Weighing in on the ABC mini-series “The Path to 9/11,” the former ambassador to Yemen, Barbara Bodine, writes (“9/11 Miniseries is Bunk”) in today’s Los Angeles Times:
One of the myths perpetuated by ABC played out in the steamy port city of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, using an FBI agent out of New York, John O’Neill, and the U.S. ambassador to that country. According to the mythmakers, a battle ensued between a cop obsessed with tracking down Osama bin Laden and a bureaucrat more concerned with the feelings of the host government than the fate of Americans and the realities of terrorism. I know this is false. I was there. I was the ambassador. I am not here to either defend or attack O’Neill. He was a complex man. But what happened after Al Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole was a complex story. Within hours, our embassy in Sana, Yemen, received support from Washington, U.S. military commands in the region and neighboring U.S. embassies. Within days, our presence in Aden went from zero to more than 300 people from the Navy, Marines, the intelligence community, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI, the State Department and my embassy. We had a clear and common goal: honor those killed by finding those guilty. As ambassador, I had four missions: recover the Cole and her crew; provide security for the burgeoning U.S. presence in Aden; establish a joint Yemeni-American criminal investigation, as agreed between the president of Yemen and FBI Director Louis Freeh; and maintain the Yemeni-American relationship. These tasks were not sequential but deeply interdependent. The recovery of the ship and its crew was the most urgent. The Cole was also a crime scene, and crew members were witnesses. Recovery efforts had to be coordinated with naval investigators and the FBI. With an unsettled threat, I could not allow either to go forward without rigorous security at the harbor and at our base of operations. The least quantifiable of the four mandates was our relationship with the Yemeni authorities. Diplomatic relations are not an end in themselves but rather provide a context within which we are able to operate – or not. Our cooperative relationship enabled the recovery, the security and the investigation to move forward, to work through the tensions, disagreements and conflicts that naturally arose. The attack on the Cole was a hostile act, but this was not a hostile government or a hostile people. It was my job to make sure everyone involved understood that our actions must not subvert our goals. The realities of a U.S. investigative style inevitably collided headlong with the limited capabilities of Yemen. The Yemenis knew Aden and its people but lacked technical and professional competence; the FBI had the forensic and technical capability but could not operate “on the street” in Aden. The friction, the suspicion, the miscommunication between the two could not, however, be allowed to derail a successful criminal investigation of the attack, its roots in Yemen and its links to other attacks against Americans around the world. Yemen’s subsequent willingness to cooperate with us in the war on terrorism confirms the value of working with it – not seeing it as the enemy.
John O’Neill was no ordinary FBI agent tasked to Yemen to investigate the Cole bombing. Long before September 11, O’Neill had warned about the threat al Qaeda posed to the U.S. In late August 2001 he took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center. He was killed there on September 11. PBS’ Frontline aired an excellent program on O’Neill called “The Man Who Knew” in October 2003. The program focused on O’Neill’s uphill battle against the U.S. government bureaucracy and also on what happened in Yemen following the USS Cole bombing. O’Neill can’t defend his actions today, so here’s the Yemen-related section from the Frontline transcript:
NARRATOR: To protect the hundreds of investigators on the ground, O’Neill and American military commanders wanted to show the Yemenis a forceful presence — guns ready, perimeters established. But much to O’Neill’s surprise, that approach quickly angered the American ambassador, Barbara Bodine, who felt his actions were harming U.S.-Yemeni government relations. RICHARD CLARKE, NSC Chief of Counterterrorism ’92-’01: You had an ambassador who wanted to be fully in control of everything that every American official did in the country and resented the fact that suddenly there were hundreds of FBI personnel in the country and only a handful of State Department personnel. She wanted good relations with Yemen as the number-one priority. John O’Neill wanted to stop terrorism as the number-one priority. And the two conflicted. FRAN TOWNSEND, Deputy U.S. Attorney general ’95-’01: This results in meetings between the attorney general and State, FBI, C.I.A. and Justice. But Ambassador Pickering is at it, the undersecretary, and the attorney general. Things are getting raised to that kind of a level, this has become such a bone of contention between them. RICHARD CLARKE: Almost all of us who were following the details in Washington, whether we were in the Justice Department, the FBI, the White House, the