The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [234]
“That’s pathetic,” [1 word redacted] told her. “Why have other countries do the interrogating, when we have people who can do the job better?”
“And they have American blood on their hands. I don’t want them to do our job. I know we can do it here, and we can do it right.”
“I agree completely. So do you have a plan to give us access?”
“I do. I’m going to go against the instructions I’ve been given from Washington, and I’m going to give you access to them for forty-five minutes each, and we’ll see what happens. If they cooperate, then maybe the whole idea of rendition will be scrapped and we can continue interrogating them here.”
“Sounds good, but did you say I can only have forty-five minutes with them?”
“Yes, forty-five minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll take what I can get.”
September 11, 2002. “Hi, Ali, welcome back.” Kevin Donovan, now the assistant director in charge of the New York office, had spotted me on the street outside the JTTF’s New York office.
“Thank you, it’s good to be home,” I replied. I had just returned to New York from working with the fusion cell in Yemen.
“We’re going down to ground zero,” Kevin said, “and I’d like you and Steve Bongardt to carry the FBI wreath to the memorial.”
“But there are others better suited than us.”
“No, it would be an honor for the FBI to have you and Steve do this.” Steve and I had been trying to get the CIA to share information with us before 9/11 that could have stopped the attacks, so I understood why Kevin wanted us to carry the wreath—the act would be symbolic.
As Steve and I walked, holding the wreath, I couldn’t hold back my tears. The history of what had happened kept swirling around in my mind.
I felt almost physically unable to look at the site where thousands of Americans had died, in an attack that in my heart I knew we could have stopped. At one point I passed a picture of John O’Neill, and as I looked at John’s face I felt a sharp pain in my chest. We laid the wreath at the memorial for law enforcement personnel who had died in the attacks.
After the walk, I returned to my office. Others were going to a nearby bar, but I was too emotional to deal with other people. As I sat at my desk, reliving what had happened a year earlier and trying to work, my phone rang. It was FBI headquarters in Washington telling me that Ramzi Binalshibh and [1 word redacted] had been captured, [16 words redacted]
[1 word redacted] flew to Washington, DC, where [1 word redacted] met [1 word redacted] and [1 word redacted] and another FBI agent, [2 words redacted], who would help with our security, and we got on a private plane chartered by the CIA and flew to Islamabad. CIA officers met us on the tarmac, and one, an older man, came up to me and asked, “Are you [2 words redacted]?”
“Yes,” [1 word redacted] replied, “I am.”
He stuck out his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you. I look forward to seeing you in action.”
“Thank you. We’ll see how it goes.”
A few hours later [1 word redacted] took a small cargo plane from Islamabad to Karachi, and a new group of CIA officials flew with us. While the officials on the plane from DC and at the airport in Karachi were friendly, on this plane [1 word redacted] were ignored. [1 word redacted] recognized some of them, including Fred, the CIA official who had caused problems in Jordan during the millennium investigation and who had threatened Ibn al-Shaykh al-Liby, ruining that interrogation. It was a bad sign that he was involved.
In Karachi [1 word redacted] were met by [1 word redacted] CIA officers and Pakistani special forces who were holding the detainees. The [1 word redacted] terrorists, who were all blindfolded and handcuffed,