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  The simple truth is that we cannot get into the al Qaeda sanctuaries to kill or capture the terrorists. President Saleh will not allow any CIA or U.S. military intelligence personnel to work outside the city limits of Sana’a for fear that their presence in the countryside would further antagonize the already rebellious tribesmen in the country’s south, where al Qaeda operates. He has also placed very strict limits on American aerial reconnaissance missions, requiring that all imagery collected by CIA unmanned drones over Yemen go to an operations center that had been set up with CIA and U.S. military assistance in the headquarters building of the Yemeni Ministry of Defense for this purpose. The one concession that Saleh was willing to make was to allow U.S. warplanes to strike al Qaeda targets inside Yemen if and when actionable intelligence became available. He even told the commander of U.S. Central Command, General David Petraeus, at a private meeting in Sana’a in January 2010, “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.”

  In effect, by imposing these onerous conditions Saleh has tied the hands of the U.S. intelligence community. Unless these restrictions are lifted, there is not much of a substantive nature that the U.S. government can do in the near future to take the war to the al Qaeda forces in southern Yemen except watch and wait for the next shoe to drop.

  The Obama administration decided early in 2009 to revamp and reorient the U.S. intelligence community’s stalled efforts to interdict the flow of money from rich Arab businessmen in the Persian Gulf to al Qaeda and the Taliban. In August 2009, President Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, created a special interagency group called the Illicit Finance Task Force to restart the effort to disrupt or, if possible, shut down the clandestine financial and logistical support networks located throughout the Persian Gulf States that were keeping al Qaeda, the Taliban, and a host of other terrorist groups alive and kicking.

  In order to track terrorist finances, it is absolutely essential that you get the countries where the terrorists are raising their money and doing their banking to cooperate. In the case of America’s allies in the Persian Gulf, where al Qaeda and the Taliban traditionally raise most of their money, this cooperation has been hard to come by.

  Some of the Gulf States have gone the extra mile to help the U.S. intelligence community block the flow of money originating in or transiting through their countries to terrorist groups. For instance, according to a leaked 2009 State Department cable, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been extraordinarily helpful to the U.S. government in “countering financial support for al-Qa’ida, and more recently, in constricting Iran’s ability to use UAE financial institutions to support its nuclear program.” In 2009 Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed ordered the UAE’s two security services to “disrupt any Taliban-related financial activity that can be identified in the UAE.” True to their word, for the past three years the Emiratis have diligently sought to block the flow of money from banks in Dubai to the Taliban in Afghanistan. In return, leaked State Department cables show that the U.S. has provided the UAE authorities with intelligence information about Taliban front companies in the UAE, as well as details of the travel from Pakistan to Dubai by senior Taliban finance officials to raise or move funds. But the UAE has been the exception rather than the rule. Convincing the leaders of other Persian Gulf States to do more to shut down al Qaeda’s and the Taliban’s financial lifelines running from their countries to terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan has proven extraordinarily difficult, a surprising development from countries that are actively cooperating with the U.S. intelligence community in the war on terrorism.

  For example, the Kuwaiti government has refused to shut down a charitable organization called the Revival of Islamic Heritage Society, which the U.S. intelligence community has determined is a major source of money for al Qaeda and a host of other terrorist organizations. Kuwait has even blocked attempts by the U.S. government to list the charity as a terrorist financier with the United Nations Security Council. The government of Qatar has also stubbornly refused to cooperate with the U.S. intelligence community in its efforts to interdict the flow of money to terrorist groups; a December 2009 State Department cable charges that “Qatar’s overall level of CT [counterterrorism] cooperation with the U.S. is considered the worst in the region.”

  Ironically, perhaps the most recalcitrant of the Arab states has been America’s top ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, with a leaked December 2009 State Department cable revealing that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” Despite years of effort by the U.S. government, according to a State Department cable, “it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority.”

  So where are we today? In Pakistan, the toll of al Qaeda fighters and other terrorists killed over the past three years has been massive, although no one in the U.S. intelligence community seems to know, much less care, how many enemy combatants have died because to them the body count is an irrelevant measure of success.

  Some have tried to keep a tally of the death toll, at least for posterity’s sake. A young intelligence analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center, whose responsibilities included maintaining an up-to-date organization chart of al Qaeda’s top leadership in Pakistan, in frustration stopped keeping her posterboard-sized chart of who was who in al Qaeda up to date in late 2009 because the CIA’s six Predator and Reaper unmanned drones based in Pakistan were killing the terrorist leaders faster than she could keep up.

