The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [100]
We went to General Qamish, and I shared my theory about Nashiri with him. “I guess you’re on to something,” he said. The Yemenis had found car registration papers for Abdul Rahim Hussein Muhammad Abda al-Nashr in the Nissan truck, along with the boat papers. In Yemen, car registration IDs contain a photo of the owner and resemble driver’s licenses. “It’s the same name, but spelled Nashr,” Qamish said, producing the ID. The photo, however, did not match the picture of Nashiri in the photo-book. Either my theory was wrong or someone was trying to mislead us as to Nashiri’s appearance. We theorized that perhaps Nashiri had deliberately left the fraudulent photo ID in the truck so that we would think he was dead. It was also strange that the Yemenis were only now mentioning that they had found the ID. Why hadn’t they given it to us with everything else they had found in the truck, or at least mentioned it? There were no immediate answers.
We showed the 1998 picture of Nashiri to the fishermen and to Hani, all of whom confirmed that he was Abdu. The Abda Hussein Muhammad who had leased the house was in fact Nashiri. Returning to the landlord, we asked how he’d come to know Nashiri, and he explained that a man named Jamal al-Badawi had introduced them. Witnesses we questioned said that Badawi had been spotted in the neighborhood, as had Musawa. The Yemenis told us that Badawi was a known local al-Qaeda operative and that they would try to track him down. The landlord added that he had found the house deserted at the beginning of January. Nashiri hadn’t notified him that he and the other tenants were leaving. They didn’t even leave the keys, and he never heard from them again.
We thought that perhaps the person pictured in the Nashr ID was the second suicide bomber and that the other was Musawa. That would fit with our smokescreen theory. Hani and the fishermen didn’t recognize the Nashr photo, however, so we sent it around to all the intelligence community and embassies to see if anyone knew anything about him.
A few weeks later, in January 2001, the man pictured on the Nashr ID walked into the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa. He waited in line and, when he got to the head of the line, told the clerk that he wanted a U.S. visa. The clerk looked at him, and his eyes widened: the man’s face matched the Wanted picture that was circulating around the embassy. The clerk alerted security and the message was passed to us.
It sounded too good to be true; no suspect had ever been served up this easily. A decision was made by Ambassador Bodine not to arrest him. He had come in for a service, and an arrest could be viewed, she felt, as kidnapping, leading to a diplomatic incident—an understandable concern. Instead we notified the Yemenis, and we instructed the embassy staff to tell the man to return in the afternoon for an answer. As he walked out, the Yemenis arrested him. The man was questioned for hours and denied knowing anything about the Cole. He said that he didn’t know why his picture was on an ID for “Nashr.” He seemed confused and shocked by the accusations, and his reactions were so obviously genuine that we eventually determined that he was telling the truth. We guessed that he had probably gone to get his passport picture taken in a store, and that someone had swiped a copy to use on a fake ID. It was an unfortunate coincidence for him, but in any case he was not given a U.S. visa. (He was the one person whom the Yemeni authorities had no problem with us questioning as much as we wanted.)
At this point, given all the evidence we had discovered so far, including the role of Nashiri, it was clear that al-Qaeda was behind the bombing. The Washington field office began making preparations to leave Aden and to hand over the case fully to the NYO. Everyone—the White House, the military, the CIA, CENTCOM—were all briefed on the fact that the bombing of the Cole had been an al-Qaeda operation. We waited for an official U.S. response against al-Qaeda. And