The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [127]
It wasn’t only Dina who misunderstood the rules regarding information sharing. The problems were right across the U.S. government, and they were to the point of being absurd. In February, Steve had been at a meeting in Yemen with Yemeni officials and Howard Leadbetter, who was on a thirty-day rotation as the FBI commander. At some point Leadbetter asked Steve to step out of the meeting while he spoke to the Yemenis about some intelligence.
“Come on, if the Yemenis can know it, I can know it,” Steve said.
“Sorry.”
One day in Sanaa—we had been there for about a week—we were told that we were to be evacuated from Yemen. New, verified threats had surfaced that all those in residence would be assassinated—Bob McFadden and I, the ambassador, the [3 words redacted], and the defense attaché. We shredded all our documents, packed up all our gear, and boarded cars to head for the airport.
But the gates of the embassy wouldn’t open. The head of the Marine Security Guard (MSG), responsible for guarding the embassy, apologetically told us that he had received a call from the State Department’s regional security officer, who said that Ambassador Bodine had ordered that the gates not be opened until she had spoken further about it with the deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage. “I’m sorry, it’s nothing personal, but these are my orders,” the MSG head told us. We had a good relationship with the marines. They had asked us to help them in their drills to secure the embassy, and so we often trained with them. We took turns on guard duty. With all nonessential personal gone from the embassy, they needed all the help they could get. We had readily pitched in, and a friendship developed between us. But here they had no choice: the ambassador was their boss.
Mary Galligan, who was doing the thirty-day rotation in charge of the FBI contingent, and Steve Corbett, NCIS on-ground commander, went to speak to Ambassador Bodine, who told them that the message sent by everyone’s leaving the embassy would be damaging to our relationship with the Yemenis. However, she told Mary and Steve, if Bob and I stayed, she’d let everyone else leave. That way, she reasoned, the Yemenis would take comfort: she knew that they liked us.
Bob and I were prepared to accept this deal, and Mary conveyed that to FBI headquarters. “No, one team, one fight,” the message came back. In addition, they reported that Bob and I were on the top of the target list for the terrorists, who knew that we were the ones spearheading the investigation and interrogating their operatives.
The director of the FBI called the secretary of state and explained the situation. The secretary intervened, and Ambassador Bodine was ordered to unlock the doors and let us leave. We flew to Fort Dix, where John O’Neill and Kenny Maxwell were waiting for us, and we drove with them back to New York City.
It was frustrating to be out of Yemen. Despite the threats, we had made important progress in the Cole investigation, and we had enough evidence to start prosecuting Badawi and Quso. Moreover, the real threats that prompted us to leave were a strong indication that al-Qaeda was still strong in Yemen. We needed to track those people down. There were other people that the Yemenis had in custody, ostensibly unconnected to the Cole bombing; we wanted to interrogate them because of their importance to al-Qaeda. High on this list were bodyguard Abu Jandal and al-Bara, Khallad’s brother.
Then there was the lingering issue of Khallad and Malaysia. We kept asking the CIA about it, and they continued to insist that they didn’t know anything about it. We wanted to try to investigate that further. Because of all these questions and issues, we kept pressing headquarters to grant us permission to go back.
In August we got the green light and returned to Yemen to meet with