As a result of having to work through the aftermath of the Bin Ladin raid with him, I became better acquainted with General Pasha. We had many frank conversations—about the counterterrorism work we did together, but also about our countries and their futures. I found him to be a proud and patriotic Pakistani whose thinking was sometimes clouded by his nationalism (Pasha was the most nationalistic Pakistani leader I met). A few months after the Abbottabad raid, we were in my office in Virginia discussing the future of Pakistan and its priorities. Pasha emphasized the absolute importance of Pakistan’s staying focused on India, as, he said, “the Indians have been, are, and will remain an existential threat to the state of Pakistan.” I could not disagree with him more. I told Pasha that India was focused on growing its economy and improving the standard of living of its people. India had moved on long ago from a singular focus on Pakistan. I added that Pasha and his government were stuck in a time warp and that while they worried about India, other much more serious threats were emerging around them. “What is an existential threat to Pakistan is the state of your economy and the growing militancy inside your borders. Look at what is happening across the Arab world,” I said. Pasha did not respond.
Early in 2012, while I was having this conversation with my Pakistani counterpart, there was a revolution under way in parts of North Africa and the Middle East—one that would bring the most significant change to the region since the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. And, importantly for the threat posed by terrorists, this revolution would end up feeding al Qa‘ida in a way that few people expected.
* * *
Forecasting revolutions is an inexact science. At CIA we were very good about providing strategic warnings but not as good on the tactical front. That is like a meteorologist telling you, “Winter is coming and it looks like a bad one.” Good to know, but what you really want to find out is whether it will snow on Thursday and how bad the storm will be.
For a number of years CIA analysts had been warning about powerful pressures in the Arab world. In one piece after another they told policy-makers that, without significant policy change in the Arab world, the status quo would not stand. They offered a wealth of analysis—citing political, demographic, economic, and societal trends that all pointed to trouble for the authoritarian regimes in the region, as these governments were not meeting the expectations of their people. There were two fundamental problems—one we saw and one we did not. The one we saw was that fairly well-educated people could not find jobs and were concerned that they and their children would not find a better life. The one we missed was that social media were helping to quickly spread these people’s views in a profound way.
What we failed to do was provide a tactical warning—either “Something bad could well happen in Tunisia in the next few months” or “The pressures that we have been discussing for years are now building to a dangerous level across the entire region.” While some criticized us for not providing that first warning, it would have been nearly impossible to do so. The fuse of the Arab uprising was lit on December 17, 2010, in Tunisia, when Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor, set himself on fire out of frustration over the way the oppressive government of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was treating him and his fellow citizens. Bouazizi was the catalyst for demonstrations that brought Ben Ali’s twenty-three-year reign to an end in just under four weeks. No intelligence agency could have predicted this chain of events—although we did point out in the early days of the Tunisia crisis that the end of Ben Ali’s reign was one possible outcome, and once Tunisia fell we did begin to warn about spillover to the rest of the region. One paper we produced at the time carried the title Jasmine Revolution Resonating in Tunisia’s Neighborhood.
But there is no good explanation for our not being able to see the pressures growing to dangerous levels across the region. Why didn’t we? It was not a resource issue—the Middle East and the Arab world always attracted substantial Agency resources. We failed because to a large extent we were relying on a handful of strong leaders in the countries of concern to help us understand what was going on in the Arab street. We were lax in creating our own windows into what was happening, and the leadership we were relying on was isolated and unaware of the tidal wave that was about to hit them.
Another problem at the time was that the intelligence community was not doing enough to mine the wealth of information available through social media. Not only was social media spreading ideas, it was becoming a means of organization for those opposed to the current regimes. The surprise of the Arab Spring in general and social media–inspired demonstrations in particular caused us to redouble our efforts to monitor the enormous amount of information available on social media platforms as indicators of political change and political movements. We had become too accustomed to stealing secrets and were not paying enough attention to important information that was streaming on Twitter for the world to see.
To be fair, it certainly was not—and is not—clear to me what difference our failure to “call” the Arab Spring had at the end of the day. I do not believe that the events would have turned out any differently if we had told policy-makers exactly what to expect.
