At The Center Of The Storm Part 8

These two issues ill.u.s.trate how Washington operates under its own laws of physics. One rule inside the Beltway is that for every action there is an unequal and opposite overreaction. Here is an example. The cover of the June 3, 2002, edition of Time Time magazine read "The Bombsh.e.l.l Memo." Inside was an article t.i.tled "How the FBI Blew the Case." The lengthy piece recounted how an unknown FBI agent, Coleen Rowley, had just sent a thirteen-page letter to FBI director Bob Mueller, copying members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In the letter Rowley criticized the Bureau for failing to act on requests from her Minneapolis field office for permission to obtain a warrant to search the belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-born al-Qa'ida operative who had been arrested on August 17, 2001. The article also tied in complaints from FBI special agents in Phoenix who had sent a memo to their headquarters on July 10, 2001, trying and failing to draw attention to potential Islamic terrorists attending flight schools in the United States. magazine read "The Bombsh.e.l.l Memo." Inside was an article t.i.tled "How the FBI Blew the Case." The lengthy piece recounted how an unknown FBI agent, Coleen Rowley, had just sent a thirteen-page letter to FBI director Bob Mueller, copying members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In the letter Rowley criticized the Bureau for failing to act on requests from her Minneapolis field office for permission to obtain a warrant to search the belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-born al-Qa'ida operative who had been arrested on August 17, 2001. The article also tied in complaints from FBI special agents in Phoenix who had sent a memo to their headquarters on July 10, 2001, trying and failing to draw attention to potential Islamic terrorists attending flight schools in the United States.

As news magazine stories go, this one was pretty devastating. A proud organization such as the FBI never likes to hear that it has blown any case, much less the biggest terrorism a.s.sault in our history. No organization, though, is better at defending itself than the FBI, and it had no intention of taking this rap lying down. The Bureau knows that when you get slugged in Time Time, you punch back in Newsweek Newsweek, and that's just what it did.

The very next week the cover of Newsweek Newsweek screamed, "The 9/11 Terrorists the CIA Should Have Caught." The story inside, t.i.tled "The Hijackers We Let Escape," described how CIA picked up the trail of two men, later to become 9/11 hijackers, when they attended a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. The article said, somewhat incorrectly, that CIA "tracked one of the terrorists, Nawaf al-Hazmi, as he flew from the meeting to Los Angeles." screamed, "The 9/11 Terrorists the CIA Should Have Caught." The story inside, t.i.tled "The Hijackers We Let Escape," described how CIA picked up the trail of two men, later to become 9/11 hijackers, when they attended a meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. The article said, somewhat incorrectly, that CIA "tracked one of the terrorists, Nawaf al-Hazmi, as he flew from the meeting to Los Angeles." Newsweek Newsweek went on to say that "astonishingly, the CIA did nothing with this information," and that CIA did not notify the FBI, "which could have covertly tracked [the terrorists] to find out their mission." An unnamed FBI official was quoted as saying that CIA's not sharing the information about the two men was "unforgivable." Bureau sources told the news magazine that if they had known of the two men, they could have connected them to all the other hijackers-an argument went on to say that "astonishingly, the CIA did nothing with this information," and that CIA did not notify the FBI, "which could have covertly tracked [the terrorists] to find out their mission." An unnamed FBI official was quoted as saying that CIA's not sharing the information about the two men was "unforgivable." Bureau sources told the news magazine that if they had known of the two men, they could have connected them to all the other hijackers-an argument Newsweek Newsweek found "compelling." The article set off a firestorm and became a pillar of the conventional wisdom that CIA had intentionally withheld information from the Bureau. found "compelling." The article set off a firestorm and became a pillar of the conventional wisdom that CIA had intentionally withheld information from the Bureau.

A few days later, on June 8, Newsweek Newsweek senior writer Evan Thomas was discussing the article on senior writer Evan Thomas was discussing the article on Inside Washington Inside Washington, a syndicated talk show, when host Gordon Peterson asked, "How is Newsweek Newsweek's relationship with the FBI these days?" Thomas answered, "Well, it was pretty good since we did their bidding." Thomas, who is a very knowledgeable reporter steeped in the intricacies of national security and intelligence reporting, later called CIA's press office to claim that he had misspoken and didn't really know what he was talking about in this instance. Whether he did or not, a very complex story had been reduced to a b.u.mper sticker-"CIA Intentionally Withheld Information"-and despite our best efforts, the 9/11 Commission, the Congressional Joint Inquiry, and the ma.s.s media largely bought into it.

To me, what's important to realize is that the watchlisting problem was not, as is so often claimed, an example of CIA and FBI not working with each other. Throughout this pre-9/11 period both agencies were coordinating closely. Louis Freeh and I worked very hard to overcome historical animosities and misunderstandings and to get both organizations to recognize that they were on the same team. Through two administrations, I had no closer relationships in Washington than with Louis Freeh, Bob Mueller, and their senior officers. While our cultures and missions may have been different, there was no difference in the heartfelt way CIA officers and FBI special agents tried to protect the country. We frequently held high-level coordination meetings, committed to a.s.signing some of our best people to each others' headquarters (jokingly referred to as the "hostage exchange program"), and tried to help each other in every way possible.

Six FBI officers were a.s.signed to CIA headquarters at the time of 9/11; their role was to ensure that the Bureau's interests were always considered and that information valuable to the Bureau was pa.s.sed back to the home office through official and unofficial channels. A similar group of CIA officers worked out of the FBI offices to help translate CIA's needs and capabilities to our law enforcement partners. Of course, there were coordination problems-agencies are bound to have different perspectives over their equally important missions. (The post-9/11 Patriot Act went a long way toward fixing some of these issues.) What's critical-and what the 9/11 Commission and others missed-is that the so-called wall preventing a free flow of intelligence to FBI criminal investigators was not really the heart of the matter. The main problems were old-fashioned ones: too few people on both sides working on too many issues. We needed more people, better communications, and, particularly on the FBI side, better information technology support. After 9/11, Bob Mueller and I sought even more ways to drive our organizations closer together. In the aftermath of such a tragedy it was perhaps inevitable that people would try to drive wedges between us.

The watchlisting story begins as part of the investigation into the August 1998 bombing of the two U.S. emba.s.sies in Africa. FBI agents pursuing that case came up with a telephone number of a suspected terrorist facility in the Middle East believed to be a.s.sociated with al-Qa'ida or Egyptian Islamic Jihad terrorists. That suspicious phone number was shared with CIA, NSA, DIA, the State and Treasury departments, and others. About a year later, in December 1999, intelligence collected from that phone indicated that several men would be traveling to Kuala Lumpur for a meeting to be held in Malaysia early the next month. The information about the meeting was distributed to a number of agencies, including the FBI, at the same time.

