span 3. coming up next on c-span threes american history tv, a look at the investigation of the u.s. as cole bombing. then a tour of philadelphia's eastern state penitentiary which opened in 1829 and was the world's first penitentiary area. later a conversation on journalism and the civil rights movement with investigative journalist jerry mitchell. on october 12, 2000, 2 al qaeda suicide bombers attacked the navy destroyer uss cole. in humans aydon harbor. killing 17 sailors and injuring 39. the naval criminal investigative service and the fbi led a joint investigation into the bombing. last month, the national law enforcement museum hosted two former ncis special agent who shared their experiences working on the uss cole

investigation. >> good evening, good evening. welcome to the national law enforcement museum. we are thrilled to have you here tonight. my name is lori sharp day. i'm the interim ceo of the fund. and i would like to thank target, would like to thank target for making these sponsorships for these wonderful programs possible. >> [ applause ] >> i am very happy to introduce steve pomerantz, former assistant director in chief of counterterrorism for the fbi. thank you. >> [ applause ] >> thank you, lori. so i'm only going to be up here for a minute. i want to welcome you all, the second person to welcome you to the national law enforcement museum witness program.

the series explores landmark events in american history by having the participants in those events speak. tonight, we are going to look at the attack on the uss cole, often thought of as a precursor to 9/11. very significant event in and of itself and certainly set the stage for what was to come later. i just want to take a minute because the theme here is partly remembrance. and as lori said, i was chief of counterterrorism at the fbi and a long time ago in mid- '80s. roughly 1990. and i can do, i can stand up and give you the litany of terrorist attacks, that most people in this business can do many of which occur before most of you were born, pan am, twa 40, the marine corps barracks in lebanon, oklahoma city, the federal building, uss cole and certainly 9/11. we talk about those, they're,

they roll off my tongue like reciting the days of the week or the months of the year. and we sometimes forget although we remember the incident, we forget the individual victims. the thousands of men, women and children. who died. in those attacks. and the people and their families, the survivors who lived the rest of their lives in agony over those events. i know that is not true in the case of the uss cole, i know that the individuals who died are well remembered individually and collectively, but it's true in other cases. and we ask ourselves, why? and these people were the victims of hate at the hands of pure unadulterated evil. no rhyme or reason that makes any sense to us. and i think it's important to remember those people as individuals. when we think about terrorist, it's not an abstract, it's thousands of people's lives

taken, many at a very early age, that was totally unnecessary, unwarranted, and the victim as i said of pure evil. and real quickly i want to say one of those things that impressed itself on me in that regard very, very strongly was my conversation with one of our fbi agents after the oklahoma city bombing, the federal building. i caught him in a moment where he was standing there looking at the remains of the building, the very pensive look on his face so i asked him, he said, turned to me and he said, i know from our investigation that timothy mcveigh the bomber surveilled this building before he actually committed the crime. stood out there and looked. and mcveigh had to know, he had to know there was a day care center, a child day care center in that building. and he still set the bomb, killed people and killed some of the children. how can somebody be so evil as to blow up a building knowing their children inside? some abstract hate reason.

and that's i think part of the reason this subject matter including what you're going to here tonight is so compelling. so i want to also thank target for sponsoring this and mahogany in particular, who not only does target and mahogany sponsor this event but they are such friends of law enforcement and do so much for the law enforcement community and this country and they ought to be, they are to be congratulated and recognized for that. thank you. thank the guests, you will hear more about in a minute. forgiving of their time and mostly, for their service to this country. of which you'll hear about one example tonight. i want to thank you for coming. for your interest in coming. to this. which i know you're going to find fascinating and interesting and compelling. so with that let me introduce our moderator, jim handley, well-known local tv anchor. and thank you for doing this

and please, the floor is yours, sir. >> thank you. it's my pleasure. and it's my honor to be with all of you tonight. as we look back on the attack on the uss cole. we do have an esteemed panel joining us, they were on the front lines in the hours and days after the attack on the uss cole and they're here to share their perspective and their insights for this tonight. we are also going to be hearing from you later, your questions too. so you can ask them what's on your mind and follow up on anything that we've said up here. but first i think it's important that we maybe refresh everyone's memory if we can and take you back to the beginning. on october 12, 2000, the uss cole, guided missile destroyer was in the aydon harbor for a routine stop and a boat laden with explosives and two suicide bombers came up next to the ship and detonated.

the cole suffered extensive damage to the ship, 39 sailors were wounded, 17 sailors were killed. joint fbi and ncis investigation began immediately and linked the bombing to al qaeda operatives in aden. i'd like to introduce our panel with us. tonight. first, is ms. kathy clement, former ncis special agent and member of the major case response team. that was the first on the scene of that bombing. and mr. robert mcfadden also former ncis special agent and koch's agent for the ncis/fbi investigation of the uss cole bombing. if we can go back to the beginning, i'd like to ask you, when were you first notified about the bombing and what did you hear and learn initially? >> so the, if you go back, october 12 was a thursday. and i was actually stationed in naples, italy, at the time. and was doing communal

investigations at the time. and major case response. so the first call i got was to come back to the office. and told that there had been an explosion on the cole. that it was hazy, but the information was coming out, so people were saying that it was a refueling accident. that the fuel going into the ship had actually exploded in some way. and the initial photos you were seeing actually from cnn showed that that was not the case at all. from the way that the damage looked. so that was my initial information. and then i was told to get ready, that myself and my co- team in naples would then be flying within the next 24 hours to yemen, to begin on the ship. >> agent mcfadden, were you in the region at the time? >> i was not. i had just left a tour at the

u.s. consulate in dubai with ncis office there. and i just started my next assignment as a special agent in float for a marine expeditionary unit. in san jose, california, had just been there about 10 days. and doing work with marine intel and counterintelligence units. so there is very early morning of the 12th of october, i received a call in my room from california, was a round 3:00 or so in the morning. and it was my good friend special agent randy hughes in the dubai office of ncis. and he said, hey brother, turn on the tv. i said what, 3:00 in the morning. he said turn on the tv. turned on the tv, cnn, breaking news. u.s. navy destroyer suffers an explosion in the port of aden. and i was looking at the tv, randy was looking at the tv and we both said, we know what that is.

