Langley, Virginia
September 11, 2001
Tuesday-morning rush. Typical traffic getting into the office. I drove my vintage 1986 red BMW 635i into work at my usual 0630 that day, listening to my favorite country music radio station as the late summer sun rose. I’d slept like crap the night before. I suspected everyone had. I think Massoud’s assassination left us all rattled.
If they could do that, what else could they do?
I reached HQS, parked, and went through the layers of security into the building. Twenty before eight, I posted up in front of Ben’s office, waiting for him to come out of a meeting. Ben and Cofer shared an office area. Their secretaries had desks across from each other. Beyond them lay our bullpen of desks and cubicles. It was bustling as usual, everyone heads-down in their morning assignments. The bullpen was so large that they had actually posted “street signs” on the cubicle lanes to help visitors navigate the maze, with street names like Hezbollah Highway.
I knew both Ben’s and Cofer’s secretaries well by now. So while I waited, I chatted with them, making small talk that concealed how unsettled I felt.
On the wall just outside of Ben’s offices was a wide-screen television tuned to one of the cable news channels. At some point during our conversation, I glanced up and saw the World Trade Center on the screen. It looked like a telephoto shot from miles away, hazy despite the transcendent, cloudless blue sky over New York City that morning.
Smoke billowed out of the north tower.
I stared at the scene. The secretaries looked up and were riveted with me. Passersby stopped and saw the smoke on the television and moved closer to find out what was going on. Somebody turned up the volume, and we heard the announcer talking about an aircraft hitting the World Trade Center.
Small plane. Accident. Happened in 1945 to the Empire State Building. Could happen now, for sure.
“Mr. Prado?”
I turned to see our Federal Aviation Administration liaison officer standing behind me. By 2001, the CTC had become a true joint operation, filled with reps from every federal agency from the FAA to DEA, NSA, DS, ATP, the USSS, and so on.
Our FAA guy looked sheet white.
“Yes?”
“We have a problem,” he said quietly.
I leaned into him. “What’s going on?”
“Four airliners are not responding to us. They all sent distress calls. Since then, we’ve been unable to contact them.”
This cannot be happening.
As if in slow motion, I nodded, then turned back to the screen, considering what do to. Just then, a blur moving right to left appeared on the news feed. An airplane, going fast, in a sharp bank. It disappeared behind the north tower. A split second later, a flaming explosion shot out from one side of the south tower. Confusion, gasps. Shocked cries filled the bullpen. All eyes locked on the scene unfolding.
One airplane could be an accident. Not two. And there were two more unaccounted for.
Cofer’s Chief of Staff stood nearby. I grabbed him and said, “Send a cable to every station. Tell them we’re under attack. Tell them to watch their six. And find out who is doing this. Hit all sources, leave no rock unturned. Cash every chip we have with our liaison services.”
He nodded once and disappeared to get it done.
Flames boiled from both towers now. They rolled out of the shattered sides of both buildings. Transfixed, I almost felt the heat of fire on my face. Again.
In an instant, I was taken back to Miami, riding through the streets in a ladder truck, geared up and holding on to the bouncing rig as we sped toward a warehouse fire. When we got there, flames roiled out of the sides of the warehouse, wreathed in black, acrid smoke.
I climbed into the bucket with a brother firefighter, and the ladder team lifted us above the flames and over the roof. We needed to cut a hole so we could vent the heat and direct a hose right into the heart of the conflagration. I grabbed an ax and leaned out over the bucket, holding on with one hand as I prepared to swing.
The roof was made of zinc, and the heat below had made it as easy as paper to cut through. My ax came down again and again, ripping a hole until an entire chunk of the roof just fell away, leaving me dangling over a hellscape of furious red embers and burning bales of hay. It was like looking down over Dante’s Inferno, the heat blasting me even through all my protective gear. My body shook, and I held on. The scene below seared into my memory.
I remember saying to myself, “What the hell am I doing here?”
A moment later, the bucket swung away.
The heat was terrifying. While with Miami-Dade, I probably responded to a couple of dozen fires in those early days of adulthood. Inside each one, I remember the furnace blasts of heat that hit in waves so powerful the visceral feel of them transcends time. You never lose that memory, that fear that must be conquered to go inside those burning hellscapes in search of anyone still alive.
