Ghost Wars Part 16

"Many Americans Are Going to Die"

AHMED SHAH Ma.s.sOUD retained a Washington lobbyist as the Bush administration took office. He wanted someone who could arrange meetings on Capitol Hill for his Panjshiri advisers. He wrote a letter to Vice President Cheney urging the new administration to reexamine its alliance with Pakistan. He traveled secretly to Russia and Iran to sh.o.r.e up supply arrangements. In Moscow, the tyc.o.o.n-ruled capital of his former communist enemy, Ma.s.soud met quietly with Russian defense officials worried about bin Laden's drive into Chechnya and Central Asia. In the Panjshir, Ma.s.soud welcomed European visitors worried about his ability to hold his ground. A sympathetic Belgian politician invited him to travel in early April to Strasbourg, France, the seat of the European parliament, to deliver a speech about the al Qaeda threat. Ma.s.soud accepted. With the loss of his headquarters in Taloqan, his military prospects looked grave. He told his advisers and visitors that he knew he could not defeat the Taliban on the Afghan battlefield, not so long as they were funded by bin Laden and reinforced from Pakistani madra.s.sas. madra.s.sas. He sought to build a new political and military coalition within Afghanistan and without that could squeeze the Taliban and break their grip on ordinary Afghans. For this, sooner or later, he would require the support of the United States, he said. He sought to build a new political and military coalition within Afghanistan and without that could squeeze the Taliban and break their grip on ordinary Afghans. For this, sooner or later, he would require the support of the United States, he said.1 His CIA liaison had slackened, but his intelligence aides still spoke and exchanged messages frequently with Langley. That spring they pa.s.sed word that Ma.s.soud was headed to France. Gary Schroen from the Near East Division and Rich, the chief of the bin Laden unit, said they would fly to Paris.2 Ma.s.soud's reputation-his myth-depended on his tenacious refusal to leave Afghan territory even in the darkest hours. At midlife he allowed himself and his family many more comforts than he had known in the Panjshir during the early 1980s, but only to the extent that cities like Tehran or Dushanbe could provide them. Many of his senior advisers, such as Abdullah, circulated regularly in European and American cities. Ma.s.soud did not follow. His political strength among Afghans rested on his claim to be the most stalwart, consistent fighter on Afghan soil, a claim that had the virtue of truth. Yet Ma.s.soud had been educated at Kabul's lycee. lycee. He retained his French. At forty-nine, Paris in April was his well-chosen indulgence. He retained his French. At forty-nine, Paris in April was his well-chosen indulgence.

At the hotel Schroen discovered to his amus.e.m.e.nt that he had been officially registered as part of Ma.s.soud's Afghan delegation. Ma.s.soud Khalili, the aide to the commander who had accompanied Schroen on his maiden flight to Kabul in 1996, had made his arrangements. He innocently included his CIA friend on the delegation's official list. But Schroen had been "declared" or openly identified as a CIA officer to the French intelligence services. They surely were monitoring the guest lists and bugging the rooms. Now the French, so often irritating to the CIA's Near East Division, would have even more reason than usual to wonder what the CIA was up to with Ma.s.soud.3 They met in a sizable group. Ma.s.soud's back was plaguing him, and he did not look well. A streak of gray now ran through his hair. He had not slowed much; he still worked through the night and flew off jubilantly on reckless helicopter reconnaissance missions in the Panjshir. But he was an aging lion, regal but stiffening.

The Americans wanted to rea.s.sure him that even though there had been no recent CIA visits to the Panjshir, the agency was still going to keep up its regular payments of several hundred thousand dollars each, in accordance with their intelligence sharing deal. The CIA also wanted to know how Ma.s.soud felt about his military position as the spring fighting season approached in Afghanistan. Would he be able to hang in there?

Ma.s.soud said that he could. He believed he could defend his lines in the northeast of Afghanistan, but that was about all. Counterattacks against the Taliban were becoming more difficult as his resources frayed. A drive on Kabul remained out of the question. The United States government had to do something, Ma.s.soud told the CIA officers quietly, or eventually he was going to crumble. The Americans told him that they would keep trying. There was a new administration in Washington, as they all knew. It would take time for the Cabinet to settle in and educate itself, but this was a natural opportunity to review policy.4 Ma.s.soud doubted they had time. "If President Bush doesn't help us," he told a press conference in Strasbourg a few days later, "then these terrorists will damage the United States and Europe very soon-and it will be too late."5 Ma.s.soud believed that the Taliban were seeking to destroy him or force him into exile. Then al Qaeda would attempt to link up with Islamist militants in remote areas of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, to press forward into Central Asia, burnishing bin Laden's mystique as a conquerer of lost Islamic lands. Ma.s.soud's clanking helicopters, patchwork supply lines, and Panjshiri volunteers could not stop this juggernaut. He could only rebound, he believed that spring, if outside powers put enough pressure on Pakistan and the conservative Persian Gulf kingdoms to cut off or severely pinch the Taliban's supplies. Since Ma.s.soud could not strike these supply lines militarily, he had to attack them through politics. This is what had brought him to the European parliament. It was also why he pushed his aides to lobby the U.S. Congress that spring.6 At the same time Ma.s.soud hoped to exploit the Taliban's weaknesses inside Afghanistan. He called this part of his strategy "the new return." For a year now Ma.s.soud had been st.i.tching a revived shura, shura, or governing council, that united Taliban opponents from every major Afghan ethnic group and every major region. From Quetta, Pakistan, Hamid Karzai organized among the Kandahar area's Durrani tribes. Ismail Khan had entered western Afghanistan from Iran and was leading an uprising near Herat. Karim Khalili, the country's most prominent Shiite leader, had returned from exile to Bamian province to work against the Taliban. Haji Qadir, a former Pashtun warlord-politician in Jalalabad, had slipped into Kunar province to lead a local rebellion. Aburrashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord, had come back to Afghanistan from exile and fought behind Taliban lines in the rough northern mountains. or governing council, that united Taliban opponents from every major Afghan ethnic group and every major region. From Quetta, Pakistan, Hamid Karzai organized among the Kandahar area's Durrani tribes. Ismail Khan had entered western Afghanistan from Iran and was leading an uprising near Herat. Karim Khalili, the country's most prominent Shiite leader, had returned from exile to Bamian province to work against the Taliban. Haji Qadir, a former Pashtun warlord-politician in Jalalabad, had slipped into Kunar province to lead a local rebellion. Aburrashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord, had come back to Afghanistan from exile and fought behind Taliban lines in the rough northern mountains.7 Many of Ma.s.soud's "new return" partners had been part of the failed mujahedin government in Kabul during the early 1990s, before the Taliban rose. Many had been discredited by their violent infighting during that earlier period. Yet they had all come back to Afghanistan. They had agreed, at least on paper, to share power and abide by common, quasi-democratic principles linked by Ma.s.soud's vision and charisma.

It baffled Ma.s.soud that the United States, in the midst of a life-and-death struggle against al Qaeda, as he was, could not see the political and military potential of the diverse anti-Taliban alliance he was forging on Afghan soil. That spring Ma.s.soud invited his new Washington advocate, Otilie English, a lobbyist who had worked for the Committee for a Free Afghanistan during the 1980s, to meet with him in northern Afghanistan. With his chief CIA liaison, Amrullah Saleh, providing translation, Ma.s.soud recorded a videotaped seminar for English about the changing landscape inside Afghanistan, al Qaeda's strengths and weaknesses, foreign involvement in the war, and his own strategy. Ma.s.soud and his aides hoped English would use the commander's ideas to change minds in Congress or the State Department.

The Taliban's "extreme actions now have cracked the Pashtuns," Ma.s.soud told her. "An average Pashtun mullah is asking-he knows the history and simply has a question: Why are there no schools? Why is there no education for women? Why are women not allowed to work?" The Taliban's religious tenets had been imported from Pakistan and applied inflexibly, Ma.s.soud said. Traditional Afghan religious leaders at the village level had now begun to challenge these decrees.8 The Arabs and the Pakistani Taliban were the key to the war's outcome, he continued. "It is a totally separate story whether Osama is a popular figure outside Afghanistan or not, but inside Afghanistan, actually, he is not," Ma.s.soud told English. "For myself, for my colleagues, and for us totally, he is a criminal. He is a person who has committed crimes against our people. Perhaps in the past there was some type of respect for Arabs. People would consider them as Muslims. They had come as guests. But now they are seen as criminals. They are seen as tyrants. They are seen as cruel. Similarly, the reaction is the same against the Pakistani Taliban." As a result, resentment was gathering against Taliban rule "from the bottom" of Afghan society, from "the gra.s.s roots, the ulama," ulama," or religious leaders. or religious leaders.

"How do we counter them?" Ma.s.soud asked. He outlined a strategy of local military pressure and global political appeals. While his allies seeded small revolts around Afghanistan, Ma.s.soud would publicize their cause worldwide as one of "popular consensus and general elections and democracy." The Taliban and bin Laden "are pushing to establish their caliphate, and what they call their emirate. This is a total contradiction to what we want." Ma.s.soud insisted that he was not trying to revive the failed Kabul government of the early 1990s. "Everything should be shared," he told his lobbyist. "These are our slogans-what we believe in. We believe in a moderate Islam, and of course, they believe in extremism."

His visitors asked what Ma.s.soud wanted from the United States. "First, political support," he answered. "Let us reopen our emba.s.sy" in Washington. "This is issue one." Second, he needed "humanitarian a.s.sistance" that was not "wasted in Pakistan and for administration costs and in the U.N. system." He needed food and medical aid on the ground in northern Afghanistan to support his followers and his loose collection of rebel allies. "And, of course, financial a.s.sistance." With cash he could purchase most of the military supplies he needed from the Russians. But he was not getting enough by way of direct donations. Finally, he hinted to English about the tensions in his liaison with the CIA. "Our intelligence structure is preoccupied with tactical information that we need. That is our priority," he said. "We do not see any problem to working directly against the terrorists. But we have very, very limited resources."9 On her way back to Washington, English met with a CIA officer in Uzbekistan. She explained the message she would be carrying to Congress and the Bush administration.

"I hope you're successful," the CIA man said.

She was surprised. Her lobbying office had shaky relations with the agency. "Really? Do you mean that?"

"Yeah. I've been writing the same thing that you're saying, and I've been writing it for months, and I'm getting no response. I've been writing it for years, and I've been getting no response."10 Peter Tomsen, the former U.S. amba.s.sador to the Afghan resistance, arrived in Dushanbe in June. Tomsen had retired from the foreign service. He now lectured and published articles denouncing Pakistani intelligence and the Taliban. Hamid Karzai and Abdul Haq tracked him down at a vacation villa in Tuscany that spring. They urged him to travel to Tajikistan to meet with Ma.s.soud and join their global political campaign. Tomsen agreed-if the meeting would develop a real political strategy. Ten years before, Tomsen had championed a "commanders' shura" shura" with a central role for Ma.s.soud, a blend of military pressure and political appeals similar to Ma.s.soud's current plan. At the time, the CIA had opposed Tomsen, preferring to work with Pakistani intelligence. Now Tomsen revived his ideas, encouraged by Karzai and Abdul Haq, and he crafted a confidential strategy paper for Ma.s.soud. with a central role for Ma.s.soud, a blend of military pressure and political appeals similar to Ma.s.soud's current plan. At the time, the CIA had opposed Tomsen, preferring to work with Pakistani intelligence. Now Tomsen revived his ideas, encouraged by Karzai and Abdul Haq, and he crafted a confidential strategy paper for Ma.s.soud.

Tomsen stayed in touch with former colleagues from his years in government service, but he found the CIA more secretive than ever. Over the years Tomsen had concluded that America's failed policies in Afghanistan flowed in part from the compartmented, top secret isolation in which the CIA always sought to work. The agency saw the president as its client. By keeping the State Department and other policy makers at a distance, it preserved a certain freedom to operate. But when the agency was wrong-the Bay of Pigs, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar-there was little check on its a.n.a.lysis. Conversely, when it was on the right track-as with Ma.s.soud in the late 1990s-it often had trouble finding allies in political Washington.11 At his house in Dushanbe, Ma.s.soud lamented to Tomsen that the rebellions by his scattered allies around Afghanistan were making limited progress. Supplies were inadequate. The Karzais were under severe pressure around Kandahar and in Pakistan. "Dostum was of the opinion that, with his return, all Uzbeks would take up guns and start an uprising," Ma.s.soud told Tomsen. But this had not happened. "I personally don't believe that the collapse of the Taliban is that imminent."

Ma.s.soud said he wanted to build the broadest possible anti-Taliban coalition. For that he was willing to drop old grievances and link his Northern Alliance with the exiled King Zahir Shah in Rome. Ma.s.soud appealed to Tomsen to bring the king into his alliance. "Talk to Zahir Shah," he urged. "Tell him that I accept him as head of state."

