The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [261]
Jack Cloonan: FBI special agent and member of the I-49 squad whom I worked alongside in many cases, including the recruitment of L’Houssaine Kherchtou.
Daniel Coleman: Senior FBI agent and I-49 squad member. He opened the FBI’s case on bin Laden in 1996 and was an FBI expert on the al-Qaeda leader. He played a key role in many high-profile investigations.
Dina Corsi: FBI analyst who worked with the CIA. On June 11, 2001, together with a CIA official and another analyst assigned to the CIA, she met Steve Bongardt and other members of the FBI’s USS Cole team and showed them three photos. She told them that one of the men in the pictures was named Khalid al-Mihdhar. Only the CIA official knew more than that, but he wouldn’t say anything. After 9/11 we learned that those pictures were from al-Qaeda’s 9/11 planning summit in Malaysia. If the CIA official had told us what he knew then, we might have stopped 9/11.
George Crouch: FBI special agent from the I-49 squad who was a member of the USS Cole investigation team. We conducted several interrogations together after the Cole investigation, including that of Salim Hamdan, bin Laden’s driver and confidant, at Guantánamo in 2002.
Pat D’Amuro: The assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism when I joined the bureau, he was my boss through my most important cases—the Millennium Operation in Jordan, Operation Challenge in the UK, the USS Cole bombing, the 9/11 investigation—and during key interrogations in Guantánamo and elsewhere. He fully supported my decision to object to the introduction of coercive interrogation techniques.
Ahmed al-Darbi (alias Abdul Aziz al-Janoubi): Al-Qaeda operative who was the son-in-law of Ahmed al-Hada and a close friend and brother-in-law of 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar. He and Mihdhar were in same combat class in Afghanistan, and it was from this class that Mihdhar was selected for the 9/11 operation. Darbi rose through al-Qaeda’s ranks to become a deputy of Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri. He was eventually captured in 2002 while visiting his mistress in Azerbaijan, and information gained from him by an FBI colleague led to the arrest of Ramzi Binalshibh, [1 word redacted], and [1 word redacted] other al-Qaeda operatives on September 11, 2002. He is being held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Tom Donlon: Senior FBI official and the case agent in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was the supervisor of the I-40 squad, which focused on Sunni extremists, when I joined the FBI, and he encouraged me to write and circulate memos on bin Laden and al-Qaeda. It was one of these memos that attracted the attention of John O’Neill. Donlon was on a thirty-day rotation in Yemen, as a supervisor of the USS Cole investigation, when we received the news about 9/11.
Kevin Donovan: Senior FBI official who did a thirty-day rotation in Yemen as part of the USS Cole investigation. Later he was promoted to assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York office.
Debbie Doran: FBI special agent on the I-49 squad; from a family of FBI agents. She played an important role in many operations. These included the 1998 East Africa embassy bombing investigation, the recruitment of L’Houssaine Kherchtou, and the DocEx program.
Maj. Gen. Michael E. Dunlavey: Commander of Joint Task Force 170 at Guantánamo; responsible for military interrogations from the opening of the base until November 8, 2002, when he was replaced in command by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. Many FBI and military personnel were critical of his leadership and attitude toward detainees, although my interactions with him on the whole were positive.
Ed (not his real name): CIA interrogator whom I first met in Yemen while investigating the USS Cole bombing. We worked together during [5 words redacted], and later we partnered a few times at Guantánamo. He was unhappy with the coercive interrogation techniques the CIA contractors were using on Abu Zubaydah, and demanded that