides a detailed, carefully reported account of Afghan political-military developments and U.S. policy gyrations during this period.

6. Tomsen's travel to Pakistan, briefings to officials, and arguments with Harry are from interviews with U.S. officials. Harry: "Coming back" and "Why are you so anti-Hekmatyar?" are from interviews with U.S. officials. Twetten had participated in the interagency meeting and had signed off on the new policy on behalf of the CIA, according to Tomsen. He and others at the State Department saw the CIA's reversal as an effort to appease Pakistani intelligence, which was upset by the new policy direction.

7. Interview with Thomas Twetten, March 18, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

8. Rubin,
Fragmentation of Afghanistan,
pp. 261-62.

9. The account in this chapter of the CIA's role in the winter offensive of 1989-90, including the details of the agency's payments to Massoud, are from interviews with U.S. officials.

10. That CIA unilateral agents reported to Islamabad that bin Laden was funding a Hekmatyar coup attempt is from interviews with U.S. officials.

11. Rubin,
Fragmentation of Afghanistan,
p. 253. The author was in Pakistan at the time of the coup attempt and interviewed Pakistani, American, and, later, Afghan government officials and military officers about the events.

12. That the CIA had reports at the time that bin Laden had funded the Tanai coup attempt is from interviews with U.S. officials. The agency had sources among Afghan commanders and within Pakistani intelligence at the time, but it is not clear exactly where the reports about bin Laden's role came from.

13. Interview with Benazir Bhutto, May 5, 2002, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (GW). The no-confidence vote against Bhutto failed, but the army did forcibly remove her from office nine months later. According to Oakley, the American embassy in Islamabad concluded that Pakistani intelligence participated that winter and spring in conspiracies aimed at ousting Bhutto from power. Interview with Robert Oakley, February 15, 2002, Washington, D.C. (SC).

14. Rubin,
Fragmentation of Afghanistan,
p. 253, cites reports that funding for the Tanai coup attempt came from "ISI and Saudi intelligence."

15. Interview with Thomas Twetten, March 18, 2002. Twetten said he had no recollection of any "piece of paper" coming into Langley from the Islamabad station providing advanced word or planning about the Tanai coup, and he felt certain that he would remember that "if they had told us" about the coup attempt. "They never were honest with us on Hekmatyar," Twetten said. "When we insisted, they would arrange for a meeting with Hekmatyar, but it wasn't very often and it wasn't very productive, even in the best of times."

16. Interviews with U.S. officials. While serving as ambassador to the Afghan resistance, Tomsen met with Prince Turki seventeen times.

17. Interviews with Saudi officials.

18. The meeting of Massoud's representative Prince Bandar and Turki's funding for the commanders'
shura
are from interviews with U.S. officials and an aide to Massoud.

19. Funding levels and estimates of private Gulf money are from Rubin,
Fragmentation of
Afghanistan,
p. 182.

20. Gorbachev Foundation, documents presented at "Towards an International History of Afghanistan," Cold War International History Project, Washington, D.C.

21. Interviews with U.S. officials.

22. That the CIA reported on the trucks rolling to arm Hekmatyar is from interviews with U.S. officials. Tomsen's meeting and the quotations from the cable to Washington: "SE Tomsen Meeting with Shura of Commanders Oct. 6," cable dated October 10, 1990, author's files.

23. Barnett R. Rubin,
The Search for Peace in
Afghanistan,
p. 115, and interview with Tomsen, January 21, 2002. Lunch meeting between Tomsen and Harry is from interviews with U.S. officials. "Not only a horribly bad . . . Afghan political context," ibid.

24. Rubin,
Fragmentation of Afghanistan,
p. 254. Rubin,
Search for Peace,
p. 121.

25. The meeting between Turki and Massoud's representatives is from an interview with Daoud Mir, July 31, 2002, Washington, D.C. (GW). Mir recalled that when he finally met Turki at a palace in Jedda, he began complaining vociferously that Saudi intelligence had misunderstood Massoud for many years. He talked, he recalled, until a frustrated Turki covered his ears with his hands, indicating that he had heard enough.

26. The increase in Massoud's stipend and the struggle to ship weapons to the Panjshir are from interviews with U.S. officials.

27. "Sore on our backside" is from an interview with Maj. Gen. Mahmud Ali Durrani (Ret.), May 20, 2002, Rawalpindi, Pakistan (SC).

28. Dennis Kux,
The United States and Pakistan,
1947-2000,
p. 309.

29. Interview with Robert Oakley, February 15, 2002.

30. While traveling in Kashmir during this period, the author met with Kashmiri Islamist guerrillas who talked of their training in Afghanistan and displayed weapons clearly manufactured in China. The warning to Indian officials about sniper rifles is from interviews with U.S. officials in India during 1991.

31. Ahmed Badeeb interview with Orbit satellite network, early 2002; translated from original Arabic. See note 1 of chapter 4.

32. Ibid.

33. This account of bin Laden's meeting with Khalil and the senior prince is from an interview with Khalil A. Khalil, January 29, 2002, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (SC). Khalil declined to identify the prince by name but said that "King Fahd is his direct uncle." This may have been Prince Turki.