State Department, the Defense Department — almost all of us thought that John O’Neill was doing the right thing. NARRATOR: But not the higher-ups at the FBI. BARRY MAWN, Director FBI NYC ’00-’02: There may have been people at FBI headquarters that were going, “See? I told you so.” You know, “John does upset people and get them upset. And maybe he wasn’t the right guy.” But that’s — I mean, that’s all childish gossip and rumoring, as far as I’m concerned. NARRATOR: But on the ground in Yemen, the law enforcement agents saw a very different John O’Neill. MICHAEL DORSEY: I think he developed a real sense of closeness with the senior Yemeni officials. They referred to him in Arabic as “Alach [sp?],” which is “the brother,” and oftentimes referred to him as “the commander” or “your commander.” They had a real sense of appreciation for his seniority in the U.S. government and for what he represented. And I knew that they came to trust John. NARRATOR: For six years at the center of the FBI’s counterterrorism effort, O’Neill and his team had built the evidence on the mounting bin Laden threat: failed plots to kill hundreds of Americans in Jordan, Ressam’s explosives headed to LAX, an aborted Al Qaeda plot to blow up another American warship, the USS The Sullivans, and now the Cole. The Yemenis finally agreed to let the FBI join in the interrogation of one of their most prominent suspects, Fahad al Quso. O’Neill and his agents believed al Quso knew about bin Laden’s desire to videotape the destruction of the Cole, and possibly a whole lot more. O’Neill worked his newly developed Yemeni police officials and old allies in the CIA. NARRATOR: He had come to believe that some Yemeni officials were not being forthcoming about information from al Quso and other suspects. It was the Khobar Towers investigation all over again. (emphasis mine) But the weeks were taking their toll. O’Neill needed a break. He’d get back to al Quso after he returned from New York at the first of the year. VALERIE JAMES (O’Neill’s wife) : I have to tell you, when John came home — he got home, I think it was two days before Thanksgiving because he kept telling me he was going to try to be home for Thanksgiving. He — John had dropped 20, 25 pounds. NARRATOR: In New York, he plotted his return to Yemen. He had taken a Yemeni police delegation on a tour of Elaine’s and other hotspots. He was working them, trying to get unfettered access to al Quso and what he knew. But then he was told he wouldn’t be allowed to return to Yemen. Ambassador Bodine denied his visa. CHRIS ISHAM, ABC News: I mean, John was not rational on the topic of Ambassador Barbara Bodine. He was — I mean, “livid” would be putting it mildly. I mean, one can’t forget that John was — he very American, but he was also very Irish. INTERVIEWER: And that means? CHRIS ISHAM: That means when he got hot, he got hot. And he was hot. There’s no question about it. I think he felt that she was on the wrong side. NARRATOR: Ambassador Bodine would not grant FRONTLINE’s request for an interview. She was quoted in The New Yorker magazine. “The idea that John or his people or the FBI were somehow barred from doing their job is insulting to the U.S. government, which was working on Al Qaeda before John ever showed up. This is all my embassy did for 10 months.” For weeks, the ambassador had been making the case against O’Neill, even lobbying Louis Freeh. Finally, her accusations had their intended effect. Headquarters supported her decision not to let O’Neill back into Yemen. BARRY MAWN: John was upset. She was bad-mouthing him. She had caused a stir at headquarters. I actually think John was more disappointed that our headquarters didn’t back us, as far as sending him back and taking a stronger stand with the State Department. Eventually, our headquarters said, “Well, let’s try and work around not having John go back.” And so that’s what I had to do. NARRATOR: So O’Neill would not be in Yemen. The investigation slowed to a crawl. MICHAEL SHEEHAN, Chief Counterterrorism, State Dept. ’98-’01: I watched with dismay as the issue of the USS Cole completely disappeared from the U.S. scene, completely — again, in a new administration. It was just not on their agenda. Clearly, it was not on the agenda of the Congress, the media or anyone else. Again, it went into oblivion. NARRATOR: By spring, intelligence about Al Qaeda forces in Yemen convinced O’Neill they were about to target his agents. O’Neill pleaded with Barry Mawn to pull them out, and Mawn agreed. O’Neill’s investigation in Yemen was effectively over. CHRIS ISHAM: We don’t know what would have happened if John could have done his job in Yemen and had really had the full back-up to go and to really push in Yemen and what kind of networks he could have exposed. But you know, we do know there were Yemenis involved in the attacks of September 11th. So is it possible that if he had been able to really open up that network and really expose that network, that he could have in some way deterred the tragedy of September 11th? I don’t think we know, but it’s sad because we won’t know the answer to that. But I think there is a fighting — he would have had had a fighting chance if he’d been able to do his job.