and it was flashing up breaking news, government of yemen says accident, explosion, we said, intuitively at least we knew it was al qaeda. >> could you tell from the video that you saw? or you just knew? >> widget knew from knowing al qaeda's motors and around i -- modus operandi, beyond intuition which an investigator intuition is one thing but the investigation but we had that feeling and that instinct, so later that morning, i received a call from headquarters and said, get ready, stand by, in fact my boss at the time mark fallon in the audience he said pack up a bag for seven to 10 days. then head over to yemen to meet the vanguard of the investigative unit. fbi, ncis. it took me about three days to get there. and the seven to 10 days turned into about 2 1/2 years. >> wow. >> wouldn't trade it for anything. >> how long did it take for the government of yemen to

acknowledge that this was not an accident? they were saying that for a few weeks or for how long? >> it was the better part of a week. i think somewhere on or about the 16th or 17th of october, the president and his administration said yes, it was not and even by that time, there was information coming from the government of yemen as well as all source intelligence that pointed to the former ambassador was about to be with us and could not make it, before the bombing or at the time of the bombing what was our relationship as a country with yemen? >> well, from my assignment in dubai and previously in bahrain, i and some colleagues from that area spent quite a bit of time in yemen, in and out. don't want to go too deeply just for the sake of time and history but the u.s. government and a unified yemen

in 2000 was just getting underway and making some progress especially as far as d.o.d. engagement. and in fact the brief stop for fuel with the refueling concept in the port of aden was a part of that engagement process. u.s. and yemen. however with that being said, though, and my and colleagues force protection efforts and liaison work was very, very shallow especially in the south where aden was. because the civil war had experienced up through the mid- '90s and into the late '90s so it was getting to know you kind of phase, i know ambassador bodine state department had made much more progress up north in the capital. but it might be useful for a scene center that's often forgot about, in that era. i had been going in and out of yemen since 1997 from force

protection liaison visits, counterintelligence work. and it was easy to get around there, the threat level was moderate. let's say there were more unknowns than nones, but it was a permissive environment for quite a few various international terrorist groups. when i arrived on the early morning of the 17th of october, what was going on in the background if you are a deep follower of the middle east, ariel sharon, former prime minister of israel had just visited temple mount and riots broke out as a result of that visit so what's important they are? in a country like yemen, there were massive street demonstrations going on so when i arrived, i had never seen anything like that before. so this was all roiling in the background, turned the temperature up as far as the force protection situation and again, that kind of danger element. >> talk a little bit about your role with the response

team, that case response team if you would and what you did initially. >> it was my responsibility to work with the fbi and do body recovery offers as well as post blast recovery, any kind of evidence that would come from the ship. so once we hit the ground, myself and another, my teammate, we had to marry up with the guys that were coming in from bahrain. so as i was telling someone earlier today, ncis, if you watch the show, our agency is truly nothing like the show although it's very entertaining. but we are about 2,000 agents worldwide and if you think about that, the fbi is five or six times that big if not larger. so our supervisors look at us as generalists, we are supposed to be able to walk into a scene and be able to do just about anything that is a

felony crime regarding the navy and the marine corps. so think of it like the texas rangers, one ranger, one fight, kind of one agent, one fight. there was six of us on the ground, and as myself and don thompson hit the tarmac because commander sixth fleet allowed us to use his learjet, we direct into aden, literally the pilot said good luck, and turned right around and left. standing on the tarmac with our bags full of whatever gear we can put together and a duffel bag of personal gear. and we walked into what was probably not much bigger than this room, at the terminal for the airport. and just as we get into the terminal, a c-130 lands and it's the fbi with 300 people. then the marine fast team from bahrain hits the ground. and they have long guns, they all have jeeps, they come rolling up.

and i say aden thought they were being invaded by americans at that point so it was a stand down. we got in that friday morning. roughly 10:00 or 11:00, we didn't leave the airport until 10 or 11:00 at night. and then the yemenis wanted us to convoy so they could control where the americans are having access. so as a convoy, we left the airport all the way around the bay, dropped the marines where it would be considered like a beachhead, that controlled access to the cole, and then we all file in again and go to the hotel which was the hotel where all of the american agencies were staying. so that was at about 1:00 in the morning, probably our first meeting. from there, we quickly met, got up the next morning, 7:00 in the morning, now we're trying to divide out and i probably didn't see bob other than morning meetings and evening meetings with arsine commander which was mike

dorsey. and all of this kind of formalized information figured out where we were going next, and then pushed forward. so myself, and three other nis agents, don thompson, harry richardson and mike marx, who was a blast expert, went out to the ship with a team of about 15 fbi agents. and we convoy with yemenis taking us back around the bay to go through numerous checkpoints and then finally the fast team checkpoint and that's where we would be inside an american circle and access to the ship. >> what was your first impression, i want to ask you both when you saw the ship in person, and i want to get into evidence collection and how difficult that was. but your thoughts initially when you laid eyes on it? >> i did. my answer would be much shorter. a few pieces of the ship, and

kathy is rugged and a warrior and modest about this but i'll say, that the conditions were extraordinarily difficult. i mean it was very emotional and gripping to see the ship that way. first of all. but even in october in yemen, in the south of yemen, in aden. average temperatures somewhere between 95 and 105 fahrenheit with really high humidity, 70% to 90%. so just the sights, the sounds, the odors, the hazards were just incredible. but if you need anything to make you any more patriotic to see the working relationship with the ncis, the fbi forensic team, the crew was just absolutely incredible. >> right. so the first day i get to the ship. we can't gain access to it. we needed a yemeni boat to get us out to the ship where it was in the middle of the harbor. so there was a lot of diplomatic things going on behind the scenes that i don't have a clue.