But for all the analytic missteps we made during the run-up to what became known as the Arab Spring, the one that seems the most important to me—because it gave people false hope—and the one most important to this story was a misjudgment that was made after the street erupted. We thought and told policy-makers that this outburst of popular revolt would damage al Qa‘ida by undermining the group’s narrative. Our analysts figured that the protests would send a signal throughout the region that political change was possible without al Qa‘ida’s leading the way and without the violence that al Qa‘ida said was necessary. Instead, with a few exceptions, the development of people’s gaining the right of self-determination had the unforeseen effect of key countries suddenly losing the will or the capability to deal with al Qa‘ida and other militant groups.
In short, the Arab Spring was a boon to Islamic extremists across both the Middle East and North Africa. Egypt and Libya illustrate this point well, and they just happened to be places where I again found myself at the center of things.
* * *
Inspired by the events in Tunisia, where President Ben Ali had just fallen, enormous public protests erupted in Egypt in January 2011. Tens of thousands of protestors hit the streets of Cairo and other major cities demanding an end to Hosni Mubarak’s three decades of rule. Many of the protesters’ grievances were legitimate, as conditions for the masses in Egypt were appallingly bad. The inequality was striking. While westerners were used to seeing pictures of stunning pyramids and beautiful Red Sea beach resorts, abject poverty affected millions of people. It was a difficult moment for US policy-makers because Mubarak had been a faithful ally of the United States. Egypt, a focal point of Arab culture, with the largest population in the Arab world, plays an enormously pivotal role in the region, and US officials could not ignore the fact that Egypt’s peace agreement with our closest Middle East ally, Israel, rested on a narrow pedestal of just a few leaders—like Mubarak.
The demonstrations grew in size day after day, with periodic outbursts of violence, mostly on the part of the government, which was trying to put down the protests. The White House held daily Deputies Committee meetings to discuss what, if anything, the United States could do to ensure a peaceful resolution and a stable outcome. I was CIA’s representative to those meetings. There was no clear answer. The participants agreed on a couple of things, however. First, you cannot throw yourself in front of the speeding freight train that is a people’s revolution. It was clear that the outcome would be decided in Egypt, not in the United States. Second, as much as the United States appreciated Mubarak’s support over the years on issues ranging from Middle East peace to counterterrorism, his domestic situation appeared too far gone to save. It seemed his days were numbered. Still, it was viewed as possible that he could play a role in a peaceful transition to a new type of government in Egypt. The representatives from the NSC and the State and Defense Departments agreed that there was no way the US government could directly support either Mubarak or those who sought to overthrow him. The best we could do was publicly say that the United States was for a peaceful resolution, and then work diplomatically behind the scenes with Mubarak to engineer an outcome that would not include a bloodbath and that would ensure a transition to a stable new government.
I was asked to get involved in making that happen. Going back over a decade, I had had many experiences with Omar Suleiman, the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service. A tall, reserved, and well-spoken man, Suleiman was an army general who always wore business suits. He was very wise about security issues in his region and we would often seek out his views on complex matters. You could ask Suleiman a single question about any regional issue and then sit back for what might turn out to be a half-hour lecture packed with insights. His remarks would be interrupted only by a quirky habitual clearing of his throat every few minutes as he gathered his thoughts to further expand on the topic.
With the situation in Egypt rapidly spiraling out of control, the United States kept pushing Mubarak to resolve the crisis through compromise, but the Egyptian president was proving stubbornly resistant. Four days after the demonstrations started, Mubarak surprised the world by naming Suleiman vice president, a position that had been unfilled for almost thirty years. Outside of his immediate family, Suleiman was Mubarak’s closest advisor. This decision was received poorly by the protesters—because they saw it as another step by Mubarak to hold on to power by promoting his most powerful ally.
At the same time, I was approached by the intermediary for an international businessman. (I cannot provide more information about him or the intermediary.) This businessman was a friend of Suleiman’s and he wanted to relay messages from Suleiman to the US government through me. The intermediary’s credentials were impeccable and several conversations with the businessman convinced me of two things—he was talking directly with Suleiman and he had the best interests of Egypt and the United States in mind. I sought and received the approval of Director Panetta and my fellow deputies to talk to Suleiman through the businessman. A number of conversations then occurred over a period of days. The main message Suleiman wanted to deliver to the White House was that he was deeply concerned about the stability of his country, he wanted to help resolve the crisis, and he was asking what the US government thought Cairo should do with that goal in mind.
