1. “the greatest mistake I ever made”: Mark Felt and John O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life: The FBI, Being “Deep Throat,” and the Struggle for Honor in Washington (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), p. 121.
2. “moving ahead of the winds”: Sullivan to Helms, Oct. 24, 1968, FRUS 1964–1968, Volume 33.
3. “I do not think”: Huston testimony, Church Committee, Sept. 23, 1975.
4. “President Nixon was insatiable”: DeLoach oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
5. “gave us all hell”: Nolan oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
6. “The President chewed our butts”: Staff summary of Bennett testimony, Church Committee, June 5, 1975.
7. “revolutionary terrorism”: “Presidential Talking Paper: Meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Helms, Lt. Gen. Bennett and Adm. Gayler, June 5, 1970,” Haldeman White House Files.
8. “Individually, those of us”: Sullivan memorandum, June 6, 1970, Church Committee files.
9. “I saw these meetings”: Cregar testimony, Church Committee staff summary, Aug. 20, 1975.
10. “went through the ceiling”: Sullivan deposition, Nov. 1, 1975, Church Committee.
11. “in view of the crisis of terrorism”: Nixon, RN: Memoirs, pp. 474–475.
12. “Hoover has to be told”: Huston to Haldeman, Aug. 5, 1970.
13. “Mitchell and I”: Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, p. 243.
14. “I was told five times”: Mardian oral history, Strober and Strober, The Nixon Presidency, p. 225.
15. “running all over the place”: Mark Wagenveld, “Delco Raid Forced Changes in FBI,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 8, 1996.
16. “to steal the nomination”: Nixon White House tapes, May 26, 1971.
17. “The national security information”: Ibid.
18. “Do you remember Huston’s plan?”: Nixon White House tapes, June 17, 1971.
19. “Why Watergate?”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
20. “Hoover refused to investigate”: Nixon White House tapes, May 9, 1973.
21. “In terms of discipline”: Nixon White House tapes, June 29, 1971.
22. “As a young Congressman”: Nixon at graduation exercises of the FBI National Academy, June 30, 1971.
23. “He was trying to demonstrate”: Nixon, RN: Memoirs, pp. 598–599; “At the end of the day”: Haldeman, Haldeman Diaries, p. 357.
24. “He may have suffered”: Ray Wannall, The Real J. Edgar Hoover: For the Record (Paducah, Ky.: Turner Publishing, 2000), p. 146.
25. “playing on the paranoia”: Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, pp. 116–121.
26. “There were a few men”: Hoover memorandum of conversation with Rep. H. Allen Smith, May 23, 1966, FBI/FOIA.
27. “We have those tapes”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 8, 1971.
28. “We’ve got to avoid the situation”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 25, 1971.
29. “Sullivan was the man”: Ibid.
30. “We got to get a professional”: Nixon White House tapes, March 13, 1973.
31. “As political attacks on him multiplied”: Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, p. 160.
32. “That son of a bitch Sullivan”: Wannall, The Real J. Edgar Hoover, p. 147.
1. “Oh, he died”: Nixon White House tapes, June 2, 1972.
2. “Pat, I am going to appoint you”: L. Patrick Gray III with Ed Gray, In Nixon’s Web: A Year in the Crosshairs of Watergate (New York: Times Books, 2008), pp. 17–18.
3. “Never, never figure”: Nixon White House tapes, May 4, 1972.
4. “an interloper bent on pushing”: “they lied to each other”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 23–27.
5. “Once Hoover died”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH. 310 “He laughed because”: Bledsoe oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
6. “It was agreed”: C. W. Bates, “Subject: James W. McCord Jr. and Others,” June 22, 1972, FBI/FOIA.
7. “The FBI is not under control”: Nixon White House tapes, June 23, 1972.
8. “I again told him”: C. W. Bates, “Subject: James W. McCord Jr. and Others,” June 22, 1972, FBI/FOIA.
9. “These should never see the light of day”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 81–82. Dean corroborated Gray’s account in his Watergate testimony.
10. “There is little doubt”: “FBI Watergate Investigation/OPE Analysis,” July 5, 1974, FBI/FOIA.
