The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [190]
On the other hand, he was financially pressed, and he would still be at the same pay grade in the White House as in the bureau. The Justice Department inquiry had been a ruinous blow. In addition to his other debts, he now owed his attorney eighty thousand dollars, more than he took home in a year.
Throughout the summer, Clarke courted O’Neill, who agonized but refused to commit. He discussed the offer with a number of friends but became alarmed when he thought that FBI headquarters might hear of it. He called Clarke in a fit of anxiety and said that people in the CIA knew he was being considered. “You have to tell them it’s not true,” he pleaded. He was certain that if the agency knew, the bureau was sure to find out. Clarke dutifully called one of his friends in the CIA and said that, by the way, he was looking for names for his replacement since O’Neill had turned him down—even though O’Neill still wanted to be a candidate for that position. O’Neill also talked about the offer to Mawn, saying that he didn’t want him to hear it through the grapevine, but he pointedly told Mawn he wasn’t at all interested in the job.
Money would have been a barrier, but O’Neill—by now a veteran bureaucratic infighter—also understood the ruthlessness with which some powerful people in Washington would greet the news of his new position. Clarke’s offer was tempting, but it was also dangerous.
FOR YEARS, Zawahiri had been battling elements inside al-Jihad who opposed his relationship with bin Laden. He spewed disdain on the Jihad members who found fault with him from comfortable perches in Europe. He called them “the hot-blooded revolutionary strugglers who have now become as cold as ice after they experienced the life of civilization and luxury.” Increasingly, many of his former allies, exhausted and demoralized by years of setbacks, had become advocates of the initiative by Islamist leaders imprisoned in Egypt, who had declared a unilateral cease-fire. Others no longer wanted to endure the primitive living conditions in Afghanistan. Yet, even as the organization was disintegrating, Zawahiri rejected any thought of negotiating with the Egyptian regime or with the West.
In an angry moment he actually resigned as the emir of al-Jihad, but without him the organization was totally adrift. Several months later, his successor relinquished the post, and Zawahiri was back in charge. According to testimony given at the trial of the Albanian cell members, however, there were only forty members left outside Egypt, and within the country the movement had been eradicated. Al-Jihad was dying, and with it the dream that had animated Zawahiri’s imagination since he was a teenager. Egypt was lost to him.
The end came in June 2001, when al-Qaeda absorbed al-Jihad, creating an entity formally called Qaeda al-Jihad. The name reflected the fact that the Egyptians still made up the inner circle; the nine-member leadership council included only three non-Egyptians. But it was bin Laden’s organization, not Zawahiri’s.
Naturally, the domination by the Egyptians was a subject of contention, especially among the Saudi members of al-Qaeda. Bin Laden tried to mollify the malcontents by explaining that he could always count on the Egyptians because they were unable to go home without being arrested; like him, they were men without a country.
Bin Laden turned to Zawahiri and the Egyptians with a particular task. He wanted them to kill Ahmed Shah Massoud. The Northern Alliance commander represented the only credible force keeping the Taliban from completely consolidating their hold on Afghanistan. Slender and dashing, Massoud was a brilliant tactician, and he was willing to match the Taliban