Although this was never clearly stated, it was our assumption that Suleiman (who could have picked up the phone and contacted Director Panetta or me directly) was looking for some deniability. If seen talking with me, he would be viewed by the inner circle as working against Mubarak—which, in fact, was exactly what he was suggesting—and he was unwilling to openly go against his boss. Secrecy was required because even the head of the Egyptian spy service could expect to be spied upon. It was also clear that he was looking for a way to survive this ordeal—and perhaps even come out of it in a more senior position, possibly as the new leader of Egypt. I never lost sight of the fact that Suleiman was in this for Suleiman.
I took Suleiman’s message to the deputies, and it was decided that I would send a message back to the Egyptian spy boss detailing exactly what the United States recommended he do. At the time Mubarak was preparing to deliver a major speech that was anticipated as a key moment in the crisis. I sat down with Denis McDonough, the deputy national security advisor, in his West Wing office—about the size of a walk-in closet but a few steps from the Oval Office—and we drafted a list of things the US government would like to hear Mubarak say. These things, we thought, might help defuse the crisis. McDonough typed faster than I could think and printed the talking points. The basic message was, I have heard the views of the people and I am going to step down from the presidency immediately. I am turning power over to a transitional council with representation across Egyptian society, and this council will run the country and put into place the mechanisms for elections that will determine the leadership of Egypt going forward. And all this will occur in a way that is orderly and secure. Denis and I returned to the deputies, who were still in the Situation Room, and he shared the points with everyone to make sure each was on board. When everyone signed off on the message, McDonough handed me the paper and said, “Go to it, brother.”
I found a private room in the Situation Room and called my business contact. I told him that I had a message for Suleiman and that it came from the highest levels of the United States government. I went through the points carefully. It was clear my contact was writing them down word by word, as he asked me to slow down at a couple of points and to repeat a phrase or two. He said he would pass the message to Suleiman immediately. Later my contact phoned me back and told me that Suleiman had not only gotten the message but that he had convinced Mubarak to make those points in his remarks.
The next principals meeting on Egypt happened to coincide with Mubarak’s big speech on February 1. We were all watching the multiple video screens in the Situation Room with great anticipation, but it quickly became clear that Mubarak was heading in a different direction from the Suleiman talking points. Mubarak talked about the peaceful protests of noble youth and about citizens being exploited by those bent on confrontation and violence. He made it clear that it was his sacred duty to protect the country and that he would continue to do so until the end of his term. The closest he would go in the direction of the protesters was to say that he would not run for the presidency again. The Egyptian street reacted quickly and violently. Mubarak’s forces subsequently engaged in a brutal crackdown. (After leaving office Mubarak was tried on charges of murder for the deaths of some of the demonstrators.)
I felt horrible—mostly for Egypt but also because my personal diplomacy had failed so miserably. It was clear to me that Suleiman’s influence was no match for that of Mubarak’s wife and children, in particular his son Gamal, whom Mubarak had been grooming as his successor.
Mubarak’s speech was a turning point for the US government. The president took a first step toward distancing himself from our long-term ally by saying publicly the next morning that the transition in Egypt “must be meaningful, it must be peaceful, and it must begin now.”
As the violence grew, so did the debate at the White House. Giving up publicly on a longtime ally was difficult for many to accept, but others thought the time had come. A crystallizing moment came in an NSC meeting when UN ambassador Susan Rice asked President Obama how he wanted history to judge him—as on the side of Mubarak or as on the side of the Egyptian people. The president made his decision to take a significant step away from Mubarak. He put out a statement, saying, “The voices of the Egyptian people must be heard. The Egyptian people have made it clear that there is no going back to the way things were: Egypt has changed and its future is in the hands of the people.” The president had sided fully with the protesters. He walked away from Mubarak, who resigned soon thereafter, and Suleiman announced that control of the government was being turned over to the Egyptian military.
There was joy in the streets of Cairo and great angst in the corridors of power elsewhere in the Middle East. The blowback was huge. I felt it myself on a trip to the region shortly thereafter, when I visited Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Our friends in the region asked how we could so quickly abandon a longtime ally like Mubarak. The unspoken but ever-present question was how quickly we would abandon them if similar circumstances arose. The truth is that we had no other options in the case of Egypt. There was no way we could have saved Mubarak—even if it had made the most sense for US policy, which it did not.