This grand Pashtun-Tajik alliance might finally persuade the American government to change its policy. "There are two shortcuts to stop the war," Ma.s.soud told Tomsen and Abdul Haq that spring afternoon. "One is military. The other is American pressure on Pakistan."12

"I'M TIRED OF SWATTING FLIES," President Bush told Condoleezza Rice in the Oval Office that spring after another in a series of briefings about al Qaeda threats. "I want to play offense."13 Chaired by Stephen Hadley, the deputies committee held its first meeting on bin Laden and Afghanistan on April 30. "There will be more attacks," CIA briefing slides warned. Al Qaeda was the "most dangerous group we face." They reviewed options left over from the last Clinton Cabinet session on the subject, conducted more than four months earlier. Richard Armitage set the outline for a new policy direction. He said that the destruction of al Qaeda should be the number one American objective in South Asia, a higher priority even than nuclear weapons control. The goal Armitage outlined, as he recalled it, was "not just to roll back al Qaeda, but to go after and eliminate them." The deputies asked the CIA to dust off its plan for large-scale covert aid to Ma.s.soud so that the shopping list and military objectives could be refined, integrated with other policy goals, and presented to the full Cabinet.14 The deputies also endorsed continued testing of an armed Predator, although there were many questions yet to be resolved about exactly how missiles would be fired if the drone was sent to Afghanistan. They asked the Pentagon yet again to develop contingency military plans to attack al Qaeda targets.

Paul Wolfowitz, Bush's influential deputy defense secretary, had concluded by now that "war against al Qaeda is something different from going after individual acts of terrorism." This was a change from how terrorism had been managed the last time the Republicans held power.Wolfowitz could see, as he recalled it, that "it really does involve all the elements of national power, that it's not just something for the intelligence community alone." As to the regional questions, he concluded it was impossible to destroy al Qaeda "without recognizing the role that the government of Afghanistan is playing."15 The deputies' decision to make bin Laden their top priority marked a change from the Clinton years when the president and his aides often listed terrorism second or third in their private talks with Musharraf and others. Yet the White House committee, slow to begin, now had to sort out many of the same old questions about Pakistan that had vexed Clinton. The country seemed extraordinarily dangerous. Wolfowitz concluded, as he recalled it, that "you can't go after the government of Afghanistan without recognizing the problems in your relationship, particularly with Pakistan, but with other neighboring countries" as well. By April State Department diplomats believed Pakistan simply did not intend to cut off aid to the Taliban. Would the United States try once again to issue diplomatic ultimatums to Islamabad? What if Pakistan failed to respond?16 Above all, how could they attempt to destroy al Qaeda, which had insinuated itself with the Pakistani military and intelligence service, without undermining Pakistan? Above all, how could they attempt to destroy al Qaeda, which had insinuated itself with the Pakistani military and intelligence service, without undermining Pakistan?

The deputies decided to slow down and review these questions before they delivered any new covert arms or money to Ma.s.soud or his fledgling anti-Taliban alliance. In a late May meeting, Rice asked Tenet, Black, and Clarke about "taking the offensive" against al Qaeda. Reflecting Khalilzad's view, Rice did not want to rely exclusively on the Northern Alliance. Clarke again urged unsuccessfully that some money be funnelled to Ma.s.soud right away, to keep him in action. Meanwhile, the administration's publicly stated policy about Afghanistan remained unaltered. As he laid out budget priorities to the Senate two weeks after the deputies meeting on al Qaeda, Colin Powell mentioned Afghanistan only once, to ask for $7 million. The money would be used, he said, to promote regional energy cooperation and to attack child prost.i.tution.17

THE CIA'S THREAT reporting about bin Laden surged that spring to levels the Counterterrorist Center had rarely seen. Tenet thought the threat intelligence from intercepts and human agents was as frightening as he had ever witnessed. Cofer Black said later that he became convinced in the spring that al Qaeda was about to strike hard. He could not tell where, but it seemed to him that the Arabian peninsula and Israel were the most likely targets. Intercepts of suspected al Qaeda members kept referring to multiple and spectacular attacks, some of which seemed to be in the late planning stages. He told Rice in late May that the threat was a "7" on a scale of ten, close to but not as intense as the "8" he felt during the Millennium. "What worries me," Black's deputy told a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee on June 4, "is that we're on the verge of more attacks that are larger and more deadly." These might include weapons of ma.s.s destruction. There were lots of ominous sports metaphors in the fragmentary intercept reports. The score was going to be 200 to nothing. The Olympics were coming.18 Between May and July the National Security Agency reported at least 33 different intercepts indicating a possible imminent al Qaeda attack. Cla.s.sified threat warnings about terrorist strikes ricocheted through the government's secure message systems nearly every day. The FBI issued 216 secret, internal threat warnings between January 1 and September 10, 2001, of which 6 mentioned possible attacks against airports or airlines. The State Department issued 9 separate warnings during the same period to emba.s.sies and citizens abroad, including 5 that highlighted a general threat to Americans all over the world. The Federal Aviation Administration issued 15 notices of possible terrorist threats against American airlines.19 Bin Laden taunted them openly. He met near the Pakistan border in early June with Bakr Atiani, a reporter for a Saudi-owned satellite television network. "They said there would be attacks against American and Israeli facilities within the next several weeks," Atiani recalled of his interview with bin Laden and his Arab aides. "It was absolutely clear that they had brought me there to hear this message." He could sense that bin Laden was confident. "He smiled. . . . It felt like bin Laden had his own Arab kingdom in southern Afghanistan." Following a mechanical ritual, State Department diplomats met Taliban representatives in Pakistan on June 26 and warned they would be held directly responsible if bin Laden attacked.20 A one-hundred-minute bin Laden recruitment video surfaced simultaneously in Kuwait City. "Blood, blood, and destruction, destruction," bin Laden crowed as the tape concluded. "We give you the good news that the forces of Islam are coming."21 "I want a way to bring this guy down," Bush told his advisers in the White House that month as he reviewed the threat reports. But when Rice met with Pakistan's foreign minister in late June, she only repeated the stale warning that Pakistan would ultimately be judged by the behavior of its allies. Clarke wrote a week later to urge that Bush officials think now about how much pressure they would put on Pakistan after the next al Qaeda attack, and then implement that policy immediately. His recommendation was ignored. Bush wrote Musharraf about the danger of terrorism a few weeks later, but his letter did not depart from past entreaties.22 The presidential policy doc.u.ment that would recast government-wide strategy against al Qaeda moved slowly through White House channels. When the final integrated plan-including tentative provisions for covert aid to Ma.s.soud-was ready for the full Cabinet to consider, it took almost two months to find a meeting date that was convenient for everyone who wanted to attend.