11. if “the President decides”: The oral arguments and the ruling are from the Supreme Court records of U.S. v. U.S. District Court, decided June 19, 1972, and more commonly known as the Keith case, after the federal trial court judge whom the Justice Department sued to prevent the disclosure of the warrantless wiretaps. It soon became clear why the Justice Department had fought so long and so hard against the disclosures. The FBI had placed a warrantless tap on the White Panther headquarters in Ann Arbor. The Bureau also had overheard the defendant Plamondon on a warrantless tap aimed at discovering ties between Black Panthers and Palestinian radicals; that surveillance had been part of a highly classified program called MINARET, in which the FBI and the National Security Agency had collaborated to spy on members of the radical antiwar and black power movements since 1967.
12. “They will kidnap somebody”: Nixon White House tapes, Sept. 21, 1972. 313 “Everybody at that meeting”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, p. 117.
13. “he had decided to reauthorize”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
14. “hunted to exhaustion” and “No holds barred”: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH; Felt and O’Connor, A G-Man’s Life, pp. 259–260. See also Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 117ff. The FBI’s Paul Daly led the subsequent internal investigation of John Kearney, leader of the FBI’s Squad 47: “I believe I counted up over eight hundred break-ins, for which he was commended.” The Justice Department eventually dropped the case against Kearney, once its investigators understood that he had been following orders from the top of the chain of command.
15. “It hurt all of us deeply”: Bolz oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
16. “There is a way to untie the Watergate knot”: Woodward notes, October 9, 1972, Harry Ransom Center, www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/web/woodstein/deepthroat/felt.
17. “They would meet at the end of the day”: Daly oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
18. “We know what’s leaked”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 19, 1972.
19. “we’ll screw up our source”: The White House knew thanks to Roswell Gilpatric—a lawyer for Time and once JFK’s deputy secretary of defense. The magazine’s top editors had ordered their reporter, Sandy Smith, to identify Felt as his own source. Then they betrayed his confidence by telling Gilpatric, who told his friend John Mitchell that Felt was leaking the FBI’s secrets.
20. “They would probably ask you”: Nixon White House tapes, Feb. 16, 1973; Gray, In Nixon’s Web, pp. 152–77.
1. An FBI agent interviewed the Iraqi: Finnegan testimony, United States v. Khalid Mohammed el-Jessem, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, 73 CR 500, March 6, 1993.
The case against el-Jessem, aka Kahlid Jawary, is reconstructed here from the federal court records of his 1993 trial; a partially declassified National Security Agency history, “The First Round: NSA’s Efforts Against International Terrorism in the 1970’s”; an FBI situation report sent out under Director L. Patrick Gray’s name, “Black September Organization Activities,” dated March 25, 1973; and Santo F. Russo, “In re Extradition of Khaled Mohammed El Jassem: The Demise of the Political Offense Provision in U.S.-Italian Relations,” Fordham International Law Journal 16, no. 4 (1992). After serving sixteen years of his sentence, the Iraqi was deported to the Sudan in February 2009.
2. “The Bureau cannot survive”: Nixon White House tapes, March 1, 1973.
3. “For Christ’s sake”: Nixon White House tapes, March 1, 1973.
4. “The quid pro quo”: Nixon White House tapes, March 13, 1973.
5. “Dean had lied to us”: Gebhardt to Baker, “Subject: Confirmation,” March 7, 1973, FBI Watergate Special Prosecutor Files.
6. “I would have to conclude”: Hearings on the Nomination of L. Patrick Gray, Senate Judiciary Committee, March 22, 1973.
7. “Gray is dead”: Nixon White House tapes, March 22, 1973.
8. “Dean has apparently decided”: Gray, In Nixon’s Web, p. 238.
9. “I’m worried”: Nixon White House tapes, April 17, 1973.
10. “This is stupidity”: Nixon White House tapes, April 26, 1973.
11. “I had never seen”: Ruckelshaus speech to National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys, Oct. 3, 2009.
12. “Felt—everybody’s to know”: Nixon White House tapes, May 12, 1973.
13. “a dangerous game we were playing”: FBI Special Agent Nick Stames interview with John H. Mitchell, May 11, 1973, FBI/FOIA.
14. “I don’t think a cop should run the Bureau”: Nixon White House tapes, Oct. 25, 1971. There were strong rumors at the FBI that Nixon’s choice had come down to either Clarence Kelley or Bill Sullivan. The FBI’s Paul Daly said: “Kelley told me that when he went in to interview with the President … he sat beside Sullivan, and Sullivan went in first and came out, then he went in. And it was a very close call.” Nixon’s available presidential records do not confirm that Sullivan was signed in at the White House that day.
