The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [109]
“Hold on,” I said. “If there is a problem outside, non–Arabic-speaking HRT guys are unlikely to help the situation but may find themselves new targets. Let me go out. I have a better chance of blending in with the Yemenis.” Bob agreed that that made sense, handed me a bulletproof vest, and said he was coming with me.
Before we left, HRT snipers took positions on the roof to cover us. Bob carried a radio to keep in touch with them. As a security precaution, we decided to take the stairs down; if anything happened, we didn’t want to be trapped in an elevator. As we started down, John called out to me, with a hint of nervousness in his voice, “Ali, be careful.” It was unlike John to publicly show anxiety.
The lobby was empty, and we ran through it and opened the hotel’s front door slowly. The street was eerily silent. There were no cars around and the roads appeared blocked off. The silence was only broken by an ambulance going by, although it didn’t have its siren on.
We saw a group of Yemeni security agents standing at the end of the street. They were not wearing uniforms but traditional Yemeni dress, and they were carrying AK-47s. They noticed us seconds after we spotted them, and started walking toward us. Right behind them was a car, moving at their pace. Driving it was a Yemeni whom I recognized as the former chief of police in Aden.
They came to a stop right in front of us. “What’s going on?” I asked the driver.
“Nothing,” he replied.
“What was the shooting we heard?”
“Nothing. There was just a wedding, and people were shooting in celebration.”
“Why did you close the streets?”
“Don’t worry.”
“The ambulance?”
“Don’t worry,” he said again, and drove off.
We reported the incident to headquarters. It was the tipping point for them, and they decided to evacuate everyone from the hotel. Everyone, “no exceptions,” we were told, had to leave. We packed all our gear, equipment, and weapons into trucks, and we went to the pier, where a team of marines were stationed. They had a small base there to monitor who boarded and left the Cole. Loading our stuff in boats, we headed out to the USS Duluth, a navy ship not far from the harbor.
Her captain and officers were waiting on deck to greet us. They were very hospitable; officers bunked together so that we would have rooms to sleep in. The plan was to stay on the Duluth for a couple of days while we monitored what was happening on shore. The Duluth moved constantly: since the attack on the USS Cole, no U.S. ships were permitted to remain stationary in the vicinity of Aden. We had to keep moving our satellite to keep in contact with FBI headquarters and took turns, day and night, positioning it.
Ambassador Bodine was annoyed when she learned that we had evacuated the Mövenpick. She felt it was an unnecessary insult to the Yemenis. It implied, in her view, that we thought that the Yemenis were unable to protect us adequately. That was true, of course. The bombing of the Cole, along with the fact that there was a truck suited for a suicide bombing loose on the streets of Aden, was evidence of that. Not to her, however.
She registered a complaint through the State Department against John, whom she blamed for “unnecessarily” ordering the evacuation. Because of her complaints, Kevin Donovan, myself, and some other officials were called to the bridge of the Duluth to speak to senior officials in headquarters about John’s performance. Once the purpose of the call became clear to me, I got very frustrated. “Look,” I told them, “we’re working here nonstop day and night. Our lives are being threatened and yet we’re making important progress. John is doing a great job. What we need here from you is