The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [46]
I wrote down the analysis I had given John and the others, and Kevin and Tom added historical and other classified information that bolstered the claim. They had been privy to intelligence reports on al-Qaeda cells in the region, specifically in Nairobi, and added those details to the memo. When we completed it we showed it to John, who gave it his approval and sent it off to headquarters.
A reply came back about thirty minutes later that headquarters had accepted the arguments in our memo. An NYO team was to be assembled: half would go to Nairobi and the other half to Dar es Salaam. Senior officials decided that Pat D’Amuro would lead both groups. Arrangements were made for everyone to leave in a few hours.
While the decision was being made as to who would make up the team, John came up to me. “Good work on the memo,” he said, putting his arm around me.
“Thanks, boss,” I said.
“Listen,” John continued, “I don’t want you to go to Nairobi. I need you here with me. We’ll have enough agents on the ground there, but I could use your insights here.”
In Nairobi the FBI team worked with local law enforcement and intelligence services to begin piecing together the attacks, gathering evidence, performing forensic analysis, questioning witnesses, and following leads. Reward for Justice posters were issued by the State Department and distributed worldwide.
At the same time, Department of Justice prosecutors from the Southern District of New York flew in and worked with local officials to establish protocol for conducting the investigation. This was essential, as our interest was not just in finding those responsible but also in ensuring that we would be able to convict them in a U.S. court—and use evidence gained for other potential al-Qaeda–related prosecutions.
We needed to make certain that all parts of the investigation—from the handling of evidence to the conducting of interviews and interrogations—met federal standards, so that evidence, testimony, and confessions would be admissible in U.S. courts. Counterterrorism is a continuous process. The result of any operation might end up in court, so it is prudent to have the legal process in mind in order to keep all options open.
While my colleagues were doing the hard work on the ground in Nairobi, I worked with John and others in New York both in providing assistance to the Nairobi team and in tracking the broader al-Qaeda network. One city we started focusing on was London. The British capital had been the location from which al-Qaeda had distributed bin Laden’s declaration of jihad and other statements. It was also where media outlets such as CNN and ABC had arranged their meetings with bin Laden.
John contacted senior British officials to urge them to take the al-Qaeda threat seriously and to help us investigate alleged al-Qaeda members in London and throughout the United Kingdom. They were at first reluctant to do anything about the presence of EIJ and al-Qaeda operatives in London, who didn’t seem to be harming British interests.
I did further analysis on the claims of responsibility. The two were almost identical, the only difference being the location and the names of the shadowy “platoons,” or cells, that had carried out the bombings. The Nairobi claim announced that the bombing had been planned by the platoon of Martyr Khalid al-Saeed and carried out by operatives from the Arabian Peninsula (referring to Saudi Arabia); the Dar es Salaam claim said that the bombing had been planned by the platoon of Abdullah Azzam and carried out by an Egyptian. The names of the platoons honored Islamist terrorist heroes: Khalid al-Saeed was one of the terrorists behind the November 1995 attack on U.S. servicemen in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (an act for which he had been praised by bin Laden), and