attorney and historian, and this program hosted by baylor university law school. watch thursday beginning at 8 pm eastern and enjoy american history tv this weekend on c-span 3. on october 12th, 2000, took idea suicide bombers attacked uss cole in yemen's harbor, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39. the naval criminal investigative service and the fbi lead a joint investigation into the bombing. next the national law

enforcement museum hosts two former and see i.s. special agents who share their experiences working on the uss cole investigations. this is an hour and 20 minutes. good evening. good evening. welcome to the national on forsman museum. we are thrilled to have you here tonight. my name is lori sharp day. i'm the interim ceo of the funded i would like to thank target. i would like to thank target for making the skull sponsorships with these wonderful programs possible. i am very happy to introduce steven pomerantz, former assistant director and chief of counter-terrorism for the fbi. thank you. >> thank you lori.

i'm only going to be up here for a minute. i want to welcome you. all you have the second person to welcome you to the national love forsman museums program, -- 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. a very significant event in and of itself, it 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 the chief of counter-terrorism at the fbi a long time ago, the mid eighties until roughly 1990 and i can stand up and give you the litany of terrorist attacks. most people in this business can do. many of which occurred before most of you were born.

pan am, the marine corps in lebanon, oklahoma city, uss cole, and certainly 9/11. we talk about those. the rule off of my tongue as if i'm reciting a date of the week for the months of the year. we sometimes forget, although we were the incidents. we forget the individual people, the thousands of men, women, and children who died in attacks. the survivors who lived the rest of their lives in agony over those events. i know it's not true in the case of uss cole. i know that the individuals who died are well remembered individually and collectively. but it is true in other cases. we ask ourselves why. these people are the victims of hate at the hands of pure, unadulterated evil.

there's no rhyme or reason that makes any sense to us. i think it is really important to remember those individuals, when we think of terrorism is not a abstract. it's dozens of people whose lives were taken. many at a early age. it was totally unnecessary, unwarranted, a victim of as i said pure evil. i really quickly want to say that one of the things that press themselves on me in that regard, very, very strongly was my conversation with one of our fbi agents. after the oklahoma city bombing i caught him in a moment when he was standing there looking at the remains of a building with very pensive look on his face. i asked him. he said turned to me and he said i know from our investigation timothy, the, bomber surveilled the building before he committed the crime. should out there and looked. he had to know there was a daycare center. a child day care center in the

building and he still set the bomb. kill people and killed some of the children. i thought how could somebody be so evil us to blow up a building knowing that there are children inside for some abstract hate reason. i think that is part of the reason why the subject matter included here tonight so compelling. i also want to thank the target. who not only target -- they have such friends of law enforcement, they ought to be congratulated and recognized for that. thank you. thank the guests, who we will hear more about in a minute for giving their time. mostly for their service to this country. of which you will hear about one example tonight. i want to thank you for coming. for your interest in coming to this event, which i know you're

going to find fascinating, interesting, and compelling. so with that let me introduce our moderator. he well known local tv anchor. thank you for doing this. >> it's my pleasure. it's my honor to be with all of you tonight as we look at the attack on the uss cole. we have an esteemed panel on the front lines, and hours and days after the attack on uss cole. they are here to share their perspective and insights with us, we will hear your questions as well, you can ask them what is on your mind and follow up on anything that we have set up here. first i think it is important that we may be refresh everyone's memory if we can and take you to the beginning, on october, 12 uss cole guided the

-- off of the harbor into yemen for a routine fuel stop and i both lead ten with explosives and two suicide bombers came up to the ship and detonated it. the cool suffered extensive damage the ship. 39 sailors were wounded. 39 sailors were killed. a jointdxk fbi and and see eye s fast occasion began immediately and link the bomber to al-qaeda officers. i would like to introduce our panel with us tonight. the first is cathy clements, she's a former ncaa especially content a member of a major response team which was the first on the scene of the bombing. also robert mcfadden cookies agent for the and see i.s., fbi investigation of the uss cole bobbing. if we can go back to the beginning i would like to ask you when were you first motive fight about the bombing in with

you here initially? >> so if you go back. october 12th whiskey thursday and i was stationed in naples, italy at the time, and was doing criminal investigations at the time, and major case response. so the first call that i got was to come back to the office. i was told that there had been an explosion on the cool. it was he easy, the information coming out. so people were saying that it was a refueling accident. the fuel going into the ship have exploded in some way. in the initial photos we were seeing from cnn show that that was not the case at all. from the way that the damage looked. that was the initial information. i was told to get ready. myself and my co-team leader enables would then be flying

within the next 24 hours to begin on the ship. >> were you in the region at the time? i know you have been there for a while. >> i was not. i had just left a tour with the ncis office there and i had just started my assignment for a marine expeditionary unit. i was in san jose, california, i have been there for ten, days do doing work ups with marine, counter-intelligence units. so the very, very early morning on the 12th of october i received a call in my room. california time was 3:00 or so in the morning. it was my good friend, special agent randy hughes had a dubai office at ncis and he said he, brother turn on the tv. i said what? it's 3:00 in the morning. he said turn on the tv. cnn breaking news, u.s. navy

destroyer suffers explosion in the port of eaten. i was looking at the tv. ready was look at the tv. we both said oh no, we know with that. is breaking. news governor of yemen says -- intuitively we know it was al-qaeda. >> could you tell from the video that you saw? or you just knew? >> we just. new knowing al-qaeda's motives operandi, there, goals beyond intuition, as investigator intuition is everything, we had this instincts, later that morning i received a call from headquarters, standby, -- in the audience said pack a bag for seven to ten days. head over to yemen. meet the vanguard, ncis.

it took me ten days to get. there it turned into two and a half years. wouldn't trade it for anything. >> how long did it take for the governments 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 around the 16th or 17th of october, the president and his administration said yes, it was not, and by the time there was information coming from the government of yemen as well as -- >> the former ambassador was supposed to be with us tonight. but couldn't make. it at the time of the bombing or around the time of the bombing what was the relationship at the time with yemen? >> from my assignment in dubai and previously in bahrain ian

some colleagues spent quite a bit of time in yemen. in and out. don't want to go to deeply just for the sake of time and history put the rapprochement between the government and a unified yemen in 2000 was really just getting underway, making some progress, especially as far as d.o.t. engagement. the refueling concept there in the port was part of that engagement process. u.s. and yemen. however, with that being said though, my and colleagues forced protection efforts and liaison work was very, very shallow. especially in the south were eight and was because of the civil war and had experienced in the mid 90s to the nineties. it was a getting to know you phase. the state department had made much more progress up north and

the capital. it might be useful for a scene setter that's often forgotten about in the area, i have been going in and out of yemen for the force protection liaison visits counterintelligence work. it was easy to get around there, the threat level was moderate. we know there was an environment for quite a few -- various international terrorist groups. the but when i arrived on the early morning of the 17th of october, what was going on in the background in the middle east, the former prime minister of israel and riots broke out as a result of that visit. so what's important there? in a country like yemen, there were massive street demonstrations so when i arrived i had never seen anything like that before, so this was all broiling in the

background that turned the temperature up as far as the force protection situation again, that kind of danger element. >> aging comments, to talk a little bit about your role with the response team if you would, and what you did initially. >> it was my responsibility to work with the fbi and do body recovery off of the ship, as well as to close the blast recovery, any kind of evidence that would come from the ship. so once we hit the ground, myself and and my teammate, we had to marry up with the guys that were coming in from bahrain so is always telling somebody earlier today, and csis if you watch the show, our agency is truly nothing like the show, although it's very entertaining. but we are about 2000 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 a generalists. we're 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, it's one ranger, one fight, it's kind of one agent, one fight. there were six of us on the ground and as myself and don thompson hit the tarmac, because the commander six fleet allowed us to use his jet from naples, italy, we want direct into aid in. literally the pilot said, good luck. and turned right around and left a standing on the tarmac, with her seat bag full with whatever care we could put back in a duffel bag filled with personal gear. and we walked into what was probably not much bigger than this room as the terminal for the airport. i just as we get into the terminal, i see 1:30 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 cheap's, they come rolling up and i'd say 18 thought they were being every invaded by americans at that point, so it was a stand down. we got in that friday morning, roughly ten or 11:00. we didn't leave the airport until ten or 11 at night and then the yemenis wanted us the convoy so that they can control where the americans were having access. so as a convoy, we left at the airport all the way around the bay, dropped at the marines where it would be considered a beach head that controlled access to the coal, and then we all filing again and go to the hotel which was the hotel where all the american agencies were staying. so that was at about 1:00 in the morning it, it was probably our first meeting. from there, we quickly met, got

up the next morning, seven in the morning. now we're trying to divide out, that probably didn't see bob other than morning meanings and evening meetings with our own seem commuter, 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 agents, john thompson, harry richardson and mike marx who was a post blast expert went out to the ship with a team of about 15 fbi agents. and we convoy it with yemenis, taking us back around the bay to go through numerous checkpoints and then to 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 about when you saw the ship in person. and i want to get into evidence

collection and how difficult that was. your thoughts initially when you laid eyes on it? >> did you get to the ship? >> i did. my answer will be much shorter. if you visit the ship in kathy's, she's rugged on a warrior and a very modest about this, but i'll say that the conditions were extraordinarily difficult. i, mean it was very emotional and grouping to sue the trip that were. but even in october in the south of yemen, average temperatures somewhere between 95 and 105 fahrenheit with partly high humidity. 70 to 90%. so just the sites, the sounds, the orders and the hazards were just incredible. but, if you need anything to make you anymore patriotic to see the working relationship within the fbi, forensic team, the crew was just absolutely incredible. >> so the first day i get to

the ship, we can't gain access to a, and we need a new many boat to get this out to the ship where it wasn't in the middle of the harbor, so there's 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 ships of the very first day, we actually decided, since we're here, we might as well think of an explosion. it's been part 360 degrees, so there's going to be possible items of evidence and all direction. so the tide comes in and out of the day, everything hits the shoreline so we walk the shoreline for whatever we can find. collected all of that up and by the time we came back, the fbi -- my little duffel bag of here, i laugh about it now, the fbi literally erected an entire tent and had plastic rubber made tampa where that had -- the with the length of it with

