Yes, its true the government of Yemen is not our enemy as Barbara Bodine, the former ambassador to Yemen says, and its even more true when she says that the Yemeni people are not our enemies. But I do find it unfortunate that Barbara Bodine in this LA Times Oped still refuses to paint a realistic picture of the regime.
Assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, Frances Townsend hit the nail on the head when she described the regime as an “inconsistent partner” in the War on Terror. She could have cited the ungoverned (not ungovernable) regions of Yemen as the source of her concern. But no, Townsend said “inconsistent.” The Yemeni government is inconsistent now and was inconsistent then during the investigation of the Cole Bombing. It has been inconstant since then with regard to the bombers themselves, some of whom have escaped twice. Several remain at large.
The systematic inconsistency of support is indicative of an underlying configuration of the regime. Within the centralized domain of the power cabal is not a monolithic entity but a structure of numerous and often competing power centers working from a variety of motivations toward a multiplicity of end results, only one of which is cooperation with the US in the War on Terror. Others include self-enrichment and support of “the resistance.”
Ambassador Bodine’s one dimensional view is frankly scary, especially when she has had all these years since the Cole bombing inYemen to track the regime’s repetitive appeasement of these and others the US considers “terrorists.” I would assume there’s something good and solid coming out from Yemen on the intel front, because there’s little that is overt, yet the US persists in calling them “an important partner.” A better and more realistic description might be “an important but inconsistent partner.” And that inconsistency clearly dates back to the days of the Cole:
9/11 Miniseries Is Bunk
Former ambassador to Yemen says ABC traded fact for drama in portraying events after the 2000 bombing of the destroyer Cole.
By Barbara Bodine
BARBARA BODINE was U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 1997-2001. She is a visiting scholar at MIT’s Center for International Studies.September 8, 2006
ON THE MORNING of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans — and the world — froze, saddened and angry. Five years later, we stop to remember those we lost and those who have sacrificed in our defense since, and to reflect on what we must learn. History will define us not by the events of that day but by who we choose to become as a result.
Regrettably, ABC has chosen not to document but to dramatize this most critical of times. Its miniseries, “The Path to 9/11,” opts for fiction when fact is needed and chooses mythmaking when the candor of history is called for. The 9/11 commission report tells the story with clear-eyed honesty, precision and studious impartiality. The ABC drama does not. The 9/11 commission spent hours interviewing virtually everyone connected not just with the events of that day but those involved in counter-terrorism over 25 years — Republican as well as Democrat. ABC did not.
Many senior officials from President Clinton’s administration, along with key members of the 9/11 commission, have publicly challenged the distortions and inaccuracies of “The Path to 9/11.” From the part of the story I know firsthand, ABC has done the American people a disservice. Drama may be more profitable than reality, but at what cost to our national history?
One of the myths perpetuated by ABC played out in the steamy port city of Aden, Yemen, in October 2000, using an FBI agent out of New York, John O’Neill, and the U.S. ambassador to that country. According to the mythmakers, a battle ensued between a cop obsessed with tracking down Osama bin Laden and a bureaucrat more concerned with the feelings of the host government than the fate of Americans and the realities of terrorism. I know this is false. I was there. I was the ambassador.
I am not here to either defend or attack O’Neill. He was a complex man. But what happened after Al Qaeda’s attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole was a complex story. Within hours, our embassy in Sana, Yemen, received support from Washington, U.S. military commands in the region and neighboring U.S. embassies. Within days, our presence in Aden went from zero to more than 300 people from the Navy, Marines, the intelligence community, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the FBI, the State Department and my embassy. We had a clear and common goal: honor those killed by finding those guilty.
As ambassador, I had four missions: recover the Cole and her crew; provide security for the burgeoning U.S. presence in Aden; establish a joint Yemeni-American criminal investigation, as agreed between the president of Yemen and FBI Director Louis Freeh; and maintain the Yemeni-American relationship.
These tasks were not sequential but deeply interdependent. The recovery of the ship and its crew was the most urgent. The Cole was also a crime scene, and crew members were witnesses. Recovery efforts had to be coordinated with naval investigators and the FBI. With an unsettled threat, I could not allow either to go forward without rigorous security at the harbor and at our base of operations. The least quantifiable of the four mandates was our relationship with the Yemeni authorities. Diplomatic relations are not an end in themselves but rather provide a context within which we are able to operate — or not. Our cooperative relationship enabled the recovery, the security and the investigation to move forward, to work through the tensions, disagreements and conflicts that naturally arose. The attack on the Cole was a hostile act, but this was not a hostile government or a hostile people. It was my job to make sure everyone involved understood that our actions must not subvert our goals.
The realities of a U.S. investigative style inevitably collided headlong with the limited capabilities of Yemen. The Yemenis knew Aden and its people but lacked technical and professional competence; the FBI had the forensic and technical capability but could not operate “on the street” in Aden. The friction, the suspicion, the miscommunication between the two could not, however, be allowed to derail a successful criminal investigation of the attack, its roots in Yemen and its links to other attacks against Americans around the world. Yemen’s subsequent willingness to cooperate with us in the war on terrorism confirms the value of working with it — not seeing it as the enemy.