15. “I was shocked by the wounds”: Clarence M. Kelley and James Kirkpatrick Davis, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director (Kansas City, Mo.: Andrews, McMeel & Parker, 1987), p. 116.
1. “The FBI engaged in a prolonged series”: Socialist Workers Party v. Attorney General; 73 Civ. 3150; 642 F. Supp. 1357 (Southern District of New York).
2. “sirens, endless streams of sirens”: Hahn oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
3. “It was done clandestinely”: Dyson oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
4. “Why not add the FBI?”: Memorandum of Conversation, Oval Office, Jan. 4, 1975, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
5. “The FBI may be the sexiest part of this”: Memorandum of Conversation, White House, Feb. 20, 1975, GRFL.
6. “designed for the Civil War era”: Kelley to Attorney General, Aug. 7, 1974, FBI/FOIA.
7. “warrantless searches”: John C. Kenney, Acting Assistant Attorney General, filing in U.S. v. Ehrlichman, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, May 9, 1975.
8. a die-hard believer in the Bureau: Healy oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
9. “the long line of Attorneys General”: Church Committee, Federal Bureau of Investigation, at 1–2 (statement of Chairman Frank Church).
10. “government monitoring”: Testimony of Attorney General Edward H. Levi, FBI Oversight: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights of the House Committee on the Judiciary, April 6, 1976.
11. “Nobody wants to work terrorism”: Dyson oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
1. “knowledgeably, knowingly, intentionally deceived”: Kelley transcript, Meet the Press, Aug. 8, 1976.
2. “very little bad news”: Kelley and Davis, Kelley: The Story of an FBI Director, pp. 39–40.
3. “an FBI agent appeared at my door”: Edward H. Levi, address to Los Angeles County Bar Association, Nov. 18, 1976.
4. “You’re going to have to let me think”: Daly oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
5. “We don’t ask our agents to squeal”: Kelley news conference, July 14, 1975, FBI/FOIA/Black Bag Jobs file, Vol. 13, p. 82.
6. “Dear Clarence”: Felt to Kelley, personal communication, June 20, 1974, FBI/FOIA/Felt file, Vol. 10, p. 169.
7. A man’s home is his castle: Miller oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
8. “Safety from external danger”: Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist no. 8.
9. “One of the things that disturbs me”: Kelley confirmation hearings, Senate Judiciary Committee, June 19, 1973.
10. “The superhuman image”: Kelley public statement, FBI headquarters, Aug. 11, 1976.
11. “a crippled and beleaguered FBI”: Kelley public statement, FBI headquarters, Aug. 11, 1976.
12. “He had these steely blue eyes”: Boynton oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
13. “do the work”: Webster oral history, Miller Center of Public Affairs, presidential oral history program, Aug. 21, 2002.
14. “to pretend that we have a charter”: Webster oral history, Miller Center.
15. “What was missing”: Webster oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
16. “a bastard godchild”: Ault interview, FBI/FBIOH.
17. “I had no idea”: Mason oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
18. he was one of the very few: During the 1980s and 1990s, the Bureau wasted well over $1 billion on computer systems that never worked. Among the first of these failed technologies was a 1980s database called the Terrorist Information System. It was supposed to provide instant readouts on 200,000 people and 3,000 organizations. “Great concept,” said Richard A. Marquise, later one of the FBI’s leading terrorism investigators. “Totally useless.”
19. “an incredible assault”: Webster et al., “A Review of FBI Security Programs,” Commission for Review of FBI Security Programs, Justice Department, March 2002.
1. “one of the most gut-wrenching investigations”: Pimentel oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
2. “blatantly false”: Revell testimony, Senate Intelligence Committee, Feb. 23, 1988.
3. From 1988 onward: In Oct. 2009, the United States Department of Homeland Security began judicial proceedings to deport Vides Casanova on the grounds that he had tortured political prisoners in El Salvador. A final judgment was scheduled as this book went to press in January 2012.
