Front Burner

In his letter to Captain Holland, Admiral Moore gave him the formal task of inquiring into the facts and circumstances surrounding the actions of USS Cole in preparing for and undertaking a Brief Stop for Fuel (as the Navy officially classifies it) at Aden Harbor, Yemen, on October 12, 2000. The investigation completion date was initially set for November 13, 2000. Admiral Moore directed that the FBI and NCIS would investigate the actual act of terrorism. The command investigation team was required to cooperate with them as necessary, but Captain Holland was not to inquire into the facts and circumstances of the explosion or the persons who may have been involved in that explosion.¹ This directive limited the scope of the investigation to internal command actions, but the limitation also removed it from the full context of how the attack occurred.

During Admiral Moore’s visit the day after the explosion, he and I briefly discussed his decision to appoint an investigative officer. We both knew this was not going to be an easy or quick process. Every fact would be checked, every qualification verified, and every measure and process Cole had put into place to protect and defend the ship would come under intense scrutiny. While the investigation was tasked with ascertaining facts, it was understood that given human nature, there would also be a tendency, unfortunately, to assign blame, given the nature and extent of the attack.

A command investigation creates an atmosphere of intimidation and anxiety, since no one can be sure not to be found to have failed in some manner and subsequently assigned blame, or cited for a failure. Informally meeting with Cole’s officers and chiefs on Friday afternoon, I made it clear that whatever the investigating team needed, it would get. Complete and total cooperation was expected from everyone, regardless of personal feelings or impressions. If one of the crew were needed for an interview or to provide a particular piece of evidence or page of documentation, watch schedules would be adjusted to accommodate the investigation requirements. The crew was expected to give their unwavering cooperation.

Captain Holland and Lieutenant Command Thomas Copenhaver, a Navy lawyer appointed to assist him with legal advice, arrived on board Saturday morning, October 14, two days after the attack, to start the investigation. As with almost everyone who arrived on the ship, they were unfamiliar with our unique circumstances following the attack and appeared to have an expectation of office spaces, working computers, and administrative equipment readily available to support them. Although the forward two-thirds of the ship was still without power, Chris quickly adapted our limited resources and set the team up in a Combat System Department space near the back of the ship.

This small space with a couple of computers, desks, and a copier would provide them with at least some degree of privacy for interviews. While it was an awkward arrangement, since the crew often needed to access the space for technical information, drawings, and equipment manuals, it worked for their purposes. This space also served as a central location for them to collect the reams of data that would be incorporated into the body of the investigation.

As the investigation started, one of the first questions they addressed was how Cole came to be in Aden in the first place. A Navy oiler, USS Arctic, made the first port visit to Aden in 1997 following the 1990 Yemen Proclamation that, after years of war, initially unified North and South Yemen into one country. That was subsequently followed by port visits, not brief stops for fuel, by two Navy ships in April and May 1998. The Navy and Department of Defense, in consultation with the Department of State, assessed that the security situation and evolving political and military ties warranted greater involvement with Yemen. Consequently the Navy, in coordination with the Defense Energy Support Center, negotiated a fueling contract for the port of Aden. The contract ran for a five-year period from June 9, 1999, to June 8, 2004. By the time the contract was signed, six ships had already pulled into Aden to refuel. Over the next fifteen months prior to Cole pulling into Aden, twenty more ships pulled into Aden for brief stops for fuel. Cole was the twenty-seventh ship to pull into Aden for a brief stop for fuel.

After the attack on Cole, national security officials in Washington expressed bafflement that the Navy had ever allowed ships to enter the port. Ali Soufan, the Arabic-speaking special agent who had been in the FBI team on the ship, later wrote, “Yemen was well known in the intelligence community to be full of radical Islamists, including al-Qaeda members.” He said that the NCIS’s Multiple Threat Attack Center had even described security in Aden as “tenuous,” and that though the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh had turned a blind eye to radical Islamic activities, the Clinton administration, wanting its cooperation, decided to trust Yemen with hosting U.S. ships. None of this, of course, was known to me or anyone else aboard Cole as we sailed unsuspectingly down the Red Sea.²

Before pulling into port, Cole had submitted the mandatory force protection plan with sixty-two measures required for Threat Conditions (THREATCON) Alpha and Bravo (Appendix). We also reviewed messages that contained lessons learned about the port from other ships that had pulled into Aden to refuel. None of them commented on either the threat conditions or force protection measures implemented during their time in port.

It was not until October 11 that Cole received approval of the force protection plan by Commander, Task Force 50, with no deviations authorized, and early on October 12, we received the message from the U.S. embassy granting us diplomatic clearance to enter Aden. The message was addressed only to Cole and did not contain any updates to either intelligence for the port or a change to the expected threat environment.

At 0546, according to the timeline that would be established in the investigation report, Cole stationed the sea and anchor detail watch team to enter port. At about 0740 we arrived at the first navigation buoy outside the port to pick up the harbor pilot who guided us into the inner harbor and pier. By 0851 the ship was twisted around with the starboard side next to the pier with mooring lines being worked by the deck crew to securely moor us in place. The ship was finally ready to start the in-port refueling checklist by 0940 when we secured the Sea and Anchor detail. The in-port watch team, consisting of an officer of the deck, petty officer of the watch, and messenger, was shifted from the bridge to the amidships quarterdeck area between the stacks and on the starboard side where they could better communicate with the Yemeni fuel workers and coordinate the activities of the husbanding agent. The engineers commenced refueling the ship at 1031.

Although the ship’s deck log had entered a time of 1115 for the explosion, that entry was written in during the post-blast period, after the quarterdeck watch standers had been injured by the force of the explosion and evacuated to local hospitals for treatment. The blast was recorded in the engineering log at 1118, and the investigation report ultimately determined that time to be the most accurate estimate, given that the engineering officer of the watch, who was uninjured by the explosion, was maintaining the log in the central control station.

For two and a half weeks, Captain Holland and a growing team of Navy lawyers interviewed crew members, gathered up the ship’s deck log, engineering log, and messages exchanged between Cole and Fifth Fleet, CTF 50, and others, as well as key shipboard documentation on qualifications and training. When it was all analyzed and put together, the team hoped to build a picture of our force protection mindset and posture prior to the attack. Most of the officers, as well as key members of the crew, were brought in for interviews or asked to provide statements for the record. Almost immediately, however, the command investigation team ran into a legal issue that put them in conflict with the criminal investigation headed by the FBI.

Initially, crew members were read their legal rights and signed an acknowledgment form under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), article 31(b), prior to being questioned by the command investigators. The problem that arose was that once a person has heard UCMJ legal rights read to them as part of any legal proceeding, if another agency needed to interview the individual, each crew member had to be given a “cleansing” statement about their rights, as well as be afforded the right to have an attorney present during any further questioning. While the crew was blissfully unaware of this issue, in the eyes of the FBI and NCIS investigators, it could severely complicate their criminal investigation of the terrorists.

