The Black Banners_ 9_11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda - Ali H. Soufan [98]
An FBI artist worked on creating sketches of the men. He was the same artist who had drawn the Wanted sketch of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. It was a tortuous process, as he didn’t speak Arabic and had to work through a translator. Despite the difficulty, the witnesses said that the final sketches were realistic likenesses.
Days after we arrived in Yemen, one of my Yemeni friends told me confidentially that some pieces of the USS Cole, including parts of the protective fiberglass cover on the outer surface of the radar, had washed ashore. He said that Yemeni officials from the ministry of the interior had taken them. My friend was one of those Yemenis who sympathized with the United States and was firmly committed to getting justice. We had not heard anything about the boat parts from the Yemenis.
Under our agreement with them, they were to notify us of any new evidence that came in. Any and all parts of the Cole were U.S. property. I asked Ansi about the wreckage and he denied knowing that anything had washed ashore. Still other Yemeni friends, however, confirmed that parts had been found and told me how to find the lab in which the wreckage was being kept.
One afternoon, while our convoy was traveling from one location to another, I directed our drivers to take a detour and head to the lab. I hadn’t wanted to give the Yemenis advance warning that we were coming. The lab was simply a fenced-in house with a courtyard and a gate; inside, there were a few rooms. We surprised the Yemenis at lunch, and they cautiously welcomed us in.
“What can we do for you?” the lab supervisor asked.
“As you know, we are working together on the Cole investigation.” He nodded. “So we’ve come to see whether there is anything here that we can work on together.”
“We don’t have anything,” he replied.
“There is nothing here from the Cole?”
“No.”
“Okay, then.” I walked past him to look into the next room.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his face showing confusion.
“We have approval to look here, and we’re going to see what you have,” I said, and signaled to my colleagues to start looking around. The official protested but seemed unsure what to do. I offered him my phone and said, “Do you want to call someone to confirm what you should already know?” He was hesitant. It was just after lunchtime; most senior officials would be taking their midday nap, and he didn’t want to wake them unnecessarily. We went on with our search as he followed us nervously.
Within a couple of minutes of searching the rooms we found parts of the Cole’s radar cover along with other pieces of wreckage from the destroyer. I told my team to load them into our trucks. “What are you doing?” he asked, running up to me. “Stop! You can’t take that!”
“Now you listen to me,” I told him. “When we came you told us you didn’t have anything from the USS Cole here. This is from the Cole and this belongs to the United States, and I’m taking it with me.”
“Wait a second,” he said, “let me speak to someone first.” He started dialing a number on his phone.
“Let’s go!” I told my team. I didn’t want to hang around. We jumped into the cars and drove off.
“Keep your heads down,” George shouted. We didn’t know if they would start shooting. We made it safely out and back to our hotel. No Yemeni official ever mentioned the incident to me.
From Hani’s family and local fishermen we learned that the men with the boat had been seen coming from Madinat al-Sha’ab, another impoverished area of Aden. We spoke to Aql al-Hara—a Yemeni term for the unofficial mayor of the neighborhood—and he said that a couple of Saudis had been spotted going into and out of a certain house with a boat.