The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [207]
On the fifth night, Soufan slammed a news magazine on the table between them. There were photographs of the airplanes crashing into the towers and the Pentagon, graphic shots of people trapped in the towers and jumpers falling a hundred stories. “Bin Laden did this,” Soufan told him.
Abu Jandal had heard about the attacks, but he didn’t know many details. He studied the pictures in amazement. He said it looked like a “Hollywood production,” but the scale of the atrocity visibly shook him. At that time the casualties were thought to be in the tens of thousands.
Besides Soufan and Abu Jandal, the small interrogation room held McFadden and two Yemeni investigators. Everyone sensed that Soufan was closing in. American and allied troops were preparing to go to war in Afghanistan, but they were waiting for information about the structure of al-Qaeda, the locations of hideouts, and the plans for escape, all of which American intelligence officials hoped Soufan and the other investigators could supply.
Coincidentally, there was a local Yemeni paper sitting on a shelf under the coffee table. Soufan showed it to Abu Jandal. The headline read, “Two Hundred Yemeni Souls Perish in New York Attack.”
Abu Jandal read the headline and drew a breath. “God help us,” he muttered.
Soufan asked what kind of Muslim would do such a thing. Abu Jandal insisted that the Israelis must have committed the attacks on New York and Washington, not bin Laden. “The Sheikh is not that crazy,” he said.
Soufan took out a book of mug shots containing photos of known al-Qaeda members and various pictures of the hijackers. He asked Abu Jandal to identify them. The Yemeni flipped through them quickly and closed the book.
Soufan opened the book again and told him to take his time. “Some of them I have in custody,” he said, hoping that Abu Jandal wouldn’t realize that the hijackers were all dead.
Abu Jandal paused a fraction of a second on the picture of Marwan al-Shehhi before he started to turn the page. “You’re not done with this one,” Soufan observed. “Ramadan, 1999. He’s sick. You’re his emir and you take care of him.”
Abu Jandal looked at Soufan in surprise.
“When I ask you a question, I already know the answer,” said Soufan. “If you’re smart, you’ll tell me the truth.”
Abu Jandal conceded that he knew Shehhi and gave his Qaeda name, Abdullah al-Sharqi. He did the same with Mohammed Atta, Khaled al-Mihdhar, and four others. But he still insisted that bin Laden would never commit such an action. It was the Israelis, he maintained.
“I know for sure that the people who did this were Qaeda guys,” said Soufan. He took seven photos out of the book and laid them on the table.
“How do you know?” asked Abu Jandal. “Who told you?”
“You did,” said Soufan. “These are the hijackers. You just identified them.”
Abu Jandal blanched. He covered his face with his hands. “Give me a moment,” he pleaded.
Soufan walked out of the room. When he came back he asked Abu Jandal what he thought now.
“I think the Sheikh went crazy,” he said. And then he told Soufan everything he knew.
MARK ROSSINI had been told that John O’Neill was safe, and so he had spent much of that day and the next calling O’Neill’s friends around the world, reassuring them that O’Neill was fine. Now he had to call them again, one by one. He was so angry with O’Neill. “Fucking bastard. Why didn’t he run away?” For weeks, when he went home, Rossini would sit in his car and weep before he went into his house. Some of the agents had breakdowns. Some, like Dan Coleman, suffered permanent damage to their lungs because of the dust they inhaled that day.
The Trade Center burned