As interesting as the developments throughout the Middle East in early 2011 might be, I would not be including them in this book were it not for the unintended impact they had on the war against terrorism. As positive as the development of greater democratic rule might be over the long term, one of the biggest winners in the Arab Spring—at least in the short-to-medium term—was al Qa‘ida.
In Egypt, Mubarak was replaced by Mohamed Morsi, a prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood who quickly started granting himself extraordinary powers. Morsi turned out to be a horrible leader, making bad decisions on both political and economic matters. Whatever the benefits of having a popularly elected leader, they were more than offset by poor governance. This was all to the dismay of many—both inside Egypt and out—who had hoped he would lead efforts to reenergize the Egyptian economy and transition the country to democracy. One of the ways this poor governance played out was that, while the mechanisms for combating terrorism in Egypt remained largely intact, there was no political will to use them. The military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities in Egypt essentially stopped fighting al Qa‘ida because they felt they had no political support to continue to do their job. In a remarkably short time, al Qa‘ida, which had been defeated in Egypt for almost two decades, made a comeback, establishing new footholds in the Sinai and other parts of Egypt. From these locations al Qa‘ida could now strike Israel, energy pipelines important to Israel and Jordan, and tourist sites popular with westerners within Egypt. The Sinai went from being a prime location for scuba divers and beach goers to a war zone.
Morsi’s government was essentially doing nothing. Eventually the White House sent counterterrorism czar John Brennan to tell Morsi that al Qa‘ida was on a rapid road to recovery in Egypt and that its overarching goal was to kill Morsi and overthrow his government. While Brennan got Morsi’s attention—Egyptian CT operations against al Qa‘ida partially resumed—the Egyptian military several months later decided that it had had enough and replaced Morsi after little more than a year in office.
But the damage had been done. Al Qa‘ida had gained enormous ground in the largest and most important Arab country in the region. We are still paying for the Egyptians’ lack of focus today, with al Qa‘ida fully entrenched in the Sinai, where it regularly conducts attacks against Egyptian military and police units, and in Egypt’s most important cities, where it still poses a threat. The Arab Spring, that flowering of self-determination and public expression, had turned into a catalyst for the worst kind of violence and oppression. From a counterterrorism perspective, the Arab Spring had turned to winter.
* * *
We experienced a different kind of setback in another major country in the region, Libya, where the problem was not a lack of willingness to deal with al Qa‘ida but rather a lack of capability to do so.
On the surface Libya would not seem to be of much interest to the intelligence community. The country, while large in size, is primarily desert. In terms of population, Libya is not even in the top one hundred among the nations on the planet. But mere numbers can be deceiving. Throughout my thirty-three years at the Agency, Libya demanded a disproportionately large share of our attention. Most of that focus can be attributed to just one of the country’s six million people: Muammar Qadhafi. Qadhafi made himself an international pariah with the course he chose for his nation—the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, and the practice of terrorism as a tool of statecraft, including the bombing of Pan Am 103 flying over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, an act of terrorism that killed 259 people on board and eleven on the ground. Qadhafi was also behind the 1986 bombing of a Berlin discotheque frequented by US servicemen, which killed two.
Then, in early 2003, just as the United States and its allies were beginning the invasion of Iraq, representatives of the Libyan government reached out to our British counterparts suggesting that Qadhafi might be willing to discuss voluntarily ridding his country of its weapons of mass destruction. CIA and British intelligence officials met secretly with Qadhafi and his senior leadership, eventually brokering a deal designed to remove Libyan weapons of mass destruction without firing a shot.
Once that deal was negotiated, the United States and its allies engaged in an awkward resumption of relations with Libya—ties that had been strained since Qadhafi seized control of the country in 1969. By 2006 the United States had reestablished diplomatic relations and sent an ambassador to Tripoli for the first time in twenty-seven years.
