The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From Al Qa'ida to ISIS (15 page)

I believe that one of the reasons CIA failed on the collection front—which should be a lesson learned moving forward—was our
focus on covert action in Iraq. During the 1990s the United States had been intent on regime change in Iraq—in 1998, Congress made it the stated policy of the United States—and CIA had been in the lead. The day-to-day aim of our operations officers at that time had been to build ties to the Kurds in northern Iraq who might play a role in the overthrow of Saddam, and who were providing us with locations from which to operate against him. Our collection focus was on finding Sunnis in Saddam’s military who might be willing and able to overthrow him and take control of the country (and develop a new and much different relationship with the United States in the process). With all this, collection on other issues related to Iraq—including WMD—suffered.

It is important to remember that CIA doesn’t authorize covert action. That’s a policy decision that requires the direction and signature of the president of the United States. Covert action has a number of unseen costs. One is that it diverts you from traditional foreign intelligence collection. When an administration gives CIA the mission of conducting a covert action, it doesn’t assign additional people to perform the mission. The Congressional oversight committees are briefed on covert actions, and they sometimes provide additional funding, but they do not raise the Agency’s personnel ceiling just because there is a new plan. So the folks who could have been trying to figure out how to collect intelligence from Saddam’s inner circle to discover Saddam’s plans, intentions, and capabilities with regard to weapons of mass destruction were diverted to trying to find generals willing to overthrow him.

We had the perfect storm of imperfect intelligence. We were not collecting the kind of information that would have saved us from inaccurate analysis, and we were not rigorously asking ourselves how confident we were in the collected information. Had we done either, the intelligence outcome would have been different—and possibly the policy outcome as well.

Charles Duelfer, who led the US WMD hunt in Iraq after the invasion, concluded that Saddam had wanted to maintain the appearance of having weapons of mass destruction in order to deter his number one enemy, Iran. But Duelfer found that Saddam had thought that US intelligence was good enough to figure out the real story and, therefore, that the United States would eventually lower the sanctions and, more important, not attack him. Even Saddam turned out to be overconfident in US intelligence capabilities.

Charles Duelfer once told me an instructive story about Saddam. In US custody, a clean-shaven Saddam became ill and needed medical attention. He was taken to a US military facility, where he proceeded to flirt with a nurse. The nurse, not surprisingly, was not responsive to the flirtations. On the way back to his cell, Saddam asked his American escort—his US debriefer, with whom Saddam had developed rapport—why the nurse had paid no attention to him. The escort, as a joke, said, “American women like men with facial hair.” The next day Saddam started growing a full beard. When, a few weeks later, Saddam walked into the Iraqi courtroom that would convict him and sentence him to death, he had quite a bit of facial hair. Media commentators, including a former CIA analyst, speculated that Saddam was trying to play to the religious elements of the court by looking Islamic. The real reason—trying to make himself more attractive to a US nurse—was hidden from the public. It was a humorous example of Saddam’s misjudging Americans.

Duelfer also told me that Saddam had told him that he did not believe that the United States would object to his invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Saddam, in essence, said, “Look, if you guys did not want me to go into Kuwait, why didn’t you tell me you would deploy five hundred thousand troops, six carrier battle groups, fourteen hundred combat aircraft and a coalition of thirty-two countries? I am not crazy. If you had simply told me, I would not have
gone into Kuwait.” Again, he assumed that the United States was smart enough to know what it was doing and that we did not have a problem with his invasion of Kuwait. Another misjudgment on his part.

Together all of these stories paint a picture of Saddam misjudging us and we misjudging him. It was a recipe that took us to war and caused him to lose his rule.

* * *

The fear of al Qa‘ida, and of the damage that could be done if a rogue state like Iraq ever shared weapons of mass destruction with the group, led us to war. Oddly, one of the main results of the road we went down in Iraq—like Route Irish itself—was the creation of an environment that helped spread al Qa‘ida’s narrative across the Muslim world. The spread of al Qa‘ida’s ideology, which began when some of its operatives left South Asia after the fall of the Taliban in late 2001, was given a new boost by a narrative that said that the United States was intent on bringing war to Muslim lands.

