On October 12, 2000, the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Cole was the target of a suicide attack while it was harbored in the Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen American sailors were killed.
On October 12, 2000, the Cole, under the command of Commander Kirk Lippold, set in to Aden harbor for a routine fuel stop. Cole completed mooring at 09:30. Refueling started at 10:30. Around 11:18 local time, a small craft approached the port side of the destroyer, and an explosion occurred, putting a 40-by-60-foot gash in the ship’s port side. CIA analysts concluded that the blast had been caused by explosives molded into a shaped charge against the hull of the boat. The boat had come so close that the attackers (trying to appear friendly) aboard the boat and the sailors on the Coleexchanged greetings before the blast. Apparently the sailors on board the Cole believed that the boat was just a garbage service boat, or that it was involved with the mooring of the Cole for refueling.
Even if the sailors had suspected something was amiss, the destroyer’s rules of engagement, as approved by the Pentagon, prohibited its guards from firing upon the small boat as it neared them without first obtaining permission from the Cole’s captain or another officer.
The blast hit the ship’s galley, where crew were lining up for lunch. The crew fought flooding in the engineering spaces and had the damage under control by the evening. Divers inspected the hull and determined the keel was not damaged.
Seventeen sailors were killed and thirty nine others were injured in the blast.
Trying to prosecute the bombers has been something of a farce.
The day after the attack, a planeload of armed FBI agents arrived in Aden. But they quickly ran into resistance from Yemeni officials, who didn’t like the idea of foreigners operating on their soil and telling them what to do.
American FBI agents were met at the airport by Yemen Special forces soldiers, with each soldier pointing an AK-47 at the plane. Speakers in the Yemeni Parliament called for jihad against America. After some delay Yemenis produced a closed circuit video from a harborside security camera, but with the crucial moment of the explosion deleted. There were so many perceived threats that the agents often slept in their clothes and with their weapons at their sides. At one point the hotel where the agents stayed was surrounded with men in traditional dress, some in jeeps, all carrying guns. Finally the agents abandoned their hotel to stay at a Navy vessel in the Bay of Aden, but even that was not safe. After being granted permission from the Yemeni government to fly back to shore, their helicopter “was painted by an SA-7 missile” [tracked with the missile's radar, the last step before being shot down] and “had to take evasive maneuvers”.
The Cole bombing represented an enormous political embarrassment for Yemen, which had lobbied the U.S. Navy to use the port of Aden as a refueling stop. As the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen was also unprepared for some of the FBI’s demands.
“This is a country that didn’t even have fingerprint powder, and now they’re dealing with the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world,” said Barbara K. Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen at the time. “DNA is a complete fantasy to them.”
Bodine had to mediate between the FBI and Yemeni authorities, a task made more difficult by the fact that the FBI was dealing with a bureaucracy and a culture that the did not understand. The FBI was used to getting what it wanted, immediately; the Yemenis tended to look at this as just one more blip in a 4,000-year history of violence. The FBI and some White House officials thought that Bodine was too sympathetic toward the Yemenis. The FBI special agent in charge was forced to return to New York after butting heads too many times with the ambassador.
Amid the friction, U.S. and Yemeni investigators soon identified the ringleader of the attack as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi national of Yemeni descent who served as al-Qaeda’s operations chief in the Arabian Peninsula.
President Clinton declared, “If, as it now appears, this was an act of terrorism, it was a despicable and cowardly act. We will find out who was responsible and hold them accountable”. He vowed to hunt down the plotters, and promised, “Justice will prevail.”
In March 2002, President Bush said his administration was cooperating with Yemen to prevent it from becoming “a haven for terrorists.” He added: “Every terrorist must be made to live as an international fugitive with no place to settle or organize, no place to hide, no governments to hide behind and not even a safe place to sleep.”
Shortly after the bombing, Yemeni authorities insisted to the FBI that Nashiri had fled the country before the Cole bombing; in fact, he was holed up in Taizz, a city about 90 miles northwest of Aden. Nashiri spent several months in Taizz, where he received high-level protection from the government. Nashiri eventually left Yemen to prepare other attacks on U.S. targets in the Persian Gulf. He was captured in the United Arab Emirates in November 2002 and handed over to the CIA; he was held in the CIA’s secret network of overseas prisons until he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay in September 2006.
At some point in his captivity, Nashiri confessed to being the mastermind of the Cole attack, but at a hearing in Guantanamo last year, he said that he had confessed only because he had been tortured.