As is often the case, the intercepted communications did not include the full names of any of the partic.i.p.ants. We had only first names to go on. Nonetheless, CIA launched a major effort to see if we could identify who the attendees were and what they were up to. With the help of a local intelligence agency, on January 4, 2000, one person whom we initially knew only as "Khalid" was identified as he pa.s.sed through a third country en route to Malaysia. The local intelligence service copied the man's pa.s.sport, which identified him as Khalid al-Mihdhar. The pa.s.sport also carried a stamp indicating that al-Mihdhar held a valid entry visa for the United States. That information was sent back to Washington electronically.

We did not know who al-Mihdhar was at first. At the time of the Malaysia meeting, we were in the midst of the largest counterterrorist operation in history, dealing with the Millennium threat. We wanted to be sure that meeting partic.i.p.ants were not headed to Southeast Asia to launch an attack. Based on the first name, Khalid, and a phone number, a CIA desk officer initiated surveillance of the individual during his overnight layover on the way to Malaysia.

In a cable dated January 4, 2000, CIA's officers at the intermediate stop reported both to CIA headquarters and to our officers in Kuala Lumpur that a Khalid al-Mihdhar had been identified by local authorities and a copy of his pa.s.sport had been obtained.

The next day, January 5, CIA officers in Saudi Arabia e-mailed headquarters stating that al-Mihdhar's visa application from the previous year had been reviewed and he had listed his destination as New York and his intended travel date as May 2, 1999. The cable also stated that the information on the visa application form matched the information in the visa, indicating that the visa was still valid.

Once this e-mail came to CIA, it was opened by CIA officers and three FBI officers detailed to the Counterterrorism Center. A senior CIA officer on the scene recently said to me, "Once Mihdhar's picture and visa information were received, everyone agreed that the information should immediately be sent to the FBI. Instructions were given to do so. There was a contemporaneous e-mail in CIA staff traffic, which CIA and FBI employees had access to, indicating that the data had in fact been sent to the FBI. Everyone believed it had been done. The parts of our operation that got the most criticism were the parts where CIA and the FBI were working most closely together."

What never happened was a formal transmission to the FBI, in a report called a CIR (Central Intelligence Report), doc.u.menting what everyone believed had already occurred, the sending of al-Mihdhar's photo and visa data. An FBI officer a.s.signed to CIA, known as a "detailee," in fact initiated the drafting of the formal report, but it was never cleared for transmission. The same senior officer said to me, "The CIR was a separate process, providing retroactive doc.u.mentation of the fact the stuff had already been pa.s.sed, not to convey new information."

No excuses. However, overworked men and women who, by their actions, were saving lives around the world all believed the information had been shared with the FBI.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Malaysia, we learned that the meeting was being hosted in a condo owned by someone named Yazid Sufaat. We could tell that those in attendance were acting suspiciously, but at the time, we were unable to learn what was being discussed.

On January 6, in an e-mail to a colleague back at Langley, a CIA officer serving at FBI headquarters stated that he had shown an FBI special agent an NSA report on some of the Malaysia meeting's partic.i.p.ants, but that the FBI agent was already aware of the meeting. The CIA officer described in extensive detail surveillance efforts against the group in Malaysia and shared this information with several FBI officers. Twice while the surveillance operation was ongoing, then FBI director Louis Freeh was briefed on the effort by his own staff.

Once we had learned the names of several of the individuals who were attending the Malaysia meeting, CIA should have placed them on a watchlist that might have prevented their entering the United States. A half a dozen other agencies, including the FBI, also had the names and could have done so as well, but did not. That does not absolve CIA from blame. We later discovered that there was inadequate staff training on how to handle watchlist submissions. Officers in the field, where primary responsibility for watchlisting resided, thought headquarters would do it, and vice versa. Clearly, a communication breakdown occurred, and we worked hard to rectify the shortcoming once we were aware of it after 9/11.

While we were able to get the names of some of the partic.i.p.ants, we were never able to determine what went on at the meeting in Malaysia. When the session in Kuala Lumpur broke up, the partic.i.p.ants dispersed. Two, al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, flew to Bangkok (not directly to Los Angeles, as Newsweek Newsweek contended in al-Hazmi's case). We asked the local intelligence service to keep an eye on them. Almost two months after the fact, on March 5, 2000, the Thais pa.s.sed on information that said that Nawaf al-Hazmi had arrived in Bangkok in early January and departed for Los Angeles about a week later, arriving on January 15 on United Airlines Flight 2. The information made no reference to al-Mihdhar, although we learned much later that he, too, was on the same United Airlines flight. contended in al-Hazmi's case). We asked the local intelligence service to keep an eye on them. Almost two months after the fact, on March 5, 2000, the Thais pa.s.sed on information that said that Nawaf al-Hazmi had arrived in Bangkok in early January and departed for Los Angeles about a week later, arriving on January 15 on United Airlines Flight 2. The information made no reference to al-Mihdhar, although we learned much later that he, too, was on the same United Airlines flight.

CIA officers in the field sent this information back to headquarters but included it at the end of a cable that contained routine information. The cable was marked as being for "information" rather than "action." Unfortunately, no one-not the CIA officers nor their FBI colleagues detailed to CTC-connected the name Nawaf al-Hazmi with the meeting of eight weeks before.

What would later prove a raw point between CIA and FBI involved an al-Qa'ida operative we at first knew only as "Khallad." FBI had developed sketchy intelligence about Khallad before the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Cole. After the attack, we discovered further intelligence linking Khallad to the phone number in Yemen that had been a.s.sociated with the Kuala Lumpur meeting. In a meeting in November, a senior FBI official, John O'Neill, received Khallad's full name and a copy of his photo. (John would later retire from the FBI and take a job as chief of security at the World Trade Center, and tragically die there in what was his third week on the job.) By the end of November 2000, CIA and FBI both knew Khallad's full name, Khallad bin Attash, had his picture, and knew he was a senior security official for Bin Ladin. Both organizations knew he had supported the After the attack, we discovered further intelligence linking Khallad to the phone number in Yemen that had been a.s.sociated with the Kuala Lumpur meeting. In a meeting in November, a senior FBI official, John O'Neill, received Khallad's full name and a copy of his photo. (John would later retire from the FBI and take a job as chief of security at the World Trade Center, and tragically die there in what was his third week on the job.) By the end of November 2000, CIA and FBI both knew Khallad's full name, Khallad bin Attash, had his picture, and knew he was a senior security official for Bin Ladin. Both organizations knew he had supported the Cole Cole attack. attack.