but the next day we actually got out to the ship. so the very first day we actually decided since we're here, we might as well, if you think of an explosion, it's going to go 360 degrees. so there's going to be possible items of evidence in all directions. so the tide comes in and out of the bay. everything hits the shoreline. so we walked the shoreline for whatever we could find, collected all of that up, and by the time we came back, the fbi -- my little duffel bag of gear, i laugh about it now. the fbi literally erected an entire tent and had plastic rubbermaid tupperware that went the length of it with every piece of evidence collection equipment that you could ever ask for. and so we had that to be able to start processing what we found. when we were finally able to get on the ship the second day, it

was to go in a yemeni garbage scow basically out to the ship. so you didn't want to touch anything because it's what they collected their garbage in. you get onto a cement structure in the middle of the bay, which was a refueling structure. and from there we took the ladder up to the ship. the ship, depending on if the generator -- the only generator that was working on the ship to keep the bilges empty and keep the ship righted var, if it was it would have been listing 60 degrees and made it more difficult to get onboard. anybody that's been around the military knows ships are loud. there's always a lot of things going on. people are always talking. there's always radios. depending on who's doing what, you know, and what music. complete silence. very somber moment. and if you haven't been around

the military, just if you can encapsulate in any one ship, this is their home. they deploy for six months. this is where they have a barbershop. they eat their maeals. they sleep. they work. so now we're walking into someone's home in which, as an investigator, it makes it that much more difficult because you would prefer that in any kind of especially a death investigation, that the family members weren't present when you had to do your job. and so there was a lot of caution and a lot of reverence given to our desire to keep that crew engaged but removed from the investigation all at the same time. >> i'm curious. all the crew stayed on the cole? and how many roughly are we talking about? >> so there's roughly 50, i think, that were taken off injured and dead, and there's a

crew of roughly 350 on an arleigh burke destroyer. >> so you had to work with all of them around you? >> yes. >> and did they provide any insights? it came out of nowhere? >> right. so early on, like i said, there were four of us and the fbi agents. so we divided into teams. mike marx was doing -- he was doing post-blast, so his main job was on the decks of the ship. i was doing body recovery, so i was actually down inside the ship, finding the people that had been pinned into the ship through the explosion. and then we had two other people doing interviews of the crew to determine what they saw, where they were, if they had sustained injuries. a lot of them assisted with the removal of victims, of their crew mates when they would take them out to the hospitals in

germany and then to the united states. >> you know, i can remember hearing back that it's tantamount to like a truck bomb. talk about the sophistication and the power of these explosives and the extent of the damage that it did. >> so the extent of the damage, from the photos, especially that photo, you're getting maybe half of the damage that was done. the damage went all the way to the keel and into midship if that happens anybody. so the midline of the ship, that damages actually pushes all the way into the midline of that ship and then down all the way to the bottom right along the keel, and it buckles the keel. so the main deck is what you see. a deck down is their mess decks, which is where everybody ate. that's where a lot of our victims were.

but then there were -- excuse me. that's not exactly true. so as we divided up our responsibilities, there were a lot of people that came in, not just ncis and not just fbi, so i'll take a step back. there was a mobile dive unit, dive and salvage unit that has expertise in going underwater and has specific gear to go in through the ship and under the water. they were then responsible for locating victims under the waterline, and then we handled the victims that were actually what we would consider in the drier areas of the ship. so we were dealing with both. so there are engine compartments underneath the mess decks under which the deck plating buckled up this way and then buckled down. think 360 degrees. everything is just kind of moving out like a ball and bending steel. >> robert, talk about the

investigation from your perspective and how long did it take for a link to be made to al qaeda? >> well, to answer the last part of the question, from all sorts of intelligence, and that's what the fbi's ncis team said from the beginning. this is going to be, in the early phases, an intelligence issue, an intelligence investigation. and so having the greatest sources and assets out there, it was coming in very early that there were strong indications that it was al qaeda-linked individuals and al qaeda's modus operandi from east africa bombing, for example. so that very early on developed, but that by itself, though is just the beginning to provide a vector for us for the things we were going to do. so on the morning of the 17th, not too long coincidentally after i arrived in the command post, cathy had mentioned the

ncis senior special agent mike dorsey and the ncis senior, the late, great john o'neill had a briefing very early that morning because behind the scenes, the state department were busy negotiating with yemeni foreign ministry, interior ministry, as well as their intelligence service to be able to take the investigative team, the u.s. investigative team out to the sites that were known at that point. and there were four sites if i'm on track for what we're talking about here from the land part of the investigation. we went out in a mass ive convo that morning, and we had the fbi hostage response team, which i'm very thankful they were there because, again, many great unknowns there and with all their equipment. so we went out to the first of four sites, which the first one was where apparently they had done most of the work and the

fabrication on the boat that was used for the bombing. we had teams divided up that would do the forensic examination plus other aleads a each site. i and a partner from the jttf, who was a nypd detective, new york police detective, who worked extensively in the east africa bombings, al qaeda, nairobi and tanzania in august of 1998, he and i were the co-captain leads for the next site, which was actually what we called the safehouse. this is where the two suicide bombers -- and i'm going a little bit forward in the narrative because we knew this later, but it was strongly suspected at that time. that was the point where they actually worked on the boat before the launch. a little bit more fabrication. they had a big tank to work on the outboard motor, and that was the actual location because we had actually good fortune to have an eyewitness, an itinerant

laborer working on the roof of the house next door that we had access to that described how the two suicide bombers very gently drove the suv and trailer with the boat, made a left turn, swung around the neighborhood and then stopped by a speed bump. passenger got out to look. why? because they had several hundred kilograms of high explosives in that boat, and then he could see make its way to the port. so another team, ncis, fbi, jttf new york as well as the washington field office went to the next site, which was the actual boat launch location. and then the fourth site that morning that started the forensic examination was the lookout location, which the al qaeda cell that pulled this off certainly did their casing and their homework because it had a perfect vantage point from the living room window of an apartment that was elevated, that had a direct line of sight

to where the cole was in the harbor. >> i want to talk a little bit more about some significant interviews that you did throughout this and the investigation. but while we're on evidence, cathy, can you touch on what you gleaned from some of the evidence collected? was that a tedious process? you talk about bends and tints and everything kind of spread out. >> right. so i wasn't involved with the sites that were on land. that was bob and some other teams of fbi. so on the ship, what we did, we were doing multiple scenes. so we were recovering the bodies, and then we were collecting the post-blast evidence. so that evidence was being screened on the -- why is that completely out of my head? >> deck? >> the front deck of the ship. >> it was a long time ago. >> it is. so we had sifting tables that we