There is nothing worse than burning alive. Nothing. It is every firefighter’s worst nightmare, because we all have seen the horror flames visit upon human flesh.
“Oh my God … Is that a person?”
I jerked out of the memory. More shocked sounds from my brothers and sisters. On the screen, bodies fell from the upper stories of the towers. Falling. Inexorable, arms flailing, they plummeted past windows, story after story until they vanished from the camera’s vantage point. An impossibly awful scene juxtaposed against the stark blue sky.
I knew at once. Our brother and sister Americans faced an impossible choice: burn alive in the furnaces their offices became as flaming aviation fuel drenched the buildings, or jump clear of the fires and heat to face the agonizing plunge to the plaza below.
The blasts of heat drove them over the shattered side of the building. And I understood.
I understood. Nobody could withstand that heat. Their last act was to choose the lesser of two ways to die.
And all because they showed up to work a little bit early that fateful and awful day.
People were in tears around me. Tears of horror. Tears of anguish. Rage. Fury. Impotent, we stared at the sight of the people we were sworn to protect dying in ways unimaginable before this late-summer Tuesday morning.
Something happened inside me that moment, like tumblers of a lock falling into place. What opened was every fiber of hate, fury, and vengeance I had ever felt. It poured out of my heart like blood from an open wound, pain-racked and agonizing. I stood there, feeling it course through me, watching the deaths unfold in front of us. I trembled from its power.
I don’t care what happens in the months ahead, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX of the motherfuckers responsible for this XXXXXX My career, my future, my path—it boils only down to this. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX They will have justice.
It seemed so trite, so pathetically weak of a response in the moment as we stood in the bullpen, safe in our headquarters building. But none of us in there that morning had any doubt: we would respond, and this wasn’t like 1998. We were going to war with whoever did this to our people.
Our FAA guy appeared beside me again. “Mr. Prado. The Pentagon’s been hit by another aircraft.”
It was a little after 0940.
They were hitting strategic and economic targets as well as our command and control centers—all in high-concentration, high-casualty areas. In minutes, word spread to evacuate the building. The headquarters of the CIA was a logical next target, and one plane remained as yet unaccounted. An order came from the seventh floor ordering all to evacuate the building.
People filed for the exits, heading to clear the building and get home to their loved ones. In the CTC, almost nobody moved. Already, workstations were being set up in conference rooms, maps of Afghanistan appeared on walls. We knew the CTC would be the epicenter of this fight, especially at the beginning. Our first mission was to find out who did this to our people and our country.
Twenty minutes later, we watched the towers collapse, engulfing the fleeing people in the streets with falling debris, body parts, glass, and billowing clouds of slate-gray dust that would cause lingering health issues for tens of thousands present that day for years to come.
In that moment, I got a chilling vision that our friend John O’Neil could be dead.
I’d first met John in the mid-1990s while doing my UBL gig. I actually taught a class called “A Day in the Life of a Case Officer” to his agents and analysts. More recently, I met up with him in NYC in 2000 just before I departed Shangri-La. I had to fly to New York City to meet with some FBI counterparts, and John was the Chief of the FBI’s counterterrorism section at the time. We got along well in spite of the reputed friction between our two agencies. John was an intense, laser-focused guy, and I think he saw that aspect of himself in me. He also had seen that I understood the threat we faced from Bin Laden. John had spent most of the late ’90s trying to convince the bureau that al-Qaeda could inflict significant harm on the United States. He’d led the investigation into the 1998 embassy bombings. Later, after we met in New York, he investigated the attack on the Cole.
He was spirited, passionate, outgoing. A larger-than-life type of guy I couldn’t help but to like and admire. While a colleague and I met with several FBI agents that day in New York, John greeted us warmly and invited us to lunch. There was no way we were going to say no to that.
He took us to his favorite submarine sandwich shop in the shadow of the World Trade Center. When we walked in, it was as if a godfather had entered. People approached John with near reverence, shaking his hand, laughing and talking to him. The owners at first wouldn’t let John pay for our meals, but he insisted. Even after we sat down, well-wishers came over to say hello.