Another al-Qaeda leader, Tawfiq bin Attash, who also played an organizing role in the Sept. 11 hijackings, was arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, in May 2003; he also supposedly confessed last year to overseeing the Cole plot. In a separate appearance before a Guantanamo tribunal, he said he had helped buy the explosives and the motorboat. He also said he had recruited operatives for the plot but was in Afghanistan at the time of the attack.
Bin Attash and Nashiri were both named unindicted co-conspirators in the Justice Department’s investigation into the Cole attack. A decision was made not to indict them because pending criminal charges could have forced the CIA or the Pentagon to give up custody of the men, U.S. officials said in interviews.
Meanwhile, the Yemeni courts conducted their own trial. In 2004, the trial court condemned Jamal al-Badawi, the organizer, to death, although his sentence was reduced on appeal to 15 years in prison. Four other conspirators were given prison sentences ranging from five to 10 years.
The convicts were sent to a maximum security prison in Sanaa, the capital. They didn’t stay there long.
On Feb. 3, 2006, prison officials announced that 23 al-Qaeda members, including most of the Cole defendants, had vanished. They escaped by digging a tunnel that snaked 300 feet to a nearby mosque.
It was Badawi’s second successful jailbreak. Three years earlier, he had wormed out of another maximum security prison in Aden; Yemeni officials said he had picked a hole through the bathroom wall.
Badawi surrendered about 20 months after his second escape. But Yemeni authorities cut him a deal. They said they would let him remain free if he would help them search for the other al-Qaeda fugitives.
The arrangement was kept secret until Yemeni newspapers reported shortly afterward that Badawi had been spotted at his home in Aden.
U.S. officials said they were stunned. After his first escape, Badawi had been indicted in U.S. District Court in New York for the Cole killings, and the United States had posted a $5 million bounty for his capture. But U.S. officials couldn’t get their hands on him. “This was someone who was implicated in the Cole bombing,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said at the time. “He needs to be in jail.”
Yemeni officials insist that the Yemeni trials were fair, but that the government had turned lenient because the Cole defendants had participated in a “dialogue and reconciliation program” designed to de-radicalize al-Qaeda members. The judge who oversees the program claimed that 98 percent of graduates have remained nonviolent. Asked about two Cole suspects who escaped and went to Iraq to become suicide bombers, he shrugged. “Iraq was not part of the dialogue program,” he said.
Yemen’s interior minister, Rashad al-Alimi, said the deal-cutting was necessary because al-Qaeda has rebuilt its networks in Yemen and is targeting the government.
“Our battle with al-Qaeda is a long one,” he said. “It isn’t our battle only. Our tragedy — and what makes things worse — is that al-Qaeda is united. And our coalition is divided, even though we have a common enemy.”
U.S. officials withheld $20 million in aid to Yemen and canceled a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Yemeni officials said they quickly put Badawi back behind bars. But reports persist that his incarceration remains a day-to-day affair. In December, 2007, a Yemeni newspaper reported that Badawi had again been seen roaming free in public. One source close to the Cole investigation said there is evidence that Badawi is allowed to come and go, despite the periodic requests by U.S. officials to inspect his prison cell. Badawi and other al-Qaeda members have a long relationship with Yemen’s intelligence agencies and were recruited in the past to target political opponents, so it seems most likely that Yemeni authorities have no intention of really punishing them. They are not subject to being extradited because the Yemeni constitution prohibits extraditing Yemeni citizens.
By May 2008, all defendants convicted in the attack had escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials. At least two went on to commit suicide attacks in Iraq. However, on June 30, 2008, Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, legal advisor to the U.S. Military tribunal system, announced that charges had been filed against Nashiri, who is still being held at Guantanamo. According to the Pentagon, the charges have been defined as “organizing and directing” the bombing of the USS Cole. The Pentagon will seek the death penalty.
Soon after the explosion, the Navy contracted with the owners of the privately owned MV Blue Marlin to transport the Cole back to the U.S. to be repaired. The Blue Marlin is a huge semi-submersible ship with a 500-foot deck; it came alongside the Cole, filled its hold with water to sink below the Cole, maneuvered until it was directly beneath the Cole, and then expelled the water from the hold, lifting the Blue Marlin and the Cole until the Cole was completely out of the water. The Blue Marlin then sailed back to Pascagoula, Mississippi, where the Cole was fully repaired.
On January 19, 2001, The U.S. Navy completed and released its investigation of the incident, concluding that Cole’s commanding officer Commander Kirk Lippold “acted reasonably in adjusting his force protection posture based on his assessment of the situation that presented itself” when Cole arrived in Aden to refuel. The investigation also concluded that “the commanding officer of Cole did not have the specific intelligence, focused training, appropriate equipment or on-scene security support to effectively prevent or deter such a determined, preplanned assault on his ship” and recommended significant changes in Navy procedures. In spite of this finding, Lippold was subsequently denied promotion and retired at the same rank of commander in 2007.
