The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [64]
As far as shared access with the CIA was concerned, we didn’t mind it at all; the source could be useful to us both. The agency had expertise in safely handling sources. Nevertheless, in the past—in the East African embassy bombings investigation, in Albania, and in other cases—evidence had been tainted and made unusable for prosecutions because CIA officers had, in fact, mishandled the chain of custody; or there were discrepancies between information that went through CIA channels and what was reported in FBI channels. This can cause considerable problems during the prosecution phase; one doesn’t know which to trust. To make matters clear this time, John Liguori spelled out the terms. “One thing needs to be clear,” he told the CIA, “the source is our source. He’s a criminal source who is providing information on the fugitives from the East African embassy bombings. The intelligence we gain might be used for investigations and prosecutions. You are welcome to use him as well, but all meetings need to be done jointly and we have to be included in the reporting. All information needs to be coordinated because it will one day be used in a court of law.”
“Absolutely,” a senior CIA officer told us. “We respect that.”
“Good,” John said. “Remember, any intelligence gained has to be exactly the same in your reports as in our 302 reports, so that when it comes to court, there are no contradictions.” The 302 is a form used for reporting information that is likely to become testimony. It contains a digest of the interview conducted.
They readily agreed to our terms.
I traveled a few times with Steve Bongardt to Pakistan to meet the source. We made efforts to protect him; we didn’t want Pakistani or other intelligence agents knowing about our meetings with him. Whenever we were in the country, Pakistani agents tried to tail us. They weren’t very efficient, which made it easy to lose them. Sometimes, however, we enjoyed playing games with them to show them how ridiculous the situation was. One time, after we had finished our mission and were ready to go home the next morning, Steve and I walked out of our rooms, went to the elevator, and spotted a man who had been following us for a few days. While he claimed to be a receptionist on our floor, he repeatedly popped up wherever we were, and he didn’t wear a hotel uniform or seem to do any administrative work. As the elevator doors opened, we stepped in, and he followed us in.
“Oh, excuse me,” I said out loud. “I forgot something.” Steve and I stepped out of the elevator, and the “receptionist” jumped out.
“Actually, I have it,” Steve said, playing along, and we both stepped back in—as did the man.
We jumped out, and he jumped out. “You’re burned,” I told him with a big smile. “Tell them they need to send someone else to follow us.” His face went red, and he walked off.
6
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“You’ll Be Singing Like a Canary”
L’Houssaine Kherchtou, chosen by al-Qaeda’s leaders to serve as bin Laden’s personal pilot, returned to Sudan from flight school in Nairobi in 1995 to find his pregnant wife begging on the streets of Khartoum for money for a Cesarean section. Al-Qaeda’s security rules had prevented him from contacting her, and he was unaware that she had been reduced to begging. He told her tearfully that he would take care of the money, and checked her into the main hospital in Khartoum.
Kherchtou then went to see Sheikh Sa’eed al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s financial chief, in the office the latter shared with bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. “I need money to pay the hospital bill for my wife’s Cesarean section,” he told Sa’eed al-Masri. “It’s five hundred dollars.”
“I’m sorry, there is no money. We can’t give you anything,” Sa’eed al-Masri said apologetically. After a pause he added: “Why don’t you take your wife to the Muslim hospital?”
The Muslim hospital offered free care to the poor; conditions were known to be terrible. Kherchtou would never take