34. Douglas Jehl,
The New York Times,
December 27, 2001.

35. Prince Turki, MBC television and
Arab
News,
November 7, 2001. In an interview with ABC's
Nightline
on December 10, 2001, Turki cited bin Laden's proposals to lead an anti-Iraqi jihad as "the first signs of a disturbed mind, in my view." The implication is that Turki was untroubled by bin Laden prior to the autumn of 1990.

36. "Whereas before . . . as well as beyond" is from the memo "Démarche to Pakistan on Hekmatyar and Sayyaf Gulf Statements," January 28, 1991; excised and released April 6, 2000. The memo urges a "strong approach to the GOP [Government of Pakistan], preferably by both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia," and also urges making the same points to Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Badeeb's trip is from an interview with Ahmed Badeeb, February 1, 2002, Jedda, Saudi Arabia (SC).

CHAPTER 12: "WE ARE IN DANGER"

1. The account in this chapter of the CIA covert action program to ship captured Iraqi armor, artillery, and other equipment to Pakistan for the Afghan rebels is drawn from interviews with multiple U.S. and Saudi officials. While working as a correspondent in Pakistan and Kabul, the author also reported on the program a few months after it began. Steve Coll,
Washington Post,
October 1, 1991.

2. Interviews with U.S. officials, including Peter Tomsen, January 21, 2002, Omaha, Nebraska (SC).

3. Charles Cogan, former chief of the Near East Division in the Directorate of Operations, wrote in 1990 that the Tanai coup "revealed, once again, that Gulbuddin, whatever his negative public image, leaves the other resistance leaders far behind in terms of tactics and maneuvering." Cogan acknowledged, however, that this "still did not make Gulbuddin a credible alternative to Najibullah." Not all of his former colleagues at the CIA accepted the second point. See Charles G. Cogan,
"
Shawl of Lead,"
Conflict,
p. 197.

4. Barnett R. Rubin,
The Fragmentation of
Afghanistan,
p. 255.

5. This account of CIA and State Department reporting about Arab radicals is from interviews with U.S. officials.

6. Interview with Milt Bearden, March 25, 2002, Tysons Corner, Virginia (SC).

7. "It is not the world" is from Joshua Tei-telbaum,
Holier Than Thou,
p. 30. "Crusaders," ibid., p. 29. "Member of the establishment . . . against the regime" is from
Frontline,
"Hunting bin Laden," March 21, 2000. Mary Anne Weaver in
The New Yorker,
January 24, 2000, sees bin Laden increasingly "under the sway" of Hawali and another "awakening sheikh," Salman Awdah, during this period.

8. Teitelbaum,
Holier Than Thou,
pp. 32-36.

9. The spending of the Ministry of Pilgrimage and Religious Trusts and numbers of religious employees are from Teitelbaum,
Holier Than Thou,
p. 101. Fahd's offer of free Korans is from Alexei Vassiliev,
The History of
Saudi Arabia,
p. 473. Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud algaisal traveled to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan within weeks of the Soviet Union's formal dissolution early in 1992, opening Saudi embassies in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Saud emphasized that Islam provided the foundation for Saudi relations in the Central Asian region. See Saleh al-Khatlan, "Saudi Foreign Policy Toward Central Asia,"
Journal of King
Abdulaziz University,
2000.

10. Interviews with U.S. officials. Schroen's exchange with Prince Turki from interview with Gary Schroen, July 31, 2002, Washington D.C. (SC).

11. Interview with Prince Turki, August 2, 2002, Cancun, Mexico (SC).

12. Interviews with U.S. officials. That Hekmatyar, Sayyaf, and Haqqanni had offices in Saudi Arabia for mosque fund-raising is from written communication to the author from Peter Tomsen, May 3, 2003.

13. The account of the Saudi escort telling bin Laden that the Americans were out to kill him is from an interview with Vincent Cannistraro, January 8, 2002, Rosslyn, Virginia (SC). Cannistraro was chief of operations and analysis at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center during this period. He said the account had been provided to him by a longtime Saudi intelligence officer directly involved. A
New York Times
account published on January 14, 2001, based on extensive interviews with U.S. and Arab sources, reported that bin Laden later told "associates" that Saudi Arabia had hired the Pakistani intelligence service to kill him, although there was no evidence, the
Times
story said, that such a plot ever existed. There are various published accounts of bin Laden's forced departure from Saudi Arabia, which is generally dated to mid-1991, around the time of the Letter of Demands controversy within the kingdom. The former U.S. counterterrorism officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon report that bin Laden first traveled to Afghanistan, then to Sudan. See their book,
The Age of Sacred
Terror,
p. 110. Other accounts have him traveling initially to Pakistan. Peter L. Bergen, in
Holy War, Inc.,
p. 29, quotes trial testimony by former associates reporting that bin Laden arrived in Sudan with family and followers in his personal jet. For the interrogation statements of two bin Laden associates, see National Commission final report, p. 57.