The Reluctant Spy Read online

  What did was the entire tragicomedy in Warren, a clarifying episode that made me focus, finally, on what really mattered: ending a marriage whose only true blessings were two children so precious to me that I would fight in any court and in any divorce proceeding, if that’s what it took, to ensure that their lives and my own remained as one.

  This was the spring and early summer of 2001, months before the day that would remind all of us how fragile family ties can be and would change all our lives as far out as our shocked minds could imagine.

  9

  THE CIA OCCASIONALLY hosted visiting intelligence services from friendly foreign countries; the idea was to give them a tour of the Operations Center, get acquainted, exchange gifts, meet the director and some other top people if schedules permitted, and take some pictures. We wanted to make them feel welcome and important, and it wasn’t a public relations stunt: They were important to us because they could be additional eyes and ears in places where our own access was limited by suspicion of the United States, language barriers, and a paucity of our own assets on the ground.

  On July 6, 2001, we were hosting a group from a small Middle Eastern state; these were people I’d been training. The group included some relatively low-level military men—a colonel and a couple of majors—but I asked Cofer Black, the director of counterterrorism, if he’d stop by for a meet and greet. These guests were below Cofer’s pay grade, but to my pleasant surprise, he agreed to my request. “This is a really big deal,” I told my charges. “He’s the head of counterterrorism for the entire world, which makes him a crucial guy in our shop.”

  Cofer showed up and shook hands all around, the model of diplomacy in such circumstances. When everyone was seated in a conference room, he formally welcomed them to the CIA and said how much we valued their friendship. Given his schedule, I didn’t expect him to hang in for very long with these folks. He’d take a few questions, perhaps, then he’d be out of here.

  But Cofer Black, who had a flair for the dramatic in his descriptive language, was concerned with more than diplomatic niceties that day. He came prepared and delivered a full and detailed briefing on topic A in his universe. The subject was al-Qaeda.

  “We know something terrible is going to happen,” he said after some preliminaries about the growing terrorist threat. “We don’t know when and we don’t know where. We do know it’s going to be against U.S. interests and it’s going to be big, perhaps bigger than anything we’ve seen before.” Al-Qaeda, of course, had already hit American targets, including our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, killing hundreds, and the USS Cole at port in Yemen, killing seventeen U.S. Navy seamen and severely damaging the ship. Its leader, Osama bin Laden, had declared war on the United States. Now, the head of counterterrorism was saying there were more attacks coming. The room went dead silent. Cofer had the full attention of our guests.

  “The mood in the al-Qaeda training camps is one of jubilation,” he went on. “We’ve never seen them as excited and as happy as they are now.” Cofer said that the chatter we were picking up was filled with code words and phrases that our analysts regarded as frightening. “There’s going to be a great wedding.” “There’s going to be a great soccer game.” “The salesman is coming with great quantities of honey.”

  “These are all code for a terrorist attack,” Cofer maintained. “We’re sure it’s going to happen, we just don’t know where.”

  Then he appealed for their help and cooperation: “If you have any sources inside al-Qaeda, please work them now because whatever it is, we have to do everything we can to stop it.”

  The briefing lasted for thirty minutes or so and clearly rattled our visitors. Frankly, it shook me up, too. This was new to me. I hadn’t been focused on al-Qaeda prior to this. Cofer invited questions, but no one responded. Finally, the senior member of the group stood up and said he would convey the substance of Cofer’s remarks to his intelligence service; they would do everything in their power, he added, to help us.

  The guys from the Middle East told me they were so shocked by the power of the briefing that they couldn’t even think of any questions. But later on, I had a question for Cofer when I thanked him for his time: “Did you just make that up or embellish the state of play for their benefit, or were you serious in that briefing?”

  “Very serious,” he said. He’d been to the White House and he’d talked with Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser to President Bush. Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism coordinator in the White House, was also raising the roof, Cofer said, but no one was really paying much attention.

  ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, I put on my best suit and drove to CIA headquarters, arriving at 8 a.m. or thereabouts. It was supposed to be a big day for me: Cofer Black and I were scheduled to go to the White House to talk to Condi Rice on an issue related to my current work—Greek terrorism. The U.S. Government Printing Office was about to publish a volume of cables between the U.S. Embassy in Athens and the State Department in Washington, covering the years 1948 to 1969. Most of the cables were innocuous enough, but CTC’s position was that a few of them shouldn’t be released because lives might be in danger.

  I stopped by Cofer’s office to tell him I was ready when he was; he asked that I check with his assistant out front to see where the car and driver assigned to us would be. It could be at any one of a half-dozen different entrances. She had the television on as I approached her desk, the screen lit up with an office tower on fire.

  “What’s happening?”

  “Oh, an airplane flew into the World Trade Center a few minutes ago,” she said matter-of-factly. It was the tone millions of Americans, watching early morning television that Tuesday, used when their regular programming was first interrupted that morning. Most everyone thought it was an accident, likely some amateur pilot who lost control or got way off course, or both. “Oh, you know, that happened in the 1940s, a bomber flew into the Empire State Building,” I said, making small talk. “Funny, though, it’s such a clear day, I wonder how that could have happened.”

  She and I were standing there, watching the television at 9:03 a.m. when United Airlines Flight 175 hit the World Trade Center’s South Tower, seventeen minutes after American Airlines Flight 11 had slammed into the WTC’s North Tower. Neither of us reacted at first. Then she turned and said, “Did you see that?” This time, the emotion in her voice was unmistakable. We both knew this was no accident.

  I ran back to my office and alerted our team, then headed back to Cofer’s area, where everyone was gathered in front of TVs. There must have been a hundred of us there, including deputy directors of intelligence, operations, and military affairs, and we were all transfixed by the images on the screens. Then, at 9:37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Finally, someone said what everyone was thinking: “It’s al-Qaeda.” And then someone shouted: “Will somebody please lead?”

  It was like a slap in the face, and Cofer Black took charge, barking orders to senior and junior people alike and urging everyone else to get out of the building and go home. “Just get out,” he said emphatically. There were still planes in the air, and everyone knew the CIA had to be on al-Qaeda’s target list. A key bin Laden aide, Mohammed Atef, one of the planners of the African embassy bombings, had said back in 1993 that he wanted to fly a plane into agency headquarters. (A strike by U.S. forces killed Atef in Afghanistan in November 2001.)

  I returned to my office and called Katherine, a CIA analyst who was my new girlfriend and soon to be my fiancée. We’d met in 1997, when she was working on Iraq and I was transferring to the Counterterrorist Center. I didn’t see her again until October 2000, when I ran into her at a meeting, reintroduced myself, and invited her for coffee. We wound up talking about my marriage; she let me vent, proving to be a great listener and offering some gentle advice. I wasn’t over JoAnne, but Katherine was patient. We dated on and off for eight months. Then, after the fiasco in Warren, she stopped by my office to ask about the Dis
ney World vacation that never was. When I told her the whole story, she gave me a hug and a big kiss on the cheek. This could be serious, I thought, and I was right: It was.

  Katherine was in her office when she fielded my call. “You should go home,” I said.

  “We haven’t really had any orders yet,” she said. By then, the CIA police, the so-called Security Protective Officers, or SPOs, were going office to office, herding people toward the exits. It took me an hour in my car just to get out of the CIA compound and onto the George Washington Parkway headed toward Arlington. Then traffic just stopped. I pulled my car off the parkway, locked it up, and walked home. Katherine and I watched the TV news; we could see the Pentagon burning from the apartment. We walked around for several hours trying to donate blood, but the Red Cross people in the area were overwhelmed. This isn’t right. We shouldn’t be here. We should be doing what we can do in the best place we can do it.

  We walked back to my car and managed to work our way back to headquarters. We weren’t alone: Everyone, it seemed, was straggling back, prepared to work all night long. We were getting names from offices and agents all over the world, literally thousands of them, and people were needed to do traces. Name traces normally are grunt work, what interns or newbies do, but the volume was just so huge that everybody in the place was involved. I’d sleep for an hour or two under my desk, get up, and do more name traces. Katherine was doing the same thing.