CHAPTER 6

Al Qa‘ida’s Nine Lives

C
IA’s counterterrorism analysts filed into my office in early 2013 for a prep session for a Deputies Committee, a meeting of all the number twos from the key national security departments and agencies in the government. It was a regular occurrence during my time as deputy director. During a discussion, one of the analysts handed me a single sheet of paper. He said, “This is the way we think about the threat posed by al Qa‘ida to the homeland.” It was a spectrum—a terrorist threat spectrum. At the left end was “No Threat.” “That is a good place to be,” said the analyst. At the right end was “Terrorists with Weapons of Mass Destruction.” “That is not a good place to be,” added another analyst. “You got that right,” I answered.

Ignoring my intervention, the original analyst continued, pointing out that just to the left of the WMD point on the spectrum is where al Qa‘ida was on 9/11—the ability to carry out simultaneous, catastrophic attacks that kill thousands. Slightly to left of that is the ability to carry out single significant attacks that can kill hundreds. Further to the left on the spectrum and just to the right of “No Threat” are the lone wolves—the individuals who have no connection
with an al Qa‘ida group but are motivated by the group’s ideology. The Boston Marathon bombing fit this category to a tee.

I took the chart to the Deputies Meeting and shared it with my colleagues. I told them, “Here is a great way to think about the threat from al Qa‘ida and to measure how we are doing over time against the group and its allies.” They agreed. It was clear to everyone, of course, that terrorists with WMD was the worst nightmare for all of us. But outcomes well short of that could still be horrific. We could not afford to become complacent. The lives of American citizens and the citizens of our allies depended on us.

* * *

Bin Ladin welcomed the US intervention in Iraq. He believed that US soldiers in Iraq fit perfectly into his narrative. He believed that the Soviet Union, by invading Afghanistan and by investing much money and many young men, had significantly weakened itself as a nation. And he believed that jihadists, by driving the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan, had dealt a body blow to its prestige and played a major role in its destruction. And now he wanted to do the same thing to America—draw us into Afghanistan and Iraq, watch us expend significant resources, and drive us out of the Middle East, hopefully destroying in the process the country that, in his mind, was doing more than any other to undermine and ultimately destroy Islam.

Bin Ladin himself, however, was far from Iraq. In the run-up to the Iraq War and in the initial months of the war, he was hiding in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We never figured out exactly where he was hiding in those early years. In 2005 he moved to a newly built compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he would stay for the next six years. His focus during this period was on continuing al Qa‘ida’s attacks against the West and
dealing with the rapid and significant changes his organization was undergoing. In the space of only five years, al Qa‘ida moved down, then up, and back down the analysts’ threat spectrum. It was a remarkable journey—one demonstrating both the group’s vulnerability and its resilience.

The history of this period teaches what I believe is the most fundamental lesson of the world of counterterrorism—al Qa‘ida has nine lives. When the West and its allies keep pressure on al Qa‘ida, when it has to worry about its own security more than it can about its operations, al Qa‘ida loses capability. When that pressure is not there, when it is free to operate, its capabilities grow. It is a pattern that has played out over and over again, wherever al Qa‘ida has operated.

* * *

After being forced out of Afghanistan at the end of 2001, some of Bin Ladin’s senior subordinates settled in the remote area of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, but most took up residence in prearranged safe houses in the settled areas of Pakistan, and they regrouped quickly. At the same time, many key operatives made the decision to leave South Asia and return to their countries of origin. Both groups now posed a threat—those left in South Asia and those spread around the globe. This second group began the spread of al Qa‘ida’s ideology outside of South Asia. The war in Iraq did not start this spread, but it reinforced it.