By December 2000, investigators began wondering whether Khallad bin Attash and Khalid al-Mihdhar (who was at the Malaysia meeting the previous January) might be one and the same. It turned out that both were at the meeting, but they were two different individuals. That month a CIA officer and his FBI colleague based in Islamabad showed the photo O'Neill had obtained to a jointly run intelligence source who had insights into al-Qa'ida.

They conducted what is known in the intelligence business as a "rolling car meeting," or "RCM." To avoid compromising the source, they picked him up at nighttime on a busy street and conducted their business while driving around. A second armed female CIA case officer was in the backseat for security. The a.s.set was shown the several photos and correctly picked out the one of Khallad by flashlight.

At a follow-up meeting in January, this time at the U.S. emba.s.sy in Islamabad, the source was shown surveillance photos taken in Malaysia. With the FBI a.s.sistant legal attache and two CIA case officers present, he identified someone who he said was Khallad. (He had the wrong person, but we would not know that until after 9/11.) Two weeks later, according to CIA message traffic, a group of FBI a.n.a.lysts from the New York field office were sent on temporary duty to Pakistan in part to debrief this same a.s.set.

On June 11, 2001, an a.n.a.lyst from FBI headquarters, another FBI a.n.a.lyst a.s.signed to CIA's CTC, and a lone CIA a.n.a.lyst traveled to the Bureau's New York field office to brainstorm the Cole Cole investigation. The FBI a.n.a.lyst carried with her the surveillance photos taken in Malaysia. The photos were discussed with the local special agents, who reportedly had requested copies. The FBI a.n.a.lyst told them that she would try to get the photos "over the wall." After 9/11, several FBI officials would allege that CIA had refused to share these photos with the Bureau. On the day of 9/11 itself, CIA and FBI officers from CTC were on the way to brief Director Mueller on the case investigations, with photos in hand. They never got there. investigation. The FBI a.n.a.lyst carried with her the surveillance photos taken in Malaysia. The photos were discussed with the local special agents, who reportedly had requested copies. The FBI a.n.a.lyst told them that she would try to get the photos "over the wall." After 9/11, several FBI officials would allege that CIA had refused to share these photos with the Bureau. On the day of 9/11 itself, CIA and FBI officers from CTC were on the way to brief Director Mueller on the case investigations, with photos in hand. They never got there.

By July 2001, indications were everywhere that a major terrorist attack was about to occur. As I later told the 9/11 Commission, "the system was blinking red." I instructed the people in CTC to review everything in their files to search for any clue that might suggest what was coming. The request, though, was redundant. Everyone in CTC felt as strongly as I did that something catastrophic was about to happen, and they had already begun such a review.

In mid-August a.n.a.lysts reviewing the Kuala Lumpur meeting came across the cable that said that Nawaf al-Hazmi had come to the United States in January 2000. Contact with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service showed no record of al-Hazmi's ever having left the country. The a.n.a.lysts then checked on the other named individuals believed to have attended the Malaysian meeting and found that Khalid al-Mihdhar had arrived in the United States along with al-Hazmi, departed on June 10, 2001, and then returned July 4, 2001.

This alarmed us sufficiently that on August 23 an immediate message went out alerting the State Department, FBI, INS, Customs, and others about the pair and asking that they be barred from entering the country if they were outside the United States, and tracked down if they were still here. Even though they were watchlisted, that act alone did not ensure that they would be automatically placed on a no-fly list preventing them from boarding an airplane. In fact, this did not occur, and even though they were watchlisted nineteen days before 9/11, they were not found. Obviously, if we had watchlisted the two a year and a half earlier, when they first came across our radar screen, we would have had a far better chance of preventing them from subsequently entering the United States. That was essentially what happened to Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who, for other reasons, was several times denied entry into the United States. Al-Qa'ida simply replaced him among the plotters, and I feel certain the same would have happened with al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar.

CIA had multiple opportunities to notice the significant information in our holdings and watchlist al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. Unfortunately, until August, we missed them all. What if we had noticed our mistake after al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi entered the United States, but months rather than weeks before the plot unfolded? Most likely the two men would have been deported. In theory, the FBI might have secretly followed them, which might have led to our learning of some of their collaborators in this country, but that may have run counter to Bureau practice at the time. Deportation might have delayed but probably would not have stopped 9/11. In the final a.n.a.lysis, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were soldiers, not generals-replaceable parts in a determined killing machine.

In my view, another opportunity may have been lost by the inability of the FBI lawyers to figure out a way to search the luggage of Zacarias Moussaoui. The first time I heard of him was on August 23, 2001, when CTC provided me with a terrorist threat update covering a large number of topics. Included in the twelve items on the agenda was information regarding the arrest of an a.s.sociate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; al-Qa'ida kidnapping threats in Turkey, India, and Indonesia; a discussion of the pending deportation from the UAE to France of Djamel Beghal, who intended to blow up the U.S. emba.s.sy in Paris; the arrest of six Pakistanis in La Paz, Bolivia, who were intending to hijack an aircraft; and other items. The last item was about Moussaoui. The briefing chart was ent.i.tled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly."

A French national, Moussaoui was arrested on August 16, 2001, by the FBI on the grounds that he had overstayed his U.S. visa, but it wasn't the visa problem that brought him to the FBI's attention. Moussaoui had enrolled in flight school in Minnesota and paid for his training in cash. He was interested in learning to fly 747s, but not in taking off or landing. He was interested to learn that 747 doors do not open in flight. He wanted training on LondonJFK flights. Moussaoui's flight instructors did not like what they were seeing with this obviously unqualified student, and they alerted the FBI.

We immediately went to work on the case with the Bureau.

As alarming as the information on Moussaoui was, I was comforted by the fact that FBI had its hands on the guy. My a.s.sumption was that the Bureau would, as standard practice, brief d.i.c.k Clarke's Counterterrorism Security Group at the NSC, and the case would be well covered.

During the 9/11 Commission hearings, I was stunned to hear Tom Pickard, who was acting FBI director in August 2001, suggest that I I had somehow failed to notify had somehow failed to notify him him about Moussaoui. Failed to tell him? h.e.l.l, it was the FBI's case, their arrest. I had no idea that the Bureau wasn't aware of what its own people were doing. about Moussaoui. Failed to tell him? h.e.l.l, it was the FBI's case, their arrest. I had no idea that the Bureau wasn't aware of what its own people were doing.

More than four and a half years later, in the spring of 2006, I was subpoenaed as a possible witness for Moussaoui at his trial, held in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. In the end I was never called to testify. Moussaoui was duly found guilty of conspiracy to kill Americans and sentenced to life in prison. But in preparation for my possible testimony, and with the help of CIA's General Counsel's Office, I set out to learn everything I could about what the Agency had been able to put together after Moussaoui's arrest. The following account relies heavily on that information.

Let me stress that most of this is not not information I knew in 2001. information I knew in 2001.

On August 15, 2001, CIA officers in the field were told by FBI's Minneapolis office that Moussaoui would be arrested the next day. The CIA officers, in turn, informed the CTC of the impending arrest, and the CTC did a "trace" on Moussaoui, looking for anything that we might have on him in our files. That search came up negative. Before August 15, we had never heard of Zacarias Moussaoui, at least under his real name. Later, in January 2002, one of our sources told us that in Baku in 1997 he had met someone whom he now knew to be Moussaoui. At the time, Moussaoui was using the nom de guerre of Abu Khalid al Francia. The source reported on him to us in April 2001, using only the "al Francia" name. By August 18, Minneapolis special agent Harry Samit was in direct contact with Chuck Frahm, an FBI special agent a.s.signed to CIA who was then the deputy group chief for al-Qa'ida operations. Samit provided everything Minneapolis had on Moussaoui, which Frahm pa.s.sed on to CIA officers.

Even though Moussaoui was taken into custody on August 16, lawyers at the FBI believed that they did not have sufficient cause to obtain authority to search his belongings, but, at least from our perspective, that would soon change. On August 24, 2001, CIA learned that Moussaoui was a known quant.i.ty to the French internal service, the very capable Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, or DST. They said that Moussaoui had recruited a friend of his into Ibn Khattab's Chechnyan Mujahideen. Khattab's group had been accused of, among other things, attacks on a Red Cross hospital in Chechnya in 1996 and blowing up an apartment building in Moscow in 1999. The French investigated Moussaoui's extremist connections and a.s.sessed him as highly intelligent, extremely cynical, cold, stubborn, full of hatred and intolerance, and completely devoted to the Saudi-based extremist Wahabi cause.

On August 24, Harry Samit again e-mailed Chuck Frahm specifically asking Frahm to ask CIA's lead a.n.a.lyst, "Is there anything you have that establishes Ibn Khattab's connection to UBL/ Al-Qa'ida other than their past a.s.sociation? We are trying to close the wiggle room for FBI headquarters to claim that there is no connection to a foreign power. Since al-Qa'ida is a designated group, anything that you have which indicates an al-Qa'ida connection to Moussaoui via Ibn Khattab would help." Frahm asked the CIA a.n.a.lyst to jump on his computer to respond to Samit. She wrote: "Am not sure why the French info is not enough to firmly link Moussaoui to a terrorist group. Ibn al Khattab is well known to be the leader of the Chechen Mujahidin movement and to be a close buddy with bin Ladin from their earlier fighting days. From a read of the DST info, Moussaoui is a recruiter for Khattab." That same day, a CTC officer pa.s.sed the Khattab connection via e-mail to the CIA representative at the FBI. "No one in the FBI seems to have latched on to this. Perhaps you can educate them on Moussaoui. This may be all they need to open a FISA on Moussaoui." The "FISA" would have authorized the necessary search.

For us, the Khattab tie-in was sufficient evidence to show that Moussaoui was a terrorist, and thus we sent out a worldwide query through our own channels to the French, British, and other countries. Despite the FBI Minneapolis field office's view that Moussaoui might be engaging in flight training for the purpose of conspiring to use an airplane in the commission of a terrorist act, lawyers and others at FBI headquarters did not believe that the French information was enough to get a court-authorized search warrant. They felt that the information did not meet the threshold of the FISA statute making Moussaoui an "agent of a foreign power."

On August 30, the CIA officer again contacted a fellow CIA officer on a.s.signment at the FBI. "Please excuse my obvious frustration in this case. I am highly concerned that this is not paid the amount of attention it deserves. I do not want to be responsible when they [sic] surface again as members [sic] of a suicide terrorist op." The officer wasn't through. "I want an answer from a named FBI group chief for the record on these questions...several of which I have been asking since a week and a half ago. It is critical that a paper trail be established and clear. If this guy is let go, two years from now he will be talking to a control tower while aiming a 747 at the White House." This comment was particularly prescient because we later learned after 9/11 that Moussaoui had in fact asked Usama bin Ladin for permission to be able to attack the White House. FBI and CIA officers worked the legal obstacles from both ends. The Minneapolis field office was in touch with CTC; FBI and CIA officers at both respective headquarters tried to influence the outcome of the legal debate. When legal hurdles could not be overcome, they came up with a plan.

By August 31, with no FISA warrant in sight to allow access to Moussaoui's belongings, we began working up a scheme with the FBI that would have had Moussaoui deported to France. Our plan was to load Moussaoui's belongings separately, then turn his laptop and luggage over to French authorities for exploitation once he arrived in Paris. (The French did not require the same high level of probable cause that the FBI thought it needed in order to conduct a search.) Ultimately, we learned that the key lay not in Moussaoui's computer but in his luggage. On September 18, 2001, a week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we were informed that a trunk belonging to Moussaoui contained letters indicating that he was the U.S. marketing consultant for a Malaysian company called In Focus Tech. The next day, our officers told us that the general manager of In Focus Tech was Yazid Sufaat, and with that the circle closed and things started to come together in a hurry. Recall that this was the same Yazid Sufaat whose condo in Kuala Lumpur had been the venue for what turned out to be the first operational meeting in the planning for 9/11-the meeting, as noted earlier, that was also attended by al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi.

If we'd had those letters in Moussaoui's luggage connecting him to Sufaat and-through Sufaat, back to al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, who had just been placed on our watchlist-is it possible that enough bells and whistles might have gone off to allow us to make all the necessary connections? While all of us involved lie awake at night asking ourselves this question, I do not believe there was a silver bullet available to us to stop the tragedy of 9/11.

CIA did not watchlist al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar until August 23, 2001. FBI did not get into Moussaoui's luggage. The famous Phoenix memo, outlining concerns about terrorists being trained at flight schools, was not shared. The FBI's effort to find al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar was pursued with too few resources. Simply using commercially available software to track their credit card usage might have been decisive, but no such effort was made.

These missed opportunities obscured the hundreds of successful operations conducted by CIA and FBI together and stood out in high relief when discovered. They pointed out larger systemic shortcomings, in resources, people, and technology. They also highlighted something equally important: The al-Qa'ida operatives who killed three thousand people on September 11 understood that the United States had never thought about how to protect itself within its borders. Policies had never been put in place to address just how disconnected our airline security, watchlisting, border control, and visa policies were at the time. There was no comprehensive, layered system of domestic protection in place to compensate for the internal weaknesses that later came into full view. Yes, people made mistakes; every human interaction was far from where it needed to be. We, the entire government, owed the families of 9/11 better than they got from us. All All of us. of us.

CHAPTER 12

Into the Sanctuary

We need to go in fast, hard and light," we told the president. "Everyone, including al-Qa'ida and the Taliban, are expecting us to invade Afghanistan the same way the Soviets did in the 1980s. Bin Ladin and his followers expect a ma.s.sive invasion. They believe we will withdraw in the face of casualties and never engage them in hand-to-hand combat. They are going to get the surprise of their lives." Ours was a strategy unlike any other in recent American history. The plan CIA laid out for the president on September 13 and expanded at Camp David two days later stressed one thing: we would be the insurgents. Working closely with military Special Forces, CIA teams would be the ones using speed and agility to dislodge an emplaced foe. Our plan was to build on relationships that had been carefully forged with regional factions over recent years to give us allies who might help oust the Taliban. This war would never be "Americans against Afghans," we told the president. Rather, it would always be about helping Afghans rid their own country of a foreign menace, al-Qa'ida, and of the Taliban, who had allowed terrorists to hijack their country.

Five times in the two years prior prior to 9/11, CIA teams deployed to the Panjshir Valley of northern Afghanistan to meet with various tribal warlords, and particularly with Ahmed Shah Masood, the head of the Northern Alliance-a loose network of compet.i.tive tribal forces made up largely of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, and others who fought against the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. We bolstered Masood's intelligence capability against Bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida. Masood's brutal murder by al-Qa'ida on the eve of the 9/11 attacks might have undone our plan before it got under way if we hadn't maintained contact with other warlords in the north. And we also had long-standing, if much weaker, relationships with Pashtun tribes in the south. We knew who the players and who the pretenders were. By September 10, 2001, CIA had more than one hundred sources and subsources, and relationships with eight tribal networks spread across Afghanistan. Although these sources proved insufficient to steal the secret that would have predicted and prevented the attacks of 9/11, we were confident that, with the right authorities, we could get those responsible for the tragedy. to 9/11, CIA teams deployed to the Panjshir Valley of northern Afghanistan to meet with various tribal warlords, and particularly with Ahmed Shah Masood, the head of the Northern Alliance-a loose network of compet.i.tive tribal forces made up largely of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, and others who fought against the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. We bolstered Masood's intelligence capability against Bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida. Masood's brutal murder by al-Qa'ida on the eve of the 9/11 attacks might have undone our plan before it got under way if we hadn't maintained contact with other warlords in the north. And we also had long-standing, if much weaker, relationships with Pashtun tribes in the south. We knew who the players and who the pretenders were. By September 10, 2001, CIA had more than one hundred sources and subsources, and relationships with eight tribal networks spread across Afghanistan. Although these sources proved insufficient to steal the secret that would have predicted and prevented the attacks of 9/11, we were confident that, with the right authorities, we could get those responsible for the tragedy.

The president approved our recommendations on Monday, September 17, and provided us broad authorities to engage al-Qa'ida. As Cofer Black later told Congress, "the gloves came off" that day.

At the White House meeting that same day, the president declared, "I want the CIA to be first on the ground." I sent a memorandum to CIA senior officers stressing that "There can be no bureaucratic impediments to success. All the rules have changed. There must be an absolute and full sharing of information, ideas, and capabilities. We do not have time to hold meetings to fix problems-fix them quickly and smartly. Each person must a.s.sume an unprecedented degree of personal responsibility."

There has been a lot written about how Don Rumsfeld was supposedly unhappy that CIA was playing such a prominent role at the time. I never had that sense. We had a good plan. I was seeing my boss, the president of the United States, every day, and he was telling us "Go, go, go." It never occurred to me that we should do anything else.

Speed was everything. We needed to get a team into northern Afghanistan as soon as possible, to engage the various anti-Taliban leaders there and to measure the effect that the a.s.sa.s.sination of Masood had had on the Northern Alliance. Our bench of Afghan experts was strong but not deep, so we moved quickly to enhance it. To lead the mission, we found the perfect person, attending a pre-retirement seminar. Gary Schroen, deeply knowledgeable about the region, was friendly with many of the senior Afghan warlords and fluent in the local languages of Dari and Farsi. Instead of leaving government service as he had been planning before 9/11, Gary arrived in northern Afghanistan within two weeks of the attacks, at the head of a small team that would be the forerunner of Agency operations there for the next several years.

Sending a senior officer like Gary ill.u.s.trates the way the Agency operates. Gary was equivalent to a three-star general in rank, and he was first in with a squad of eight men who averaged forty-five years of age and twenty-five years of professional experience. Empowered to speak on behalf of the Agency, Gary was able to enter into agreements, make demands, and, not inconsequentially, dole out some of the millions of dollars in cash that he flew in with.

The CIA Northern Alliance Liaison Team, led by Gary Schroen, traveled to Afghanistan on an old Russian helicopter that we had purchased a year before 9/11 to facilitate our movements in the region. The NALT, as the team was known, set up shop in the village of Barak, at an elevation of 6,700 feet and surrounded by mountains as high as 9,000 feet. Living conditions in Barak were spartan to say the least. The NALT reported that sanitation conditions were "circa mid-12th century" but that the team was "healthy, motivated, and working hard." To remind themselves why they were there, they repainted the tail number on their MI-17 helicopter shortly after arriving, giving it the designation "091101."

Gary quickly established contact with Fahim Khan, one of the Northern Alliance leaders who figured prominently after the a.s.sa.s.sination of Masood, while also reaching out to other tribal leaders to learn who was with us and who was against us. Simultaneously, NALT team members sent back intelligence that would form the basis of targeting decisions in the military air campaign that was to follow.

Some of the contacts with tribal leaders were face to face. Others were conducted by radio and satellite telephones. Tribal leaders were asked, "Can we count on you to help drive al-Qa'ida and their Taliban protectors out of Afghanistan?" If the answer was yes, food, medical supplies, military equipment, and weapons would soon be air-dropped to them. Between mid-October and mid-December 2001, U.S. aircraft delivered 1.69 million pounds of goods in 108 airdrops to 41 locations throughout Afghanistan. Each drop was tailored to the specific requests and needs of the teams on the ground. One ethnic Uzbek leader told us that his most critical need was horse feed. Others needed saddles. These were shipped along with arms, portable hospitals, and food. Some of our officers slept on millions of dollars in cash, which was used to capitalize on the Afghan tradition of switching sides. A tribal leader who sided with the United States would, within hours, see the answer to his clan's prayers drop from the sky. It gave those warlords tremendous clout within their organizations. But if a tribal leader refused to work with us, essentially declaring himself and his clan our enemies, his clan might find themselves on the receiving end of a different kind of airdrop-a two-thousand-pound bomb courtesy of the U.S. military. Subtle, it wasn't, but neither were the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York that had brought us to Afghanistan.

In addition to working with various warlords, Agency officers in Afghanistan also secretly contacted Taliban officials to try to get them to turn over Bin Ladin. In one case, an agency team traveled to a virtual no-man's-land outside of Kabul for what they hoped would be a meeting with a very senior Taliban intelligence official. CIA headquarters gave the team wide lat.i.tude on deciding how to handle the matter. The Taliban official failed to show up, however, but did send his deputy. The stand-in made it clear that they had no intention of being helpful to us. That was a mistake. The CIA team literally rolled him up-in a carpet-threw him in the back of a truck in broad daylight, and spirited him back to U.S.-controlled territory, where he could be questioned. Scores of al-Qa'ida and Taliban were killed in U.S. airstrikes based on what we learned from that Taliban deputy.

On September 26, President Bush paid a visit to CIA headquarters. In a speech in the Agency lobby, in front of a wall of honor memorializing CIA officers who had died in the line of duty, he told our workforce how much confidence he had in them. He also reminded them that the American people expected "a 100-percent effort, a full-time, no-stop effort on not only securing our homeland but bringing to justice terrorists, no matter where they live, no matter where they hide." That, he noted, was "exactly what we're going to do." After the president's remarks, we briefed him on the first reports coming in from the NALT, which, unbeknownst to most of the world, had landed in Afghanistan that same day.

CIA was built to gather intelligence, not conduct wars. When it became clear that we were going to be asked to play a leading role in ousting al-Qa'ida, we added a new branch to our Counterterrorism Center-CTC Special Operations, or CTC/SO. To head up this new branch, we tapped Hank Crumpton, a slow-talking, quick-witted CIA officer who had recently completed a three-year tour of duty in Washington, including two years in CTC and one working with the FBI. Hank was the perfect man for the mission. He had spent ten years in sub-Saharan Africa working around insurgent groups; had extensive interagency experience, including a recent tour of duty with the FBI; and had led the CIA team that went to Yemen to investigate the USS Cole Cole bombing. Hank and his family had just arrived in an attractive overseas capital for what was supposed to be a three-year posting. A day or so later he got a call from headquarters: Stop unpacking. We need you back in Washington. To no one's surprise, Hank didn't hesitate for a moment. He knew that the decision to come back would be tough on his three kids. They'd just made the adjustment to a new home, the family belongings had arrived, they were ensconced in new schools, and the family dog had just gotten out of quarantine. "I know you are unhappy," Hank told them, "but think about the families of three thousand people who have just lost their lives. You've got it good. I need you to suck it up and help your mother repack. Let's go home." bombing. Hank and his family had just arrived in an attractive overseas capital for what was supposed to be a three-year posting. A day or so later he got a call from headquarters: Stop unpacking. We need you back in Washington. To no one's surprise, Hank didn't hesitate for a moment. He knew that the decision to come back would be tough on his three kids. They'd just made the adjustment to a new home, the family belongings had arrived, they were ensconced in new schools, and the family dog had just gotten out of quarantine. "I know you are unhappy," Hank told them, "but think about the families of three thousand people who have just lost their lives. You've got it good. I need you to suck it up and help your mother repack. Let's go home."

Upon his return from overseas, Hank headed directly to Langley from the airport. There, he met with Cofer Black, who outlined his expectations. "Your mission is to find al-Qa'ida, engage it, and destroy it."

Like Gary Schroen, John M. (who remains undercover and cannot be fully identified), a Naval Academy graduate with twenty-six years of government service, was on his way out of the Agency on 9/11. In fact, he was in the second day of a pre-retirement program at an outlying CIA facility in northern Virginia when the terrorists struck. John jumped in his car and found himself drawn to CIA headquarters. Having no specific a.s.signment, he spent the first day pitching in where he could, delivering messages and helping make sense of a chaotic situation. He told senior officials in the Directorate of Operations that if we had a job for him, he would withdraw his retirement papers. In the meantime, he traveled to New York City and volunteered to help dig through the rubble near the World Trade Center. When Hank heard about John's determination and availability, he quickly tapped him to be one of his deputies.

Another key player in the effort was Frank A., a hulking longtime veteran of CIA's clandestine service who planned and implemented the psychological operations of the Afghan campaign. Throughout the war he became one of our most valued strategic thinkers. Frank had enlisted in the Marine Corps as a young man and later joined the Agency, where he served with distinction on three continents. He is a no-nonsense, can-do kind of guy. I remember one Sat.u.r.day morning, shortly after 9/11, I was in CTC getting a briefing on operations. It turned out that someone had decided that that was a good day to test the headquarters fire alarms. The briefing kept getting interrupted. We could barely hear ourselves think. Frank calmly got up and ripped the wires out of the alarm in the room we were in. The briefing proceeded.

One of the biggest problems we faced in Afghanistan at the outset was how to foster cooperation with the mostly Tajik tribes in the Northern Alliance without alienating the country's Pashtuns, largely in the south, many of whom had once been supportive of the Taliban. The last thing we wanted on our hands was a civil war.

CIA was split into its own factions on the matter. Some officers, particularly those serving in Pakistan, argued that we should not align ourselves too closely with the Northern Alliance. In general, CTC/SO, our officers in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, and the NALT unit in northern Afghanistan disagreed. In their view, we couldn't wait for opposition forces to rise up in the south. Instead, we had to take advantage of the Northern Alliance's willingness to engage the enemy right away. I appreciated both arguments, but I agreed with Gary and Hank that momentum was critical.

The original NALT unit was followed by the deployment of six additional CIA teams in the first two months of the war. Like the first, each new team averaged eight members and included experienced officers with Farsi/Dari, Uzbek, Russian, and Arabic language capabilities. These officers were a.s.signed to work with tribal warlords across a broad expanse of northern and western Afghanistan.

The Northern Alliance controlled the mountainous northeastern corner of Afghanistan, including the Panjshir Valley, which led to the Shomali Plains, north of the capital of Kabul, along with some small patches in the central portion of the country. As yet, we had no allies in control of territory in the south. All we could do was hope that the south's partic.i.p.ation would fall in place as events progressed.

The war plan was for Northern Alliance forces, with the aid of U.S. airpower and targeting provided by CIA and Special Forces teams, to drive toward north-central Afghanistan and take the town of Mazar-i-Sharif. From there they could establish a land bridge to Uzbekistan, from which supplies could flow. At the same time other Northern Alliance forces would attack the town of Konduz, in the north, while still others would try to take Bamiyan, in central Afghanistan. Then Northern Alliance troops, a.s.sisted by the NALT, would head south through the Shomali Plains, toward Kabul.