While we had no illusions about the harsh, authoritarian nature of the regime led by the “Brother Leader,” as Qadhafi liked to be called, in the aftermath of 9/11 we were more than prepared to work with his regime if it would help in our efforts to prevent attacks and defeat al Qa‘ida and similar organizations. And help it did. For very different reasons, the most important being that al Qa‘ida wanted to overthrow secular Arab regimes, Qadhafi hated and feared al Qa‘ida as much as we did. Since a number of top leaders of Bin Ladin’s organization were Libyans, his assistance proved quite useful.
The world of intelligence is packed with strange bedfellows—and few stranger than the Libyans. But due to this “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” mind-set, we found ourselves working with them. I made a trip to Libya in late 2010, just weeks before their revolution began. As deputy director of CIA, I was visiting to ensure that the Libyans continued to work with us against al Qa‘ida.
My principal point of contact in Libya—and my host for the visit—was Abdullah Senussi, Qadhafi’s domestic intelligence chief. Senussi was known for being ruthless. He had been implicated in bombing airplanes, massacring prisoners, and possibly trying to assassinate foreign leaders. I did not know what to expect when I walked into his office, but what I found was a strangely personable interlocutor.
While it was clear to me that Senussi was a tough guy (he was also Qadhafi’s brother-in-law), I was able to see another side of him. I found Senussi to be smart, straightforward, and funny. We had an intense meeting in his office, where protocol—that is, his boss—demanded that he lecture me on his view that the United States was moving too slowly to restore full diplomatic relations with Libya. Once we got over that box-checking, we settled into a detailed discussion on al Qa‘ida and what we could do together against the group. It was almost as if Senussi flipped a light switch to go from the first topic to the second.
Near the end of the meeting, we found common ground in talking about our families. We told each other about our children, and it was clear to me that the light of his life was his daughter, Anoud, who was in her late teens. He was enormously proud of her—and I could relate on a human level by telling him about my own kids, who were not far from her age. By the end of the meeting, I had to remind myself of the horrible deeds Senussi had undertaken for the sake of the “Leader.”
My next stop was a three-hour lunch with the head of Libya’s external spy agency, Abuzed Omar Dorda. Set next to a Roman ruin, the restaurant was one of Tripoli’s finest. We had a large table in the middle of the restaurant, with Dorda sitting across from me. Security agents—mine and his—filled the tables around us. Dorda smoked nonstop before, during, and after lunch. It was like a scene from The Sopranos.
During the meal I learned that lecturing was part of the personality of senior Libyan officials. The intelligence chief used most of the lunch to tell me that everyone in the world was a Muslim but not everyone knew it yet. He said, “Michael, you are a Muslim. You have just not yet acceded to Allah’s will.” But he pleasantly suggested that I would someday. When I mentioned that this was not what I’d learned in eight years of Catholic school, he proceeded to tell me about the great significance of Jesus in Islam. To me his lecture was not just rhetoric. Dorda actually believed deeply what he was telling me, and I found his sincerity and his interest in my personal relationship with God endearing.
Intelligence cooperation between any two countries is based largely on personal relationships and trust. And from that perspective, my visit to Libya paid off. Within a day Senussi and I had developed a relationship. On a very basic level, there was trust established between us. I departed Libya with the relationship between our two services stronger and with the knowledge that I could at minimum pick up the phone and call him if I needed. This was important because Libya had a very effective intelligence service.
Very soon I had to do just that. Early in 2011, protests and clashes with security forces broke out across wide swaths of Libya. The bloodiest clashes occurred in the country’s second-largest city, Benghazi. In late February a decision was made at the State Department that the US embassy in Tripoli should be temporarily closed and its employees—as well as any other American citizens who wanted out—evacuated. The only way to get all of them out quickly was to charter a ferry to Malta. The State Department set up the ferry—as well as a follow-on air flight to take out the last few Americans—but there was still concern about the safety of Americans as they moved from the embassy to the Port of Tripoli, where the ferry was docked.
White House officials, aware that I had established a relationship with Senussi, asked me to reach out to him and seek his assistance in ensuring that the State Department employees were allowed to safely withdraw. I called Senussi on February 24 and asked him to provide security for our diplomats as they moved to the dock. He promised me that he would ensure their safety, and he was as good as his word. Nearly two hundred Americans managed to depart without incident.