By late 2001 the prestige of being the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks had propelled Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) into a new job—the role of external operations chief for al Qa‘ida. Working from the safe houses in Pakistan, KSM quickly began planning new operations against the West. In a short time KSM had several plots under way, including Richard Reid’s attempt to use a shoe bomb in December 2001 to bring down an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami, and the successful assault in April 2002 against
a Jewish synagogue in Tunisia, which killed nineteen. KSM was also planning to use operatives recruited in Saudi Arabia to hijack aircraft and crash them into London’s Heathrow airport, employ terrorists from Southeast Asia to conduct a similar aircraft attack against skyscrapers in California, and send a team of Pakistanis to smuggle explosives into New York to target gas stations, railroad tracks, and bridges. In addition to these plots, KSM was working to carry out simultaneous attacks in Karachi, Pakistan—against the US consulate, Western travelers at the airport, and Westerners residing in the Karachi area. KSM, bursting with confidence as a result of 9/11, was being extraordinarily aggressive. We would later learn that he also personally decapitated
Wall Street Journal
reporter Daniel Pearl in a demonstration of brutality that is hard to fathom. I believe that KSM is the personification of evil.

By a coincidence, I was back in the presidential briefing seat the day after Pearl was murdered. I was filling in for my successor, who’d wanted to take a day off. When I met Tenet to conduct the final prep session for the briefing, he asked if I was going to show the president the video of Pearl’s decapitation, which al Qa‘ida had posted on the Internet. I said, “I have it with me, but there is no way I am going to show it to the president.” Tenet and I ran into Condi Rice as we entered the West Wing and she too asked about the video. Now I was wondering if I had made the wrong call in deciding not to show it to Bush. The answer became very clear when, in the middle of the discussion about Pearl’s murder, Rice told the president, “Michael has the video, if you want to see it.” The president snapped, “Why in the hell would I want to watch that?” I felt vindicated, and I had not lost my sense of what to share with the president and what not to share.

Those operatives emerging from South Asia in the chaotic post-9/11 environment not only worked to support KSM’s plots, they did their own plotting against local targets—some with great
success. Indonesian-born Riduan bin Isomuddin—best known among his extremist colleagues as “Hambali”—left Afghanistan and became the operational leader of the terrorist group Jemaah Islamiya. He helped plan the October 2002 bombings in Bali that killed more than two hundred people, and facilitated the financing for the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Jakarta in August 2003.

‘Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who’d helped lead the successful attack against the USS
Cole
in the Port of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, also fled Afghanistan after 9/11 and returned to the Gulf, this time working out of the United Arab Emirates. From there he planned a successful attack on the French tanker MV
Limburg
off the coast of Yemen in October 2002. At the time of his arrest in November 2002, he was working on a number of plots, including attacking a US housing compound in Saudi Arabia, flying a plane into a US warship in Port Rashid, UAE, and striking oil tankers in the Strait of Gibraltar.

In short, the immediate post-9/11 period saw what was probably the most significant plotting in al Qa‘ida’s history—despite its having lost its Afghan sanctuary. The scope of the plotting demonstrated the strength of the organization that Bin Ladin had built—in particular, the plans the group had made to resettle in the cities of Pakistan, if necessary. It was a reflection of the sense of confidence that al Qa‘ida had. And it was a reflection of the additional funding flowing to al Qa‘ida in the aftermath of 9/11, largely from private donors in Arab countries. Nothing boosts funding for a terrorist group like a successful attack.

What did all these operatives have in common? Three things. One, they were as committed to “the cause” and to jihad against the West, in particular the United States, as was Bin Ladin himself. Many had previously fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets and had seen many of their friends die in a fight that they eventually
won. Two, they wanted to enjoy the success that KSM enjoyed. They wanted to lead a great victory against their enemy. KSM’s rapid rise to the top rungs of al Qa‘ida after 9/11 created strong incentives for others to mimic his career path. And three, they brought capability to the table. Not all terrorists are smart and skilled. In fact, many are not. But these operatives were. They were the best and deadliest of their generation of terrorists—battle-hardened from fighting in Afghanistan. These operatives were very dangerous.