4. “They were skillful collectors”: Webster oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
5. “There is little or no doubt”: Hunter oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
6. “At first he was less than enthused”: Oliver “Buck” Revell and Dwight Williams, A G-Man’s Journal (New York: Pocket Books, 1998), p. 217.
7. “That was my first experience with espionage”: York oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
8. “Mathews considered himself”: Matens memoir reprinted in FBI/FBIOH.
9. “I did not want to turn the FBI”: Webster oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
10. “Reagan was preoccupied”: Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 397.
11. “The Attorney General doesn’t”: Revell deposition, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran/Contra Affair, June 11, 1987, pp. 909ff.
12. “I was sort of odd man out”: Ibid.
13. “A real bombshell”: Vice President Bush’s diary entry for Nov. 22 and his FBI interview on Dec. 12, 1986, are described in the Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Aug. 4, 1993.
14. “We probably could have overcome”: Duane R. Clarridge with Digby Diehl, A Spy for All Seasons: My Life in the CIA (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 371.
15. “effectively neutralized”: Revell, A G-Man’s Journal, p. 296.
16. “down to zero”: Revell testimony, House Committee on International Relations, Oct. 3, 2001.
17. “terrorism was not a big deal”: Marquise oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
1. “The FBI was not set up”: Marquise oral history. The FBI’s work on Pan Am 103 is minutely described in Marquise’s book on the case: SCOTBOM: Evidence and the Lockerbie Investigation (New York: Algora Publishing, 2006).
2. “fearlessly moved”: Robert S. Mueller III combat citation (2nd Platoon, H Company, 2nd Battalion, 4th Regiment, 3rd Marine Division), Dec. 11, 1968.
3. “Getting Director Sessions’ full attention”: Baker oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
4. Megrahi was indicted: Qaddafi turned Megrahi over to the long arm of international law in 1999. He was found guilty by a Scottish court sitting in the Netherlands in 2001, but released in 2009 after a diagnosis of cancer and threats against the British government by Qaddafi. In February 2011, Qaddafi’s justice minister, after defecting during the NATO attack on Libya, said unequivocally that Qaddafi had commanded the bombing of Pan Am 103.
1. “destroying the structure of their civilized pillars”: United States v. Abdel Rahman, 93 Cr. 181, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Government exhibit 76T.
2. “If it had been properly”: Revell testimony, House Committee on International Relations, Oct. 3, 2001.
3. “We were feeling pretty good”: Revell testimony, House Committee on International Relations, Oct. 3, 2001.
4. “I believe the defendant”: State of New York v. El Sayyid Nosair, sentencing hearing, Jan. 29, 1992, Manhattan Criminal Court.
5. “Salem’s penetration had”: Andrew C. McCarthy, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (New York: Encounter Books, 2009), p. 10.
6. “We couldn’t let you make a bomb”: Salem recorded his conversations with both the FBI and the targets of the investigation on his own; transcripts of the tapes quoted here were introduced as trial evidence in United States v. Abdel Rahman. As Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy wrote: “Salem had installed a home recording system that would have made the Nixon White House blush. He would sometimes wear amateur body wires to meetings with FBI agents and cops. He was not systematic about it. When he was out of tape and wanted to make new recordings, he would haphazardly grab an old tape and record over it. But what tapes he had, he maintained—here, there and everywhere in the clutter of his home. All sixty-seven of them, capturing well over two thousand conversations which I was just thrilled beyond words to have to share with over a dozen salivating defense lawyers. Salem wanted to help the FBI and, in his supreme self-confidence, believed he could infiltrate the jihad group. He would not try it, however, unless he was given iron-clad assurance that he was involved only in intelligence-gathering, just as it had been with the Russians, and not in an investigation regarding which his public testimony might one day be required … The [FBI] agents misled Salem, Salem lied to the agents, and it ended in a disastrous parting of the ways.”
7. “Egypt’s most militant Sunni cleric”: Unsigned CIA analysis, “Hizballah Ties to Egyptian Fundamentalists,” in CIA Near East and South Asia Review, April 24, 1987, CIA/FOIA.
8. “Quickly, when I came into office”: Reno testimony, National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (9/11 Commission), April 14, 2004.
9. “The speed at which this occurs”: Hahn oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
10. “I told you they will blow bombs”: United States v. Abdel Rahman.
11. “The big house, I will take care of it”: United States v. Abdel Rahman.
