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Another sticking point was how the interrogation of suspects would work. The Yemenis said that only their officials could talk to Yemeni suspects and that we wouldn’t be allowed to question anyone directly. Given our early experience with Ansi, we didn’t have much faith in the types of questions detainees would be asked if someone from their domestic intelligence service conducted an interrogation. Once again, because of political pressure from our State Department, we had to accept the Yemenis’ terms. By the end of a single day, the initial terms of engagement were finalized. The rules for conducting joint interrogations would take many more weeks to establish.

We also decided that all our requests would go through Qamish—sweeping aside the problem of dealing with competing agencies. This didn’t mean it was a smooth ride. Qamish was a tough negotiator, but, unlike Ansi, he was pragmatic—and friendly. It was clear that he understood our perspective, which helped. Night was when deals were done in Yemen, and almost every night when Qamish was in Aden, we would spend hours talking and joking with him—cajoling him and bargaining with him to give us access to sites, witnesses, and evidence.

I first heard the name Bob McFadden at 3:00 one morning, the day after John O’Neill had arrived in Aden. I was in a room at the command center, exhausted but unwilling to go to sleep until I had finished following up on some leads and writing reports. John entered the room, spotted me in a corner, beckoned to me, and said he wanted to speak to me privately. I followed him into another room.

“Ali,” he began. In his voice was a tone he usually reserved for unpleasant tasks, and there was also a hint of stress. “Sometimes we have to work with others from outside the FBI. There is a guy here called Bob McFadden who is the case agent for the NCIS. He’s said to be one of the best operational people in the region. He’s an Arabic speaker, too.” John then made a self-deprecating joke about the quality of Arabic an Irishman could speak. “You need to try to work with him,” he added.

I was confused. “Boss, I don’t understand,” I said. “Why is Immigration working with us on this?” In my sleep-deprived state, NCIS had sounded like INS—the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

John smiled. “No, the NCIS. It’s the navy.”

“Sorry, it’s late,” I said, laughing. “That makes more sense. No problem. We’ll do our thing, and if he wants to contribute we’d be grateful for any help we can get.”

Many view it as an insult to be asked to work alongside officials from other agencies, and this antipathy is a recurring problem. I never shared the view. In fact, my first partner when I joined the JTTF was from the CIA. And when I was in charge of a squad, I made sure to partner every FBI agent with a non-FBI official. I believed it was a constructive process that helped improve relations and cooperation.

“Now, go to sleep—that’s an order,” John said. He had, I noticed, been studying my face. None of us were sleeping much. With the blood of sailors on the ground, we didn’t feel we had a right to sleep. John, however, was rightly concerned about the health of his team. Still, I had work to do.

“Let me just finish this report and I’ll go,” I told him.

An hour later John returned to the command center and found me working. He didn’t like being disobeyed, especially when he believed you were harming yourself. He pushed down the lid of my laptop. “That’s it,” he said. “Leave.” He stood there, his hand resting on the laptop as I walked out.

The next day Robert McFadden introduced himself. He had been in U.S. Air Force intelligence before joining NCIS, where he had learned Arabic and served in offices throughout the Arab world. We would become partners in the investigation, doing most of our traveling, interrogations, and interviews together. Bob is polite and gentle, with an acerbic wit. He has a penetrating mind and is hard to fool. Working almost twenty-two-hour days together, we were in sync on everything, from how