The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [106]
I was traveling from Aden to Sanaa one day to meet with PSO officials, and the embassy gave me a diplomatic pouch to carry. Under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, diplomatic bags, which contain articles for official government use, have immunity from search or seizure, as does their courier. We’d had problems in the past with pouches being searched, and to try to minimize such problems, I had told the Yemenis in advance that I would have one. I was convinced, of course, that some agency would insist upon a search.
After I was dropped off by colleagues at the airport, a PSO official in civilian clothes—I had seen him in the airport on various occasions before—came running toward me shouting, “Ali Soufan, Ali Soufan, come with me.” Oh, no, I thought, here we go. He told me to follow him, and I braced myself for drama as he led us to the VIP lounge. Sitting there to greet me was Qamish, with a big smile on his face. “You weren’t expecting me?” he asked, half rhetorically, and I shook my head. “I’m going to travel with you to make sure you have no problems.” The trip was the smoothest of all my time in Yemen. We spent the journey discussing our lives. He told me about his time in the military academy, and about his family.
Earning Qamish’s friendship didn’t result in his anticipating everything we might want. He only gave us what we asked for, and often we had to push hard for it. But unlike Ansi, when we were on to information, he didn’t try to cripple our investigation. And he was always friendly, even when saying no.
One evening, John, Naji, and I were in a car, discussing the problems we were having and how hard it was to get information from some Yemenis. Naji spoke English well, so there was no need for me to translate from Arabic for John. Naji told us: “You have to remember we Arabs are stubborn people—that’s why we’re hitting a rock. You’ll have to back down, because eventually things will work out.”
“You’re dealing with another Arab, and I’m also stubborn,” I replied with a smile, reminding him of my childhood in Lebanon.
“The Irish are even more stubborn than the Arabs,” John interjected, and told us a story about his clan in Ireland. The O’Neills were known for their strength and bravery. “Every year in their village there was a boat race to a giant stone in the middle of the local lake, and every year the O’Neill clan won. One year, another clan’s boat took the lead, and it looked as if they would win. My great-grandfather took his sword, cut off his own hand, and threw it at the rock so that he would touch it first. You two got anything that can match that?”
“We’re stubborn,” I said with a smile, “but we’re not crazy.”
As the weeks passed, our morning meetings became increasingly upbeat. The focus shifted from problems with the Yemenis or Ambassador Bodine to progress that was being made on various fronts. There was a sense that we were getting closer and closer to nailing those responsible. And then a new problem arose.
Before we arrived in Yemen, there had been some confusion about what information could be shared between intelligence and criminal investigators. In 1995, Attorney General Janet Reno had instituted new rules concerning the division between criminal and intelligence investigations, partly because of alleged problems with the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in past investigations. FISA governs the conduct and use of surveillance and physical searches of foreign powers and their agents inside the United States.
There are some differences between intelligence and criminal investigations: in a criminal investigation, in order to listen in on someone’s conversation, you first need probable cause and a judge’s approval. For intelligence gathering,