Almost immediately, the lead FBI and NCIS investigators, after consultation with John O’Neill, approached me about this issue. They specifically sought to assure me that neither organization had any intention of pursuing criminal charges against the crew for what had happened. While that was good to hear, everyone remained somewhat guarded since no one knew exactly what the Navy’s investigation might try to do regarding my actions and those of key crew members responsible for force protection. But the matter appeared to be quickly resolved when Captain Holland and his legal advisors chose to take unsworn statements from the crew without reading them their UCMJ legal rights. Complications from this decision would arise later, however.

At the end of the two and half weeks in port, the command investigation team left the ship and returned to Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain to finish the investigation and reach their conclusions. At the same time, however, another investigative team arrived with a mandate from the secretary of defense. A week after the attack, on October 19, Secretary of Defense William Cohen had assigned retired Army General William W. Crouch and retired Navy Admiral Harold W. Gehman, Jr. as co-chairs to head up a commission to carry out an investigation from the perspective of the Department of Defense into the circumstances surrounding the attack on the USS Cole.

The Cole Commission was specifically tasked with taking a larger perspective view to determine the circumstances surrounding the attack on Cole and what the implications were about the possible vulnerability of any military unit in transit around the world. General Crouch and Admiral Gehman visited the ship while pierside in Aden and were taken on the standard tour of the ship that other visitors had received. There were also shown the areas where the crew had been recovered from the wreckage of the mess line, galley, and main engine room 1.

When speaking privately with me, they both reiterated their desire to know the mindset and procedures the crew followed as we entered port. This was a national-level report that would drive a number of force protection changes throughout the Department of Defense and had ramifications far beyond the attack on us. Without a clear understanding of what processes were followed by not only the ship and crew but also those within the chain of command, as well as other government agencies and departments, General Crouch and Admiral Gehman would not be able to adequately determine just how vulnerable U.S. military units were during transit periods like our move from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Gulf. Following a short few hours on the ship speaking with Chris, Joe Gagliano, and me about force protection issues and the status of the ship and crew, the Cole Commission team left the ship to continue their investigation.

Back at Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, the command investigation team spent long days organizing and collating all the information and interviews gleaned from the crew. Poring over the material, they confirmed that once Cole moored to the refueling pier, we had waived a number of the sixty-two force protection measures we had agreed to follow because of the physical surroundings of the ship.

Since the pier was located in the middle of the harbor and not pierside, there were no fewer than nineteen measures that did not apply to our circumstances (see Appendix, THREATCONs Alpha and Bravo: 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 22, 24, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 45, 56, 57, 60). These force protection measures included actions that pertained to vehicular access, vehicle barriers, liberty boats, conducting searches under the pier, and placing armed sentries on the pier (as there would be no liberty calls ashore, and we were moored at a refueling station in the middle of the harbor, no brow or gangplank was put down to the pier), and so on. In statements submitted to the command investigation team, all the officers involved in force protection said that we had completed all remaining measures—our assessment was that we had taken all the precautions that were applicable, in light of what (little) we had been told to expect.

One issue that directly impacted the investigation was the damage sustained by the electronic data system the ship used to store information about personnel qualifications, which by Navy-wide mandate had replaced the old-fashioned paper filing system for crew members’ service records that had to be submitted to the Bureau of Personnel in Washington. The shipboard electronic system thus was the only official record of their training and watch qualifications. Located on the refrigerator decks, however, it was now mostly underwater. The magnetic drives were damaged and deemed unsalvageable, and there was no backup or off-ship storage of the training and watch qualification material. Consequently, the command investigation team felt they had no choice but to determine that all qualifications were not officially verified. All the hard work we had done before leaving Norfolk to get the crew qualified to stand all watch stations while entering or leaving port was thus ignored in the command investigation report.

The team also conducted interviews with personnel other than those assigned to Cole. These included the commanding officers of Hawes and Donald Cook, as well as staff members, force protection officers, and intelligence officers assigned to Fifth Fleet, and the George Washington and Abraham Lincoln battle group staffs. These interviews tended to focus on instances when force protection requirements in a plan that had been approved by higher authority could be waived or not completed. In almost every case, staff officers expected a ship to follow the submitted plan no matter what. From the staff’s perspective, at no point would a waiver be considered even if it were clear that the ship could not complete or would be unable to complete measures it had listed because of physical arrangements or conditions that staff members, unlike ship’s officers, were aware of in the particular port.

The command investigation team also conducted an extensive interview with Lieutenant Colonel Bob Newman, the defense attaché in Sana’a. He stated that, “during at least one BSF (brief stop for fuel) prior to my arrival (during a period when Fifth Fleet was in THREATCON CHARLIE) [a higher threat level than when Cole stopped in Aden for fuel], a USN ship put a small boat (RHIB) in the water for security reasons, ... and the Yemeni Navy objected to this as a sovereignty issue, even though we believed we had not had any previous problems with this.”³ He further stated that he had addressed this issue with the Yemeni minister of defense and Southern Area commander and considered this issue resolved; however, he was unaware if this information was passed on to Navy ships that pulled into port. The command investigation report determined that it had not been. It also observed that no Yemeni assistance had been offered in ensuring the safety and security of Cole while the ship was in Aden.

After weeks of reviewing all the information they had collected, resolving conflicting statements from crew, staff, and other personnel, and piecing together the timeline of events and actions of the officers and crew, Captain Holland submitted his report on November 27, 2000, to Admiral Moore.

Throughout the course of the investigation, I had not had any access to it, nor to the endorsements by senior officers in the chain of command and their conclusions as they made them. I did not learn about any of it until the report and the endorsements were publicly released in early 2001. When I finally got the report, I saw that Captain Holland, given the narrow scope of his mandate, had clearly sought to place blame for the entire incident squarely on my shoulders, and to varying degrees accused my officers and crew of being derelict in the performance of our duties. It was unfortunately shortsighted, failing to put the attack into the larger context of the then-unacknowledged war being waged by al Qaeda against the United States. But the report was merely the first step in the investigative process, and the chain of command had yet to weigh in with opinions and conclusions that would address and counter the report’s assertions of substandard performance.

The key finding was that, of the sixty-two force protection measures listed for completion in the plan that Cole had submitted, the ship had waived nineteen and completed only thirty-one.

Of the sixty-two measures, the opinion section of his report concluded, “Nineteen measures could possibly have prevented the suicide boat attack or mitigated its effect. Of those 19 measures, the ship accomplished 7. The remaining 12 were either waived by the Force Protection Officer under the authority [of] the Commanding Officer, or were simply not accomplished.”

Six of those twelve unexecuted measures the report considered to be of “particularly high importance.” Its assessment of the failure to execute them was starkly critical.

“The collective failure to execute these six measures created a seam in the defense posture of USS Cole and allowed the terrorist craft to come alongside the ship unchallenged by those responsible for the ship’s protection,” it said.

These were the six crucial measures Captain Holland’s report accused my command and me of not executing, in his opinion thereby exposing the ship fatally to the attack:

(1) Brief crew on the port specific threat, the Security/Force Protection plan, and security precautions to be taken while ashore. Ensure that all hands are knowledgeable of various THREATCON requirements and that they understand their role in implementation of measures. Remind all personnel to be suspicious and inquisitive of strangers, be alert for abandoned parcels or suitcases and for unattended vehicles in the vicinity. Report unusual activities to the Officer of the Deck.

(2) Muster and brief security personnel on the threat and rules of engagement.

(18) Water taxis, ferries, bum boats and other harborcraft require special concern because they can serve as an ideal platform for terrorists. Unauthorized craft should be kept away from the ship; authorized craft should be carefully controlled, surveyed, and covered. Inspect authorized watercraft daily.

(19) Identify and inspect workboats.

(34) Man Signal Bridge or Pilot House and ensure flares are available to ward off approaching craft.

(39) Implement measures to keep unauthorized craft away from the ship. Authorized craft should be carefully controlled. Coordinate with host nation/local port authority, Husbanding Agent as necessary, and request their assistance in controlling unauthorized craft.

The command investigation report viewed the force protection plan submitted by Cole as a “perfunctory submission,” but it also judged the review of the plan by higher authority, the Task Force 50 staff we were reporting to, as equally “perfunctory.” Neither Fifth Fleet nor the CTF-50 staffs ever fully reviewed the implementation of the force protection measures that either did not apply or could not be completed due to the physical circumstances of the brief stop for fuel. For the ship’s part, the report said, there was a failure to think critically about the force protection posture in view of all the security factors that were unknown to us.

“The crew, while trained, failed to shift their mindset or increase their awareness regarding the new threat environment,” the report concluded. The opinions listed in the report found a lack of focus on the importance of strictly executing the plan that was amplified by confusing messages from up Cole’s chain of command about the threat level and the nature and danger of the threat. “When USS Cole . . . arrived in Aden, Yemen, the threat level was HIGH and the THREATCON was BRAVO,” it observed, yet “many of the ship’s crew were not attuned to, or even aware of, the heightened threat level.” A new four-point system (High, Significant, Moderate, Low) had gone into effect, and Yemen was rated Significant, but Central Command had not implemented it and was still using the old five-point system of “CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW AND NEGLIGIBLE.” “At a minimum this contributed to confusion as to the actual threat environment, as the Commanding Officer and the Executive Officer interpreted this as a ‘decrease in Threat Level,’” the report said.⁴

Even though Cole had made self-authorized adjustments to the plan based on what we had learned about previous ships’ experiences in Aden and on procedures in the Sixth Fleet area of operations, the report’s conclusions criticized the ship for not notifying the chain of command that we had done so. There had been a disconnect between the work done by the embassy and defense attaché, the Fifth Fleet staff, and the ships deployed to the region, the report concluded, with information gaps about who was responsible for security on the pier, identification and certification of boats approaching the ship, as well as the latest port security and threat information.

Though the force protection planning system places the onus on individual ships to gather information regarding threat levels and conditions for the areas they deploy to and ports that they visit, the report noted that there was no mechanism in place to ensure that a ship has in fact acquired this information.

The last part of the command investigation report made recommendations for the Navy and the chain of command—lessons learned from this attack:

(1) Increase the emphasis on force protection measures and incorporate them into the training cycle prior to every deployment. Key areas included: specific delineation of responsibilities, clarification of host-nation responsibilities, better coordination with local NCIS threat assessments, and a better process for recommending and reporting force protection measure deviations.

(2) Fleet Commanders must conduct force protection briefings for ships in their area of responsibility before they arrive, thereby encouraging the proper mindset is established for the applicable threats.

(3) The Force Protection Officer should be designated as a primary billet on ships, not a collateral duty, as it was on Cole. In other words, it should not be a part-time job, and specific training and experience standards should be set for the designation.

(4) The Navy must initiate dialogue with the Department of Defense, the Department of State and other federal agencies in developing plans for port security of U.S. ships in foreign countries, and ensure the necessary authority is granted to carry out all necessary force protection measures.

(5) There should be closer coordination between individual U.S. defense attachés and ships pulling into their country of responsibility.

(6) Uniform force protections should apply throughout the Navy and other services.

(7) There should be daily backup and preservation of shipboard electronic databases containing watch qualifications.

(8) The Navy should encourage the Department of Defense to develop a system by which threat analysis information is “pushed” to individual units, rather than putting the burden on the unit to “pull” information from individual sources.

But to me as commanding officer, as captain, the most devastating finding—again, in the opinion section of the report—was its conclusion that I and my executive officer, Chris, and two of our subordinate officers had shown “a notable absence of supervision” and “did not meet the standards set forth in Navy regulations.”⁵

The report began winding its way up the chain of command for endorsement—in this case, first by Fifth Fleet/Naval Forces Central Command, then by Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, then by the chief of naval operations, and finally by the secretary of the Navy, and the secretary of defense.

Admiral Moore, the commander of Fifth Fleet and Naval Forces Central Command, rejected its central conclusion in his letter forwarding the report to Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet. He determined that Cole’s crew had a robust force protection program incorporating the intelligence assessments that were available, and though he said that he was “disappointed” in the way we had implemented it, he also observed that, “had USS COLE implemented the THREATCON Bravo Force Protection Measures appropriately, the ship would not have prevented the attack. I am convinced THREATCON Bravo Force Protection Measures were inadequate to prevent the attack.”⁶ It was a stunning admission.

The admiral continued that neither Fifth Fleet nor the ship possessed specific threat information that would have compelled a higher degree of readiness. None of the available information or intelligence included any assessment that hinted of adversaries lying in wait and poised to strike a U.S. Navy ship moored at the refueling pier in Aden harbor. Had it been known that al Qaeda was poised to strike, the ship would not have been scheduled to stop there.⁷

In specifically addressing my actions as commanding officer, Admiral Moore stated that the Navy “cannot use hindsight to penalize a commanding officer for not knowing in advance what has become common knowledge—that a determined, well-armed and well-financed terrorist cell was operating in the Port of Aden. In fact, all of the intelligence assets of the United States and its allies, as well as the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, did not identify the threat, let alone communicate the presence of that threat to the Commanding Officer of USS Cole.”⁸

Admiral Moore wrote that because by the time he forwarded his review up the chain of command, at the very end of November 2000, the criminal investigation by the FBI, NCIS, and the Yemeni authorities had identified the terrorists responsible for the attack as close associates of Osama bin Laden. The FBI investigators, including George Crouch and Ali Soufan, discussed their findings with John O’Neill and others up the chain of command in the FBI and believed that bin Laden had ordered his subordinates years earlier to come up with a way to destroy a U.S. Navy ship in or near Yemen, though at this early stage in the probe they were having trouble tying him directly to the actual carrying out of the attack against USS Cole.

The Yemenis had interrogated suspects who told them that Tawfiq bin Attash, aka “Khallad,” a longtime trainer at one of the al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan who was known to be in constant touch with bin Laden, had supervised the planning. Khallad, easily recognizable because he had lost a leg, tasked one of the jihadists he had trained, Jamal al Badawi, with obtaining a boat from a source in Saudi Arabia and getting it to Aden for an attack against a U.S. Navy ship. The boat, the one that blew up alongside Cole, arrived well before the start of 2000.

On-scene planning in Yemen was the responsibility of Abd al Rahim Hussein Mohammed Al-Nashiri, a Yemeni who was another longtime bin Laden operative and a first cousin of the suicide driver who had attacked the U.S. embassy in Kenya in 1998. An explosives expert, he oversaw the handling, preparation, and installation of explosives into the boat, a fiberglass and wood hull with a centerline console to control the engine. Operating from a safe house with a view of the harbor, he and at least two other Yemeni terrorists, Hassan Said Awad Al Khamri and Ibrahim Al-Thawar, known to the authorities as associates of local al Qaeda operatives, could see when Navy ships came into the port.

Their first attempt had been a failure. On January 3, 2000, as the USS The Sullivans, an Arleigh Burke–class guided missile destroyer like USS Cole, glided into Aden, the boat, mounted on a trailer, was slowly backed down into the water. Although nobody knows for sure, apparently it was backed too far into the water, became stuck with the boat still attached, and could not be freed from the shoreline mud. Despite numerous attempts, they could not free the boat quickly enough and it became swamped and flooded. Unsure whether their actions had come to the attention of the local authorities, the plotters panicked and abandoned trailer and boat. By that afternoon, The Sullivans had been refueled and set sail for sea unscathed and, like the rest of the Navy and U.S. intelligence, unaware of how close it had come to disaster. Over the next few weeks it became clear to the terrorists that no one had detected their attempted attack. They recovered the trailer and boat and all the explosives they had placed in the hull, and continued plotting.

A new safe house was picked that was farther out of town, surrounded by a wall, in a quiet neighborhood where people minded their own business—not so different from the one in which bin Laden himself hid in plain sight for so long in Abbottabad, Pakistan, until 2011. The terrorists also selected a small apartment close to the harbor from which they could observe ship movements and film an attack to impress the world with their capabilities and exploits. Here they noted that when Navy ships tied up to refuel, small garbage boats usually came alongside soon afterward.

In September of 2000, bin Laden was reportedly so unhappy with the terrorist cell’s lack of success that he wanted to replace Al-Khamri and Thawar. Al-Nashiri, in response, ordered them to execute an attack on the next U.S. warship to enter the port of Aden—that would be Cole—and left Yemen to try to talk bin Laden out of making any changes.⁹

By the time Cole arrived on October 12, the terrorist attack boat sported a fresh coat of white paint, with red and black speckled carpet laid in the interior that gave it a clean look. Over months of careful and methodical work, Al-Nashiri had precisely placed blocks of explosives into the hull. As each was placed inside, fiberglass sheets and coats of sealant held it securely in place. The explosives used were blocks of C-4 and Semtex, containing cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine, or RDX, interleaved with blocks of TNT, or trinitrotoluene. TNT is not readily moldable, and as the explosives were built into the boat and slowly filled, it was probably used to line those areas where there were minimal curves and bends along the hull. Batteries built into the boat as part of the bomb provided the charge for the electric blasting caps the attackers used, apparently at least two for each block of RDX-based explosive. It can never be known with certainty how much was used, but the terrorists apparently believed there was enough to sink a ship at the refueling pier.

The suicide bombers themselves—Al-Khamri and Al-Thawar—initiated the detonation, exactly according to the plan. Allah was surely going to bless them when they triggered the switch that morning, which explained why they were smiling and waving at the infidels they thought they were dispatching to hell. No one knows whether the trigger was built into the console or activated by a foot switch, but it did not matter. The ignition circuit closed and their destiny was sealed. A surge of current from the battery raced along the lines to the electric blasting caps. The caps’ bridge wires heated white hot and burst into searing flame, igniting the RDX-based explosive that initiated the explosive conversion of the TNT surrounding it as numerous strands of detonation cord extended the blast. In about one ten-thousandth of a second, the chemical chain reaction was initiated and the massive shock wave, travelling at over 25,000 feet per second, began to do its work.

Ultimately, prisoner interrogations and other evidence showed that bin Laden had not only ordered the attack, but also paid for it himself. None of this, none of this at all, was known. Not to me as commanding officer, nor to Admiral Moore as Commander, Fifth Fleet, nor to anyone in Washington when Cole pulled up to the refueling pier on October 12.

The admiral did not know that the Central Intelligence Agency had absolutely no assets in Aden to monitor and assess the terrorist threat there. In reality, without relying on local Yemeni authorities to provide NCIS with information, the United States was essentially blind in its ability to accurately evaluate threats in the port. As the FBI investigator Ali Soufan put it much later in his book, Cole was “a sitting duck.”¹⁰ The blind leading the blind had led directly to the tragedy that disabled my ship.

In closing out his review of the actions of the leadership on Cole, Admiral Moore took a broader view of the events of October 12, 2000, and put them in context. He felt the combination of actions by USS Cole, fleet logistic and contingency requirements, the declining number of replenishment ships, intelligence assessments, Task Force oversight, U.S. policy and relations with the government of Yemen, Navy and Joint Force Protection Measures, and the training cycle prior to deployment had all contributed to putting USS Cole and its crew in a situation where a successful attack could be ruthlessly carried out by a well-trained and determined adversary.¹¹

Admiral Moore concurred with each of the recommendations set forth in the investigative report. Just as damage control is integrated into every facet of a sailor’s training, he said, force protection must now assume that same priority. But regardless of what measures were taken to improve force protection measures throughout the Navy, he observed, a ship and its crew must not bear the onus of finding out what the threat was in a theater of operations. That burden should be borne by the upper echelons of the chain of command, which should assume greater responsibility for the coordination and integration of intelligence reports to support commanding officers in making force protection decisions. He also called for closer coordination and a broader intergovernmental effort to provide ships with relevant information about ports. Admiral Moore said he and his staff did not believe an attack in Yemen was any more likely than it would be anywhere else in the region. “The simple fact is that terrorists operate out of most Middle East countries,” he wrote.

The United States had been drawn into an undeclared war with al Qaeda, Admiral Moore observed. The attack on USS Cole was not a purely criminal deed; it was an asymmetric act of war. While our nation had dedicated billions of dollars towards developing a sophisticated intelligence network and a modern military that could detect, deter, and defend against conventional threats, these resources, tactics, and strategy must now be focused on the global terrorist threat. Clearly, there was insufficient emphasis on waterborne security by the Navy. Unlike land facilities where layered defenses were possible, no such protection existed for ships. His conclusion set the stage for the revolution in the Navy’s approach to force protection that the attack on USS Cole made inevitable.

Immediately following Admiral Moore’s endorsement on November 30, 2000, the entire command investigation package was forwarded to Admiral Robert J. Natter, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, in Norfolk, and Admiral Natter’s legal team, headed by Captain Larry McCullough, JAGC, USN, started an independent internal review process.

The document was classified Secret, with the special caveat NOFORN attached, meaning not for release to foreign nationals because the information contained in it was so sensitive that it could not be shared with any of our allies. When it arrived at Atlantic Fleet headquarters on December 6, Admiral Natter was adamant that only a limited number of personnel could have access to it.

But the media were continuously pressing the Navy for updates on the status of the investigation. Once the crew returned home on November 3, the drumbeat picked up considerably. Given the public attention being devoted to the investigation, the hunt was on to find a scapegoat, someone who must have been responsible for ordering Cole into the port of Aden and leaving the ship open to attack. It was only a matter of time until someone in the Navy leaked the investigation still in progress. On December 9, the Washington Post published a front-page article citing the failure of Cole to fully execute its classified force protection plan. The article also noted that while some of the crew had assumed the attacking boat was a garbage scow, they were unaware of any attempt to challenge it.

In response to the bad press, the head of the Navy’s public affairs office, Rear Admiral Stephen Pietropaoli, warned against a “rush to judgment” against the crew or me, stressing that the inquiry was continuing. The damage, however, was done.¹² I took the leak as a violation of the trust I had assumed existed between the Navy’s leadership and me.

The morning the article came out, I debated for a couple of hours before deciding to telephone a Naval Academy classmate of mine, Commander Frank Thorp, the public affairs officer of Admiral Vern Clark, the Chief of Naval Operations. I felt betrayed and set up, and said precisely that. “Frank, the only way the Post could know about the status of what security measures I did or did not complete could be if someone familiar with the investigation purposely leaked it to the press,” I told him.

Frank was an exceptional officer. Calm and focused, he had been working the halls of the Pentagon for years. As the public affairs officer for the CNO, he was a candidate for eventual promotion as the Navy’s Chief of Information. “Kirk,” he said, “you know as well as I do that these kinds of leaks happen. I don’t know who did it but there is nothing we can do about it now.”

“Well, Frank, let me put it to you this way,” I told him. “That investigation is classified Secret–NOFORN. If the Navy is casually leaking classified information to the press in an effort to create the appearance that I’m going to take the fall for this, they better stand by. I have been completely loyal to the Navy to date and have yet to say anything to the press while the investigation is ongoing. You know as well as I do that the Navy’s instruction for handling classified information calls for a signature by anyone that checks out or handles classified information at the Secret level or above. That means the Navy knows who has had access to the investigation and that means we have a limited group of people that could leak it to the press.”

Frank tried to calm me down. “Kirk, come on now. You know that this stuff happens. You saw it all the time when you were working for SECNAV (Secretary of the Navy). There’s nothing we can do about it.”

I was stunned. If the Navy was going to try this case in the court of public opinion through leaks to the press blaming me, it would look self-serving and vindictive. Unwilling to let this slide, I continued, “I’ll tell you what, why don’t you let the CNO know that I am going to go to the press and let them know that since the Navy can’t seem to control access to classified information, perhaps that same lackadaisical approach compromised the intelligence I had available to me and now seventeen sailors are dead as a result of the Navy’s approach to safeguarding this type of material. That investigation is classified Secret and I will not tolerate any more leaks or I will call into question the ability of the Navy to protect its ships and sailors. Is that what you want?”

For a number of seconds, Frank was silent, thinking about what to say next. Finally, he took a deep breath and pleaded with me, “Kirk, please don’t go to the press. Let me see what I can do, but don’t do this. I’ll take care of it, I promise.”

Frank and I were still good friends and had worked together on a number of projects over our time together at the Pentagon and with that, I too took a deep breath and in a very measured tone replied, “OK, you’ve got it. I won’t go to the press, but these leaks have got to stop or I have no choice. I am not going to tolerate this investigation being tried in the press when the Navy expects me to keep my mouth shut. That investigation is classified Secret–NOFORN and it better be handled that way from this point on.”

Almost immediately, the leaks seemed to diminish considerably. Whether our conversation made the least bit of difference didn’t matter; the media would have to wait until the investigation was done before drawing any more conclusions. Adding to the pressure of the investigation was a larger national issue; the country had become consumed with the outcome of the presidential election. Butterfly ballots and hanging chads became the talk of the day, and a suicide bombing in Yemen lost the interest of the press and public.

On January 4, 2001, Admiral Natter forwarded his second endorsement of the command investigation to the Chief of Naval Operations. He viewed it as his responsibility to “. . . assess whether Commanding Officer, USS COLE (DDG 67) or any of his officers or crew should be held accountable for actions taken in regard to the terrorist attack of 12 October 2000.”¹³ And his view was clear and unambiguous. “After careful consideration of the matter of personal accountability, I am firmly convinced, and conclude, that the Commanding Officer, Executive Officer, Command Duty Officer, Force Protection Officer, and other officers and crew of COLE, were not derelict in the execution of duty. Further, they did not act in violation of any regulation, order or custom of the Navy. Accordingly, no disciplinary or other adverse administrative personnel action is warranted.”¹⁴

From the beginning of his endorsement, Admiral Natter concisely addressed the issue of the decision not to put a boat in the water on fifteen-minute standby for picket duty. He pointed out that the presence of a patrolling boat would not have caused the crew to suspect the approaching boat was anything other than the third garbage barge. Even if Cole were operating under the more robust THREATCON Charlie procedures and patrolling around the ship, he noted, the rules of engagement Cole was operating under did not allow for any meaningful engagement since the boat did not give any indication of hostile intent or commit a hostile act against the ship until it detonated. By his assessment, there would have been no justification in U.S. or international law for USS Cole to use force, deadly or non-lethal, against a vessel or individuals in a vessel making an apparently benign approach.¹⁵

The endorsement then addressed the issues of crew knowledge and the planning process for the refueling in Aden. In both cases, Admiral Natter found more than ample evidence through the actions of the crew that they had been briefed on the heightened level of awareness required in a port operating under THREATCON Bravo, and he rejected the investigation report’s assertion that they had not been. The crew had shown this to be the case by controlling access to the ship by unknown personnel from one of the garbage boats, and in the way the husbanding agent had not been left alone but escorted around the ship.

Regarding the actual execution of the force protection plan for Aden, Admiral Natter took specific issue with the investigating officer’s opinions:

In distinct contrast to these statements [by the investigating officer], I find that USS COLE was cognizant of force protection concerns, employing an active and knowledgeable team. COLE’s performance during the interdeployment training cycle and her aggressive pursuit of force protection training and information is well documented in this investigation. Beyond the force protection performance of the ship, and fully consistent with that performance, were the extraordinary successful and effective damage control and medical efforts undertaken by the ship after the attack.... These exceptional, and in many instances heroic, life-saving efforts reflect the ship’s character. Read in its entirety, this investigation conclusively demonstrated a taut, highly capable ship—well-trained and well-led.¹⁶

His endorsement was also not without criticism of my performance, nevertheless. “I am not completely satisfied with the Commanding Officer’s performance,” he wrote, adding that he was “troubled” that I had not pressed harder before we entered port in Aden for information about where the ship would be moored, whether we would be authorized to deploy small boats, and so on. But in addressing several key measures that we had not implemented, his endorsement specifically refuted the opinion that their omission had created a seam in the defensive posture of the ship that allowed the terrorist boat to approach.¹⁷ Admiral Natter viewed the seventeen men and women of Cole who gave their lives in defense of their country as casualties in a continuing conflict between the forces of a free nation committed to protecting the liberty and lives of its people and ruthless bands of highly organized terrorists, bent on destruction and death.¹⁸

His endorsement, the second, was forwarded to the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Clark, who on January 9, 2001, completed his endorsement, the third. Admiral Clark concurred with the Atlantic Fleet commander’s recommendation to take no punitive action against the commanding officer or any of the crew for the tragedy. “I concluded, along with the previous endorsers, that the tools and information at the Commanding Officer’s disposal on 12 October 2000, coupled with the lack of any indication of hostile intent before the attack, severely disadvantaged the Commanding Officer and crew of COLE in trying to prevent this tragedy. Likewise, I concur that the investigation clearly demonstrates that COLE was a well-trained, well-led, and highly capable ship.”¹⁹

In his comments, Admiral Clark maintained that, based on the threat warnings, NCIS Threat Assessment, and other information and intelligence, the ship was focused almost exclusively on a shore-based threat. There was an absence of any specific indication of a waterborne threat. Moreover, an intelligence assessment contended that the known terrorist groups in Yemen had limited operational capability. Given this paucity of specific indications, the Chief of Naval Operations felt that the security measures employed by Cole were not unreasonable.²⁰

The admiral also agreed with the assessment by both Naval Forces Central Command and Commander in Chief, U.S. Atlantic Fleet, that implementation of all THREATCON Bravo force protection measures would not have thwarted or stopped the attack. Specifically, Admiral Clark stated, “I find nothing in the warnings that would have induced a commanding officer to deploy boats and establish a security perimeter around the ship, the only measure that, in my judgment, would have protected the ship from a suicide attacker. I conclude that THREATCON BRAVO measures were inadequate for the 12 October scenario.”²¹

During the course of his review, Admiral Clark also determined that none of the previous ships entering Aden had requested additional security or intelligence information about the port and all had adjusted their force protection posture based on the conditions in the harbor when they pulled in to refuel. Yet while the inadequacy of THREATCON Bravo measures was central to his determination that disciplinary action was not warranted, like Admiral Natter, Admiral Clark was troubled by one shortfall in my performance as commanding officer—my failure to press the chain of command harder before pulling into port in Aden for answers to my questions about the mooring arrangements and other conditions we would find there. That, he said, had contributed to inadequate formulation of the force protection plan.²²

In the end, the command investigation, limited to examining the actions taken by the ship’s commanding officer and crew, did not address the conduct of others higher up in the chain of command for their degree of accountability and responsibility for what happened. Admiral Clark indicated that he would address this issue separately.

More broadly, Admiral Clark’s endorsement addressed the issue of the Navy’s force protection program. The measures then in force were written to be applicable in all situations, but gave insufficient guidance to commanding officers, for example, as regarding the requirement to keep unauthorized craft away from a ship. Without benefit of picket boats specifically trained in what to look for, or trained linguists to be able to interface with the local police and populace, what commanding officers should do was not clear. Admiral Clark was particularly concerned that the scope of the measures for each threat condition must also be reassessed to determine their adequacy in addressing waterborne and other threats.

Additionally, he concurred with Admiral Moore’s recommendation that ships should be provided with more assistance in formulating force protection plans for particular ports. Ships should not be required to draw information and intelligence from the “system”; higher headquarters should ensure that information is provided to ships as they develop their plans. While the nature of naval operations might preclude a briefing as soon as a ship reported for duty in a particular theater of operations, some information had to be provided before they entered that area of operations.

The Chief of Naval Operations deemed the performance of Cole’s crew in damage control effective. The CNO remarked on the investigation’s findings of brilliant and determined leadership and demonstrated that when significant damage occurred to the ship, the Cole’s crew immediately and aggressively fought for their ship and the lives of their shipmates, relying on their countless hours of training.

The crew’s heroic actions, both individually and as a team, saved the lives of many shipmates and ultimately saved the ship. His pride in the actions of the individual sailors was apparent with his comment, “This tragedy demonstrated the courageous character and resourcefulness of our service members, many of whom risked their lives to save their shipmates and their ship. Their heroic lifesaving and damage control efforts upheld the highest Navy traditions.”²³

As he put it in a press conference when the command investigation report was released a few days later, “The investigation clearly shows the commanding officer of the Cole did not have the specific intelligence, the focused training, the appropriate equipment and on-scene security support to effectively prevent or deter such a determined, such a preplanned, assault on his ship. So in short, the system—and that’s all of us—did not equip this skipper for success, and if you look at my statement, you will see those kinds of words. If you look at my endorsement and my assessment of the . . . and conclusions about the investigation, we did not support him in this kind of an environment, the kind he encountered, when they pulled into Aden on October the 12th.”²⁴

As the chief of naval operations was preparing to deliver his endorsement to the secretary of the Navy, the Department of Defense released the USS Cole Commission Report prepared by General Crouch and Admiral Gehman. It went beyond the focus of the command investigation, to find ways to improve the U.S. policies and practices for deterring, disrupting, and mitigating terrorist attacks on U.S. forces in transit. The recommendations in their report were to create a form of operational risk management applied at both the national and operational levels to balance the benefits against the risks of overseas operations. Ultimately, the report focused on five functional areas—organization, anti-terrorism/force protection, intelligence, logistics, and training.²⁵

As has been true in the aftermath of other tragedies of this nature, the report called for greater unity of effort among the offices and agencies in the Department of Defense to provide resources, policy, oversight, and direction and gain the initiative over a very adaptive, persistent, patient, and tenacious new kind of terrorist. This unity must also extend across other U.S. government agencies, the Defense Department report said, including developing security capabilities of host nations to help protect U.S. forces.²⁶ Force protection considerations were broken down into national level policy and procedural and resource improvements to better support anti-terrorism and force protection for units in transit.

The recommendations called for a number of initiatives and changes, including designating a unit’s Force Protection Officer as a full-time billet [the command investigation report had also recommended this]; augmenting individual units during transits through high-threat areas; fully funding service anti-terrorism and force protection programs to support threat and physical vulnerability assessments; assessing and funding anti-terrorism and force protection physical security requirements during the budget cycle; initiating a major unified effort to identify near-term anti-terrorism and force protection equipment and technology requirements, field existing solutions, and develop new technologies to address shortfalls; and giving geographic combatant commanders sole responsibility for assigning threat levels for a country in its area of responsibility.²⁷

In the realm of intelligence, the report was blunt in its assessment that intelligence priorities and resources were only making progress at the margins in the shift from a Cold War mentality to the new and emerging threat of terrorism. Once again, it called for reprioritization of resources for collection and analysis, including from human and electronic sources, of intelligence against terrorists. Intelligence production should be refocused and tailored to keep watch over transiting units to mitigate the terrorist threat, it said, and it also endorsed an increase in counterintelligence resources dedicated to combating terrorism and development of clearer counterintelligence standards.²⁸

As far as logistics were concerned, the report concluded that the number of refueling oilers operated by the Navy was sufficient to meet the requirements of national security. Although no resource requirements were identified in this area, the report did urge the secretary of defense to ensure that enhanced force protection needs were addressed in the logistics planning and contract award process. It also called for the Defense Logistics Agency to incorporate anti-terrorism and force protection concerns into the entire fabric of logistics support.²⁹

In addressing the last area, training, the report called on the U.S. military to create an integrated system of training so that units had a level of anti-terrorism and force protection proficiency on par with their other primary mission areas, including primary combat skills, such as anti-air and anti-submarine warfare tactics. It was incumbent on the Department of Defense to develop and resource credible standards of deterrence against terrorism: tactics, techniques and procedures, and packages of defensive equipment.³⁰

With the release of the USS Cole Commission Report to the public, the secretary of defense had a number of specific recommendations for review and action. The command investigation report remained as a piece of unfinished business. With the endorsement of the chief of naval operations now complete, the investigation and all three endorsements were delivered to Richard Danzig, the secretary of the Navy. A brilliant lawyer and strategic thinker, Secretary Danzig meticulously embraced his role. Since I had briefly worked for him prior to taking command of Cole, he knew me, but I also knew that his views regarding the investigation, endorsements, and my accountability would not by swayed in the slightest when he rendered judgment on the investigation and accountability for the attack.

Unfortunately, politics was beginning to cast a shadow on the question of accountability.

Both the command investigation report and the USS Cole Commission Report were scheduled for simultaneous release on January 10, 2001. The Clinton administration wanted to finish both investigations before it left office. On one hand, the President understood the need for a thorough and complete investigation into the attack and its causes. On the other hand, there was immense political pressure not to leave an incident as controversial and public as the attack on Cole as an outstanding piece of unfinished business for fear that the Bush administration would use it politically against them. So the Clinton administration was pressing the Department of Defense to find a single individual or organization that could be pointed to as responsible for allowing the tragedy to occur. While the temptation to blame the commanding officer looked like the quickest and easiest way to close out the investigation, the senior political and military leadership of the Department of the Navy strongly resisted it, for the reasons given in the endorsements that had been made.

Secretary Danzig and Admiral Clark stood firm; no one individual would be singled out to take the fall for the attack. They understood the larger and more strategic nature of the conflict with terrorism that had been brought to the fore by this event and blame was not an option. Frustrated with this intransigence, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen ordered the release of the investigations decoupled. Only the USS Cole Commission Report would be released on January 10, 2001. The command investigation could wait and perhaps the Navy’s leadership could find it in themselves to come up with the “correct answer” to a perceived thorny political problem. The Navy leadership’s unwillingness to single out fault for the attack resulted in the sliding of the release date until late Friday afternoon, January 19, 2001, the day before the inauguration of President George W. Bush.

It was ugly, hardball Washington, D.C., politics. If the Navy was going to be stubborn and affix blame to the entire chain of command instead of one individual, then the service would be made to pay a price. The perception that the Navy was trying to sweep the entire incident under the rug was sure to go over badly with the American public and, more importantly, Congress.

Eight days after the release of the USS Cole Commission Report, Secretary Danzig, in a January 18, 2001, memorandum to the secretary of defense, organized his comments on the command investigation report into three main areas—the issues that concerned him; the implications requiring action within his responsibilities for training, organizing, and equipping the Department of the Navy; and finally the implications of the analysis for the commanding officer of the Cole.

Secretary Danzig noted that although there had been substantial intervals between successful terrorist attacks, they were happening again and again, and succeeding. He cited the Navy as a whole for six failings:

(1) Coordination of intelligence efforts and policy decisions. While intelligence can never be perfect, in the three months since the attack on Cole, the intelligence community had ascertained that more than a dozen people had participated over eighteen months in a plot against Navy ships in Aden; yet, the intelligence community had failed to detect this ongoing terrorist operation.

(2) Operations risk assessment. The original decision to use Aden for brief refueling visits had been carefully weighed, but Secretary Danzig could find no indication that any organization compared the risk associated with limited intelligence about terrorist activity in Aden against the alternative risks to the Cole of proceeding with less than a 50 percent fuel supply, or conserving fuel by proceeding at slower speeds, or by refueling elsewhere or at sea. While THREATCON BRAVO measures may have been deemed appropriate for those permanently stationed in Aden, there was inadequate consideration of raising the THREATCON level for the short duration of Cole’s visit.

(3) Security cooperation with host nations. The Yemeni authorities did not provide significant inport protection and the commanding officer was not well informed about the support to expect.

(4) Navy Force Protection Training. Even in light of the lessons learned from the attack at Khobar Towers, force protection training still placed too much emphasis on known scenarios—the kinds of attacks, like truck bombs and car bombs, that had taken place before. There was a tendency to focus force protection plans and assets against attacks like that rather than against a kind of attack that had never happened before.

(5) Counter-terrorist equipment. Despite robust research and development efforts directed towards defense against familiar forms of military attack, the Navy and Department of Defense were underperforming in the development of equipment that could detect, thwart, or insulate units against terrorist attack.

(6) Maintaining situational awareness. The commanding officer could reasonably alter force protection measures to account for the unique circumstances in Aden. While some had been vigorously implemented to minimize risk, others were not, which resulted in a reduced level of situational awareness. That said, even if all measures had been implemented, the attack would not have been thwarted.³¹

As he put it in a press conference the next day:

In general, I am in many respects impressed by the conscientiousness of the commanding officer with respect to thwarting certain kinds of terrorist attacks. The challenge lies in the words “certain kinds.” I believe that our training program sensitized him in many ways, but may have produced the disadvantage of a somewhat blinkered vision. When this commanding officer underwent his training program, and the Cole as a whole did, it was commended for its work in countering land-based attacks on the ship. When it went to Slovenia, the CO instituted particular force protection measures that were highly successful, again, against land attack, and were substantially beyond what may be the norm. Going through the Suez Canal, he was diligent with respect to a number of issues. And when he was in Aden, in my view, he vigorously protected against attack that might come from the dolphin at which he was refueling. The problem, I think, is that by focusing so intently on that particular set of scenarios that he had been specially trained for, he may have lost some situational awareness with respect to other kinds of scenarios, like attack from the sea. We need to make sure that uncertainty is broadly appreciated by our commanders, and that in fact, we recognize that we’re not training—inevitably, there will always be a risk out there that we will not train for some scenario that some people will think of. And we need to become more muscular with respect to expecting that kind of level of surprise and being prepared to deal with it.³²

Secretary Danzig’s memorandum addressed the Navy’s, as well as USS Cole’s, force protection training as required by his responsibilities under Title 10 of the U.S. Code. Cole’s force protection measures implemented in the Mediterranean, during the Suez Canal transit, and even in Aden before the attack were diligent, but the ship had not trained to defend itself against a small boat attack of this nature while in port. He ordered Navy training immediately expanded to include a broader range of scenarios and to make commanders aware of the need for higher levels of alertness and vigilance in situations where uncertainty is high.³³ He specifically cited the need to do better in risk assessment and management, and to balance that process against the available intelligence. He stressed the need for the chain of command, which typically possessed experts with greater experience, to use their talents and supplement the needs of commanding officers and force protection officers in the protection of their units. He stressed that “one size does not fit all” and that each force protection plan must receive the benefit of being specifically tailored to the circumstances encountered by each individual ship or unit.³⁴ Investments specially crafted to thwart terrorist threats must receive high priority to improve both lethal and non-lethal weaponry and improved methods of surveillance, threat identification, interdiction, and physical protection.³⁵

Finally, he made his assessment of my accountability as commanding officer. In his view, command of a U.S. Navy warship was the greatest privilege the Navy can bestow on an individual. In Navy regulations, the responsibility of command is cleanly and simply defined: the responsibility of the commanding officer for his or her command is total; the authority of the commanding officer is commensurate with that responsibility. It rests—whether for success or failure—squarely on the commanding officer’s shoulders.³⁶

But, he continued: “This does not mean that it follows inexorably that when bad things happen to, or on, a ship, the commanding officer must be punished. Terrorists are attempting to wage war on Americans. We will suffer additional casualties as a result of their criminal acts. If commanders were regularly sanctioned whenever we suffered casualties, we would compound the injuries to our crew by crippling the will, and, for that matter, the willingness to serve, of our commanders. Furthermore, those commanders we retrained might be more concerned with preparing for the aftermath, than with preventing the occurrence, of an attack.”³⁷

He agreed with the three admirals’ comments in their endorsements of the command investigation report that the conduct of Cole’s officers was not so deficient as to warrant criminal punishment by courts-martial or other measures. The additional investigation into the post-attack damage control measures that saved the ship, he found, established that the commanding officer was exceptional both in training the crew in damage control measures and in leading them through the horrific hours and days after the attack. But the Navy had not provided the ship with the information and training that might have prepared it to deal with the attack it had sustained. And, Secretary Danzig wrote, while I as commanding officer was keenly focused on the threats I had trained for and understood, I had fallen short in anticipating the unexpected and adjusting the level of preparedness to deal with the unknown.

In closing, the secretary said, in order to adequately judge my suitability for future assignments and promotions, the sum total of my performance must be considered. Consequently, in consultation with the Chief of Naval Operations, he took the unusual step of ordering that the investigation, his memorandum, and any other memorandum the CNO chose to write should be included in my permanent service record.

The last person to comment on the investigation prior to its release was Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen. He took a much broader and strategic approach in his comments. In a memorandum to virtually every level in the Department of Defense, including the service secretaries, undersecretaries of defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he delivered his assessment of accountability arising from the attack on USS Cole.

From the start, he assumed responsibility for the Department of Defense’s failure to fully appreciate the danger posed to in-transit naval forces by waterborne threats in restricted waters, such as during a port call or refueling stop. It was the terrorists’ exploitation of a “seam” in our force protection efforts that allowed the attack to succeed.³⁸

“Both the JAGMAN [command] investigation and the COLE Commission make clear that force protection was indeed a priority issue both at the shipboard level and above,” Secretary Cohen wrote. “Nonetheless, all of us who had responsibility for force protection of USS COLE—including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the Navy, the Chairman, the CNO, CINCCENT, CINCLANTFLT, COMUSNAVCENT, and CTF-50, as well as the Commanding Officer of USS COLE—did not do enough to anticipate possible new threats.”³⁹ He enjoined the Department to seek to identify, in advance, the potential vulnerabilities where a determined adversary is most likely to strike. Commanders at every level should continually test and probe every aspect of our force-protection plans, including the assumptions underlying those plans, in order to identify the “seams” that make the United States vulnerable to terrorist attack. He also pointed out one other aspect of this incident as deserving special mention—namely, the extraordinary professionalism and heroism of the Cole’s captain and crew in the aftermath of the attack. Noting the earlier comments of the Chief of Naval Operations, he paid tribute to the crew’s heroic actions that had saved the lives of many shipmates and the ship itself.⁴⁰

In the last paragraph, he closed with these words: “Finally, I join the endorsers of the Navy’s JAGMAN investigation in paying tribute to the seventeen men and women of USS Cole who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country. Their performance of duty was in the highest tradition of the U.S. Navy, and their sacrifice a vivid and somber reminder of the traditions and heritage of the United States Armed Forces. I extend my deepest sympathy to each member of every family whose loved ones were lost or injured in this act of terrorism. Our nation shall not forget their sacrifice, and we will not rest until all the perpetrators are identified and held accountable.”⁴¹

After all this, however, the official U.S. government response to the attack was far from quick or decisive. Instead of ordering retaliation, officials in Washington deliberated inconclusively. As the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, the 9/11 Commission, reported several years later: “After the attack on the USS Cole, [White House] National Security Adviser [Samuel (“Sandy”)] Berger asked General [Hugh] Shelton for military plans to act quickly against bin Laden. General Shelton asked General Tommy Franks, the new commander of CENTCOM, to look again at the options.... Documents show that, in late 2000, the President’s advisers received a cautious presentation of the evidence showing that individuals linked to al Qaeda had carried out or supported the attack, but that the evidence could not establish that bin Laden himself had ordered the attack. DoD prepared plans to strike al Qaeda camps and Taliban targets with cruise missiles in case policymakers decided to respond. Essentially the same analysis of al Qaeda’s responsibility for the attack on the USS Cole was delivered to the highest officials of the new administration five days after it took office.”⁴²

Apparently, even bin Laden was frustrated by the long inaction after the attack on Cole, according to the 9/11 Commission’s final report: “In February 2001, a source reported that an individual whom he identified as the big instructor (probably a reference to bin Laden) complained frequently that the United States had not yet attacked. According to the source, bin Laden wanted the United States to attack, and if it did not he would launch something bigger.”⁴³