would collect. so early on, the captain knew, and we engaged with him very early on, on how to incorporate his people back into their own ship, how to get them involved in what was going on. so through those conversations, they were daily, they assisted with us sweeping every single deck, every single flat surface, and helping us sort out what actually, truly belonged on the cole and what was debris that wasn't a part of the cole in any fashion. and those, then, those piles of "don't know what it is" to "this definitely isn't it" and "those belong to the cole" we would take them to the post-blast sifters to sift them again and go back through it. they found all sorts of things in those siftings from every single deck. biological material was found,

dna that was found, which actually came back to the individuals that bob had identified. parts of the boat that were recovered, everything from the outboard -- well, not originally, but outboard motor to a serial number to parts of the red carpet that was on the deck of the boat to -- we found teeth on the deck that we didn't know if they were involved or not, so definitely becomes part of the evidence that you collect. i just have to say this. we could not have done our job if the master at arms that was on that boat didn't convince the captain not to do any kind of cleanup of the scene. so he was instrumental. he was a first class. his last name was crowe. he was great, convinced the captain, please don't clean this or sweep this or wash this. but there was, through the ship,

when the explosion occurs, diesel fuel rained down on the ship. so the whole ship was covered. so it acted kind like a sticky material that could collect the evidence that we were looking for as it started to -- these wave blasts came over the ship. it all just kind of stuck. but we were able to then use that in collecting all the evidence that we needed. so lots of pieces of -- i don't even know how many. do you recall? i know well over 200 -- i'd say maybe closer to 500 pieces of evidence were actually recovered from the ship, small pieces of wire and things, and then later were examined. >> bob, you interviewed fhad al clouseau. is that how you -- i don't really care if i mispronounce his name. you gained a lot of information and intel from him.

>> we did. >> tell us a little bit about him and what he told you and was able to tell you. >> sure. and, again, with credit to ambassador bodine and the state department, there was a gap of roughly the end of october until january where we had little to no access to witnesses. that was a long and arduous negotiation process. finally when we had access -- and i say me and primarily my partner, former fbi agent, terrifically talented, much more famous partner than me in the partnership, but that's okay. he deserves it. when we finally had access to fhad clouseau, he, in his role within the local conspiracy -- and this fit within al qaeda's modus operandi of how it did things -- very compartmentalized organization. only the two masterminds really had all the pieces, but fhad clouseau was a trusted confidant

of the cell taking direction from afghanistan from al qaeda central. but he was trusted in the sense that he had been to places like bosnia. he had been to afghanistan. he had these associations, and he was like the underling or protege of the local cell leader. so when we finally had access to fhad al clouseau, and again for setting the scene of how it was, after all this buildup of months, ali and i were in there champing at the bit. the interrogation room was something out of central casting, kind of more dungeonen-like than office-like. the room was filled with yemeni officers all waiting to see what was going to happen. right at the point we were about to start the interview, the head of the yemen intelligence service for the entire south walked into the room, and everyone on the yemen side, british-style from old colonial days clicked their heels and saluted the colonel-general.

and ansi looked at us and kind of nodded dismissively because that's a whole another story with the relationship there. and he made a beeline to clouseau. clouseau stood up, and then they kissed, right cheek, left cheek, right cheek. and then the colonel was whispering sweet nothings in clouseau's ear, and i for my part banged my fist on the table. what's going on here? and ali, same thing. and so the colonel said, okay. have at it. and clouseau sat there kind of like, have at it. and that was -- that was the start of the interview, okay? but the short of the story over many nights, many days in a row, building rapport, a little bit of guile, a little bit of cunning, and finding what the motivators were for clouseau even though he probably to this day -- and he's long departed now, you know, because he just did not leave the jihad life. he gave us first little tidbits of information that he thought

weren't important, but then it starts to build upon itself. so names, associations, the way they did things, his role as the would-be videographer was all very valuable. and one quick kind of post-script to that because 9/11 and the cole are inextricably tied. the small team was still in-country with the yemen cole investigation in august after we had to leave the country because of a very serious threat. when 9/11 happened, the team was even much smaller because of the threat, but our first order of business from headquarters, fbi and ncis, was get fhad by many means necessary. that was actually said "by any means necessary." so we were able to, through liaison, have him flown up from aden to sanaa, and we had access to him very early morning of the 13th of september. and clouseau had no idea why i

and ali were there. he wasn't all that happy to see us, but he actually gave us the first known actual al qaeda member identification of two of the 9/11 hijackers that morning. >> wow, that soon after? >> mm-hmm. >> yes, sir. >> you mentioned he was supposed to be the videographer that day? did he oversleep or something, did i read? >> that's right. that's what the investigation -- we did not believe him at all because that's not gold. it's platinum if they had that for propaganda purposes. >> oh, my god, yes. >> but his story is that he woke up for prayers. he put his alarm -- his pager on silence because they had a code. 1010 when the ship was in place. then he would go to pick up the camera. but for his part, he said he overslept because the pager was on silent. now, we didn't believe him at all. but then later on in the investigation, spending quite a few man hours digging down, that tape, if it exists, never

surfac surfaced. so i tend to believe that story. >> talk a little bit more about the al qaeda connection and any connection down the road to bin laden and what we learned after 9/11. >> well, as i mentioned with the jttf in new york and other fbi colleagues who had intimate knowledge of how east africa was pulled off, right from the beginning they were noticing the same type of traits, details. the house that was rented, for example, the safe house, kind of equivalent to yemen style townhome. they said east africa was the same at both two locations. so that kind of tactics, techniques, and procedures combined with all-source intelligence, it very early on showed there was a definitive link to al qaeda with this operation. some of the same people that were involved in east africa were involved in the cole. two of the masterminds, for

example, there was intelligence and they were known to have been involved in east africa. >> we talk about hindsight, but not to be cliche, i mean are there things that people have pored over and said, oh, this could have prevented this or prevented that, something down the road in the future? >> i think -- i don't know. i'd be just guessing. >> the short answer to that, it was a really valid question, is yes. but then when you look at, for example -- and i'm very thankful for the opportunity to have worked al qaeda, and like sunni extremists, violent extremist movements, al qaeda as the example are extremely compartmented when it comes. they really know how to keep secrets. i say that just by way of how difficult it is to have a human penetration operation of an organization like that. that really is so very, very modestly sized, very much smaller than most folks would realize. i mean it would be great to hear

ambassador's bodine's perspective, but the geopolitical events at the time, that was the optimal place for a brief stop for fuel for ships going into the iranian and persian gulfs. that was a centcom decision. the big however was those in the intelligence community pointed to there were many more unknowns about the security posture than knowns. so that's the part where out of a great tragedy like that, many lessons learned have been derived, and it changed policy, for example, enforced protection posture. it changed policy on information-sharing amongst law enforcement and intelligence agencies. so out of tragedy, a lot of good has come out of it. >> talk about the relationship, if you both would -- i mean did the government in yemen get in your way? were they cooperative at a certain point? i'm assuming they didn't start out with a lot of cooperation.

