The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [258]
Similarly, I have had to compromise on reporting things I believe to be true but cannot prove. One tantalizing example is the fact that Prince Turki disclosed to the Associated Press on October 17, 2003, that as head of Saudi intelligence he had personally provided the names of two of the eventual September 11 hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khaled al-Mihdhar, to the CIA in late 1999 or early 2000. “What we told them was these people were on our watch list from previous activities of al-Qaeda, in both the embassy bombings and attempts to smuggle arms into the kingdom in 1997,” Turki said at the time. This would explain the CIA’s sudden interest in those men around the date of the meeting in Malaysia of the hijackers and the USS Cole bombers. The CIA furiously rejected Turki’s comments, and the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, clarified his cousin’s statement by saying that there were “no documents” sent by Saudi Arabia regarding the hijackers to American intelligence. At the time, Turki stood by his statement, maintaining that he had passed the information, at least orally. I had confirmation of his claim from Nawaf Obaid, a security consultant for the Saudi government, who told me that the names of the future hijackers were given to the CIA’s chief of station in Riyadh. Now, however, Turki, who has replaced Bandar at the Saudi embassy in Washington, says that, after reviewing his notes, he was wrong; he himself never gave information about any hijackers to the Americans. Because of his outright denial, I removed this version of the story from the text. I cite it here to address the questions that might pose themselves to readers who know about this episode, and also to acknowledge the crosscurrents of politics and diplomacy that sometimes pull the real story, whatever it may be, frustratingly out of reach.
The reporting of this book has required constant checking of hundreds of sources against each other, and it is in this back-and-forth inquiry that the approximate truth—the most reliable facts—can be found. One might call this horizontal reporting, since it takes into account the views of as many participants as are willing to talk. Although the list is long, it is certainly not complete. There are key people in the American intelligence community, particularly in the CIA, who declined to meet with me; moreover, many of the best sources in al-Qaeda are being held by American authorities, not only secretly but also in U.S. prisons, where they are kept apart from any contact with the press, despite my pleas to their wardens and the judges in their cases. A full history of al-Qaeda cannot be told until they are allowed to talk.
There is another axis of reporting, a vertical one, that has more to do with understanding than with simple facts. Some of the people in this book I have interviewed in depth dozens of times. Invariably, the most profitable conversations are ones that come after a degree of trust has developed between the journalist and his source. This relationship is fraught with problems, since trust and friendship go hand in hand. Knowledge is seductive; the reporter wants to know, and the more he knows, the more interesting he becomes to the source. There are few forces in human nature more powerful than the desire to be understood; journalism couldn’t exist without it. But the intimacy that comes with sharing secrets and unburdening profound feelings invites a reciprocal degree of friendly protection that a reporter cannot always offer. By the conspicuous use of a tape recorder and extensive note-taking, I try to remind both of us that there is a third party in the room, the eventual reader.
I have strained to keep the use of anonymous sources to a minimum.