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Within a few days of Badawi’s name being mentioned by witnesses, the Yemenis found him in Sanaa and picked him up for questioning. We weren’t allowed to question him, however. The United States and Yemen were in the final stages of working out an interrogation agreement—it became known as the Joint Yemeni-American Investigative Committee—and Kelley and the judge were still negotiating terms. In the meantime, we kept pushing Qamish for more information on Nashiri. At one point, frustrated with all my queries, he said to me, “Look, Nashiri doesn’t matter. Badawi told us that a terrorist called Khallad introduced him to Nashiri. Khallad is the main guy, anyway.” Qamish folded his hands.

“Khallad?” I recognized the name from the conversation I had had months earlier with my source in Afghanistan, who had spoken of the one-legged al-Qaeda terrorist, and from reports of his mistaken arrest around the time of the Bayt Habra car thefts to finance Mihdhar’s escape. Rumor had it that, following Khallad’s arrest, bin Laden himself had written a letter to the Yemenis, addressed “To Whom It May Concern of the Brothers in Yemen,” asking for the “bin Attash son to be freed.” Khallad was not mentioned by name but the subject of the letter was clear. The letter reportedly went on to threaten the Yemenis with severe consequences if they didn’t release bin Laden’s errand boy.

This letter has never been found, and its existence was never confirmed by the Yemenis. However, it would not have been surprising for bin Laden to have written and sent such a letter: the al-Qaeda leader at that stage was viewed in Yemen not as an international terrorist but rather more as a respected mujahid from the first Afghan war, and he was known, feared, and respected. Al-Bara, however, was still in a Yemeni jail, ostensibly for his involvement in the Bayt Habra car theft plot. My source in Afghanistan had told me that al-Bara and Khallad looked like each other, a fact confirmed by other al-Qaeda operatives I questioned: when I showed them pictures of al-Bara, at least one identified the man in the photo as “Khallad when he was younger,” and almost all were in agreement about the likeness.

All this information from my source was classified, and I wasn’t permitted to tell Qamish that we knew about Khallad and al-Bara. I pulled John aside and told him what Qamish had said and asked for permission to reveal what I knew. John quickly got approval from Washington.

We went back to Qamish. “My friend,” John said to him, “given that you said Nashiri doesn’t matter and that Khallad is the key person, we’d like to ask you for pictures of both Khallad and al-Bara. Al-Bara is still in your custody, right?”

Qamish was surprised. “Yes, al-Bara is still in jail,” he replied matter-of-factly.

“We understand you’ve had him in custody since the Bayt Habra incident. You also arrested Khallad around that time. I’d like their photos and files,” John continued.

Qamish appeared unsure of how to respond. He had never mentioned al-Bara to us and was not expecting that we would know much, if anything, about him, let alone that the Yemenis had him in custody. John asked me to brief Qamish about Khallad and al-Bara, which I did. Qamish told us what they knew about the two men, giving us some new information.

It was, of course, difficult to get information from him in this way, but the slow back-and-forth wasn’t unusual. No intelligence agency (even that of an ally) readily gives up information unless its officials know that the other party has much of it already, or knows something about it, or unless their officials believe that it is in their own interests to share it. In that case, they don’t want to be seen as being noncooperative. If an agency thinks that we don’t know much about a suspect or a subject, however, they’re less likely to give up what information they themselves have.

The next time I met with Qamish, on November 22, he handed me an envelope. Inside, he told me, was a picture that Khallad had submitted when he had applied for a commercial license to