i don't know. >> i didn't have to deal with the yemeni government at all. i really was focused on the ship, so my interaction would be just to and from the hotel to there. and really that posture never changed. you could always see -- and although we didn't have access to intelligence that was going out, the hotel could never be completely cleared to have a huge meeting. so that's why we always had small meetings with just our little groups. i think the first thing i realized was the posture of the fast team changed. and once you watched their posture change, you're like, all right. so they've heard something. there's something changing, and you just have to stay cognizant of the access to the boat and everything else that we had through those things. >> steven started out the conversation talking about the

lives of our american sailors who were wounded and who died. what was it like to go onto that ship every day and be around them? you talked about how quiet it was. did things ever change? time line, were you on there weeks or how long? >> so there from about the 13th through -- i think i was there about two weeks. i don't know exactly, but at some point we became the target, and that's when we got up and left. >> that's a great point. it was a very tight time line. the ship was in peril. >> when you say you became the target, talk a little bit more about that. >> so in the evening would be one of those times in the hotel that you could actually kind of sit back, have a beer, and discuss the events of the day in kind of an unclassified area with other people. and i remember looking up, and you look up and there's cnn on the tv. and we're like, can you turn the tv up? and they've just now

announced -- at least this is how i found out that movenpik hotel is now a possible target of a terrorist vehicle attack. so we all just kind of looked at each other and said, maybe we need to go have a meeting. so then you go and have a meeting, and the whole posture changes at that point as to what you're going to do. but i want to go back to your first comment about being on the ship with the other -- with the sailors. the sailors wanted to help us at all costs obviously. you know, i had one -- and i don't know how much jokingly, it's like tell me where they are, and we'll use the generator to realign the arm amouament to actually fire something off. i'm like, yeah, we're not going to do that. >> it would be nice. >> you might feel good right now but -- but they definitely wanted to help us. so collection of whatever we could on those ships. they definitely, as we removed bodies, they were instrumental in putting together friends

basically that would then, as we put flags on everyone in the body bags, they would then escort those bodies off the ship to a waiting rib, which the uss cole is named after a marine. so the marine fast teams would then drive them in the boat to our waiting makeshift mortuary that we had until we got them all off. the temperature of the ship didn't change until we got the last body off. i think nobody wanted to sleep below decks knowing -- and what bob alluded to. it's 110 to 120. it's humid. by day two, i don't wish to gross you out, but entomology sets in. so we have flies. we have larvae. we have all sorts of things and

immediately the crew began to always assume it's their friends versus we have all of the ship's stores that have just -- all of those generators have gone down. there's a lot of food. it was at lunch when they were -- when the bomb hit. so there's food debris everywhere on the ship as well. so all of this stuff is going on. they wanted that cleaned up as quickly as we could. so once we had the last body off, working with the crew, the ensign, or the flag that's on the aft end of the ship, it was the same one from the day that they had pulled in to fuel. it wasn't until we had the last body off that the captain took that ensign down. the next morning a fresh insin we -- ensign went up and a fresh attitude. the radios came back on. people started to clean. we were at that point where a different atmosphere was there once all the bodies had been removed, and we were at a point where they could start washing

and cleaning the decks and starting to take control of that ship again and make sure that it was theirs, and they had pride in it. so definitely cleaning it up. >> wow. >> so i wanted to go back to that. >> thank you for sharing that. bob, you talk about the planning. how long had they been planning this? you said they knew exactly what they were doing. >> mm-hmm. >> it seems almost like it was a perfect target where it was in that harbor. >> sure. well, based on that, it's a great question. my overview would include events up to fairly recently for having myself and colleagues access to some of the high-value detainees, including the two most intimately involved with the operation taking orders from afghanistan. they're in the high value detainee program. so what the planning was originally, al qaeda central referred to it as the ship's operation in arabic. the original plan was a four-pronged simultaneous attack

, but in al qaeda fashion -- again, we know this largely from those in the organization who provided the information to us during interview and interrogation. bin laden himself, with his deputy at the time, decided let's go conservative. we want to get a gray hole whether it's a commercial or u.s. military vessel, and it was part of their land, east africa, then sea, and air operations, which of course we know they pulled off. so as best as the investigation intelligence could tell, they started hatching the idea at least two years before the cole was attacked, but they actually were under way and operational in yemen by the spring of 1999. and the goal, again, was -- and not much of this is in the public realm yet.

i'll share the goal was to acquire 40 tons, four-zero tons, of high explosives. and the ultimate was going to be feeling a dow, which is their fishing boat in the region. a large dhow with high explosives, so that with escorts, it would be able to ram an aircraft carrier. but again al qaeda central said let's pull one off first before we go big. >> through bob's investigation, we found out that there had been a prior attempt back in -- >> january, yeah, against the u.s.s. sullivan. >> what happened in that? >> they sunk their own boat, but they learned. >> they did. in fact, the cell leader was a man of details. it didn't actually sink. what happened was they didn't do their homework for the casing operation, for the beach and the tide and the softness of the sand. and the boat was so laden with the high explosives that when they tried to release it from

the trailer, it was stuck in the sand, and there wasn't enough tide to bring it out. how do we know that? because we had five eyewitnesses that myself and ali and others from the investigative team had access to. we called them the beach boy five. they were terrific witnesses that gave an eyewitness account of finding the boat. >> roughly how many people were taken into custody, and are they still in custody? have people passed on? >> real good question as to how many in custody. >> i mean was it like dozens or -- >> i would say more along the line of scores because kind of one of those unique things for a country like yemen, if not a quirky oddity, they actually placed in custody witnesses. and when we asked them what's going on, they said, they're in our protective custody. we said, custody? yes, because there may be suspicion there. so that's what -- >> huh. >> so sorting the witnesses from the actual members involved,