1. “He came to believe”: Louis J. Freeh with Howard Means, My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror (New York: St. Martin’s, 2005), pp. 177ff. Freeh’s book is a classic Washington memoir, though often dubious and disingenuous. I cite it only to reflect Freeh’s direct experience. Freeh distorts many aspects of his dealings with the White House. A small case in point: The FBI created a pointless controversy after it mistakenly sent the Clinton White House the files on four hundred people who had held security clearances under Presidents Reagan and Bush. When these files turned up, Freeh’s aides asserted that Clinton had solicited them. That was false. But Freeh publicly protested that the White House was smearing the good name of the FBI. This was a symptom of a far more serious problem.
2. “One of the greatest flaws”: Steinberg oral history, Sept. 27, 2000, National Security Council Project, Brookings Institution/Center for International and Security Studies, University of Maryland; “His mistrust of the White House”: Clinton’s national security aides Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin reported in The Age of Sacred Terror (New York: Random House, 2002), p. 301. More pithily, Clinton’s political aide John Podesta told the reporter John Harris, then at The Washington Post, that Freeh’s first name never passed Clinton’s lips: it was always Fucking Freeh, as in Fucking Freeh has screwed us again.
3. When President Clinton expressed: Freeh, My FBI, p. 263. The FBI’s expenditure of working hours on the Chinese campaign contributions case exceeded all terrorism investigations from 1995 to 2002: “Federal Bureau of Investigation Casework and Human Resource Allocation,” Office of the Inspector General, Justice Department, September 2003. On the Katrina Leung case and its suppression during Freeh’s tenure at the FBI, see “A Review of the FBI’s Handling and Oversight of FBI Asset Katrina Leung,” Office of the Inspector General, Justice Department, May 2006. FBI Agent Smith was sentenced to three years’ probation and a $10,000 fine. FBI Agent Cleveland—“a very religious man who was universally well regarded, dedicated to the FBI, and considered a mainstay in the FBI’s China Program in the 1980s and early 1990s,” according to the inspector general’s report—was not charged with a crime. As the investigation surfaced, Cleveland was the chief of security at a leading American nuclear weapons research laboratory.
4. “Merely solving this type”: Freeh’s statement comes from the FBI’s fiscal 1995 budget request to Congress.
5. “We allowed him”: Schiliro interview by Lowell Bergman and Tim Weiner, Sept. 18, 2001. PBS broadcast, “Looking for Answers,” Oct. 9, 2001. The facts of Yousef’s arrest are taken from the records of his criminal trial, United States v. Yousef, and the appeals court’s summary in the case. The FBI did not arrest Yousef in a safe house owned by Osama bin Laden, as was widely reported at the time.
6. “to make the American people”: Pellegrino testimony, United States v. Yousef (appeals court record dated April 4, 2003).
7. “disrupt, dismantle and destroy”: The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 22 USC 2237.
8. “We will not allow terrorism to succeed”: Presidential Decision Directive 39, “U.S. Policy on Counterterrorism,” June 21, 1995, declassified Jan. 27, 2009.
9. “exhausted, many sick”: Freeh testimony, Senate and House Joint Intelligence Committee, hereinafter Joint Inquiry, Oct. 8, 2002.
10. “Khobar represented”: Ibid.
11. “I have information about people”: Al-Fadl testimony, U.S. v. Osama bin Laden, 98 Cr. 1023, Feb. 7, 2001.
12. “no one was thinking”: Watson interview, Joint Inquiry staff report, “Strategic Analysis,” p. 338.
13. “The balance of power has shifted”: O’Neill speech, National Strategy Forum, Chicago, Illinois, June 11, 1997.
14. “double the ‘shoe-leather’ ”: Freeh testimony, Senate Intelligence Committee, Jan. 28, 1998.
15. “almost the primary responsibility”: Clarke interview and Clarke testimony, 9/11 Commission.
16. “Freeh should have been spending” and “We have to smash”: Richard C. Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror (New York: Free Press, 2004), pp. 116, 219.
17. “a Stalinist show trial”: Clinton interview, Ken Gormley, The Death of American Virtue (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 249.
18. “I wanted to hurt the Bureau”: Ault oral history, FBI/FBIOH. Ault debriefed Pitts at length after his conviction.