We ate great food and talked not like colleagues but friends.
I’d heard through the grapevine he’d left the FBI earlier in the summer. And he became the Chief of Security at the World Trade Center.
I knew that whatever happened, John O’Neil would never have abandoned his post. Somewhere in that monstrous growing cloud of ugly gray dust that was consuming lower Manhattan, John O’Neil lay dead or dying. Ten days later, we found out he’d helped survivors down to the street, then turned back and rushed back into the shattered buildings to save as many as he could. His body was found under the rubble that deluged Liberty and Greenwich Streets, his wallet still tucked into his perfectly tailored suit coat.
As Flight 93 spun into a field in Western Pennsylvania, the CTC burst into find out who is doing this mode. We culled the cable traffic, reached out to all our stations, searching for information and answers. Long into the day, even as the fires raged at the World Trade Center and President Bush addressed the nation, we worked to find out who did this.
Only a few of our people went home that day, even though the entire building was evacuated. Those who did leave went home to hug their families and secure childcare and came rushing back. Toward evening, with everyone at their desks feverishly culling for clues, our Chief of the Management Group, “Cash,” broke the windows to our abandoned cafeteria and raided it for food. Snacks and drinks were passed out among the cubicles and offices. Better food would be forthcoming.
We worked long into the night. I know in the back of our heads, we wondered if Langley would be hit. By then, all planes were grounded, but if Bin Laden was behind this, who knew what follow-up attacks he’d planned. Suicide bombings? Light planes? We were absolutely a target.
Yet the vast majority of our people in the CTC stayed behind, ignoring their own safety.
Sometime after eight that night, I decided to walk the CTC and check on everyone. As I walked through the Hezbollah group, I spotted one of our senior and most talented officers still at her desk. Christie was eight months pregnant with her first child, and there she was still here, on the first day of a new war in a building with a big X on it.
My disbelief at her presence must have been all over my face. She looked up from her computer and greeted me. She was sure Hezbollah must have had a role in the day’s attacks. She was furiously searching for a link that could tie them into this. So far, all indications pointed to al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. She remained behind with us because she did not want Hezbollah to escape our wrath if they had been involved.
When I think of the best people I’ve met in my Agency career, I think of Christie, alone at her desk in the worst moments our nation has ever experienced. She was there, ignoring her own safety and the safety of her unborn child to find out who had attacked our nation and killed thousands of our people. She worked through the morning, even as the building was evacuated and Flight 93 had yet to be accounted for. She stayed at her post until I finally discovered her there that night.
Eight months pregnant, in a chair for hours. She must have been miserable. Enough was enough. I asked her to get home, get some sleep. This would be a marathon, not a sprint. She wanted to stay, to follow up on a few leads. Instead, I tracked down one of our logistics guys and asked him to drive Christie home. She smiled through her exhaustion, picked up her purse, and headed out with him. She would be back in the morning at the crack of dawn.
People in our business frequently equate courage with a calm reaction under gunfire or in a tight undercover moment. Courage comes in many forms. That night, I saw a remarkable aspect to it I’d never encountered before: a woman so dedicated to our mission she was willing to risk her unborn child to carry out her duties.
After I watched Christie depart the CTC, I returned to my own office and worked until I fell asleep at my desk. The next morning, I noticed that many of us had done the same thing. For three days, I stayed in the building, showering in our gym and raiding the cafeteria for food. Around me, others did the same.
Cofer, who’d spent much of this time either briefing the president or meeting with our leadership on the seventh floor, set the pace. He was a machine, working nonstop with fiery energy. The attacks had infused him with a singular sense of purpose. The president ordered him to get whoever did this XXXXXXXXXX. That became his mission, and nobody would get in his way.
The pieces began to fall into place within hours. All through the eleventh and twelfth, we listened. We asked questions. Around the world, we tapped our assets, called in every chit, exploited every avenue. The pieces we collected all pointed to al-Qaeda. The worst part was reading how these evil terrorist fuckers were celebrating their great victory.