they had at least six, a half dozen that we wanted access to that we knew were involved. >> how do you develop that rapport with someone? you said it took days and days to build that up. >> well, in brief for a rather complex topic. no tricks. >> and are you working with a translator? >> we weren't working with a translator because ali is native fluent lebanese, arabic speaker, and i've trained formally in arabic and spent a lot of time. very good arabic with a philadelphia accent, but effective. so building rapport, one, it's the training. i have to say our old outfit, high, high value and premium in training in a clinical setting, but also a terrific mentoring ojt program for the art and skill and science of interview and interrogation. again, credit to my former boss, mark fallon, who is a champion of that. ali, although less tenure than

me, less experience, he was just a natural people person, so building a rapport is not necessarily about tea and biscuits, but it's about getting to things like motivation, what makes an individual tick. how can we leverage and manipulate those things and kind of form kind of an operational quid pro quo? does that mean he's going to give us everything inassistasta? no, but over the course of time it's quite effective in building that. think of it in terms of a metaphor of a helicopter circling a target. it may not go right for the bull's-eye, but it's going to keep circling until we're getting more and more. >> talk, cathy, if you would about -- this is a massive team and different agencies working together and how, i guess, that's the priority. i hear you guys mention names of colleagues and people under you or superiors too. it's a humbling thing the way you talk about t. everybody's working together. >> definitely. >> you're not working

independently. >> oh, no. >> talk about it. as a layman out there, we may not understand how you all come together and work together. >> wow. okay. so from just think myopically of just the ship, there is one team working the decks, one team working to recover bodies that are considered in the drier areas, one team that's in the water. we had a grid search out into the bay with fbi and special forces, and literally as people are coming together and telling each other what they find, it's more of a -- it's very collaborative. >> mm-hmm. >> and then definitely we all were very curious of what he was finding out separately from what we were collecting. and really our job is just the post -- is just that stuff that's left. he was getting the stuff like,

well, who did you find today, or where are you going today and being able to then connect all the dots and hear it. egos aside. there's no room for that in a situation like this. you're there for the ship, and i think we all felt that. definitely, you know, you rally around, you know, your friends when they get injured. so we all rally, and you all do what you have to do. it doesn't matter how long those days are and how long or how quickly you're in and out of a location. you do what you've got to do to make it work. i don't think -- we didn't have any problems on our teams. >> none. >> cathy mentioned about connecting the dots. do you remember was there a moment when it's like, this is it, it's coming together, and the world will soon know what we're finding? i'm sure you had to sit on a lot for a long period of time. >> that's right. but i mean to cathy's great points, though, it really is a

massive team effort, and this type of situation was unprecedented, certainly for the yemenis, but it was for the united states government and intelligence community. the response was just, as you can gaerth, we'ther, you had di security service. you had worldwide leads coming in from various agencies so it takes a team. i know myself never having been involved in anything remotely of that size, i was really wondering how are we going to put this together? but like cathy said, there were teams of experts and subject matter experts fusing information, gathering intelligence, feeding into the briefs that we had every day and the debriefs and putting that together. within a few days of the cole attack, there was a massive whiteboard with photographs that were acquired from various means as to who was who and who was involved and what we were working on. so the eureka moment as far as

al qaeda, again setting aside my bias from thinking and knowing it was in the beginning, not long after i arrived, there was compelling evidence and agreement and consensus at ncis, fbi, cia, and anothers at the national level of intelligence that there was the al qaeda link. now, i know geopolitically there was frustration from the team, geopolitical i mean as far as the administration at the time was reluctant to speak about a definitive link to al qaeda, something that we couldn't quite understand from a practitioner level. but we knew it was there. >> in the initial hours, others tried to take credit, but you knew it wasn't. >> that's another good point that could be lost because among others, hamas, palestinians, some shia groups, which is pretty common in international terrorism, but that was essentially brushed aside by the investigative team. >> i want to open it up. we've got two microphones on

either side, and please step up if you have a question for our special agent special guests. anything that we haven't touched on, but you do have to go to the mic, please, if you would. >> since i was close, i'll -- >> all right. >> dothere's an 800-pound elepht in this room, so i'm going to front it. the ambassador is not here, or i might phrase this question -- you know where i'm going. i might phrase this question a little bit more delicately. anybody who has read about this or who has seen the movie or read the book, one of the major -- let me back off and then say that i was retired by the time this took place, but i was involved early on. in about the mid-1980s there was a law passed that gave us jurisdiction abroad, federal law enforcement to go abroad and

conduct criminal investigations involving terrorism. that was a new thing for us, and the cole was one of the -- it was 15 years later, the cole incident. but i found pretty quickly that success or failure was 90% the cooperation you got from the locals in the country that you went to, how much access they gave you, how much cooperation you got. there were certain countries that spin you around like a $2 top with the pretense of cooperation. so that's the one thing. and the second thing was the state department, how much latitude they gave you to operate. in the case of the cole, and you mentioned our mutual colleague and my good friend john o'neill, who was the fbi agent in charge, who passed away on 9/11. he retired, and a month later he had taken a job as chief of security at the twin towers, and he died one of the heroes of that, going back into that tower

to help law enforcement. so i have special -- and, again, if you've done any more than superficial, you know about his dealings with the ambassador, who is not here, i recognize. it is the elephant in the room, so i ask you to say what you will about how that impacted on your investigation. >> yeah. >> please. >> well, steven, i know that remains a topic of great interest, and a lot was written about it. i was privy to some of the conversations and some of the churn, if you will, which i would say from a large aspect, it was an extremely stressful situation, okay? there was also the foreign aspect in the sense that i and a few of my colleagues from ncis, we spent quite a bit of time in yemen, but i don't know if there was a single member of the fbi team that would have been to yemen. i mean only because it was not part of the mission, okay?