1. “The cell members in East Africa”: The message was first published by Frontline in a PBS/New York Times documentary series, “Hunting Bin Laden,” and later entered into evidence in U.S. v. Bin Laden.
2. “I was introduced to al Qaeda”: Plea hearing, United States of America v. Ali Mohamed, 98 Cr. 1023, United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Oct. 20, 2000.
3. “He had been pitched to me”: McCarthy, Willful Blindness, pp. 301–303.
4. “MOHAMED stated”: Coleman affidavit, U.S. v. Ali Abdelseoud Mohamed, sealed complaint prepared September 1998 but undated.
5. “the only good thing”: Scheuer testimony, House Foreign Affairs Committee, April 17, 2007.
6. “O’Neill poisoned relations”: Michael Scheuer, Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), p. 279.
7. “I thought to myself”: Bushnell testimony, U.S. v. Bin Laden, March 1, 2001. The author covered the 1998 embassy attack in Nairobi. A full factual summary of the case, which adds to (and significantly subtracts from) previous published accounts of the investigations, is found in the consolidated decision In re Terrorist Bombings of U.S. Embassies in East Africa, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Nov. 24, 2008.
8. “I had been told”: Bushnell oral history, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, July 21, 2005.
9. “He stated that the reason”: Anticev testimony, U.S. v. Bin Laden, Feb. 28, 2001.
10. “He wanted to tell”: Gaudin testimony, U.S. v. Bin Laden, Jan. 8, 2001.
11. “He and I were to meet”: Bushnell oral history, FAOH, July 21, 2005. Freeh’s memoir gives an entirely different account, placing him in command in Dar es Salaam at the time of the cruise missile attacks. News articles of the day place him in Nairobi, suddenly cutting his visit short, squaring with Ambassador Bushnell’s story.
12. “After the bombing in 1998”: Mohamed guilty plea, U.S. v. Ali Abdelseoud Mohamed, Oct. 13, 2000.
13. After all the trials: Fitzgerald’s grand jury originally handed up a secret indictment in U.S. v. Bin Laden on June 8, 1998, charging bin Laden with “conspiracy to attack defense utilities of the United States.” It was a misfire. Fitzgerald had used a copy of el-Hage’s computer files to link al-Qaeda to the killing of American troops in Somalia during the “Black Hawk Down” battle of Mogadishu five years before. The charge was unsupported by the evidence, and it would have to be redrawn. Though the sealed indictment gave the United States the theoretical power to disrupt or destroy al-Qaeda anywhere in the world, it had little effect in the world outside the court house.
14. “It’s like telling the FBI”: Hill testimony, Joint Inquiry, Oct. 8, 2002.
15. “Here were the ground rules”: Fitzgerald testimony, Senate Judiciary Committee, Oct. 20, 2003. FISA actually imposes few restrictions upon intelligence and law enforcement coordination. But the FBI nonetheless developed a Byzantine system in which “dirty” teams of intelligence investigators and “clean” teams of criminal investigators worked the same terrorist cases. “This became so complex and convoluted,” said one top FBI official, Michael Rolince, “that in some FBI field offices, agents perceived ‘walls’ where none actually existed.”
16. “Did we have a war plan?” and “the hardest thing”: Watson testimony, Joint Inquiry, Sept. 26, 2002. Watson was perhaps the only senior official at the FBI who heeded a call to arms issued on Dec. 8, 1998, a month after the indictment of bin Laden. George Tenet, the director of Central Intelligence, had issued a directive that he intended to resound throughout the government of the United States. “We must now enter a new phase in our effort against bin Laden,” it said. “Each day we all acknowledge that retaliation is inevitable and that its scope may be far larger than we have previously experienced. We are at war. I want no resources or people spared in this effort.” An aide faxed the memo to the leaders of the American intelligence community, but it had little palpable effect. Those same leaders had convened with Tenet and resolved that unless they made “sweeping changes,” the United States was likely to suffer “a catastrophic systemic intelligence failure.” The date of that report was Sept. 11, 1998.
17. “There is a problem”: The author interviewed Clarke and reported highlights of his briefing in a profile in The New York Times on Feb. 1, 1999, at about the time Clarke delivered his seminar to the FBI.
18. “We had neither the will”: Freeh, My FBI, p. 296.