  Everyone was running out of food, so a couple of guys from the Counterterrorist Center got bolt cutters and cut the chains off the doors to the CIA cafeteria. We took all the food, cooked what needed cooking, then set everything out on tables in the hallways. People could work, sleep, eat, or graze as they saw fit. The next day, Marriott, which operated the cafeteria, agreed to stay open 24/7 for as long as the agency wanted.

  But fairly soon, headquarters was not a particularly popular venue. It wasn’t a case of nerves over a potential al-Qaeda attack. No. Nearly everybody was volunteering to go to Afghanistan and take on bin Laden’s barbarians and their Taliban enablers. Here was another example of Cofer Black’s remarkable leadership. A couple of days after 9/11, he summoned everyone in the CTC up to his office for a pep talk and a reality check. I don’t think his remarks were recorded, but one part went something like this: “You know, we have a big job ahead of us. We’re at war, a different kind of war than we’ve ever fought before, whether the country realizes it yet or not. We’re all going to have to do our part. And not all of us are going to make it back.”

  You could have heard a pin drop. “I’m sorry to say this now, but we have to get used to the idea that some of us are going to die. But we have to do whatever we can to bring these people to justice. We owe it to three thousand of our dead compatriots. We have to do the right thing. And remember this, always: We’re the good guys and we’re going to win.” That combination of truth telling and his willingness to take risks set Cofer Black apart from others at the agency and inspired the rest of us to believe in him and want to follow his lead. He richly deserved every accolade thrown his way.

  People with military experience—especially special operations training—were in high demand; I had none of that training or those skills, save what I learned in the short course at the Farm, but I kept badgering anyone who would listen, explaining that I had other attributes that would come in handy over there. “Look, I’ve got Arabic, which is what these al-Qaeda killers speak, and I’ll go anywhere you want me to go.” The CIA guys who went in first, led by former U.S. marine Gary Schroen, who was planning to retire from the agency, were true heroes, the best of the best. Schroen came back, but Cofer was right: Some did not make it home alive—Mike Spann, for instance, a heroic former marine who died in Afghanistan in the early stages of the war there. What Schroen, Spann, and others did starting in late September 2001 made possible the air strikes and U.S. ground forces that followed. Our nation owes them an enormous debt.

  My persistent volunteering must have worn them down. Finally, in early January 2002, I got a call from Dan Praig, a mentor and the guy who originally hired me for the temporary assignment that included Athens. “How’s your Arabic?” He knew the answer because I’d been telling him and anyone else who would listen that my Arabic was good. “My Arabic’s terrific,” I said.

  “Fine,” Dan said. “Can you go to Pakistan soon? We need someone to take charge of counterterrorism operations there.”

  “Just tell me when, and I’ll be gone.”

  The next day, I was on a plane to Pakistan.

  10

  AS SOON AS I arrived at our office in Pakistan, the guy I was replacing handed me the keys to a rental car and said, “It’s all yours.” He had been dispatched to Pakistan from his assignment in a Spanish-speaking country, but this was an abrupt handoff even from someone on temporary duty. No briefing on his cases, just adios, amigo, and good luck. On my first day, the deputy to Bob Grenier, our senior officer in Pakistan, said he wanted me to come up with a standard operating procedure for doing counterterrorist raids. I’d recently completed a course in advanced counterterrorism operations at one of the CIA’s training facilities in the States; now, Grenier’s deputy was giving me the opportunity to put what I’d learned into practice in a place reportedly teeming with al-Qaeda operatives and wannabes.

  My plan called for raids that would begin at precisely 0200 hours. At 2 a.m., the streets of Pakistani cities were empty, and the bad guys, we figured, would probably be sleeping, too. Each team would include people from the CIA, the FBI, and the Pakistani military. We were in charge; the FBI was always supposed to secure evidence at the crime scene and the Paks were there for the obvious reason: This was their country, after all. We’d identify the house where the bad guys were and use battering rams to break down doors. The Pakistanis would go in first and separate the men from the women and children. Then we’d go in with the FBI.