Whenever I talked to Senussi during this period he would go out of his way to try to convince me that the people rising up against Qadhafi were not freedom seekers but wholly owned agents of al Qa‘ida. There was no doubt that mixed among the various rebel factions were some extremists loyal to Bin Ladin’s ideology, but the vast majority had no agenda other than to rid their country of the oppression imposed over four decades by their “Brother Leader.”
It was the policy of the US government at the time to be supportive of the goals of the rebels, and we gave them considerable assistance—short of lethal arms. Eventually military support was provided to the resistance through NATO and other allies.
A second opportunity to employ my back channel to Senussi came in March 2011 when four New York Times employees were captured by Qadhafi’s forces outside the town of Ajdabiya. The group included a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, a videographer, and two still photographers (one of whom was a woman). We later learned that they had been badly beaten by their captors and were convinced they would likely not survive captivity.
As is often the case with media operating in a war zone, low-level soldiers holding the journalists thought they might be spies. Again the White House asked me to help, and I picked up the phone and called Senussi. After another lecture about how the rebels were really al Qa‘ida operatives and how we should be working with the Libyan government against them, I was able to turn the conversation to the reporters. I told Senussi that the four were exactly what they said they were—reporters, not spies—and that they should be released. Two days after my call, they were let go. I am not sure that the leadership of the Times was ever told of the role CIA played in making the release possible.
Senussi’s cooperation was not the result of our personal relationship. That got me in the door. No, the cooperation resulted from Senussi’s belief that if he assisted me on these tactical matters, it would make it easier for him to convince me that Libya was indeed under assault from al Qa‘ida and we would see the error in our ways. His was a strategic play.
My third encounter with Senussi was designed to be a wake-up call. It was May, and the NATO and Arab coalition had been active for a number of weeks under the banner of protecting the Libyan people from their own government. No senior official in Washington had yet publicly demanded Qadhafi’s departure. The White House thought that needed to change and asked me to speak with Senussi again—this time to make it clear that there was only one solution to the ongoing violence: Qadhafi had to go. Once I passed on the message, Senussi said over and over again, “This is a very important message. This is a very big deal.”
My final encounter with Senussi was the most dramatic. The conflict had been dragging on for months and there had been considerable bloodshed on both sides. It was apparent that the Qadhafi regime’s days were numbered and that its end would be violent and perhaps protracted. In an effort to speed up the inevitable collapse of the dictator’s rule, my fellow participants in the Deputies Committee asked me if I could convince Senussi to do the right thing, to join the future of Libya, not remain in its past. The thinking was that if someone of Senussi’s stature in the regime changed sides it could lead others to do the same, perhaps resulting in a rapid collapse of the regime and the saving of thousands of Libyan lives.
The last thing I wanted to do was discuss this with him over the phone, however. There was a high probability that a call such as mine would be intercepted and my suggestion alone might be sufficient to get Senussi killed. So I reached out to him and offered a personal meeting in either Egypt or Tunisia. He agreed, and we set the Tunisian island of Jerba as the meeting place. But just two days later, he sent word that the meeting had to take place at a border crossing on the Libyan-Tunisian border. I thought perhaps the Leader did not want Senussi venturing too far from home. So I said OK and dispatched a security team to Tunisia to quietly assess the proposed meeting location. The team reported back that in order to reach the proposed meeting site it had had to pass through more than a hundred thousand Libyan refugees who had swarmed across the border to avoid the fighting. Still I insisted that the planning for the trip continue.
But a week before the proposed meeting I received word that Senussi would not attend. I later learned that Qadhafi had refused to let him travel to the border—perhaps correctly guessing my intent, fearing that his intelligence chief was looking for a way out of the crisis.
Of course, I never lost sight of the fact that Senussi was far from a good guy. That’s not a surprise when you’re dealing with the intelligence chief of a totalitarian dictatorship. My interest in talking with him at this point was to speed the demise of a brutal regime and minimize the loss of life in the process.
Since I’d failed to lure him to a face-to-face meeting, my next-best option was to have my discussion with him over an open phone line and hope for the best. “Abdullah,” I said, “you must know that the Leader’s days are numbered. You must know that it is just a matter of time now. The most important thing now is to think about your country and what will be best for you and your family.” He knew exactly what I was saying, and he said, “No, Michael, I could never leave the Leader’s side in difficult times like these.” He was holding firm, so I played my trump card.