19. a chemist known to the CIA: The chemist in Malaysia also signed letters of introduction for an Algerian with a French passport named Zacarias Moussaoui, who entered the United States as his patron’s business representative and promptly enrolled at the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma.
20. “to prevent and effectively respond”: Freeh testimony, “Threat of Terrorism to the United States,” written submissions to Senate Appropriations, Armed Services, and Intelligence committees, May 10, 2001.
21. “Implement a system”: Reno testimony, 9/11 Commission, April 13, 2004.
22. “You guys aren’t on life support”: Freeh, My FBI, p. 280.
23. “Musharraf laughed”: Freeh, My FBI, p. 287. The account of the informant’s approach to the FBI’s Newark office in April 2000 is in a 9/11 Commission report dated April 13, 2004.
24. “FBI investigation and analysis”: Turchie testimony, House Subcommittee on National Security, July 26, 2000.
25. “The celebration was held”: Mary Jo White, “Prosecuting Terrorism in New York,” address to the Middle East Forum, New York, Sept. 27, 2000.
1. “We can’t continue in this country”: Kean public statement to reporters and witnesses, 9/11 Commission hearings, April 13, 2004.
2. “Some connected the dots”: Burger oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
3. “Hello, Cathy. This is Bob Hanssen”: Kiser oral history, FBI/FBIOH.
4. it was Hanssen: U.S. v. Hanssen, affidavit in support of arrest, United States District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Crim. 1-118-A.
5. “Any clerk in the Bureau”: Hanssen debriefing cited in William Webster et al., “A Review of FBI Security Programs,” Department of Justice, March 2002.
6. “bastard stepchildren”: Williams cited in Eleanor Hill, “The FBI’s Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication and Investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui Prior to Sept. 11, 2001,” Joint Inquiry, Senate and House intelligence committees staff report, Sept. 24, 2002.
7. sixty-eight thousand counterterrorism leads: Hill, “The FBI’s Handling of the Phoenix Electronic Communication.” FBI headquarters also fumbled when a leading agent in the Cole investigation, Steve Bongardt, learned through a misdirected e-mail that one of the original members of the al-Qaeda cell in Yemen, Khalid al-Mihdhar, had received a renewed visa to re-enter the United States. On Aug. 29, 2001, his superiors told him to stand down: it was not his case. “Someday somebody will die,” he wrote in a message to his overseers, “—and Wall or not—the public will not understand.” Al-Mihdhar was one of the 9/11 hijackers.
8. “flying an airplane”: Samit testimony, U.S. v. Moussaoui, March 20, 2006.
9. “criminal negligence”: Samit testimony, U.S. v. Moussaoui, March 20, 2006. Moussaoui had been recruited by al-Qaeda. He was being held in reserve for a second wave of attacks.
10. She received a despondent e-mail: Kiser’s e-mails to Samit and his responses were reported by the Joint Inquiry and the 9/11 Commission, although neither agent was identified by name. Kiser recorded an oral history for the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI in October 2009, in which she detailed the correspondence. “It was awful,” she said. “We all knew … And we didn’t even know about the Phoenix memo. Because those idiots in ITOS [the FBI’s international terrorism section] didn’t let anybody know. Dale Watson didn’t even know about the Phoenix memo. We would’ve done a scrub on these flight schools! And that would’ve scared these guys! And would they have done something else? Probably. But it wouldn’t have been the magnitude of what we experienced.”
“You had kind of connected the dots,” her interviewer said.
“I did,” she said. “A small cadre of agents connected those dots.”
11. “I didn’t think the FBI”: Clarke testimony, 9/11 Commission, April 8, 2004. White House terrorism chieftain Clarke had no faith that the FBI would ever provide any reporting on al-Qaeda. “The Phoenix memo, the Minnesota case, whatever,” he said. “Not just a few hints were missed.” The failures went back for many years.
“I know the abuses the FBI engaged in—in the 1950s and 1960s—” he said, but “by the 1980s or 1990s we should have recognized the need for domestic intelligence collection.… It doesn’t mean you become a totalitarian state if you do a good job of oversight and control. We needed to have a domestic intelligence collection and analysis capability, and we did not have it.”
12. “We got the passenger manifests”: Clarke, Against All Enemies, pp. 13–14.
13. “I told Bob”: George W. Bush, Decision Points (New York: Crown, 2010), p. 8.