  Outside of Pakistan, the White House has quietly approved an expanded series of classified counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda affiliates in North Africa, Yemen, and Somalia, including commando raids, cruise missile attacks, and clandestine air strikes. The number of individuals on the CIA’s “Kill List” has grown exponentially since the list was first conceived in the summer of 2008, growing from just a couple of dozen al Qaeda militants hiding in northern Pakistan to over two thousand today, including its first American, the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, still believed to be in hiding somewhere in southern Yemen.

  On the negative side of the ledger, none of the al Qaeda terrorists that are currently in U.S. custody have yet been brought to trial to answer for their crimes. Secret legal opinions prepared by Justice Department lawyers since Obama was inaugurated indicate that successfully prosecuting many of these individuals in American civilian courts may be next to impossible. Key parts of the government’s legal case against these prisoners are based on evidence obtained by torturing three of the top al Qaeda leaders currently in U.S. custody—Abu Zubaydah, ‘Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Justice Department officials are convinced that all of these individuals are guilty but fear that they may never be able to try them because federal prosecutors have not been able to obtain corroborative evidence independent of what the CIA obtained from torture. Without evidence untainted by torture, prosecution of these defendants is problematic, at best, and obtaining convictions in a federal court is even less certain. The only remaining option is to try these individuals before military tribunals at Guantánamo, where the rules of evidence are not as strict as in civilian courts. If the U.S. government takes this route, it will almost certainly generate vast amounts of controversy around the world, especially if the government tries to use evidence obtained from torture.

  The military-run Guantánamo Bay detention facility in Cuba remains open despite the president’s executive order signed during his first week in office ordering its closure. Three years later, the fate of the detainees there remains in limbo. Since 2009, about 200 of the 245 Guantánamo detainees that Obama inherited from the Bush administration have been transferred to prisons in their home countries, leaving forty-eight prisoners that the Justice Department has decided to continue to hold indefinitely without trial although according them the status of prisoners of war.
A senior Justice Department official admitted in a 2010 interview that this state of affairs is not popular and almost certainly will result in a legal challenge from civil liberties groups, who will challenge the constitutionality of the government holding anyone prisoner for the rest of his life without due process of law. According to the Justice Department official, “It’s the only option open to us … If we can’t try them, then we have to keep them behind bars.”

  Counterterrorism officials in the United States and Europe tend to be a rather dour bunch, who generally believe that things will get worse before they get better. One of the nightmare scenarios that keeps these men and women awake at night is the gnawing fear that they may never be able to win the war on terrorism, no matter how hard they try.

  They are worried that the global battlefield may be expanding faster than the ability of the U.S. intelligence community and its allies to contain it. For example, the al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa, although small in size, is rapidly expanding to countries outside of its base in Algeria. There are signs that new terrorist groups not affiliated in any way with al Qaeda are beginning to take root in a number of East African countries, like the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, Congo, and Sudan. Al Shabaab is continuing to grow in size and power in Somalia, and there is very little realistically that the U.S. government can do about it other than try to prevent the group from expanding into neighboring Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia. In Yemen, the options of the U.S. government are constrained by strict limitations imposed by a host government that does not believe that al Qaeda is really a significant threat to national security. The efforts of the U.S. government to choke off the flow of money to terrorist groups like al Qaeda have met with fierce resistance from many governments in the Persian Gulf, almost all of whom are close allies with American troops stationed on their soil for their protection.

  In Pakistan, despite killing Osama bin Laden and hundreds of his fellow terrorists over the past three years, the U.S. intelligence community still has not been able to destroy the last battered vestiges of al Qaeda because it cannot uproot them from their sanctuaries in the FATA. Nor does the Pakistani military appear to have the capacity, or the willingness, to do the job. As long as al Qaeda continues to survive and some of its top leaders, like Osama bin Laden’s longtime deputy and al Qaeda’s new leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain at large, everything that has been accomplished to date could potentially come undone, especially if the Pakistani government ceases cooperating with the CIA in the fight against al Qaeda.

  While many Americans rejoiced at the news of Osama bin Laden’s death, many in the intelligence community believe that his death will probably not be the end of al Qaeda, or terrorism in general. In the fall of 2006, a team of U.S. government officials and consultants sat down at the Pentagon to consider what the U.S. strategy should be in order to win what was then popularly called “the Long War.” The panel concluded that even if al Qaeda was crushed and Osama bin Laden was captured or killed, that would not be the end of the struggle: A war on terrorism would almost certainly continue for at least another generation or even longer, because as long as even a small number of angry Muslim men hate America, extremism and the terrorism that it breeds will continue to exist well after al Qaeda is dead and gone.