so knowing the protocols of the state department or not knowing them was, you know, created a natural tension. now, to the more important part of it, did it impact the investigation from my perspective? it did not. i mean we were kind of very surprised that the great john o'neill was not allowed back in-country. his country clearance was denied after he left, and the investigative team was back after we evacuated due to the threat. >> and who made that call? was that the ambassador? >> yeah. in any country, that's the ambassador's call for diplomatic clearance for government personnel. now, again, you know, we would have wished it could have gone differently as far as the dynamic of the relationship, but i don't think it had any negative impact ultimately on the investigation. but to your point, though, about liaison with the host nation, having spent a large part of my career in the overseas environment, particularly in the

near and middle east, you're absolutely right about how important that is whether the host nation is cooperative or not. the short of it is yemen was just about anything but cooperative although ambassador bodine and team were working very hard at the s.o.g., government to government level, but we for our part, john o'neill on down, myself, ali, others were working the personal relationship at the ground level, and that was very important for getting those things done. where big government of yemen might say, no, no, cannot, cannot, but at the local and ground level, we were making progress acquiring intelligence from these liaison contacts but also getting concessions minor enough that it wouldn't rise to the level of their top leadership. so that was a really important part of moving the investigation forward. and as ambassador bodine said in a few interviews, i think she summed it up as the relationship was quite complex.

>> well, you're both obviously very professional, talented people. and, again, may i take the latitude to say since this was my business, i'm sure everybody should and does have great respect for what you did. under the circumstances that you just outlined, it's even more incredible the results that we got, and you're to be admired and congratulated for what you did. >> thank you. >> thanks. [ applause ] >> i really appreciate that, steven. that's very kind. you know, i won't speak for kathy, but i think the dear lord that i was just in a place and had the opportunity to work on something like that. but, again, another post-script, though, talk about that lack of cooperation and a pulling teeth exhibition every day with the yemen intelligence service to bring witnesses, to let us look at evidence. we really got nowhere until, you know, deep into 2001. but it wasn't until 9/11 and

eyewitnesses up close and personal, was a watershed event and a sea change of attitude by the yemen government overnight. i mean literally. and one of the key aspects of this -- and i believe it's in ali sufan's book, the black banners. we had a meeting, myself, fbi supervisor tommy donilon, and we only had a couple of s.w.a.t. protectors. we were the only ones in of it country on 9/12. we had a meeting with the yemen general intelligence service, and the general had a very close relationship with john o'neill. he referred to him as a brother, and he was asking how john was, and we had word early on the 12th of november that john o'neill was missing and presumed dead. when the general asked about the brother john, how is he, ali sufan choked up and said, john may be dead. the general started tearing up

as well. and when we said we needed fhad al clouseau immediately, he picked up the phone, called the control tower in aden, and told them the last yemeni flight was not to leave until fhad clouseau was aboard. so the cooperation after that was absolutely tremendous. we had access to al qaeda card carrying members after that, and it was a veritable treasure trove of information post-9/11. >> another question? >> well, i have several questions. i'll try to limit the ones i have, but just a little bit of background who i am. my name is jamal gunn. my brother, sharon gunn, he was one of the 17 onboard the uss cole, one of the 17 that was killed. and just a little bit of background, what you were saying.

this is not a blame game on anyone, but my information about john o'neill is a little by secondhand. he was more in contact with my father, giving him updates about the case throughout. but the kind of person he is -- you know this -- that when he first heard about the attack, his response was probably an expletive. he's kind of very -- well, you're laughing because you know him. it's true. the reason why is because john o'neill probably -- not probably. he actually knew it was al qaeda that did the attack right when he heard about it. so he was really angry about it that it was happening. and that's the kind of relationship, that's the kind of person he is, and to keep that in mind when his relationship with ambassador bodine. from my information, maybe i could be wrong, but from my information, they didn't get along well at all, which is why, again, he was not let back into the country to continue the

investigation with regards to what happened to my brother. but you did go over a lot of information on questions i did have. dy hai did have one particular question for each of you. agent clements, you said you arrived there on october 13th, is that correct? >> a friday. >> and the attack was on the 12th. you said you assisted in body recovery and recovering evidence as well. were there any -- what was going on with the crew between that time, from october 12th to 13th? were they -- did they start any investigation themselves, or were they just there to try to keep the ship afloat? because i know that's what they did pretty much throughout the entire. this he were focused on keeping the ship afloat and make sure no other damage has taken place. but, again, i'm just kind of curious what was going on between the time the attack happened and then your arrival. and the question now for you, sir, is you had mentioned one name.

i'm sorry if i got it wrong. he was the latest perpetrator that i believe was killed. but there are several others. one right now is in guantanamo bay. he's the one we've kind of been waiting on to be brought to trial. >> right. >> and he's the one that we've been repeatedly told is the mastermind of the attack. but we've also heard several names, and i kind of want to know who is the actual mastermind. was badali just a gopher? from my information, he was, or who was the person actually responsible? >> you want me to go first? >> any particular order? >> okay. so talk about the crew. the explosion occurs. it's noon. they're in the line getting food if they're not helping do some other refueling event on that ship. so part of what helped the ship was actually being in a

refueling status. if you understand how they secure zebra-ing or closing compartments helped keep the ship afloat. the crew then actually got all of the injured off the ship. the crew took care of everything that they could find, and then were intimately responsible for helping keep that ship afloat, not just that one day before we arrived, but the entire time we were there. two or three times the generator would go down, and we would all, like mice, come up onto the main decks and wonder what the next movement would be. and the crew and the captain then would figure out what the problem was, get the generators going. so they did a lot to keep that ship afloat, period. you can't underestimate the work that they did at all. they helped, like i said, with

all of the evidence collection on the deck and were concerned about us removing their other friends and getting the remains off the ship. so, no, they were intimately involved with maintaining their ship. and i don't know how to explain it, but that ship would not have been afloat without that crew manning that one generator. so that one generator and their work kept that ship afloat. >> mr. gunn, for your question about who was the mastermind -- and first, let me say, we mourn your brother and all his ship mates, god rest his soul. you know, that's a really great question because i guess as the saying goes, success has many fathers, and it's mostly loose press reporting, but the mastermind, if there was a

mastermind, think of it in terms of like the military structure or the operational element, that's where it was hatched at al qaeda core central in afghanistan between bin laden himself, his main deputy, who was taken out in an air strike not too long after 9/11 in afghanistan. but then if there is a local or operational cell mastermind and leader, that's absolutely, without dad, nashry, who is in guantanamo right now. he was the co-lead with another al qaeda detainee who is part of the 9/11 five but was also very much involved in the lead-up to the ship's operations as they called it. his name is walid banatash. he was arrested in a case of mistaken identity somewhere in 1999, the summer of 1999. bin laden ordered him, when he was released from yemeni custody, to get back to afghanistan. he wound up going to karachi,