14. “Round up the evildoers”: Bush address at FBI headquarters, Oct. 10, 2001.
15. “hold until cleared”: The policy, its consequences, and the delays in informing Mueller are documented in “The September 11 Detainees,” Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice, April 2003.
16. “Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department”: John Ashcroft, “Remarks for the U.S. Mayors Conference,” Oct. 25, 2001.
17. “We are going to keep America free”: General Michael V. Hayden, “What American Intelligence and Especially the NSA Have Been Doing to Defend the Nation,” address at National Press Club, Jan. 23, 2006.
18. “turned on the spigot of NSA reporting”: Hayden, address at National Press Club, Jan. 23, 2006.
19. “free from the constraints”: John Yoo, “Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States,” Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, Oct. 23, 2001; declassified March 2, 2009.
20. “We sent a message to the FBI”: Lamberth address, American Library Association, June 23, 2007.
21. “The thought of regularly sharing”: Mueller speech, Stanford Law School, Oct. 18, 2002.
22. “The other day we hauled”: Remarks by President Bush, Republican luncheon, Hyatt Regency Hotel, Greenwich, Conn., April 9, 2002.
23. “a national treasure”: General Dunleavy quoted in “A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq,” Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice, Oct. 2009.
24. “I asked him his name”: Soufan testimony, Senate Judiciary Committee, May 13, 2009.
25. “We don’t do that”: D’Amuro’s discussions with Mueller are cited in “A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq,” Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice, Oct. 2009.
26. “They told me, ‘Sorry’ ”: Transcript, Combatant Status Tribunal Review, Guantánamo Bay, March 27, 2007.
27. From “a piece of al-Qahtani” to “as soon as possible”: “A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq,” Office of Inspector General, Department of Justice, Oct. 2009.
28. “ongoing, longstanding, trench warfare”: Ibid.
1. “Every day”: Mueller testimony, Senate Judiciary Committee, Sept. 17, 2008.
2. “neutralizing al Qaeda operatives”: Mueller classified testimony to Senate Intelligence Committee, Feb. 24, 2004, cited in Jack Goldsmith, “Memorandum for the Attorney General Re: Review of Legality of the [Deleted] Program,” Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, May 6, 2004 (declassified in part March 9, 2011).
3. “I could have a problem with that”: Mueller’s conversation with Cheney, his resignation letter, and his contemporaneous notes of his confrontation with the president are all cited in “Unclassified Report on the President’s Surveillance Program,” an extraordinary joint effort by the inspectors general of the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the CIA, the NSA, and the Director of National Intelligence, July 10, 2009.
4. “If we don’t do this”: James Comey, address to National Security Agency, May 20, 2005, reprinted in The Green Bag 10, no. 4 (Summer 2007), George Mason University School of Law.
5. “We did not have a management system”: Mueller testimony, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Sept. 30, 2009.
6. “an institutional culture”: Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, P.L. 108-458.
7. “turning to the next stage”: The FBI’s Counterterrorism Program Since September 2001, Report to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, April 14, 2004.
8. “It was the single worst experience”: Silberman speech, First Circuit Judicial Conference, Newport, R.I., June 2005.
9. “It has now been three and a half years”: Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States, March 31, 2005.
10. “the increasing boldness”: Hoover to SAC, San Juan, Aug. 4, 1960, FBI/FOIA.
11. “Bald believed that there was confusion” and “Who is calling shots?”: Cited in “A Review of the September 2005 Shooting Incident Involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Filiberto Ojeda Ríos,” Office of the Inspector General, Department of Justice, August 2006.
12. “It took me maybe six to twelve months”: Mudd testimony, Senate Intelligence Committee, Oct. 23, 2007.
13. “homegrown terrorist cell”: Mueller speech, City Club of Cleveland, June 23, 2006.
14. “To hit John F. Kennedy, wow”: Indictment, U.S. v. Russell Defreitas et al., June 3, 2007.
15. “Back in 1908”: Obama speech, FBI headquarters, April 28, 2009.
16. “rigorous obedience to constitutional principles”: Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, Federal Bureau of Investigation, October 15, 2001, declassified in part and published online at http://vault.fbi.gov on November 7, 2011.
17. “You won the war”: Mueller testimony, April 14, 2004, 9/11 Commission.