The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [89]
Bodine was a tough, thin woman in her forties who had previously served as an ambassador in charge of terrorism for the State Department. While she was a seasoned diplomat, she gave people strange looks when they spoke, as if she were trying to catch them out. When we interviewed USS Cole sailors, some told us that Bodine treated them as if they were responsible for the bombing and as if they had unnecessarily inconvenienced her. We couldn’t believe that this was how a U.S. ambassador treated U.S. sailors who had just been victims of a terrorist attack.
As usual following an attack on U.S. citizens in a foreign country, the State Department prepared to put out a Reward for Justice poster, asking locals to help with the investigation. Such posters often produce useful leads, as they had with the East African embassy bombings. Without coordinating with us on the ground, Bodine’s staff worked on translating a standard poster to be published in Yemeni newspapers. When I opened a paper the next day to look at the ad—written, of course, in Arabic—I saw that rather than asking for cooperation, it warned the local population not to cooperate with us. Apparently no one in the embassy had noticed the colossal mistake.
Bodine had a tendency to be overly sensitive to how she felt the Yemenis would react to actions we took. Her attitude reminded me of a story my colleague and co-author Daniel Freedman likes to tell about George Shultz. When Shultz was secretary of state, before a new ambassador would head off to his or her country of destination, Shultz would call the person into his office and say: “Before you leave, you have one more test. Go over to that globe.” He would point to a giant globe he had in the corner of his office. “Show me that you can identify your country,” he would say. Without exception, the ambassador would spin the globe and point to the country to which he or she was heading. Shultz would gently correct the ambassador by pointing to the United States and saying, “No, this is your country.”
On October 18, almost a week after we had arrived in Yemen, we watched on a hotel television the memorial service being held for the victims of the Cole at the Naval Station Norfolk, in Virginia. President Clinton led the service. Many of the injured sailors, sitting in wheelchairs or resting on crutches, were present. The sky in Virginia was gray and overcast, a fitting backdrop for the ceremony. President Clinton said all the right things. He warned those responsible: “You will not find a safe harbor. We will find you, and justice will prevail.” That cheered our spirits. With the president making a declaration like that, we believed strong support for our investigation would be forthcoming.
And initially it looked good. Ambassador Bodine was overruled by her superiors in the State Department, and the team in Germany with John O’Neill was finally allowed into the country. I went to the airport to prepare for John’s arrival. We didn’t want his group to have the same problems that we had encountered when we’d landed. The Yemeni official in charge of the airport had become my friend from our first day in Aden. I told him that John was “a very, very important man in the FBI.” I knew that because of the class and rank consciousness of Yemeni society, this would make entry easier for John.
“How important?” the official asked. “Special agent in charge” doesn’t translate well into Arabic, so I told him that John was the “boss of my boss, the equivalent of a general.” The Yemeni official was impressed and told me that he would personally welcome John on the runway. It was only fitting that he, as the most important official at the airport, greet a general, he reasoned, and I nodded solemnly. I also suggested that he open the VIP lounge