The CIA's Counterterrorist Center reported ominously that key operatives in bin Laden's network had begun to disappear. Others seemed to be preparing for martyrdom. "Sunni extremists a.s.sociated with Al Qaeda are most likely to attempt spectacular attacks resulting in numerous casualties," warned a cla.s.sified threat advisory issued in June by the Intelligence Community Counterterrorism Board. It mentioned Italy, Israel, and the Arabian peninsula as the most likely targets. A leader of the FBI's counterterrorism team declared he was "98 percent certain" that bin Laden would strike overseas. A later review found this was the "clear majority view" among intelligence a.n.a.lysts. Another advisory concluded that "al Qaeda is prepared to mount one or more terrorist attacks at any time." There were some reports that the attack was aimed at U.S. soil. An intelligence alert in early June said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was recruiting volunteers to undertake missions in the United States, where they would "establish contact with colleagues already living there." In July the CIA's Counterterrorist Center reported that it had interviewed a source who had recently returned from Afghanistan. The source had reported, "Everyone is talking about an impending attack."23 The CIA prepared a briefing paper on July 10 for senior Bush administration officials: "Based on a review of all-source reporting over the last five months, we believe that [bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against U.S. and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict ma.s.s casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."24 Tenet brought huge wall charts to the White House in mid-July to show Condi Rice the web of threats and the al Qaeda members they were tracking from Pakistan to the Middle East. Tenet called spy chiefs in about twenty friendly countries to plead for help. Vice President Cheney called Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Tenet said later that "the system was blinking red" and that Bush's cabinet understood the urgency.25 Yet the threat reports remained, as they often had been since 1998, vague and elusive. They were also part of a much wider tapestry of intelligence reporting that was routinely circulated to Cabinet-level officials. In June, only 18 out of 298 cla.s.sified Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs sent to Bush administration officials referred to bin Laden or al Qaeda. Yet the threat reports remained, as they often had been since 1998, vague and elusive. They were also part of a much wider tapestry of intelligence reporting that was routinely circulated to Cabinet-level officials. In June, only 18 out of 298 cla.s.sified Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs sent to Bush administration officials referred to bin Laden or al Qaeda.26 Urged on by Tenet and Black, CIA stations worldwide collaborated that spring and summer with local police and intelligence services to arrest al Qaeda a.s.sociates and interrogate them. The objective was "to drive up bin Laden's security concerns and lead his organization to delay or cancel its attacks," as Tenet recalled it. They recovered rockets and explosives in Jordan, broke up a group planning to hit American buildings in Yemen, learned of plans for various other small-scale attacks, and acquired many new names of suspects for American border watch lists. They chased reports of a bin Laden team supposedly trying to smuggle explosives into the United States from Canada. They picked up a report about a plot to crash a plane into the U.S. emba.s.sy in Nairobi or destroy it with car bombs. But they could not get a convincing handle on the big, spectacular attacks that the NSA's telephone intercept fragments showed were on the way. They considered whether al Qaeda was feeding them disinformation through these intercepts, but they concluded that the plots were authentic. They just could not get a line on the perpetrators.27 Officers in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center felt a rising sense of fatalism that summer. They worked long hours, exchanging Arabic translations across their office part.i.tions, frequently "with a panic-stricken look" in their eyes, as one of the center's officers recalled. For every bin Laden operative they caught, another fifty were getting through their net, they feared. "We're going to miss stuff," they told one another, as this officer remembered it. "We are are missing stuff. We can't keep up." CIA leaders such as deputy director John McLaughin said later that some Bush Administration officials, who had not experienced prior surges of threat and panic, voiced frustrating skepticism about the validity of the threat intelligence, wondering aloud if it were disinformation. Hadley told Tenet in July that Paul Wolfowitz had doubts about the threat reports. One veteran CIA officer at the Counterterrorist Center said later that he so feared a disaster he considered resigning and going public. missing stuff. We can't keep up." CIA leaders such as deputy director John McLaughin said later that some Bush Administration officials, who had not experienced prior surges of threat and panic, voiced frustrating skepticism about the validity of the threat intelligence, wondering aloud if it were disinformation. Hadley told Tenet in July that Paul Wolfowitz had doubts about the threat reports. One veteran CIA officer at the Counterterrorist Center said later that he so feared a disaster he considered resigning and going public.28 Some recipients of their cla.s.sified reports felt equally frustrated. The CIA's unremitting flow of threat information remained in many cases nonspecific, speculative, or based on sources known to be unreliable. The Counterterrorist Center circulated a cla.s.sified threat report that summer t.i.tled "Threat of Impending Al Qaeda Attack to Continue Indefinitely." Tenet agreed that the CIA's reporting was "maddeningly short on actionable details," as he put it later. Worst of all, the most ominous reporting that summer, which hinted at a large attack, "was also most vague."29 BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE IN U.S. was the headline on the President's Daily Brief presented to Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on August 6. The report addressed questions Bush had asked about domestic threats and included the possibility that bin Laden operatives would seek to hijack airplanes. The hijacking threat, mentioned twice, was one of several possibilities outlined. There was no specific information about when or where such an attack might occur. Tenet said the intelligence indicated that al Qaeda might have delayed a major attack.30 "We are going to be struck soon," Cofer Black told the Pentagon's cla.s.sified annual conference on counterterrorism nine days later. "Many Americans are going to die, and it could be in the U.S."31 In mid-July Tenet ordered the Counterterrorist Center to search all its files for any lead or name that might take them toward bin Laden's biggest and most active plots. He wanted to find "linkages among the reports as well as links to past terrorist threats and tactics," as he recalled it.32 CIA and FBI officers dug back through the surveillance images and cables generated in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. For the first time he saw that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who had been photographed and tracked during that operation, had unrestricted visa access to the United States, had probably entered the country, and might still be resident. Yet neither man had ever been placed on a watch list. CIA and FBI officers dug back through the surveillance images and cables generated in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. For the first time he saw that Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, who had been photographed and tracked during that operation, had unrestricted visa access to the United States, had probably entered the country, and might still be resident. Yet neither man had ever been placed on a watch list.

The CIA apparently did not formally notify the FBI about this alarming discovery. Only the New York field office received a routine request to search for Mihdhar. Investigators later could find no evidence that anyone briefed Clarke, Bush's cabinet, or the president about the missing suspects.33

BY NOW THE TWO MEN were living in cheap motels in Laurel and College Park, Maryland, a dozen miles or so from the White House.

All nineteen of the attackers had safely entered the United States by mid-July. Fifteen were Saudi Arabians, including al-Mihdhar and al-Hazma. Two others were from the United Arab Emirates. Mohammed Atta was the only Egyptian, Ziad Jarrah the only Lebanese. The leaders among the group, those with pilot training, included the members of the Hamburg cell who had traveled from Germany to Kandahar late in 1999 and then applied successfully to American flight schools. Early in 2001 the conspirators trained as pilots were joined in the United States by their muscle, Saudi recruits with no flight training, who arrived in Florida and New Jersey between April 23, 2001, and June 29, 2001, then settled into short-term apartments and motels to await the go signal. The late-arriving Saudis mainly came from the restive southwest of the kingdom. A few of them had been to college, while others had no higher education. Some had histories of depression or alcoholism. Some had never displayed much religious zealotry before a sudden exposure to radical ideas changed their outlooks dramatically. Nearly all of the supporting hijackers visited Afghanistan for the first time in 1999 or 2000, as Mohammed Atef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed began to organize the final version of their suicide airliner hijacking plan. Most of the Saudi muscle, George Tenet said later, "probably were told little more than that they were headed for a suicide mission in the United States."34 They lived openly and attracted little attention. They did not hold jobs. They moved frequently. Two and possibly as many as six of them pa.s.sed American border posts carrying pa.s.sports that showed signs of fraud or suspicious background, yet in only one case did a Customs and Immigration officer foil entry, unaware of the Saudi's intentions as he ordered his deportation. Among the plotters there were tensions, accusations, and apparent changes of heart as the launch date approached. Jarrah and Atta clashed as the former operated on his own and spent time with his girlfriend; a one-way ticket Jarrah bought to see her in Germany during the summer of 2001 suggests that he may have decided to drop out of the plot, but was talked back in. The two Saudi volunteers surveilled by the CIA in Malaysia had lived openly in southern California since early 2000. One of them, Nawaf al-Hazmi, was listed in the phone book, opened a local bank account, and even reported an attempted street robbery to police in suburban Fairfax, Virginia, on May 1, 2001, although he later decided not to press charges. The two Saudi veterans of the plot shirked their English and piloting studies and aggravated their colleagues. In Pakistan Khalid Sheikh Mohammed fretted like a harried mid-level corporate manager, pressured repeatedly by bin Laden to speed up the date of the attack, but unable to keep his front-line suicide pilots fully on track. He protected Atta from bin Laden's hectoring about timing and targets and tried to give the Egyptian the s.p.a.ce and resources he needed to bring the project to completion. Atta selected early September after determining Congress would be in session. Although bin Laden continued to lobby for the White House as a target, Atta still favored the Capitol, believing it would be easier to strike; the evidence suggests the decision may have remained unresolved until the very end.35 The hijackers' money came from al Qaeda contacts living in the United Arab Emirates. One of these, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, Mohammed's nephew, used Western Union and less formal currency exchange offices in Dubai and other Persian Gulf cities to send $119,500 to Mohammed Atta and others in his group while they attended school in Florida and elsewhere. A second money source, Mustafa Alhawsawi, a brother of one hijacker, sent them $18,000 via Western Union. He also received by return transfer all the group's leftover funds-about $42,000-when the hijackers wound up their affairs in late August 2001 and prepared to die.

Alhawsawi arranged to place the surplus funds on his Standard Chartered Bank Visa Card. Then he boarded a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Karachi, Pakistan, and disappeared.36

Ma.s.sOUD DISPATCHED his foreign policy adviser, Abdullah, to Washington in August. Their Northern Alliance lobbyist, Otilie English, scratched together a few appointments on Capitol Hill. It was difficult to get anyone's attention. They had to compete with Pakistan's well-heeled, high-paid professional lobbyists and advocates, such as the former congressman Charlie Wilson, who had raised so much money for Pakistan's government in Congress during the anti-Soviet jihad. Abdullah and English tried to link their lobbying effort with Hamid Karzai and his brother, Qayum, to show that Ma.s.soud was fighting the Taliban with multiethnic allies. But the members they met with could barely manage politeness. Guns or financial aid were out of the question. Some barely knew who Osama bin Laden was. With the Democrats they tried to press the issue of women's rights in Afghanistan, but even that seemed to be a dying cause now that the Clintons were gone. Both Ma.s.soud's group and the Karzais were "so disappointed, so demoralized" after a week of meetings on the Hill and at the State Department, Karzai's lobbyist recalled.37 "You're basically asking for the overthrow of the Taliban," an incredulous midlevel State Department officer told Qayum Karzai in one meeting that August. "I'm not sure if our government is prepared to do that."38 Abdullah bristled as he listened yet again to arguments about "moderate and nonmoderate Taliban. . . . It was ridiculous." But he also picked up encouraging hints from the White House and senior officials at State, including Richard Haas, director of policy planning. They invited Abdullah back in September. He sensed there might be a change of approach coming, but he could not be sure.39 While Abdullah was in Washington, an email arrived from Hamid Karzai in Pakistan. Karzai had been served with an expulsion order by Pakistani intelligence, and he reported that he could no longer delay its execution. He had to be out of the country by the end of September 2001 or he risked arrest.

The ISI had been monitoring Ma.s.soud's anti-Taliban campaign. Its Afghan bureau was determined to oppose any effort to foment rebellion against Mullah Omar from Pakistani soil.

Hamid Karzai was agitated. He wanted to slip inside Afghanistan to join Dostum, Ismail Khan, and the others fighting in alliance with Ma.s.soud. But he wasn't sure where to go, and he could not win military support from the Americans. He wondered what Ma.s.soud would advise.

Abdullah and Qayum Karzai huddled in a Starbucks off Dupont Circle to talk about Hamid's options. They were afraid that ISI was monitoring his communications and might already know of his plan to enter Afghanistan. That made his situation all the more dangerous. It had been just two years since the a.s.sa.s.sination of Hamid's father on a Quetta street.40 "Look, I no longer have a place to stay in Pakistan," Hamid Karzai told Ma.s.soud when he raised him a few days later on a satellite phone.41 Should he try to cross secretly from Pakistan to Kandahar, despite the risks of encountering Taliban forces or bin Laden's Arab radicals? Or should he fly first to Dushanbe, enter Afghanistan from the north, and then hope that Ma.s.soud's men could help him reach a mountainous Afghan province from where Karzai could challenge the Taliban? Should he try to cross secretly from Pakistan to Kandahar, despite the risks of encountering Taliban forces or bin Laden's Arab radicals? Or should he fly first to Dushanbe, enter Afghanistan from the north, and then hope that Ma.s.soud's men could help him reach a mountainous Afghan province from where Karzai could challenge the Taliban?

Ma.s.soud felt strongly that Karzai should head around to the north. He would be most welcome in Northern Alliance country. He should not try to drive directly for Kandahar, as Karzai recalled Ma.s.soud's advice. The ground for nationwide war against the Taliban and al Qaeda, Ma.s.soud said, had not yet been prepared.42

32.

"What an Unlucky Country"

EARLY IN SEPTEMBER, Ma.s.soud's intelligence service transmitted a routine report to the CIA's Counterterrorist Center about two Arab television journalists who had crossed Northern Alliance lines from Kabul. The intelligence sharing liaison between Ma.s.soud and the CIA concentrated mainly on Arabs and other foreigners in Afghanistan. If Ma.s.soud's forces captured prisoners or if they learned about movements by Arab-led military units, they typically forwarded reports across the dedicated lines that linked the Panjshir Valley directly to Langley. In this case officers in the bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center took note of the movement of the two Arab journalists. It did not seem of exceptional interest.1 The pair carried a television camera and other equipment, possessed Belgian pa.s.sports, and claimed to be originally from Morocco. One was squat, muscular, and caramel-skinned. He cut his hair very short, shaved his face clean, and wore European clothes and gla.s.ses. His companion was tall and darker. One spoke a little English and French, the other only Arabic. Their papers showed they had entered Kabul from Pakistan after arriving from abroad.2 The conspiracy they represented took shape the previous May. On a Kabul computer routinely used by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who was bin Laden's closest partner, an al Qaeda planner wrote a letter of introduction in patchy French. On behalf of the Islamic Observation Center in London, the letter explained, "one of our best journalists" planned to produce a television report on Afghanistan. He sought an interview with Ahmed Shah Ma.s.soud. A list of proposed questions written on the computer in French included one infused with dark irony: "How will you deal with the Osama bin Laden issue when you are in power, and what do you see as the solution to this issue?"3 Inserting disguised al Qaeda agents from Taliban-ruled Kabul into Ma.s.soud's headquarters near the Tajikistan border was a daunting operation. Ma.s.soud's troops were on continuous hostile alert against Arab volunteers. Al Qaeda had tried to smuggle agents carrying explosives into the Panjshir the year before, but the perpetrators had been arrested. This time bin Laden's planners prepared the deceptive legends of their a.s.sa.s.sins carefully and exploited the long history of Arab jihadists in Afghanistan to complete the infiltration.

Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, the white-bearded, Arabic-speaking Afghan Islamist first selected and promoted by Saudi intelligence in 1980, had aligned himself with Ma.s.soud in recent years. His military power had been much reduced since the late 1980s and early 1990s when he had been the favored recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and weaponry from Prince Turki al-Faisal's service and independent Persian Gulf proselytizers.

Aged and politically irrelevant, Sayyaf maintained a modest headquarters compound outside of the capital; he was no longer active in the war. Because of his long history as the host of Arab volunteers in Afghanistan and his wide contacts among Arab Islamist theologians, he provided a link between Ma.s.soud and Arab radicals. Ma.s.soud was chronically uncomfortable about his reputation in the wider world of political Islam. Just as he sought American and European aid to isolate the Taliban, he reached out to Arab and Islamic audiences to counter bin Laden's incendiary propaganda.4 Al Qaeda's planners tapped their connections to Sayyaf and played on Ma.s.soud's desire to be understood in the Arab world. An Egyptian who had fought with Sayyaf during the anti-Soviet years called him by satellite telephone to recommend the visiting Arab journalists. Sayyaf relayed an endors.e.m.e.nt to Ma.s.soud. Through this and other channels the journalists emphasized that they intended to portray the Northern Alliance in a positive light, to help rehabilitate and promote Ma.s.soud's reputation before Arab audiences.

Ma.s.soud authorized a helicopter to pick up the pair just north of Kabul and fly them to Khoja Bahuddin, a compound just inside the Tajikistan border where Ma.s.soud had established a headquarters after the loss of Taloqan. The two Arabs checked into a guest house run by Ma.s.soud's foreign ministry where a dozen other Afghan journalists and visitors were staying.

But Ma.s.soud was in no hurry to see them. Despite their letters and endors.e.m.e.nts, their interview request languished. Days pa.s.sed, and still Ma.s.soud was too busy, the visitors were told. They shot video around Khoja Bahuddin, but their interest slackened. They lobbied for their interview, brandished their credentials again, and eventually declared to their hosts that if a meeting with Ma.s.soud did not come through soon, they would have to leave.5

AFGHANISTAN AFTER 1979 was a laboratory for political and military visions conceived abroad and imposed by force. The language and ideas that described Afghan parties, armies, and militias originated with theoreticians in universities and seminaries in Europe, the United States, Cairo, and Deoband. Afghans fought as "communists" or as "freedom fighters." They joined jihadist armies battling on behalf of an imagined global Islamic umma. umma. A young, weak nation, Afghanistan produced few convincing nationalists who could offer an alternative, who could define Afghanistan from within. Ahmed Shah Ma.s.soud was an exception. A young, weak nation, Afghanistan produced few convincing nationalists who could offer an alternative, who could define Afghanistan from within. Ahmed Shah Ma.s.soud was an exception.

Yet Ma.s.soud did not create the Afghanistan he championed. Partly, he failed as a politician during the early 1990s. Partly, he was limited by his regional roots, especially as the Afghan war's fragmenting violence promoted ethnic solidarity. Most of all, Ma.s.soud was contained by the much greater resources possessed by his adversaries in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

At the end of his life, as he fought the Taliban and al Qaeda, he saw the potential to recover his nationalist vision of Afghanistan through an alliance with the United States. He saw this partnership primarily as a brilliant tactician would-grounded not in ideology but in urgent and mutual interest, the need to contain and defeat Osama bin Laden and his jihadist volunteers.

Ma.s.soud did fight also for political ideas. He was not a "democrat" in an American or European sense, although conceivably he could have become one in a peaceful postwar era. He was indisputably tolerant and forgiving in the midst of terrible violence, patient, and prepared to work in coalitions.

Ma.s.soud frustrated bin Laden and the Taliban because of his extraordinary tactical skills, but also because he competed credibly for control of Afghanistan's political ident.i.ty. It was Ma.s.soud's unyielding independence that earlier had enticed and stymied both the Soviet Fortieth Army and the CIA. In the early years of the jihad the agency's station chiefs read British imperial history and managed Afghanistan more or less as Kipling recommended. They raised Pashtun tribes against their Russian adversaries and kept their distance behind the Khyber Pa.s.s. Later, between 1988 and 1992, presented with a chance to do the hard neo-imperial work of constructing a postwar, national, sustainable Afghan politics, Langley's leaders argued against any direct American involvement. Neither the CIA's managers nor any of the American presidents they served, Republican or Democrat, could locate a vision of Afghanistan to justify such an expensive and uncertain project. The Afghan government that the United States eventually chose to support beginning in the late autumn of 2001-a federation of Ma.s.soud's organization, exiled intellectuals, and royalist Pashtuns-was available for sponsorship a decade before, but the United States could not see a reason then to challenge the alternative, radical Islamist vision promoted by Pakistani and Saudi intelligence. Ma.s.soud's independent character and conduct-and the hostility toward him continually fed into the American bureaucracy by Pakistan-denied him a lasting alliance with the United States. And it denied America the benefits of his leadership during the several years before 2001. Instead-at first out of indifference, then with misgivings, and finally in a state of frustrated inertia-the United States endorsed year after year the Afghan programs of its two sullen, complex, and sometimes vital allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

And at the end of this twisted road lay September 2001 when the American public and the subsistence traders of the Panjshir Valley discovered in twin cataclysms that they were bound together, if not by the political ideas they shared, then at least by the enemies who had chosen them.

THE OPPORTUNITIES missed by the United States on the way to September 2001 extended well beyond the failure to exploit fully an alliance with Ma.s.soud. Indifference, la.s.situde, blindness, paralysis, and commercial greed too often shaped American foreign policy in Afghanistan and South Asia during the 1990s. Besides Ma.s.soud, the most natural American ally against al Qaeda in the region was India, whose democracy and civilian population also was threatened by radical Islamist violence. Yet while the American government sought gradually to deepen its ties to New Delhi, it lacked the creativity, local knowledge, patience, and persistence to cope successfully with India's p.r.i.c.kly nationalism and complex democratic politics-a failure especially ironic given the ornery character of American nationalism and the great complexities of Washington's own democracy. As a result, America failed during the late 1990s to forge an effective ant.i.terrorism partnership with India, whose regional interests, security resources, and vast Muslim population offered great potential for covert penetrations of Afghanistan.

Nor did the United States have a strategy for engagement, democratization, secular education, and economic development among the peaceful but demoralized majority populations of the Islamic world. Instead, Washington typically coddled undemocratic and corrupt Muslim governments, even as these countries' frustrated middle cla.s.ses looked increasingly to conservative interpretations of Islam for social values and political ideas. In this way America unnecessarily made easier, to at least a small extent, the work of al Qaeda recruiters.

Largely out of indifference and bureaucratic momentum, the United States constructed its most active regional counterterrorism partnerships with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, despite evidence that both governments had been penetrated by al Qaeda. Dependent upon Saudi oil and unwilling to reexamine old a.s.sumptions about the kingdom's establishment, Washington bounced complacently along in its alliance with Riyadh. Nor was the United States willing to confront the royal families of neighboring energy-rich kingdoms such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, even when sections of those governments also appeased and nurtured al Qaeda. In Pakistan, the hardest of hard cases, the Clinton administration allowed its laudable pursuit of nuclear stability and regional peace to cloud its eyesight about the systematic support for jihadist violence within Pakistan's army and intelligence service. Unwilling to accept the uncertainties and high political costs of a military confrontation with the Taliban, American diplomats also suspended disbelief and lazily embraced Saudi and Pakistani arguments that the Taliban would mature and moderate. Even by late 2000, when many members of Clinton's national security cabinet and his Joint Chiefs of Staff at last accepted that hopes for Taliban cooperation against bin Laden were absurd, the Clinton cabinet adamantly opposed military action in Afghanistan. This caution prevailed despite week after week of secret intelligence cables depicting active, advanced, but unspecified al Qaeda plans to launch ma.s.s attacks against American civilians.

President Clinton, weakened by impeachment proceedings and boxed in by a hostile Republican majority in Congress, proved unwilling or unable to force the astonishingly pa.s.sive Pentagon to pursue military options. As an alternative he put the CIA's covert action arm in the lead against al Qaeda. Historically, the CIA has carried out its most successful covert actions when its main patron under American law, the president of the United States, has been eager to push the agency forward and has proven willing to stomach the risks and failures that accompany CIA operations. This was not Clinton. The president authorized the CIA to pursue al Qaeda and he supported the agency to some extent. Yet he did not fully believe that the CIA was up to the job, and he at times withheld from Langley the legal authorities, resources, and active leadership that a president more confident about the agency's abilities might have provided.

Was the president's evident skepticism about the CIA justified? Since the advent of spectacular modern terrorism in the late 1960s, the record of even the most accomplished intelligence agencies in preventing terrorist attacks has been mixed at best. The CIA in the 1990s was generally seen by intelligence specialists as strong on technology and mediocre at human intelligence operations against hard targets. Agent penetrations and covert action often work best where an intelligence service shares language, culture, and geographical s.p.a.ce with its adversary-as with British operations in Northern Ireland, for example. Even then, it usually proves impossible to stop all terrorist attacks, and an intelligence service's efforts to maneuver a terrorist group into surrender or peaceful politics often requires decades of persistent, secret effort. The difficulty is compounded when the enemy are religiously motivated fanatics who see their violence as above politics and divinely sanctioned. The Israeli spy and security services, widely regarded as leaders in human intelligence, agent penetrations, and covert action, have been unable to thwart suicide bombings by Islamist radicals. In the case of the CIA's attempts to disrupt al Qaeda's leadership in Afghanistan, the severe inherent difficulties were extended by the vast cultural gaps and forbidding geographical distances that separated CIA operatives from their targets.

Still, even within these limits, the agency did not do all it might have done. George Tenet's discretionary, internal allocation of money and people did not fully reflect his rhetoric about an all-out war, as he later acknowledged. The Counterterrorist Center's failure early in 2000 to watch-list two known al Qaeda adherents with American visas in their pa.s.sports appears, in hindsight, as the agency's single most important unforced error. If it had not occurred, the specific attacks that were to unfold with such unique destructive power in New York and Washington might well have been prevented. Some of the CIA's disruption operations in Afghanistan after 1998 were creative and resourceful, while others, such as the Pakistani commando plan in 1999, were naive and ill-judged. In the end, however, it is difficult to evaluate fully the agency's performance in covert operations against bin Laden after 1998 because some significant ideas generated by CIA officers-notably their plan to partner more actively inside Afghanistan with Ma.s.soud-were never authorized by the White House.

EARLY IN SEPTEMBER CLARKE unloaded his frustrations in a memo to Rice. The previous spring she had declared the president was tired of "swatting flies" in his contest with bin Laden. Clarke felt that was all they were doing six months later. "Decision makers should imagine themselves on a future day when CSG has not succeeded in stopping al Qaeda attacks and hundreds of Americans lay dead in several countries, including the U.S.," Clarke wrote. "What would those decision makers wish that they had done earlier?" The CIA was "masterful at pa.s.sive aggressive behavior" and would resist funding new policy initiatives. "You are left with a modest effort to swat flies," Clarke declared. "You are left waiting for the big attack, with lots of casualties, after which some major U.S. retaliation will be in order."6 The Bush Cabinet met at the White House on September 4. Before them was a draft copy of a National Security Presidential Directive, a cla.s.sified memo outlining a new U.S. policy toward al Qaeda and Afghanistan. The stated goal of the draft doc.u.ment was to eliminate bin Laden and his organization. Its provisions included a plan for a large but undetermined amount of covert action funds to aid Ma.s.soud in his war against the Taliban. The CIA would supply Ma.s.soud with trucks, uniforms, ammunition, mortars, helicopters, and other equipment to be determined by the agency and the White House-the same rough shopping list drawn up the previous autumn. There was to be money as well for other anti-Taliban forces, although the full scope of covert action would unfold gradually, linked to renewed diplomatic efforts. Still, under the plan Ma.s.soud's coalition of commanders and scattered insurgents in Afghanistan would soon be better equipped than at any time since the early 1990s.7 The Cabinet approved this part of the proposal, although there remained uncertainty about where the money would come from and how much would ultimately be available. The Cabinet approved this part of the proposal, although there remained uncertainty about where the money would come from and how much would ultimately be available.