The key to our strategy was in the way our Afghan allies could be motivated. Based on years of experience in the region, CIA officers knew that the way to galvanize the local units was to appeal to their sense of prestige and honor as it was defined in tribal terms. This required a cultural understanding based on trust and confidence.

At the outset of the war in Afghanistan, CIA's senior officer dealing with Pakistan recommended a limited air campaign in the south, focusing on Taliban air defenses, facilities physically and symbolically a.s.sociated with Mullah Omar and UBL, and al-Qa'idaa.s.sociated training camps. The plan was intended not to alienate the country's large Pashtun ethnic group, which formed the basis of the Taliban's support. A heavy bombing campaign against the Taliban and al-Qa'ida in the north might be seen as the U.S. siding with the mostly Tajik Northern Alliance to the detriment of the Pashtuns in the south. The idea was that such a limited campaign might create fissures within the Taliban, and induce Taliban officials to turn over Bin Ladin. None of this happened. The Pashtuns sat on their hands.

The Northern Alliance warlords had the impression that the American bombing effort was tepid at best. CIA officers in the north argued forcefully that the only way to get the Northern Alliance fully into the fight was to show them that we were serious, with a more aggressive bombing campaign. They said that Afghan military resistance and public support for the Taliban would both collapse under increased U.S. military pressure. The Pashtuns would switch sides, as long as they did not face an imminent threat from the Northern Alliance.

During the first week of the bombing campaign, Gen. Tommy Franks followed our recommendation regarding the gradual application of force but began to feel the heat for being so closely aligned with CIA. The new chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force general d.i.c.k Myers, felt the bombing campaign wasn't working, and that CIA's plan was flawed. Tommy and I were both frustrated, and he certainly understood that CIA did not want to micromanage the campaign. But he and I were close enough to be able to talk candidly. It would soon be winter in Afghanistan, and we both knew it was time to act.

On October 17, U.S. Special Forces arrived on the ground. By late October, with CIA officers providing targeting intelligence, military Special Forces troops courageously closing in on Taliban and al-Qa'ida units to provide laser target designation, and fixed-wing aircraft dropping precision weapons, the pace of the air war soon stepped up, and made the critical difference in overwhelming the foe.

There was a lot of bureaucratic tension. In early October, I was taking part in a secure teleconference with the vice president, the secretary of defense, and others when Don Rumsfeld questioned who was in charge on the ground in Afghanistan. CIA and the Defense Department operated under different authorities. I understood Don's sense of order and desire for clarity of command, but this was a different kind of war. It was opportunistic, and required flexibility. CIA and Special Forces personnel on the ground melded together immediately. They did not worry about who was in charge. It was essential to give teams on the ground the tactical autonomy they needed. Our job in Washington was to provide support and guidance, but basically to get the h.e.l.l out of the way. We understood that, in the end, CIA would support Tommy Franks's efforts and take his lead. But in the beginning, CIA's knowledge of tribal relationships had primacy. I remember not saying much, and Rumsfeld not letting go of the issue until the vice president intervened by saying, "Don, just let the CIA do their job."

He did, for the moment, but that wasn't the last we would hear of the matter. A few weeks later Franks paid me a visit at CIA headquarters.

"I want you to subordinate your officers in Afghanistan to me," he said. That's military talk for "you guys need to work for me."

"It ain't gonna happen, Tommy," I told him.

I have tremendous respect for the military and for Franks in particular, but in this case I knew that if we fell under Pentagon control, the big bureaucracy would stifle our initiative and prevent us from doing the job we were best equipped to do. Tommy was just carrying water for the folks at the Pentagon. He and his staff had long had a great working relationship with the Agency, and we weren't about to screw that up. He and I agreed that CIA would enter into some sort of "Memorandum of Understanding" with CENTCOM on relations between our two organizations. I gave the task of writing the memorandum to Lt. Gen. John "Soup" Campbell. I made it clear that the memo should be written in a manner that did not compromise CIA's prerogatives. Soup had taught me a few things, most notably a great military expression for when you really do not want to get sucked into something: "Go dumb early." And that is exactly what we did with the MOU: drafted it, coordinated it with CENTCOM, and put it on the shelf.

With the Northern Alliance yet to be fully unleashed and bombing in the north still to take its toll on Taliban front lines, some pessimism began to creep in as to whether our strategy would succeed before the onset of winter. On October 25, Rumsfeld sent around a paper that had been produced for him by the Defense Intelligence Agency. He pa.s.sed out copies of the doc.u.ment at a meeting in the Situation Room. I read it quickly and shot a look at Hank Crumpton, who was sitting behind me. Among DIA's key points was the bold a.s.sertion that "Northern Alliance forces are incapable of overcoming Taliban resistance in northern Afghanistan, particularly the strategic city of Mazar-I Sharif, given current conditions." The paper also flatly stated that "The Northern Alliance will not capture the capital of Kabul before winter arrives, nor does it possess sufficient forces to encircle and isolate the city." DIA was equally glum about prospects in the south, saying that "No viable Pashtun alternative exists to [the] Taliban." In its summary, the DIA said, "Barring widespread defections, the Northern Alliance will not secure any major gains before winter."

Pessimism wasn't limited to official sources. On October 31, New York Times New York Times correspondent R. W. "Johnny" Apple wrote that, "Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word 'quagmire' has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad. Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?" correspondent R. W. "Johnny" Apple wrote that, "Like an unwelcome specter from an unhappy past, the ominous word 'quagmire' has begun to haunt conversations among government officials and students of foreign policy, both here and abroad. Could Afghanistan become another Vietnam?"

Contrary to what the Pentagon and Johnny Apple were saying, we were closing in on our objectives, but we still had a hard time convincing our own national security team that the plan was working. But we had honed our plan down to four main objectives: capturing Mazar-i-Sharif in the north, pushing south to Khandahar (Mullah Omar's headquarters), unifying the east and west areas of Northern Alliance control, and finally taking Kabul. Throughout it all, the president never wavered.

On the morning of Friday, November 9, Pentagon officials again briefed the White House that things were not going well in Mazar-i-Sharif. Hank Crumpton, whom I had brought along to the session, disagreed. "Mazar will fall in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours," he boldly stated. Not everyone in the room agreed with Hank's a.n.a.lysis.

Hank proved right; Mazar fell the next day, and Taliban resistance quickly began to dissipate elsewhere in the country. Suddenly, the concern in Washington shifted from things moving too slowly to things moving too fast. The worry now was that the Northern Alliance was getting ahead of the nascent resistance in southern Afghanistan, and that if they took the capital of Kabul too quickly, intertribal fighting and score-settling would break out and chaos would reign.