Both the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration have been criticized for failing to respond militarily to the attack on the USS Cole before September 11, 2001. The 9-11 Commission Report cites one source who said in February 2001, “[bin Laden] complained frequently that the United States had not yet attacked [in response to the Cole]… Bin Ladin wanted the United States to attack, and if it did not he would launch something bigger.”
Evidence of al-Qaeda’s involvement was inconclusive for months after the attack. The staff of the 9-11 Commission found that al-Qaeda’s direction of the bombing was under investigation but “increasingly clear” on November 11, 2000. It was an “unproven assumption” in late November. By December 21 the CIA had made a “preliminary judgment” that “al Qaeda appeared to have supported the attack,” with no “definitive conclusion.”
Accounts thereafter are varied and somewhat contradictory.
Then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice told the Commission that when the administration took office on January 20, 2001, “We knew that there was speculation that the 2000 Cole attack was al-Qaeda… We received, I think, on January 25th the same assessment [of al-Qaeda responsibility]. It was preliminary. It was not clear.”
Newsweek reported that on the following day, “six days after Bush took office,” the FBI “believed they had clear evidence tying the bombers to Al Qaeda.” The Washington Post reported that, on February 9, Vice President Dick Cheney was briefed on bin Laden’s responsibility “without hedge.”
These conclusions are contrasted by testimony of key figures before the 9/11 Commission, summarized in the 9/11 Commission Report — http://www.9-11commission.gov/… . Former CIA Director George Tenet testified (page 196) that he “believed he laid out what was knowable early in the investigation, and that this evidence never really changed until after 9/11.” The report suggests (pages 201 - 202) that the official assessment was similarly vague until at least March 2001:
On January 25, Tenet briefed the President on the Cole investigation. The written briefing repeated for top officials of the new administration what the CIA had told the Clinton White House in November. This included the “preliminary judgment” that al Qaeda was responsible, with the caveat that no evidence had yet been found that Bin Ladin himself ordered the attack… in March 2001, the CIA’s briefing slides for Rice were still describing the CIA’s “preliminary judgment” that a “strong circumstantial case” could be made against al Qaeda but noting that the CIA continued to lack “conclusive information on external command and control” of the attack.
According to Condoleezza Rice, when President Bush took office 3 months after the attack, it was his decision that there would be no military attack in response to the Cole bombing. She said he “made clear to us that he did not want to respond to al-Qaeda one attack at a time. He told me he was ‘tired of swatting flies.’” He supposedly had some broader strategy in mind, though we never saw it.
On March 14, 2007, U. S. District Court Judge Robert Doumar, in Norfolk, ruled that the Sudanese government was liable for the bombing. The ruling was issued in response to a lawsuit filed against the Sudanese government by relatives of the victims, who claim that Al-Qaeda could not have carried out the attacks without the support of Sudanese officials. The judge stated “There is substantial evidence in this case presented by the expert testimony that the government of Sudan induced the particular bombing of the Cole by virtue of prior actions of the government of Sudan.” On July 25, 2007, Doumar ordered the Sudanese government to pay $8 million to the families of the 17 sailors who died. He calculated the amount they should receive by multiplying the salary of the sailors by the number of years they would have continued to work. Judge Doumar awarded the families compensation under the Death on the High Seas Act, which permits payouts for economic losses but not for mental suffering. The lawyer for the families announced that they would appeal the denial of non-economic damages, and Sudan’s Justice Minister announced that Sudan would appeal the ruling granting damages at all. (Yemen could not be sued because, unlike Sudan, it is not listed as a state sponsor of terrorism by the State Department.)
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U…
http://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24…
http://www.al-bab.com/yemen/co…
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At a veterans’ rally on Friday, Senator Jim Webb enthusiastically endorsed Tom Perriello for the Fifth District House seat. There were probably about 80 people there. Charlottesville City Councilor David Brown got things started, introducing retired Army General Jim Kelly, who has been campaigning for Obama. Kelly clearly didn’t remember that the purpose of the rally was to talk about Tom, but that’s OK — he introduced retired Captain, now DC lawyer, Jim Morin of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who clearly knew enough about Tom to provide a ringing endorsement. Captain Morin, a 2001 West Point graduate and veteran of one tour in Afghanistan and one tour in Iraq, said, in essence, “If Washington had been listening to Tom Perriello, we’d be in a lot better shape over there.”
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From the Tom Perriello campaign: