Life was surreal. Our home, generally protected by a brick wall and Kenyan contract security guards, now crawled with Air Force personnel with guns. Armed State Department Diplomatic Security people escorted me to work in an armed convoy, yelling at pedestrians to “Stay back,” with Duncan now in the lead car. The yelling did not help our popularity.
The day’s paper reflected our then-current reputation through a letter to the editor. “I was also disappointed by the American rescue team who favored their own people. It appeared that Kenyans were not the team’s priority. The American rescue team’s effort was shameful and disappointing. However, my highest regard goes to the Israeli and French rescue teams who were simply outstanding and true friends of Kenya. Let the Americans know that most Kenyans were saddened by their open discrimination toward local people injured in the bomb blast.”1
To reach the eight-story apartment-house-turned-USAID-office-turned-temporary-embassy-chancery, we stopped at checkpoints manned by Fleet Antiterrorism Support Team (FAST) marines with sniffer dogs. The building itself was protected with concertina wire and a sniper’s nest. The neighborhood was the safest place in Nairobi.
I put a dusty plastic palm tree that had survived the bombing at the front door of the building and a framed poster next to the notoriously slow elevator:
doesn’t always roar.
Sometimes courage is
the little voice at
the end of the day that says,
I will try
again tomorrow.2
At the recommendation of our regional psychiatrist and with the help of visiting Army counselors and others, every employee of the U.S. mission was signed up for a “critical incident stress debriefing.” Top Spouse, already well known in the community, applied his cheerful energy toward active recruiting, and for a couple of days every room in the residence, including our private quarters, was humming with group discussions. Outside of the USAID building, this was the safest place and a lovely spot. Mixing Kenyans and Americans made for sometimes-stilted conversations, but I would not hear of separate groups. I did limit my own group, however, to my senior team. Some had been out of the country when the bombing occurred, while others had experienced the full force of the explosion and immediate aftermath. I had seen when the rescuers came how quickly we fell into “we” who had survived the unthinkable and “they” who had not, and I could not afford that dynamic among my closest teammates. The people I depended upon, like Michael Marine, our deputy chief of mission who had been in the United States when we were bombed, needed to be with us emotionally and every other way.
Our group, like the others, answered three questions: Where were you when the bomb went off? What did you do? How do you feel now? I had not yet articulated my feelings publicly, and what I heard myself say boiled down to commander’s guilt: self-reproaching and painfully sad. It was my responsibility to keep people safe, and I had failed—tried, yes, but failed. I did not weep—I always saved that for later—but I did choke up. By the end of our discussion, every single person on the team made it clear that he had my back, the bombing was not my fault, and we would carry on.
As we said good-bye after the session, one of the military colleagues on my team handed me a softball I knew well, autographed by the first-ever members of a Kenyan softball team. A few weeks earlier, at the invitation of the Peace Corps volunteer who had created that team, I had thrown out the first ball and later been handed it, covered in signatures, as a gift. As my military colleague stumbled through the dust-filled offices, he had come across this. He pressed it into my hand now, saying, “Here’s your softball, ma’am. Your ball. Your mission.” So, it was.
Refugees from the former chancery set up their workstations cheek by jowl with their hospitable USAID colleagues. The remaining floor space crawled with electrical and computer wires. Supply boxes, computer parts, and other stuff we had rescued littered the hallways. On the eighth floor, which my front-office colleagues and I now shared with the classified communications unit, we were allowed one safe for classified material hugging a load-bearing column. This was a fragile building.
A blessing for Americans was the U.S. military post office. A team had been sent to Nairobi to assess whether we qualified for military postal privileges when the bomb went off. The group had taken it upon itself to turn a part of the USAID underground parking garage into a postal facility in service before the end of the month. We could savor another world far away from the stresses of ours.
The workplace had been bombed, our colleagues were dead and injured along with thousands of Kenyan neighbors, our spirits and friendships were shaken, and hundreds of people descended upon us. Some came to help us reconstruct, starting with consular services, and others to investigate the crime. Foreign Service colleagues from all over the world pitched in to get us back on our feet. We needed them. The VIPs and disaster tourists were starting to show up. The first two were necessary; few were helpful.
First came Secretary Albright. She told me she could no longer put off an official visit, and she was right. Unfortunately, the mood in Nairobi had turned from compassion to anger as the extent of devastating losses to lives, limbs, and livelihoods became apparent. As much as 10 percent of its GDP may have blown up on August 7, and the U.S. government had not offered anything but in-kind contributions and $25,000 in disaster relief funds that I could authorize as ambassador. We had been blown up in the month of August, when Congress was not in session, and at a time when the only domestic issue of political importance was the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
The secretary arrived hours late because her military aircraft had broken down. We had to cancel one-on-one meetings with political opposition leaders, who reacted with fury. Then there were the atmospherics. Everywhere we went, suspicious and alert Diplomatic Security agents surrounded us. Zealous precautions included blocking access to a hospital we visited. A woman had to give birth on the sidewalk outside; she named the baby Madeleine Albright. The secretary’s public statements of condolence promised assistance but gave no round numbers or timeline. We were behind a demanding schedule all day.
At some point, the secretary asked me about my onward, or next, assignment. I was taken aback because I had put that issue aside. Before the bombing, Top Spouse, Linda, and I had been stressing over onward assignments. They wanted Central or Latin America, and I—the one who would need to learn professionally adequate Spanish—was resisting. When Albright asked where I wanted to go next, I was unprepared, and out of my mouth came “Guatemala.”
“You’d be great for Guatemala,” the secretary replied. And that was that. So, I thought, that is how deals are made—it definitely is all about who you know!
It was dark and very late by the time Secretary Albright stood on the back veranda of the residence for a town meeting with the American embassy community seated in the garden swatting bugs. The Mission Award for Heroism she bestowed on the community of beleaguered survivors meant very little to people who wanted assurances that the bombings would galvanize Washington to take better care of its overseas civilian employees.
Top Spouse made sure our promised senior team meeting with the secretary was private, and in the process he created a kerfuffle among the secretary’s entourage, who could not bear even two minutes apart from their principal. As they stood in doorways, ears cocked to our conversation, one of my teammates, a victim-turned-survivor-turned-first-responder-turned-crisis-manager and now “just” a Foreign Service officer, voiced grave concerns about continuing security threats. “This will not be the last bombing by al-Qaeda. What can we anticipate from Congress, whose starvation-level funding was the excuse for not providing adequate security overseas?”
“Congress has a short memory,” was the secretary’s response. It was not what we wanted to hear. The delegation left shortly after the meeting. I think all of us were relieved to check off “condolence visit” from our various post-bombing to-do lists.
Local feedback to the visit was not positive. One opposition political figure summarized reactions this way: “She came and went, leaving the wounds as raw as ever. If anything, the visit . . . appears to have rubbed more salt into the still bleeding wound that the blast inflicted on Kenyans.”3
The next VIP arrived on August 20. FBI director Louis Freeh wanted to celebrate the success of ongoing investigations with photo ops. Past my bedtime on the eve of our meeting, I received a call from an agent announcing that the director was on his way to see me with urgent news. I jumped into my clothes as his vehicle arrived at the residence.
“Did you know,” Freeh asked breathlessly, “that the U.S. government was planning missile strikes against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan?” I invited him into the small study.
“No, I did not,” I replied. Washington did not generally share such intimate secrets with their ambassadors. (That part I kept to myself.)
“What are you planning to do?” Freeh asked. He had already commandeered a plane to evacuate his people, he said, and a few seats were left. “Take my advice,” he advised. “Select people you want to take those seats—unless the Department of State has made other plans for you.”
Whaaaat?? I stopped listening and looked at Freeh incredulously. The guys with the guns were going to leave because missiles would be landing next door, and I was supposed to choose some folks to leave with them? First of all, the Foreign Service does not evacuate unless the threat is imminent, unarmed though we may be. Second, there is a rule called the “no double-standard policy,” which expressly prohibits U.S. government officials from hoarding information—much less airplane seats—when the safety and security of all Americans are at stake. Finally, Nairobi was a long way away from Sudan’s border, and we were not at risk from collateral damage.
I wished Freeh a bon voyage, confirmed that Washington had no plans for us, and called key teammates to the residence to review likely scenarios. We concluded that, at worst, some hotheads might emerge angry from Friday Mosque prayers and make noise. Al-Qaeda had killed too many Kenyans to attract much public anger from our retaliatory attack, and besides, the embassy was protected by marines. The next day, as missiles flew into a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, the department warned U.S. citizens around the world to take care. We closed the embassy and American schools at noon and waited to see what would happen. Not much. A few days later, the FBI returned.
The missile strikes failed to deliver on both accounts. Bin Laden was not dead, and the plant that employed three hundred people produced legitimate drugs. In the U.S. Congress and American media, President Clinton was ridiculed for fabricating acts of war as a means to deflect attention from the investigation into his personal conduct. In Nairobi, we carried on.
On September 11, 1998, the memorial service for the 224 people who died at al-Qaeda’s hands in Tanzania and Kenya opened with a stunning procession up the central aisle of the National Cathedral in Washington DC, as Fanfare for the Common Man echoed from all corners. The percussive sound of the kettledrum went through me like the waves of a nearby truck bomb. I jumped, and my cells went into panic mode. I wanted to run. Instead, I sat wondering if any of the other survivors or grieving families present had also just experienced a spark of terror. We looked heartbreakingly disciplined and stoic. The ceremony that ensued was beautiful, the music exquisite, the rhetoric soaring, and the mood prayerful. It was a farce.
A 400-page report had come out that morning, alleging that the president had lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. President and Mrs. Clinton arrived late and left early, merely a phantom presence. The cabinet members arrived on time with their entourages and scurried away as the service ended. Only Jesse Jackson stayed to greet people after the service. I had not realized how accustomed I had become to the courtesies of Africans.
I was angry even before the service had begun when I learned how little money the administration would ask from Congress in its supplemental security budget request. Susan Rice reassured me, “Don’t worry, Pru. Madeleine will take care of it.” I was doubtful. It was starting to look as though it was not just Congress that had a short memory.
A few days later, I asked the two most senior career colleagues I knew to join me in discreet conversations with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Hill staffers to respectfully make the case for the security of our people and get funding levels increased. My colleagues looked at me in genuine horror. I had just taken a step too far out of the box.
I had already trespassed unspoken rules by agreeing to be featured in Vanity Fair’s Hall of Fame and Glamour’s Women of the Year. I recognized I was taking risks by putting myself in the spotlight after a horrific event and discussed the possible impact with country team members in Nairobi. Most encouraged me in order to keep our story alive, but one member cautioned that I could create resentment. He might be right, I thought, but the family members of the victims would surely understand my need for validation and appreciate the efforts to educate Americans about the dangers of practicing diplomacy. The resentment I experienced came from senior department colleagues, not from victims or survivors.
As I continued consultations that week, numb alienation replaced the anger I had felt at the memorial. “Have you come to closure yet?” people wanted to know. “Aren’t you ready to move on?” “Why haven’t you sent in the reports due last week?” Washington colleagues clearly expected a certain range of behavior, and I had the sense we were not measuring up. In our world, we were cobbling together the communications system, fretting over the life insurance benefits to desperately needy Kenyan families, coping with permanently wounded colleagues, and dealing with an unfriendly local press. While American media tittered over President Clinton’s sex life, Nairobi papers were listing the needs and losses of thousands of people. As my community and I surveyed the crises ahead, the department declared the crisis closed. We wanted help and attention. Our Washington colleagues had moved on and wondered why we had not.
Six days after the event at the National Cathedral, the State Department’s undersecretary for management, Bonnie Cohen, told the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Operations that “diplomacy can’t be conducted on the cheap,” and then went on to show them how it could be. In her testimony, Cohen listed the department’s structural weaknesses:
More than 300 vacancies worldwide.
Overworked and insufficiently trained staff.
12 percent reduction of Diplomatic Security staff in the past 10 years.
18 new embassies opened in past 13 years, with almost no additional funding.
Near-obsolete communications systems.
A state of building disrepair that would “surprise if not appall” Americans.
No appropriations for capital projects since FY 1995.4
With that as a prelude, she asked for money to restore the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, increase the number of security personnel and perform some upgrades, provide some assistance to Kenya and Tanzania, and create antiterrorism funds. That is it. The U.S. government enjoyed a budget surplus, but the three hundred vacancies, the appalling state of buildings, the obsolete communications, and the startling vulnerabilities of 80 percent of our embassies did not rate the expenditures.
The administration did request about $30 million in disaster-related assistance funds to help Nairobi citizens and businesses devastated by the attack. It would still be months before we would see the money, and it was far less than the Kenyan government had requested, but at least we could start working. More than 100 buildings and 250 businesses were damaged or destroyed, and among the 5,000 people injured, a large percentage would remain permanently disabled.5 There was a catch to the funding, however. Not a penny of the money was to go to administrative costs, that is, to support the people now responsible for figuring out how the funds were to be divided, managed, measured, and accounted. That was to be an additional challenge for the Kenyans and Americans who had survived the bombing. The victims of al Qaeda were to be punished with more work by congressional mandate. Although I enjoyed seeing family and reconnecting with friends, I viewed them from a great distance, through a cloud of confusion and huge sadness. My perspective was as narrow as that of a woman in a burqa. It was a relief to get back to Nairobi.
We had become by then a new and fluid community of newcomers, temporary help (TDY’ers, for “temporary duty”), injured people who had returned from American hospitals, and survivors who had remained. On the front page of the August 27 Nairobi Roar, Worley “Lee” Reed, our security engineer, summarized our feelings about the people who put their lives aside to assist us.
Documenting Heroes: I have searched for human words to express the thoughts and feelings concerning our recent catastrophe. There are no words that adequately perform the duty. I wish, however, to pass a message to our colleagues who did not directly participate in the old Embassy search and rescue operations.
For the ones who were TDY or on leave during this nightmare, we are thankful for your lives. We are thankful that God, in whatever form you believe in Him, kept you safe from this criminal act. We are thankful that we were not required to carry you from the building. Never ever permit yourself to wish that you could have helped in the search and rescue. We knew each time we entered the building that we may not be coming out alive again. If you had been here to help, you may have been the last victim of this tragedy. God saved you to serve a higher purpose than to add to the death toll of this criminal. We are happy that you are alive. We want you to also share that happiness. . . . On behalf of the people who worked at the bombed Embassy, we honor you for your hard work and efforts. There are many forms of heroes.
While the bombing remained ever present for us, the department had deemed the security threat over, gone, passé, yesterday’s news. The protective details had left town, and Duncan and I were back to cruising Nairobi without escort in the burgundy Cadillac with red-orange license plates. At the overcrowded USAID building one morning, a sniffer dog detected a suspicious package, and we were told to take cover in the underground parking garage. As we headed down the stairs I heard someone gasp softly, “Oh, God.” The rest of us filed silently down to wait for the all-clear in the dim, dusty subterranean space. At first I thought I should move around and let people see the calm me-in-charge. Not a person wanted to interact. I found the Cadillac and sat in the backseat, silent and alone.
Not long afterward, a colleague in the Africa Bureau called to alert me that the department was planning to remove the Fleet Antiterrorism Support Team marines providing our perimeter security because of . . . funding issues! And anyway, my Washington colleague explained that the experts said we had already been bombed and so would not be targeted again.
Really?? Were these the same experts who had announced we were only at medium risk of a terrorist attack three months before al-Qaeda’s attack? I informed my colleagues in a low and calm voice that the day the marines were withdrawn, everyone in Washington would see me on international CNN, tears streaming down my face as I waved good-bye to the brave boys in camouflage fatigues who had protected us. The FAST marines remained. But so did the threat of their removal.
Visitors kept coming, and many wanted a photo op in the “old embassy,” as we now called our former workplace. To me the place still reeked of death, but it was important that people from Washington understand what had happened, and there was no more visceral way to show them. When one group innocently asked to have their photo taken against the backdrop of smeared remains of a colleague we had known well, I almost threw up. I learned the next day that all three of us who had escorted that group of VIPs had endured a sleepless night. We decided then and there to close the building to future tours.
We were living betwixt a past that hurt badly, a future that guaranteed nothing, and a present that truly sucked. Did I know before the bombing that you can chart the stages people go through as they respond to disaster and then try to recover? No, but I was sure seeing it unfold. The amazing feats of bravery we had witnessed on August 7 represent the “heroism” stage. The empathy we experienced in the immediate aftermath is the “honeymoon” stage. We were now in the “disillusionment, resentment, and group fragmentation” stage. Great. As the textbook said, we were absorbing our losses and feeling angry over unmet expectations.6 Washington and the world had moved on. We needed to get our act together.
One-third of our senior team had arrived over the summer, some only days before we were bombed, and all of them faced huge challenges best resolved together. So we met on the residence veranda and set our priorities. We put them on the front page of the Nairobi Roar under the headline “Where do we go from here?” Each category included an array of actions we had to take concurrently. Here was the priority list: 1. Put people first. 2. Reestablish operational systems and efficiency. 3. Address moves and space issues. 4. Reestablish close ties of friendship with Kenya.
It was my job to reflect the value of putting people first by getting resources and delegating decision making. It was also my job to represent our needs to Washington in ways that would fit the peculiar circumstance of a community that was neither dead nor evacuated nor normal. Not since Beirut 1983 had the State Department experienced a calamity of this size, and mechanisms to assist beyond the rescue phase did not meet our needs.
We described our battered circumstances in a cable sent to Undersecretary for Political Affairs Tom Pickering, Undersecretary for Management Bonnie Cohen, Director General Skip Gnehm, Assistant Secretary for Administration Pat Kennedy, and Assistant Secretary for Africa Susan Rice.
On behalf of the country team, I would like to invite you to visit Nairobi to see firsthand the impact of the August 7 bombing on our people, our operations, and our bilateral relations. The difficult and enervating discussions with Washington colleagues over the supplemental budget request, release of ESF [economic support funds], and presence of FAST marines—to name only a few issues—indicate that too few people appreciate just how severely the attack has affected every aspect of our personal and work lives. A brief stop-over could make a difference in demonstration of security and institutional support for efforts to put this mission back together.
No response. For Washington’s attention, we were unsuccessfully competing with Iraq weapons inspections, Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests, disorder in the former Yugoslavia, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
We did get a visit from the Republican staff members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and we included in their itinerary conversations with community members and teachers to give them an understanding of why putting people first was such an imperative. Let them hear about the child who asked, “Mommy, when you go to work today, are you going to die?” They listened, and what they took away were complaints about the State Department that they were only too happy to exploit once they returned to Washington. I know because I received major blowback from that visit a few weeks later.
Meanwhile, we carried on. “Be kind to yourselves, and be kind to one another” became my public mantra. Community leaders and Top Spouse formed networks around the families who had needed the most support. Our medical team, local counselors, therapists, and teachers offered mental health and other services. Not that many people walked through their doors. Americans feared damage to their security clearances and professional reputations. Kenyans chose family, community, and faith over western-style therapy. At least the opportunities were there. The Marine House, as the barracks for our detachment was called, welcomed newcomers and lots of children to community activities. The residence pool and tennis court were made available to American employees and their families 24/7. The American Women’s Association created a Bomb Relief Fund to send child victims to the United States for free eye surgery.
Putting people first meant listening to the Nairobi community, too. We at the U.S. mission were not the only ones experiencing disillusionment. As the inventory of human and material losses was translated into Kenyan shillings, the government asked for $150 million and criticized the Clinton administration’s assistance request to Congress, which was less than a third of that.
I was the face of the United States, and people had a lot to say to me. I listened at memorial services, at hospital visits, and at city functions and found that the only person who was not saying much was President Moi. Our conversations before the bombing had been “frank and candid.” We saw one another frequently and argued a lot. I once interrupted our conversation to comment that we were fighting again and asked Moi if he was enjoying himself. “Yes,” he declared. “l am a democrat!” Now our interactions were stilted and often unpleasant. He announced that his government would have nothing to do with helping us find another site for the chancery. The Clinton administration’s icy distance hurt his pride, and the paltry congressional responses to funding requests hurt his public image. He eventually became more respectful as he watched me deal with challenges over the next few months, but our relationship was never the same. Thank goodness for Sally Kosgei, the permanent secretary at the Foreign Ministry, who kept our bilateral issues on track and our relationship ever cordial.
I knew I had to take care of myself if I was going to take charge and take care of others. For the body, I swam laps, got massages, and drank good wine. I wore the brightest suits in my wardrobe because they made me feel better and gave me a chance to show our murderers that this ambassador was still in the pink. For the brain, I began reading Spanish translations of Danielle Steele novels in preparation for Guatemala, a pastime guaranteed to fixate my attention on something other than the endless to-do lists. For the spirit, I meditated, I prayed, I gardened, and I allowed a friend to lure me into a few sessions of Reiki, a healing technique based on the principles of energy and natural healing processes. I would have howled at the moon if someone had told me it would work.
I decided to share the Reiki process with the senior team. After all, isn’t that what a leader does—model constructive behavior? I closed one meeting with a cheerful announcement that I had begun Reiki treatments, an alternative form of healing, and would be happy to provide the name should anyone want to try it. No one had a thing to say, although I am pretty sure some eyes rolled. Three men followed up.
“Ambassador,” one of them said, “we think it’s great that you have found a method of treatment that’s working for you, but we’re practicing something else.”
“Oh?” I was really interested. “What?”
“It’s called the RAD method.”
“The RAD method?” I was now intrigued. “I’ve never heard of it. What is it?”
“Repression, alcohol, and denial. And it’s working very well for us.”
Others coped by working themselves to exhaustion. Some came into my closet office and wept. Fortunately, we began to see results thanks to the help of newcomers and temporarily assigned colleagues, perseverance, and energy. We now had two functioning satellite offices and a newly purchased interim office building bordering the Nairobi National Park wildlife conservation center near the airport. For the newly important requirement of a 100-foot offset, we purchased boulders that would accommodate wild animals and deter wild terrorists. Negotiating boulders with the head of the Kenya Wildlife Service was an “only in the Foreign Service” moment.
On a cool, sunny day in a walled-off area of the gold Athi Plains, two marines in dress blues raised the American flag on the pedestal salvaged from the old embassy. We stood at attention, and I thought of the souls of our neighbors and colleagues imprinted in that flag. I avoided eye contact after the ceremony lest my stiff upper lip relax into unbearable grief. We were going forward, falling apart, picking ourselves up, and trying again tomorrow. At least I was.
Then the Accountability Review Board came to town.
The secretary of state must call an Accountability Review Board when a U.S. embassy sustains loss of human life or significant property damage. William J. Crowe, retired admiral and former U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, split his board into two groups: one went to Dar es Salaam and the other to Nairobi. I was well aware that the first person held to account would be the chief of mission. U.S. ambassadors are among the few Senate-confirmed government officials who actually have written job responsibilities, including the safety of all Americans in their country of assignment.
I could not wait! Other than the crisis-debriefing sessions in the residence a few days after the bombing, no one in the department or anywhere else had asked me what had happened. The board was mandated to listen, and I was ready to talk. I had sheets of yellow legal paper listing every cable I had sent over two years by subject line and reference number and the responses when there was one. On the eve of my interview, I had also asked my senior team, “Are we sure that we did everything possible to secure the embassy before we were bombed?” When I walked into the lion’s den, I wanted not only data but also the armor of a pure heart and a few arrows of righteous indignation in my quiver.
I was called into a dimly lit hotel conference room in which a group of unreadable white faces sat around a large rectangular table. I ignored them all and locked eyes with Admiral Crowe. I recognized leadership when I saw it and trusted that he did, too. I told my story to him.
I had arrived in Nairobi in August 1996, when the State Department’s Office of Foreign Buildings was planning to renovate our overcrowded building that violated security requirements for a 100-foot setback from a public thoroughfare. The 100-foot setback requirement was a result of the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983. But budget cuts had ensured that requirements were waived. I had suggested an assessment of the value of the building and other properties around town with an eye to relocating. “There’s no money for assessments,” I was told, and anyway, the United States was only leasing the land from the Kenyan government. Would I please move aside and allow long-approved Washington plans to unfold? I did.
I knew from an intelligence briefing before coming to post that a terrorist financier, Osama bin Laden, had an al-Qaeda office in Nairobi and that the United States was monitoring his communications with the aim of disrupting his operations. It sounded reasonable to me. The mile-high city of perpetual spring attracted an array of dubious characters: Somali warlords, the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army leaders, Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, Rwandan Hutus who had helped perpetrate the genocide, and Rwandan Tutsis who had fled it. Al-Qaeda was just one more.
Throughout 1997, crime worsened and political demonstrations grew, so we perfected our emergency action systems, charged our countrywide warden network with disseminating information, practiced embassy radio alerts, and held town meetings. We considered relocating the medical unit, decided against it, and successfully moved a few of the agencies out of the chancery to other locations. Meanwhile, we focused on a considerable policy agenda that included assistance for free and fair presidential elections at the end of the year.
Things began to change in August 1997. The members of the Nairobi al-Qaeda cell discovered their phone was tapped. A joint CIA-FBI team arrived and, with Kenyan assistance, raided the home of Wadih el-Hage, the head of the cell and a U.S. citizen. Not long after, el-Hage moved his family to Texas. When he landed in New York, the FBI tried to turn him, but el-Hage refused. That was the end of it as far as I knew.
About a month later, we learned of a plot to bomb the embassy. Al-Haramain, an Islamic charity organization near the Somali border, was discussing how to get the weaponry. I cabled the department advising what we faced and what we were doing about it. No one answered. Indirect word from the Washington intelligence community came with the request that we do nothing yet to allow time to check into al-Haramain’s other links. The Kenyan government increased security at the embassy, as I requested. As the host government, Kenya was responsible for the security of resident diplomatic facilities. The bomb threat turned into an assassination threat, then back to bomb. Still no word from Washington. I asked President Moi to dismantle al-Haramain, and he did so, deporting its staff amid considerable media attention and Muslim outrage. I sent yet another cable to the department. I also asked if there was a link between al-Qaeda and al-Haramain, and the answer was no.
In November 1997 I was in Washington for a conference when a man walked into the Nairobi embassy with information about a possible truck bomb. The information was sent to Washington, shopped around to other intelligence services, and declared faulty. The guy was a flake, I was told. In the meantime, during my Washington consultations I was lectured by the Africa Bureau executive director that senior people in management and administration were getting irritated by my “nagging” about embassy security and vulnerability. I was advised to stop sending cables regarding security concerns. I sent another cable soon after I returned to Nairobi, citing the recent warning and highlighting the rising anti-American sentiments among the Muslim community following the takedown of al-Haramain, the increasing political violence leading up to elections, the mugging of one of our largest American employees outside embassy doors, and, yes, the building’s continuing vulnerabilities.
In February 1998 Gen. Tony Zinni, the four-star head of the Defense Department’s Central Command into whose theater Kenya fell, volunteered to provide a vulnerability assessment team, since the department said it had no money for such purposes. The department declined his offer but did approve money to send a team of experts to suggest some reasonable upgrades.
Two months later I got my annual performance appraisal. For the first time in my seventeen-year career, I was not asked to draft a benign critique to fill up the “Needs improvement” section. Instead, I received a completed one with the notation that I tended to “overload the bureaucratic circuits,” a coded reference to my repeated efforts to draw attention to our security posture. That was it. I decided to write a personal note to Secretary of State Albright and another one to Undersecretary for Management Bonnie Cohen. Instead of chastising an ambassador for “overloading circuits” with security concerns, the department’s managers could more usefully ask Congress for sufficient funds to keep us safe. In my note to Secretary Albright, I cited the threats and the actions we had taken and noted that “the chancery remains vulnerable, and I remain nervous.” I gave the letter to the visiting director general, head of human resources, who promised to hand-deliver it. In his own thank-you letter to me, he wrote the following: “I am concerned, as you are, with the security problems that the Mission faces. I just hope that it does not become too much of an obsession. I found similar security concerns in both Addis Ababa and Pretoria, but neither had problems as severe as yours.”7
Within a month, the undersecretary for management responded: “I understand that the current chancery office building in Nairobi lacks adequate setback and structural features to resist blast and ballistic forces. However, because of Nairobi’s designation as a ‘medium’ security threat for political violence and the general soundness of the building, its replacement ranks relatively low among the chancery replacement priorities.”8
Over the summer the threats died down, and so did my cables to Washington. On August 7 we were blown up. I described the consequences and the imperfect rescue efforts. When I finished, some of the people around the table asked about security weaknesses within our control, like pressing the Kenyan government more aggressively for another radio network, but it was hard to top my story. Instead, the group’s determination to find someone in Nairobi at fault fell on my colleagues, who were grilled far more intensely than I. It was an excruciating experience to be accused even indirectly of inadequate performance on the small issues when larger ones back in Washington were ignored.
Days before the Accountability Review Board arrived, a New York grand jury indicted bin Laden for long-term conspiracy to attack U.S. facilities overseas and kill American citizens. It mentioned bin Laden’s alliances with the governments in Sudan, Iraq, and Iran as well as Hezbollah producers of bombs against U.S. embassies and military facilities in the past. It noted that he recruited Americans and set up humanitarian front organizations to move money, people, and materials around the world. It said he owned land for terrorist training camps, warehouses for explosives, bank accounts under assumed names, and sophisticated communications equipment and weapons. In 1993 al-Qaeda began training Somali tribes to oppose the United Nations’ humanitarian efforts in Somalia. In October members of al-Qaeda participated in an attack on U.S. military personnel where eighteen soldiers were killed and seventy-three others were wounded in Mogadishu. That year bin Laden and “others” also tried to develop chemical weapons and obtain nuclear weapons components.9
The indictment, issued only three months after the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, showed a level of detail that made it clear some people knew a great deal about bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Apparently that did not interest the Accountability Review Boards—or Congress, for that matter.
The Nairobi team looked exhausted at the event Admiral Crowe hosted at the conclusion of the board’s work. He had tears in his eyes when he acknowledged how sorry he was for the way we had been treated before and after the bombing, I felt we had earned every word of the apology. It turned out to be the only apology we would ever get.
The Marine Corps birthday ball, the social event of the year, took place a few days later. We had suffered two casualties in our detachment. Cpl. Nathan “Jesse” Aliganga had died on August 7, and Sgt. Daniel Briehl had received a Purple Heart for his injuries and his heroic actions on the same day. This year’s ball was going to be particularly poignant. As the president’s personal representative, the ambassador is the guest of honor with the job of reading a White House message during the grand opening ceremony.
The marine who came to brief me stood tall in front of my desk in the tiny office I used. I asked what the detachment wanted me to say about Corporal Aliganga. Tears came down his face as he explained that the guys had talked about it and decided it was time to start moving on, so please keep the reference to a minimum. He was not the first man to cry in that small space, and I usually handed over a box of tissues and waited quietly. But I ignored this young man’s tears in deference to his dignity. I had learned a lot about grief: I could not take it away from anyone, but I could accompany.
Marine birthday ball pageantry is always splendid. Women at their most elegant and men in ribbon-bedecked uniforms or black ties provide a fitting backdrop to the Marine Corps Color Guard as they present the American and USMC flags. A magnificent cake was rolled in, and it was time for brief remarks before the ceremonial cutting. One piece would go to the oldest marine present and one to the youngest. I said a few words and sat down. The marines remained at attention around the cake. A colleague took the podium to say a few words about Corporal Aliganga. He talked and he talked. He had been close to Jesse and had not smiled since the bombing. A marine at attention, sword in hand, began to sway in front of the cake. On went the talk. The marine swayed again. Our colleague kept talking. The marine started to go down, saved by a quick-acting woman sitting nearby who pulled him backward by the belt. Our colleague continued to talk. When he finally stopped, he said thank you. And then he smiled, a big beautiful smile that we had not seen since August.
He smiled all night long, and so did Top Spouse and I when, duties performed, we got to dance. I had rock ’n’ rolled my way through three years in Karachi, two years in Tehran, and a lot of Marine Corps balls. When Donna Summer belted out “I Will Survive,” I threw my body around, hands high in the air, shimmied and shivered and wiggled my hips with Osama bin Laden on my mind. Later I danced and mourned until it was time to go. Richard and I had long ago learned to leave the party to the marines before any of them had drunk enough to start asking me to dance. I took the detachment’s gift with me. Ambassadors often receive a token present, usually something inexpensive from a catalog. The Nairobi detachment that night gave me a Marine Ka-Bar knife inscribed with my radio call sign, “Albany.” I did in fact feel that we had survived combat.