pakistan, to shake mohammed's right hand man. so he went from one major operation, ships, to what they call the air operation, the planes operation. so then nasry not only was he the al qaeda lead that communicated clandestinely with al qaeda core, he also, we later learned, became the operations chief for all the arabian peninsula for al qaeda. and in fact it was his henchmen who were coming after us when we were working, we later learned, trying to hit us in yemen and then later do a truck bomb operation against the embassy in sanaa. so he was captured, as you know, in dubai sometime in 2002, and he's been in u.s. custody ever since that time. but i have to say, an editorial comment on my part, in a big way, he's still not even past preliminary hearings and legal

proceedings in guantanamo. so not even close to trial at this point. it is a capital case, but we hope that justice will prevail. >> inching closer. >> inching closer, he said. >> yeah. >> anyone on this side? >> sir, i have a question. >> go ahead. >> so first of all, thank you very much for coming out here and sharing your experiences. for an operation like that when you essentially are acting on behalf of the united states, what's the reach in terms of kind of the guidance and kind of the communications that you're getting in terms of, hey, are you thinking about this? how much kind of micro management are you getting from, you know, back stateside where it comes to being able to focus on your operation and actually

get your head down and getting the stuff done versus having to -- obviously you have someone that's going to be acting as an intermediary back there. i'm just curious how much reach-back there was coming to you all when you were over there. >> do you have anything? >> i was just going to say i didn't feel it at all. we had one supervisor on the ground. he filtered everything for us. we were completely focused on our mission with no interference. always obviously information being fed back to washington, d.c. and our headquarters at the time and the fbi, but never felt that we were getting micromanaged at all. i think the event was so unique at the time that it was not something that anybody thought would have happened. so with all of the moving parts,

i think they were very thankful for all the information we were pushing out, and it was a great deal of information, especially from bob's end, but definitely we had a lot that we were pushing out as well. >> and that's a really important question because as you probably, you know, get the sense and paint the story in a narrative that there's a tremendous amount of pressure on the field element in the lexicon of the intelligence community and law enforcement, the requirements are just flooding in. but here's the big, very important part of this. first of all, it was an exceptional relationship between ncis and fbi from top leadership down to the special agents working the case in the field, on the ground. two, the fbi had already established the protocols with the sayoc, so that was up and running. kind of the central brain node back at fbi headquarters tied in with ncis headquarters and the

national security council. but then also too, and from my perspective, the single biggest and most important ingredient, we were blessed to have tremendous leadership that acted as a filter and a blocking back to make sure that we weren't feeling that professional and otherwise pressure to stay focused on the job, you know, working -- i mean we tried to sleep as little as we possibly could because there was just so much to be done. but we never planned for, trained for, or experienced a situation like -- yeah, large responses to terrorism events like east africa, as i mentioned, but not with the circumstances as occurred with the uss cole attack. so, again, from my perspective, it probably couldn't have worked better. we just had tremendous leadership the entire time. >> yeah. >> go ahead. [ inaudible question ]

>> thank you. >> we know about questionable threat assessments that were submitted out to the navy. >> right. >> yemen was not the typical port for our sailors for ships to pull into to. it certainly wasn't a liberty port. we look at places like naples and those types of things. the work that was done on threat assessments where we put out the information about we're concerned about this area, yet they obviously put a lot of great detail in their plan and were able to nail the ship, and it didn't come by accident because with the servicing that was done for that ship on that

particular day, that particular port, if you could expand a little bit about how that played into this because -- [ inaudible ] >> of course right as the event happened, it was self-evident. really a very broad, complex, and again data-rich type of situation, but you're absolutely right. really quite unique in post-desert storm/desert shield for navy ship visits. it was designed to be a brief spot for fuel and a logistics node. i know i was involved for some of the advanced force protection and counterintelligence teams with fifth fleet and going to djibouti and eritrea, and then yemen, aden were the top three finalists. command leadership and the experts involved at the end of the day figured that because of the standoff -- and i don't mean

for there to be any irony here. but because of the standoff and the refueling dolphin some 400 to 500 meters from the shore, that there would be natural standoff from, you know, launched weapons, mortars of some kind. but what al qaeda did for its part was really quite ingenious in that exploiting the local cell that mr. gunn mentioned, he was actually taken out on an air strike on the 1st of january this year. he was the senior local guy, the masterminds tapped into because they knew him from relationships in afghanistan, bosnia, and other places, okay? but bed wi clouseau would not know the nuts andcompartmentali. but through those trusted relationships, they knew the

degree they could hide in plain sight because one of the things i'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen, has so often been written, and i've met a lot of smart people in the community that are convinced the yemen government was complicit. there's not one the yemen government is complicit and there's no evidence that come my way, that's counterintuitive and if anything the government was an enemy of that kind of extremist islam so migrator point there is they were able to exploit the conditions and have a colossal failure that would have otherwise brought a lot of attention, of boat with explosives stuck in the sand in january 2000, not one police officer or any government official we know of were aware of it so they were quite artful in leveraging their cultural intelligence, knowledge in those sorts of things to pull it off. the other part is my organization to an extent the cia responsible for doing

country threat assessments at the time and they talked about the permissive environment for transnational terrorist groups and that there are a lot of pockets outside of the major city and aidan proper itself of unknowns by the government so therefore the caveat, is far as port visits and things like that, there's nothing definitive that said don't go to a country like yemen. anyone else have a question? >> i like to thank you both for a fascinating discussion. [ applause ] >> it's been remarkable what you could share with us and as we said before we all owe you a great deal of gratitude for

your servants . >> thank you very much. thank you all for coming as well. this will be on c-span's website so if you'd like to see more refer someone to it. thank you for coming out. [ applause ] this is a special edition of american history tv, a sample of the compelling history program that error every weekend on american history tv like lectures and history, american artifacts, real america that the civil war , oral histories, the presidency and special event coverage about our nations history. enjoy american history tv now and every weekend on cspan-3.

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