In the aftermath of the attack on the Cole, the stakes were high. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s first lesson of leadership is that “being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.” It’s inevitable, if you are honorable. The job of the ambassador is to make the tough calls. To paraphrase a fellow Missourian, the buck stopped on my desk.
During her congressional testimony in 2000 on the subject of the Cole, Bodine spoke in glowing terms of regime’s cooperation, however the FBI was frustrated in its investigative efforts. Neither Congress nor Bodine contemplated any inside assistance. So to paraphrase the words of her boss, I guess it all depends of what “hostile” means. I appreciate the value of working with Yemen and not “seeing it as the enemy,” but lets be realistic as we do so.
The Yemeni government did not blow up the Cole and kill 17 US sailors. But there are circumstantial indications that some few individuals associated with the regime at various levels had some knowledge or complicity both before and after the attack. The investigation was neither thorough nor complete. Warnings were issued by both Able Danger and Kie Fallis at DIA prior to the bombing that were never forwarded. These topics may be more taboo with some in the USG than they are in Yemen.
These issues were completely ignored by the both the congressional investigation into the Cole and the 9/11 commission report. The commission got the information late they say, after the book was already going to print. Senator Werner’s suggestion to reopen the investigation to reexamine the decisions of the Commander Lippold, the ships commander, is off the mark. Several areas of the Cole bombing should be reexamined and none of them have to do with Lippold. The way in which the FBI’s Cole investigation was stymied to a greater or lesser degree by the Yemeni goverment, under Bodine’s watch, is an appropriate subject for the CBS documentary.
Ms. Bodne’s goal of “honor those killed by finding those guilty,” has not been fulfilled when several Cole bombers have been found time and time again and yet are free today. This is no “myth.” Its an outrage.
PS: The links from the Cole bombers to 9/11 are not insubstantial. And thwarted investigations in Yemen lead to a “Mind Boggling Missed Opportunity” to uncover the 9/11 plot.
Fahad al-Quso is arrested by the government of Yemen. [PBS Frontline, 10/3/2002; PBS Frontline, 10/3/2002] In addition to being involved in the USS Cole bombing (see October 12, 2000), al-Quso was at the January 2000 Malaysian meeting (see January 5-8, 2000) with al-Qaeda agents Khallad bin Attash and hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar. Al-Quso tells Yemeni investigators that he flew from Yemen to Bangkok in January 2000 for a secret meeting where he turned over $36,000 in cash to bin Attash. The FBI asks the CIA for more information about bin Attash and the Malaysian meeting, but later the FBI claims that the CIA does not provide the requested information that could have led them to Alhazmi and Almihdhar as well. [New York Times, 4/11/2004] For instance, there are pictures from the Malaysian meeting of al-Quso next to hijacker Khalid Almihdhar, but the CIA does not share the pictures with the FBI before 9/11. [Newsweek, 9/20/2001] Meanwhile, FBI head investigator John O’Neill believes that al-Quso is holding back important information from his Yemeni captors and wants him interrogated by the FBI. However, O’Neill had been kicked out of Yemen by his superiors a week or two before, and without his influential presence, the Yemeni government will not allow an interrogation. Al-Quso is finally interrogated days after 9/11, and he admits to meeting with Alhazmi and Almihdhar in January 2000. One investigator calls the missed opportunity of exposing the 9/11 plot through al-Quso’s connections “mind-boggling.” [PBS Frontline, 10/3/2002] In April 2003, al-Quso will escape from a Yemeni prison and apparently remains free. [Associated Press, 4/11/2003]
More from Frontline via the Weekly Standard: The Yemenis finally agreed to let the FBI join in the interrogation of one of their most prominent suspects, Fahad al Quso.O’Neill and his agents believed al Quso knew about bin Laden’s desire to videotape the destruction of the Cole, and possibly a whole lot more. O’Neill worked his newly developed Yemeni police officials and old allies in the CIA.
NARRATOR: He had come to believe that some Yemeni officials were not being forthcoming about information from al Quso and other suspects. It was the Khobar Towers investigation all over again…..
NARRATOR: So O’Neill would not be in Yemen. The investigation slowed to a crawl.
MICHAEL SHEEHAN, Chief Counterterrorism, State Dept. ‘98-’01: I watched with dismay as the issue of the USS Cole completely disappeared from the U.S. scene, completely — again, in a new administration. It was just not on their agenda. Clearly, it was not on the agenda of the Congress, the media or anyone else. Again, it went into oblivion.
NARRATOR: By spring, intelligence about Al Qaeda forces in Yemen convinced O’Neill they were about to target his agents. O’Neill pleaded with Barry Mawn to pull them out, and Mawn agreed. O’Neill’s investigation in Yemen was effectively over.
CHRIS ISHAM: We don’t know what would have happened if John could have done his job in Yemen and had really had the full back-up to go and to really push in Yemen and what kind of networks he could have exposed. But you know, we do know there were Yemenis involved in the attacks of September 11th. So is it possible that if he had been able to really open up that network and really expose that network, that he could have in some way deterred the tragedy of September 11th? I don’t think we know, but it’s sad because we won’t know the answer to that. But I think there is a fighting — he would have had had a fighting chance if he’d been able to do his job.