  When Grenier got word from headquarters that Abu Zubaydah was in Pakistan, probably in Faisalabad, I knew we’d need help and asked the Counterterrorist Center at headquarters to provide it. We did get some “special help,” but I cannot reveal the details because the information remains classified. My bright idea was to drive the streets of Faisalabad, hoping the special help would give us some clue to Abu Zubaydah’s whereabouts; then, if we got lucky, he’d show himself and, of course, we’d recognize him from the photos we had of him. Piece of cake: We spot him at the house he’s using, reconnoiter, raid the place at night while the bad guys are sleeping, break down the door, and grab him. Yeah, that’s how it’ll happen.

  The fantasy of a CIA agent doesn’t stand a chance of prevailing against the guile of a ruthless adversary. My bright idea was ridiculous: Only once in the two weeks did we get an inkling of where Abu Zubaydah might be, but the lead wasn’t really actionable. He was very smart, moving around, covering his tracks in ways I can’t discuss here, sticking to no discernible pattern. We used some fairly sophisticated methods in an effort to nail down his location. But we kept coming up empty.

  That’s when I told Grenier that we’d need more targeting help and a bigger team. I got Rick Romanski, the best in the business, and a group of CIA and FBI personnel large enough to get the job done.

  AS I HAVE recounted, Rick used the reports we were receiving to narrow down the field of potential spots being used as safe houses by Abu Zubaydah to fourteen—all of them, it seemed, in Faisalabad or one other city. I’d never even heard of Faisalabad until I got to Pakistan, even though it’s a city of nine million people and promoted as the Birmingham of Pakistan because of its large textile industry.

  I first went to Faisalabad with Amir, the Arab American agent who was part of our team, to buy a house for our people during the Abu Zubaydah operation. The city was quite a sight: Every structure seemed to be made of hardened mud or unpainted cinder or concrete block. There were no tall buildings, not one more than ten or fifteen stories. Signs of poverty were everywhere, including an odor of rotting garbage
and fouled water that hit you like a punch in the face. People got around on overcrowded buses, motor scooters, trucks, donkeys and camels, and rickshaws—whatever was available. The place gave me one of those not-in-Kansas-anymore feelings: This was a very long way from home. I felt very small and very lonely.

  But then, there is always something that brings America to you regardless of where you are in the world, something that demonstrates our country’s global reach. Amir and I were hungry, but we were worried about finding a decent place to eat. We turned a corner, first spotting an open garbage pit. But not one hundred feet away was a gleaming glass-and-steel structure with a logo we’d seen thousands of times. Saved by McDonald’s.

  “I want a Quarter Pounder with cheese, large fries, and a Coke Light,” I told the counter guy. Coke Light is what they call Diet Coke over there.

  “Oh, why don’t you try the Big Mac? It’s better than the Quarter Pounder with cheese.”

  “No thanks, I want the Quarter Pounder with cheese.”

  “Oh, sir, the Big Mac has a very special sauce,” the Pakistani said. “It will be to your liking.”

  “No, I want the Quarter Pounder with cheese.”

  “Well, sir, but the special sauce, it is homemade.” I was beginning to get a vision of this verbal ping-pong—my repeating the order and his defense of the special sauce—continuing long into the evening. “Buddy, just give me the Quarter Pounder with cheese.”

  He sighed. “Sir, we only have Big Macs.”

  “Okay, a Big Mac will be fine. Don’t forget the special sauce.” It wasn’t our only McDonald’s encounter of the night. We made our way back to the other Pakistani city, but we got lost in the tangle of streets leading from our hotel to the safe house we had purchased a few days earlier. We managed to find the hotel and a McDonald’s only two blocks away. Why McDonald’s? There was yet another McDonald’s quite close to the location of our safe house. Think of these last two as McDonald’s numbers two and three of what had become a very long evening. We figured the manager of McDonald’s number two could give us directions to McDonald’s number three, after which we could crawl on all fours, if necessary, to the safe house. But the manager was new to the city. Instead of verbal guidance, he gave us a map—sort of. In fact, it was the children’s menu with a cartoon map on the back, with pink stars designating all the McDonald’s locations in the area. He gave us a couple of clues and we were on our way.