The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [241]
The memo had been put together with the help of the joint military and fusion cell. In a meeting with representatives from all U.S. agencies in Yemen, as well as the U.S. ambassador, Edmund Hull, Colonel Duke had asked for permission to intervene to stop the plot. The CIA [3 words redacted] had opposed [1 word redacted] analysis.
One crew member was killed in the October 6 attack on the Limburg, a 332 x 58-meter oil tanker flying under a French flag off the coast of al-Mukalla. Twelve others were injured, and some 90,000 barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Aden.
After the phone calls with Duke and Andy, I went with Bob to the U.S. Embassy for a meeting in Ambassador Hull’s office. Members of the fusion cell, State Department officials, and the CIA [1 word redacted] were gathered. I noticed that the [1 word redacted] looked agitated as I walked into the meeting with Stephen Gaudin, who at the time served as a permanent detailee to the fusion cell.
“I just returned from a meeting with Yemeni officials,” the ambassador said, “and they told us that they believe the attack was an accident and not a terrorist attack.” We were told that at the moment we had to go along with the Yemenis’ verdict on the issue, and we were not to write reports saying it was a terrorist attack.
“On what basis are they saying that it’s an accident?” Stephen asked.
“They looked into it. That’s their position.”
Stephen and I left the meeting with Colonel Duke, who muttered, “Accident my ass” on the way out.
“Like they said the USS Cole was an accident?” I replied.
“This cover-up won’t work,” Duke said.
“The truth will come out soon. The direction of the explosions, residue, witnesses—exactly like the Cole. You can’t hide for long the fact that it was a terrorist attack,” I said.
For three days the official position was that it was not a terrorist attack. We could not call it one, nor could we refer to the memo [1 word redacted] had written before the attack, predicting it.
But on the third day a team from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service began testing the boat and found residue of TNT and other explosives. After an examination of the blast area, it was clear that the tanker had been attacked, and NCIS reported it up their chain of command. The director of the FBI assigned an FBI bomb team to investigate as well.
We investigated the attack with the Yemenis and found that what had happened conformed precisely to the information [1 word redacted] had given [1 word redacted]: two al-Qaeda suicide bombers, one of them [2 words redacted], whom [1 word redacted] had mentioned to [1 word redacted] by name, pulled up alongside the Limburg and detonated the explosives in their dinghy.
The memo [1 word redacted] had written became known in government circles as the “crystal ball memo,” because it was so utterly and unanswerably accurate.
The joint military-FBI fusion cell had worked out that there were two separate cells operating in Yemen: one sent by Nashiri specifically to attack the Limburg; and a local group, run by Abu Ali al-Harithi, the post-9/11 bin Laden appointee to Yemen. Harithi’s cell included Furqan al-Tajiki. Prevented from breaking up the Limburg cell, we had begun to focus on tracking the other operatives.
We learned that the local al-Qaeda cell had come up with a plan to target foreign embassies in Sanaa and planned to hit the U.S., British, German, French, and Cuban embassies. The Cuban Embassy was a target because of the detention of operatives at Guantánamo Bay. Apparently the al-Qaeda leadership wasn’t aware that the facility is owned and operated by the United States and has nothing to do with the Cuban government.
The local cell’s attack was to take place on August 13, 2002. Having cased the embassies, operatives had decided to hit the British and German with car bombs; the French and Cubans with explosives left nearby; and the U.S. with a missile, as it was deemed too well