Granted, that danger existed, but I told Condi Rice and other NSC officials that it would be impossible to tell the Northern Alliance, after years of resistance to the Taliban, that they should stand down and not retake their country's capital when it lay before them. What's more, I said, we had teams inserted with all the major warlords and could monitor events closely; and indeed, when the Northern Alliance did roll into Kabul on November 14, they demonstrated remarkable restraint in their actions.

As successful as the northern campaign was, the southern one limped along in search of tribal support and, most important, a charismatic Afghan to rally the tribes there against the Taliban. As always, we were getting lots of advice, sometimes from odd precincts. Former national security advisor Bud McFarlane and two wealthy Chicago brothers all weighed in, urging us to support someone by the name of Abdul Haq. Haq had gained prominence and lost a leg fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late eighties.

We dutifully sent officers to meet with him in Pakistan to a.s.sess his capabilities. It turned out they were minimal. Haq had only a handful of supporters. CIA officials urged him not to enter Afghanistan until he could muster more forces. We offered him a satellite phone with which he could communicate with us, but he turned it down, apparently, as we later learned, because he feared we would use the phone to track his whereabouts. Tragically, Haq ignored our advice and entered Afghanistan on the back of a mule. Reportedly, by then he had with him nineteen men sharing four rifles. Before long we were receiving frantic calls from Haq's American admirers, telling us that he was besieged by the Taliban and demanding that we save him. Unfortunately, there were no American a.s.sets anywhere in the vicinity of his uncoordinated entry. CIA did have an armed Predator UAV close by, and we sent it looking for Haq. When we found him surrounded, Agency officers remotely fired the Predator's h.e.l.lfire missile, hoping to divert Haq's attackers, but a single missile was insufficient to the task. Haq was captured and executed on October 25. (Later, in March of 2002, our Predator went to the rescue of U.S. Rangers in a downed helicopter on Roberts Ridge in Shaikot. We were able to alert the Rangers about enemy forces surrounding them. The Predator marked enemy forces for a successful French Mirage attack, and circled overhead until the Rangers were safely extracted.) Happily, other Afghan leaders in the south showed greater promise. Chief among them was Hamid Karzai, the leader of the Popalzai tribe, which was traditionally based in the Tarin Kowt region of Afghanistan. Although Karzai's following was small, it was loyal, and he was widely respected among the various Afghan factions. He also had incentive: his father had been a.s.sa.s.sinated by the Taliban in 1999.

On October 9, Karzai entered Afghanistan from Pakistan, where he had been in exile, on the back of a motorcycle and joined up with about 350 of his supporters. Four days later, they seized the town of Tarin Kowt, the dusty capital of Oruzgan province and the area from which Karzai's tribe originated. Taliban forces came down from Khandahar and counterattacked Karzai's lightly armed troops. Unlike Abdul Haq, however, Karzai had accepted our offer of a satellite phone and used it to tell us he was in trouble and to request a resupply of arms and ammo.

We couldn't comply right away-CIA officers in the south had to compete with other urgent requests for materiel support to Afghan units in the north-but finally, on October 30, Karzai received his much-needed airdrop. Still, the situation around Tarin Kowt was desperate. On November 3, Karzai called his CIA contact, someone I can identify only as "Greg V.," and asked to be extracted by helicopter. Greg quickly contacted CIA headquarters and made the case that Karzai represented the only credible opposition leader identified in the south. His survival, Greg said, was critical to maintaining the momentum for the southern uprising.

Greg got the go-ahead to fly in to Tarin Kowt along with a U.S. Special Forces unit to airlift Karzai and seven of his senior tribal leaders to safety in Pakistan on the night of November 45. Karzai made it clear to us that his withdrawal was just a temporary one and that he planned to reenter Afghanistan within days. He hoped that news of his tactical retreat would not be disclosed for fear that it might demoralize some of his supporters. Unfortunately, Don Rumsfeld happened to be in Pakistan at the time and told a press contingent about the evacuation before we could get word to him of Karzai's desire for secrecy.

Karzai's plan was to return to Afghanistan as soon as possible. We agreed, but we also wanted to send a small, joint CIA-DOD team back in with him. On November 14, Karzai and his tribal elders, accompanied by a six-man CIA team, a twelve-man Special Forces unit, and a three-man Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) unit, made a dangerous nighttime insertion into the Tarin Kowt area. By the next day, Taliban forces had fled Tarin Kowt and about two thousand Pashtun tribal fighters loyal to Karzai awaited his arrival in the town. For the next several days Karzai went from village to village rallying support against the Taliban. As his support grew, U.S. airdrops of machine guns, recoilless rifles, mortars, and communications gear increased as well. Unfortunately, he also attracted the enemy's attention.

On November 16, we received reports of a large force of Taliban fighters moving toward the area. The next day a major battle erupted, and some of Karzai's newly recruited supporters turned and ran. Greg V. took command of the situation, sprinting from one defensive position to another, telling the Afghans that this was their chance to prove their worth and make history. "If necessary, die like men!" he shouted. Backbones stiffened; Karzai's forces repulsed the Taliban attack. For the Afghan war, it was a seminal moment. Had Karzai's position been overrun, as appeared likely for much of November 17, the entire future of the Pashtun rebellion in the south could have ended.

Dramatic events were happening all over Afghanistan. CIA's NALT Team Delta accompanied tribal warlord Abdul Karim Khalili on a tour of the recently liberated town of Bamiyan, his ancestral home. The town is famous for two huge statues of Buddha carved into an overlooking mountainside. The Taliban had blasted these third-century relics with dynamite and artillery fire in March 2001, saying that proper Muslims should not look upon idols. Khalili sadly noted that "Bamiyan is not Bamiyan without the statues of Buddha." Together he and Delta team drove around the town square, which sits atop the several-hundred-foot plateau where the statues were carved. As daylight faded, they looked out on the snowcapped peaks in the distance. Khalili asked our officer to pa.s.s along his heartfelt thanks to the CIA and the U.S. government for allowing him the bittersweet opportunity to see Bamiyan at sunset again.

As the situation in the south solidified around Hamid Karzai, conditions in large parts of the north remained fluid and chaotic. After the city of Konduz fell on November 24, Northern Alliance forces incarcerated many hundreds of prisoners in a nineteenth-century fortress called Qala-i-Jangi, on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif. Many of the Taliban POWs were foreigners, including at least fifty Arabs from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, and elsewhere. Also in the mix were Russians, Chinese, and a few Africans. More than just Taliban supporters, many of these people were hardcore al-Qa'ida members. We later learned that the prisoners also inc