The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [108]
Even after he left Yemen, right up till 9/11, Steve Bongardt was furiously battling “the wall,” as it came to be known. Often he would demand of people who were refusing him access to intelligence: “Show me where this is written that we can’t have access to intelligence.” They couldn’t, but they would insist it was the law. It was a widespread misconception that no one at the top ever refuted. These problems—the problems identified by the 9/11 Commission—started in Yemen. Day by day it got worse. At one point I got the Pink Floyd CD The Wall. And whenever an issue came up and we were told we couldn’t have information because we were on the criminal side, we would play it.
When I returned from Yemen I met with a delegation from the Department of Justice, led by Fran Townsend, to discuss intelligence-sharing problems. The meeting was convened in my supervisor Pat D’Amuro’s conference room. “Imagine an instance where one agent on a squad is handling intelligence,” I said to the delegates, “and another is handling the criminal investigation. It’s likely that one agent would have half of the plot, and the other would have the other half. And yet they won’t be allowed to piece it together. Imagine if someone wants to bomb the World Trade Center and our agents are unable to connect the dots since one half isn’t allowed to tell the other half what it knows.”
I said this not because I thought there was an attack coming, but because until 9/11, the previous major terrorist attack in the United States had been the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. The delegates were sympathetic and understood our problem, but in government it is very difficult to change anything, and nothing happened.
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The Human Polygraph Machine
Witnesses who had seen Nashiri and the other al-Qaeda operatives around the Tawahi apartment told us that they had observed some of the suspects visiting a mechanic in the area. We tracked him down, and he confirmed the visits. He told us that the suspects had carried AK-47s and that they had brought in a white Dyna pickup truck and asked for a steel plate to be added to one of its sides.
Terrorists add steel plates to trucks that are to be used as conveyances for bombs; the plates help to direct the explosion toward the target. The trucks used in the East African embassy bombings, for example, were modified this way (they were Dyna trucks, too). We started investigating the truck in question in this case and found the dealership that had sold it. The truck had been purchased by Jamal al-Badawi—the second time that Badawi’s name had appeared.
The Yemenis searched for the truck but were unable to find it. This meant, most likely, that it was still available, fitted for a possible suicide attack. Sources told us that Yemeni extremists were becoming increasingly agitated by the U.S. presence in the country, and the U.S. National Security Agency had picked up chatter traffic (the term used for intelligence collected using technical means to eavesdrop and intercept e-mail) about an immiment attack. With every American in Aden packed into a single hotel, it was clear where the most effective strike would be. We heightened all our security, strengthening the hotel perimeter protection; and the Yemenis blocked off one side of the street with cement blocks.
John, Kevin Donovan, and I were having a meeting one evening in October in the command post when we heard