The hours passed like a blur. I barely remember any of it, just the sense of pandemonium, the intensity and emotions of it all. At one point, on day two or three, one of our FBI counterparts, “Mike,” came to brief us on what they’d learned. The evidence they’d developed pointed straight at Bin Laden as well.
“We’re pretty sure this was al-Qaeda,” Mike said. Then he added, “Thank God.”
That threw me. “Why ‘thank God’?” I asked.
“Because if Hezbollah was behind this, they would bleed us for months.” I looked over at Cofer, confused.
“Huh?” I said.
Mike proceeded to explain that the FBI had uncovered networks of Hezbollah cells scattered all over the United States. They were functioning as smugglers, running drugs, black market cigarette cartons without the tax stamps, and other scams. The FBI strongly suspected that on a word from Iran, those fundraising cells could be activated and used to launch attacks throughout the country.
The FBI didn’t think al-Qaeda possessed that sort of well-developed network in the United States.
“Mike,” I said, “this is the first I’ve heard of this.”
Communication between the FBI and CIA always had issues. We had different cultures, different ways of doing business. The FBI focused on building legal cases against criminals. We were under no such structured approach to our job. In years past, I’d run a program designed to show the FBI how we did business. I liked the FBI a lot and enjoyed working with them. Our own CTC FBI liaison was a great asset to us, and he often went to bat for us against his own people. Yet there were communication lapses, and that was something we clearly needed to fix.
Friday night, I left HQS and found my red BMW in the parking area. I was wrung out, smelly after three days in the same set of clothes—even with the showers. We knew we faced a long war ahead. This wasn’t going to be a hundred-hour fight like the Gulf War. We were fighting an insidious new type of enemy—an actor without a state, with tentacles in nations all over the globe. I drove home through light traffic in the shadows of a summer sunset.
At home, I parked and wearily headed for the door. As I opened it, my youngest son flung himself into my arms. He hugged me so tightly he bruised my ribs. I hugged him back in the doorway, fiercely. Protectively. A rush of emotions hit me all at once.
Together, we went to find Carmen. She was cooking in the kitchen, just as she’d always done. It felt odd to see such a routine thing in a week filled with so many life-changing moments. Even in the midst of a crisis, Americans lived on. We went through our daily routines, even as the world changed overnight around us. There was comfort in that. It felt resilient. Like despite the soul-pain the entire country felt, we would get by. We’d be okay.
Then I saw the tears streaming down her face. She came to me, and our embrace was at once a comfort and a caution. These moments could be so easily taken away. In the past hundred years, our homeland was barely scratched by war. Now, our very people here at home, our loved ones, were the targets. As I held my wife, I knew there were families missing fathers, husbands, mothers, and wives in New York. The lampposts around Manhattan were covered with missing person photos, including John O’Neil’s.
Civilians. Missing in action. Buried somewhere in the rubble at One World Trade Center, their families clutching to slender reeds of hope that the first responders digging at Ground Zero would discover a miracle and pull their loved ones from the wreckage alive.
I knew miracles would be in terrible, short supply.
My folks came to this country and found not a haven from communist oppression but heaven. All they wanted was a chance to build a life with their own labor and effort. America gave them that opportunity, and they thrived with this second chance. They loved this country like few people I’ve ever known. Even in the darkest days of the Vietnam War era, when protests and radicals made national self-loathing chic, my parents always stood for the flag and our anthem. Their loyalty never wavered.
For me, 9/11 was personal. It was a direct attack on my friends, my family, and my country. We were not going to be fighting for some abstract concept. This wasn’t communism versus capitalism. We weren’t about to send our troops overseas to protect an ally. This was about keeping our own families alive.
I would use everything I’d learned—every tactic, every trick, every tradecraft nuance—to crush the enemy that robbed us of our American sanctuary.
I felt Carmen crying, her head on my shoulder, tears on my suit coat. I pulled her closer, comforting her through my own mix of renewed rage and anguish over what we’d just gone through. There in our suburban kitchen, safe in the arms of my beloved, feeling her own pain even as she eased mine with her mere presence, I knew right then we could never take such a moment for granted again.