Teams from the FBI, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and the CIA
were immediately sent to Yemen to investigate the attack.With difficulty, Bar-
bara Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen, tried to persuade the Yemeni gov-
ernment to accept these visitors and allow them to carry arms, though the
Yemenis balked at letting Americans openly carry long guns (rifles, shotguns,
automatic weapons). Meanwhile, Bodine and the leader of the FBI team, John
O'Neill, clashed repeatedly--to the point that after O'Neill had been rotated
out of Yemen but wanted to return, Bodine refused the request. Despite the
initial tension, the Yemeni and American investigations proceeded.Within a few
weeks, the outline of the story began to emerge.
us they immediately assumed that al Qaeda was responsible. But as Deputy DCI
John McLaughlin explained to us, it was not enough for the attack to smell,
look, and taste like an al Qaeda operation.To make a case, the CIA needed not
just a guess but a link to someone known to be an al Qaeda operative.
tions. The CIA described initial Yemeni support after the Cole as "slow and
inadequate." President Clinton, Secretary Albright, and DCI Tenet all inter-
vened to help. Because the information was secondhand, the U.S. team could
not make its own assessment of its reliability.
viduals from whom the detainees had received operational direction. One of
them was Khallad, who was described as having lost his leg. The detainees
said that Khallad helped direct the Cole operation from Afghanistan or Pak-
istan.The Yemenis (correctly) judged that the man described as Khallad was
Tawfiq bin Attash.
regularly with CIA and FBI officers.The source had called Khallad Bin Ladin's
"run boy," and described him as having lost one leg in an explosives accident
at a training camp a few years earlier. To confirm the identification, the FBI
agent asked the Yemenis for their photo of Khallad.The Yemenis provided the
photo on November 22, reaffirming their view that Khallad had been an inter-
mediary between the plotters and Bin Ladin. (In a meeting with U.S. officials
a few weeks later, on December 16, the source identified Khallad from the
Yemeni photograph.)