Frontline also speculated on the “what if” O’Neill was allowed to continue his investigation in Yemen:
Following Sept. 11, Fahad al-Quso was interrogated again in Yemen on Sept. 12, 13 and 14 by FBI and Navy investigators, who had only just returned to Yemen a few days earlier. One of O’Neill’s last acts at the FBI in late August 2001 was to sign the authorization for that return. Interrogators showed al-Quso the CIA surveillance photos taken at the critical January 2000 Malaysia meetings. Al-Quso identified Alhazmi and Almidhar and admitted he was a bagman for Al Qaeda, presumably to fund the conspirators’ future operations. He claims he wasn’t at the meetings, but that Alhazmi and Almidhar met with him soon after the meetings concluded. One investigator admitted to FRONTLINE that al-Quso’s connections to the 9/11 conspirators was a staggering revelation, and he still had nightmares about it. When asked what might have been discovered if they’d learned of al-Quso’s connections earlier, he responded, “the possibilities are mind-boggling.” So there was the trail — the pieces of information linking the Malaysia meetings in January 2000, to the USS Cole attack of October 2000, to the 9/11 plot. At those meetings in Malaysia, it’s believed both the 9/11 and Cole plots were planned, their operatives met with each other, and investigators suspect one or more Al Qaeda operatives at the meetings worked both the Cole and 9/11 plots. The stunning and logical question that hangs in the air about John O’Neill’s compromised USS Cole investigation in Yemen is, “What if?” What if FBI headquarters had backed O’Neill and pushed the State Department to allow him to return to Yemen in January 2001 (over the objections of U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine) to continue his investigation? If O’Neill had been allowed to go back, what could he have done that wasn’t already being done? Given his aggressiveness in investigations, it would have meant more wiretaps, more surveillance of suspects, and pushing the government for more arrests. And as his colleagues like Barry Mawn, Clint Guenther and Mary Jo White knew so well, it all would have been done in the John O’Neill style: — wining and dining the head of Yemen’s PSO, Yemen’s equivalent to the FBI… — working with the CIA agents in Yemen and building on those past relationships from his Station Alex days… — holding the Yemeni officials’ feet to the fire to get more access to those detained, and using the interrogations to slowly unravel the Al Qaeda network in Yemen — especially, Fahad al-Quso, who O’Neill knew had been holding back … This is the scenario that might have played out in Yemen and the one that still bothers O’Neill’s former allies and supporters. For them, it is conceivable that, in the end, John O’Neill would have been able to learn about that critical January 2000 meeting in Malaysia, and to start connecting the dots that ultimately led to Sept. 11, 2001.
One last thing. Contrary to Bodine’s claim of the “cooperative relationship” between the US and Yemeni governments, Richard Clarke told Frontline just the opposite:
The first thing was the government of Yemen didn’t want us to know all the details; in part, because that would reveal that some low-level people in the Yemeni government may have been part of the conspiracy; in part, because it would have shown that the Yemeni government didn’t really have control over a large section of Yemen; in part because it would have shown that Yemen was filled with terrorists from a whole variety of different organizations. So Yemen didn’t want to cooperate fully, didn’t want us to see everything that was there.