A long, inconclusive discussion followed about whether to deploy an armed Predator to Afghanistan. The CIA remained divided internally. Cofer Black and the bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center wanted to go forward. James Pavitt at the Directorate of Operations worried about unintended consequences if the CIA suddenly moved back into the business of running lethal operations against targeted individuals-a.s.sa.s.sination, in the common usage. Such targeted killings carried out directly by the CIA could open agents in the field to retaliatory kidnappings or killings. The missions might also expose the agency to political and media criticism.

The CIA had conducted cla.s.sified war games at Langley to discover how its chain of command, made up of spies with limited or no military experience, might responsibly oversee a flying robot that could shoot missiles at suspected terrorists. By early September of 2001 Tenet had reviewed a "concept of operations" submitted by his Counterterrorist Center that outlined how a CIA-managed armed Predator might be fielded and how a decision to fire would be made. At the September 4 Cabinet meeting, Tenet said he wanted the Bush policy makers to understand the proposal: The CIA would be operating a lethal fixed-wing aircraft of the sort normally controlled by the Air Force and its Pentagon chain of command. If Bush and his Cabinet wanted to entrust that operational role to the CIA, Tenet said, they should do so with their eyes wide open, fully aware of the potential fallout if there were a controversial or mistaken strike. Some at the meeting interpreted Tenet's comments as reluctance to take on the mission. There were differing recollections about how forceful Tenet was in outlining the potential risks. For his part, Tenet believed he was only trying to clarify and facilitate a presidential decision that would break recent precedent by shifting control of a lethal aircraft from the uniformed military to the CIA. The armed Predator was by now a CIA project, virtually an agency invention. The Air Force was not interested in commanding such an awkward, unproven weapon. Air Force doctrine and experience argued for the use of fully tested bombers and cruise missiles even when the targets were lone terrorists. The Air Force was not ready to begin fielding or commanding armed robots.8 Rice told the group that an armed Predator was needed, but that it obviously was not ready to operate. The princ.i.p.als agreed that the CIA should pursue reconnaissance Predator flights in Afghanistan while work continued-the same recommendation Clarke had made unsuccessfully the previous winter.

On Ma.s.soud, however, the CIA could at least start the paperwork. CIA lawyers, working with officers in the Near East Division and Counterterrorist Center, began to draft a formal, legal presidential finding for Bush's signature authorizing a new covert action program in Afghanistan, the first in a decade that sought to influence the course of the Afghan war.9

Ma.s.sOUD READ PERSIAN POETRY in his bungalow in the early hours of September 9. The next morning he prepared to fly by helicopter toward Kabul to inspect his forward lines and a.s.sess Taliban positions. A colleague told him that he ought to meet the two Arab journalists before he left; they had been waiting for many days. He said he would talk to them in the cement office used by his intelligence aide, Engineer Arif. Around noon he settled in the bungalow on a cushion designed to ease his back pain. Ma.s.soud Khalili, his friend and amba.s.sador to India, sat next to him. As the more compact Arab journalist moved a table and set up his tripod at Ma.s.soud's chest level, Khalili joked, "Is he a wrestler or a photographer?"10 Ma.s.soud took a telephone call. Eight Arabs had been arrested by his troops near the front lines. He asked Engineer Arif to see if he could find out more about them, and Arif left the room.

The visiting reporter read out a list of questions while his colleague prepared to film. About half his questions concerned Osama bin Laden. Ma.s.soud listened, then said he was ready.

The explosion ripped the cameraman's body apart. It smashed the room's windows, seared the walls in flame, and tore Ma.s.soud's chest with shrapnel. He collapsed, unconscious.

His guards and aides rushed into the building, carried his limp body outside, lifted him into a jeep, and drove to the helicopter pad. They were close to the Tajikistan border. There was a hospital ten minutes' flight away.

Several of Ma.s.soud's aides and the lanky Arab reporter sitting to the side of the blast recovered from the noise, felt burning sensations, and realized they were not badly hurt. The Arab tried to run but was captured by Ma.s.soud's security guards. They locked the a.s.sa.s.sin in a nearby room, but he wiggled through a window. He was shot to death as he tried to escape.

On the helicopter Ma.s.soud's longtime bodyguard, Omar, held the commander's head and watched him stop breathing. Omar thought to himself, he said later, "He's dying and I'm dying."11

AMRULLAH SALEH CALLED the CIA's Counterterrorist Center from Tajikistan. He spoke to Rich, the bin Laden unit chief. Saleh was in tears, sobbing and heaving between sentences as he explained what had happened.

"Where's Ma.s.soud?" the CIA officer asked.

"He's in the refrigerator," said Saleh, searching for the English word for morgue.12 Ma.s.soud was dead, but his inner circle had barely absorbed the news. They were all in shock. They were also trying to strategize in a hurry. As soon as the Taliban learned that Ma.s.soud was gone, they would swarm up the Panjshir Valley in attack, Ma.s.soud's surviving aides felt certain. Based on the Taliban's past behavior in newly conquered lands, the valley faced devastation and atrocities. Ma.s.soud's aides had to get themselves organized. They had to choose a new leader and reinforce their defenses. They needed time.

They had already put out a false story claiming that Ma.s.soud had only been wounded. Meanwhile, Saleh told the Counterterrorist Center, the suddenly leaderless Northern Alliance needed the CIA's help as it prepared to confront al Qaeda and the Taliban.13 This looked to many of the CIA's officers like the end of the Northern Alliance. Ma.s.soud's death immediately called into question a central plank of the national security strategy designed to confront al Qaeda in Afghanistan, endorsed by Bush's Cabinet just five days earlier. There was no one in the wings who approached Ma.s.soud's stature. The CIA's quick a.s.sessment was that Ma.s.soud's coalition might not be viable either militarily or politically without him.14 Officers in the Counterterrorist Center alerted the White House to the news that Ma.s.soud was dead. Within hours the story had leaked to CNN. From Tajikistan, Saleh called Langley again, angry. The CIA was the only call he had made confirming Ma.s.soud's death. How had the agency let it leak so fast?

On the morning of September 10 the CIA's daily cla.s.sified briefings to President Bush, his Cabinet, and other policy makers reported on Ma.s.soud's death and a.n.a.lyzed the consequences for America's covert war against al Qaeda. At the White House Stephen Hadley chaired a meeting of the Deputies Committee called to finalize new policies toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, decisions that would round out the National Security Presidential Directive approved by cabinet members six days earlier. Explaining the Bush Administration's deliberate pace in fashioning new policies toward al Qaeda, Paul Wolfowitz emphasized the need to think carefully about Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet after five months of discussion and delay they had arrived at relatively cautious, gradual plans that departed from Clinton policies in their eventual goals, but not in many of their immediate steps. On the Taliban, the committee