  If there is a single overarching lesson to be taken away from America’s decade-long war on terrorism, it may very well be that no matter how hard we try, for every terrorist group that we neutralize or every jihadi fighter we kill, more will take their place. In reality, Osama bin Laden’s death, while an emotional milestone for the American public, does not change the dynamics of the war on terrorism in any meaningful way. This idea is just now beginning to sink in at the White House and elsewhere around Washington, with one senior Obama administration counterterrorism official lamenting, “Killing him [Osama bin Laden] will probably change nothing.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Men of Zeal

  Homeland Security and Domestic Terrorism

  The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

  —U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE LOUIS D. BRANDEIS (1928)

  On most days, the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House hums with activity. On weekdays there is almost always a meeting taking place in the Sit Room’s famous conference room. President Obama comes down to the Sit Room several times a week to chair National Security Council meetings with all of his senior national security advisers, as well as to chair the weekly meetings of his homeland security and Afghanistan-Pakistan policy teams.

  Unlike how it is portrayed in popular television shows like The West Wing, the Sit Room’s windowless conference room is cramped and somewhat claustrophobic. The room’s wooden conference table can seat only a dozen or so people, and not particularly comfortably. Complaints about the cold in the Sit Room are legion because the system is set to keep the room at near-arctic temperatures.

  It used to be much worse, before the advent of laptop computers and powerful air-conditioning systems. President Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, hated the Sit Room’s conference room, describing it in less than glowing terms as a “tiny, uncomfortable, low-ceilinged, windowless room.”

  During the weekly National Security Council principals’ meetings, the president sits at the head of the conference table with an ever-present can of Diet Coke in front of him. Vice President Joe Biden sits on his right, usually reading through a pile of unread policy papers while sipping on a bottle of water. Until he was fired in October 2010, Obama’s national security adviser, retired General James L. Jones, or Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, sat on the president’s left. Against either wall of the conference room are rows of leather chairs that can seat up to twenty junior staffers and note takers. On most occasions, the large video screens at the far end of the conference room display the visages of foreign government officials or senior American military commanders thousands of miles away who have been patched in so that they can participate in the conference via secure video teleconferencing technology.

  But the Sit Room is much more than just a snazzy high-tech conference room. Since it was created back in the summer of 1961 in what used to be the White House bowling alley, the Sit Room’s principal function has been to be the president’s eyes and ears on the world, a combination of watch center and intelligence fusion facility, whose mission is to provide the president with up-to-the-minute intelligence and alerts of significant events taking place around the globe, as well as with secure communications allowing him and his senior staff to talk securely to cabinet secretaries, military commanders, and the nation’s top intelligence officials anywhere around the world, twenty-four hours a day.*

  The Sit Room has its own staff of thirty senior intelligence officers and military personnel seconded by the CIA and other branches of the U.S. intelligence community, who work in a cramped watch office in rotating eight-hour shifts scanning the more than one thousand classified messages and intelligence reports, plus over a thousand wire service reports, that come into the Sit Room every day, looking for anything that might rise to the level that requires informing the president immediately. Even at night, the Sit Room staff is responsible for keeping the president and all of his senior national security staff informed if a crisis situation happens anywhere around the world. Because of who they work for, these men and women are cleared for access to virtually every type of classified information generated by the U.S. government. A former Sit Room watch officer recalled that when he returned to his regular job at the National Security Agency, he had to spend the better part of an hour signing a stack of forms taking away the dozens of special security clearances that he had formerly held.

  Intelligence reporting on terrorist incidents at home and abroad comes into the Sit Room every day of the week. Both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security operations centers have standing orders to inform the White House
Sit Room immediately of any significant domestic terrorist incidents or arrests. There were ten instances in 2009 when the yellow-colored secure phones in the Sit Room rang, with the FBI watch officer on the other end reporting a major arrest of a terrorist suspect inside the United States.

  During the first ten months of 2009, the FBI successfully broke up plots by groups of homegrown terrorists who were planning attacks in Boston, Massachusetts; Dallas, Texas; Newburgh, New York; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Springfield, Illinois. All had been duly reported to the White House. Only two of the plots involved individuals with ties to foreign terrorist groups. One, Najibullah Zazi, was arrested in September 2009 on charges of going to Pakistan to get explosives training from al Qaeda with the intent of planting bombs on New York City subways. The second, David C. Headley, was arrested in Chicago in October 2009 and charged with scouting the locations for the November 2008 attack by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists in Mumbai, India. All in all, according to one of the counterterrorism analysts at the NCTC, it had been a “pretty hum-drum year.”

  Then, as described in the previous chapter, on November 5, 2009, a Muslim U.S. Army psychiatrist named Major Nidal Malik Hasan went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, killing thirteen American soldiers and wounding thirty-two more. Two months later, on Christmas Day 2009, a twenty-three-year-old Nigerian national named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to bring down his Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam while it was on final approach to Detroit International Airport. Disaster was averted only because the crude explosive device sewn into his underwear failed to detonate, earning him for all eternity the nickname of “the Tighty Whities Bomber.”