“Abdullah, my friend,” I said, “think about your daughter. Think about her future. By choosing the right side, you can save her, she can have a future in Libya.” What he said next sent chills down my spine. “Michael,” he said, “the Leader is more important to me than my family.” From the tone of his voice I could tell that this was not something meant for anyone listening in—he was deadly serious. The discussion was over. Senussi wasn’t going to change. It was the last time I ever spoke with him.
Qadhafi’s regime collapsed in August 2011, and Senussi went on the run. He was arrested in Mauritania in March 2012. The International Criminal Court in The Hague sought custody so that he could be tried for crimes against humanity. But on September 5, 2012, he was returned to Libya instead. Subsequently his daughter Anoud was also arrested—later released, and then kidnapped by gunmen just as she stepped outside of the prison gates after a visit to see her father. She was eventually freed by her captors. In December 2013 she publicly called for her father to be tried by the ICC in The Hague—not because she knew him to be guilty, she said, but because he faced a show trial and almost certain death if he was tried in Libya. Nonetheless, Senussi and thirty-six other former Libyan officials were placed on trial in Tripoli in the spring of 2014. (As of this writing there has been no verdict.)
* * *
The aftermath of the fall of Qadhafi was chaotic. The institutions of the state withered away—most important, the security services responsible for dealing with terrorists. A power vacuum swept the country, and it was filled by militias that could not agree on anything beyond getting rid of Qadhafi. Some of those militias had extremist views of the world—giving al Qa‘ida an opportunity. The defeat of the Libyan military also resulted in the spread of a huge number of conventional weapons not only in Libya but also around the region, strengthening al Qa‘ida affiliates from Mali to Egypt.
With our concerns about al Qa‘ida growing, the White House sent me to Libya in January 2012 (I took with me Mike Vickers, the under secretary of defense for intelligence; Vickers was a frequent traveling companion of mine due to the critically important collaboration between CIA and DOD). My objective was to convince the new Libyan prime minister of the urgent need for him to build an intelligence service capable of dealing with the al Qa‘ida problem (the previous Qadhafi-era service had collapsed and no longer existed). I was only in the country from nine a.m. to five p.m. For safety reasons my security detail would not allow me spend the night.
With the ambassador and Vickers at my side, I made my argument, pointing out that al Qa‘ida had its sights set on Libya and that an intelligence service was an absolute must for dealing with it. I explained to the prime minister that a leader of al Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was at that very moment in Tripoli purchasing as many weapons as he could get his hands on. The prime minister pushed back—saying that he was only leading an interim government, that he had a lot to do, and that it would take time to figure out how to build a service the “right way.” I told him that if he was referring to the excesses of Qadhafi’s former service, he needed to know that there were many democracies in the world with intelligence services that operated within the law and upheld human rights and that this could certainly be the case in Libya.
Still nothing. In frustration I emphasized to the prime minister that I was certain al Qa‘ida’s growing strength in Libya would result in attacks against Libyan interests, European interests, and American interests. The meeting ended—with only the vaguest of commitments to building a service. I knew it was not going to happen.
My warning would become a tragic reality in less than a year.
* * *
In both Libya and Egypt there were important lessons to be learned.
The day that the Egyptian military moved against President Morsi, I received a call from a senior Arab ambassador to the United States. He simply said, “Michael, what do you think about Egypt?” I said, “This is a good thing. Morsi was leading the country to ruin, to instability, and to extremism. Now Egypt has a chance again.” I knew that I was being inconsistent with US policy, but I had been trained all my life to speak the truth as I saw it. The ambassador said to me, “I have made similar phone calls all morning. You are the first to say that this is a good thing. You are right.”
Not every country is ready for democracy, and democracy—to work effectively—is much more than free and fair elections. It certainly includes those—along with the freedom to form political parties, compete for political support, and vote—but it also includes freedom of expression, the availability of multiple sources of information, and institutions that make and carry out the preferences of the electorate as expressed in elections. And to force democracy on countries that do not have these characteristics, and cannot develop them quickly, is almost always a recipe for instability and a set of outcomes that are inimical to US national security interests. The poster child is Gaza, where, in 2006, voters elected a terrorist group to lead them. And Hamas has led its fellow Gazans exactly where you would think a terrorist group would—to ruin.