every piece of evidence collection equipment you could ever ask for. so we had that to be able to start processing what we found. when we are finally able to get on the ship, the second day, it was to go in a yemeni garbage scowl, basically out to the ship, so you didn't want to touch anything because that's where they collected their garbage. you get on to a cement structure in the middle of the bay which was a refueling structure. and from there, we took the latter up to the ship. that ship depending on whether the generator, the only generator working on the ship to keep the villages empty and to keep the ship righted. if it wasn't it would be listed 60 degrees from the dolphin and made it a little more difficult to get on board anyone who's been around the military knows

that ships are loud. there's always a lot of things going on. people are talking. there are always radios depending on what is being, done a very somber moment. if you haven't been around a military if you could just encapsulate in anyone's ship, this is their home. they deployed for six months. this is where they have a barbershop. they have their homes. fleet. now we are walking into someone 's home which as a investigator it makes it that much more difficult because you would prefer that in any kind of especially death investigation that the family members were not 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 brew engaged but removed

from the investigation of the same time. >> is it your all the crew stayed on the gold? how many roughly we're talking about? >> this roughly 50 that i think were taken off, injured and dead, and there is a crew of roughly 350 and the destroyer. >> so you have to work with all of them around you? >> yes. >> did they provide any insights? >> it came out of nowhere. >> right. >> early on, like i said there were four of us, the fbi agent, we divided into teams, mike was doing post last. so his main job was on the deck. so the ship. i was doing body recovery so i was inside the ship finding the people that had been pinned into the ship through the explosion. and then we had to other people doing interviews of the crew to

determine what they saw. or they were. if they had sustained injuries. a lot of them assisted with the removal of victims have their crewmates when they were taken to the hospitals in germany, and then to the united states. >> i think we have heard that there was a truck bomb at the towers, route, to talk about the sophistication of the power, and the extent of the damage that it did. so the extent of the damage. so from the photos, especially that photo, you're getting maybe half of the damage that was done. it went into half of the heel and then intimate ship. if that helps anybody. the halfway line of the ship, the damage pushes all the way into the mid line of the ship in that down all the way to the

bottom. and it buckles the keel. so the main tech is what you see. decked out is them mess decks which is where everybody eight. that is where a lot of our victims were. excuse me, that's not exactly true. as we divided up our responsibilities there were a lot of people that came in. not just mcas and not just fbi. i will take a step back. there was a mobile salvage unit that has expertise in going under water and can go through the ship and under the water. they were then responsible for locating victims under the water line. 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. there are engine compartments

underneath the mistakes in which the deck plating just buckled up this way, and then buckled down. so think 360 degrees. everything is just kind of moving out like a bomb, and bending steel. >> talk to us about the investigation from your perspective. and how long did it take for eight linked to be made to al-qaeda? >> to answer the last part of your question, from all sorts of intelligence, that's with the fbi and ncis team said, this will be eight intelligence investigation. having the greatest resources and assets out there it was coming in very early that they were very strong indications that there was al-qaeda operandi from east africa for example. so that developed, it's just

the beginning to provide a vector for us to do the things we were going to do. so in the morning of the 17th, not too long in the command post, cathy pensions ejector, c and the great late john o'neill had a briefing that morning, inside -- behind the scenes they were negotiating with the yemeni foreign interior ministry as well as our intelligence service to be able to take the u.s. investigative team out to the sites that were known at that point. there were four sites if i'm on track for the land part of the investigation. we went on the mass convoy that morning. and we had the fbi hrt team,

hostage response team, very thankful they were there. many unknowns there. with all of their equipment. so we went to the first of four sites, the first where apparently they had done most of the work in the fabrication on the boat that was used. we had teams divided up that we can do the forensic examination plus leads. i and a partner from fbi new york who was a nypd police detective who worked extensively on the east african bombings. nairobi, kenya, tanzania in 1998. he arrived with a coat that says for the next site, which was also called the safe house. which is where the two suicide bombers, i'm going a little bit forward in the narrative because we knew this later but it was strongly suspected at the time, that was the point where they actually worked on the boat before the launch.

there was a little bit more fabrication. they had a big thing to work on the oat board motor. that was the actual location. we had the good fortune of having a eyewitness, a laborer working on the roof of the house next door, that we had access to the suicide bombers very gently drove the suv and the boat swung around the neighborhood by a speed bump a passenger got up to look. because they had several hundred kilograms of high explosives in that boat. and then he could make its way to the port. so another team, and csis, fbi, jay téa york as well as the duty gfs washington d.c., washington field office went to the next side which was the actual boat launch location. and then the fourth site that morning that started to examination was the lookout

location, which the al-qaeda pull this off, certainly did their case 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 cold 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 you're on evidence, can you touch on what you glean from some of the evidence collected? was that a tedious process, we talk about pins and tents 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 on the flight deck

of the ship. so we had sifting teams that we would collect, may 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's actually truly billowed on the cool and was degree that wasn't part of the coal in any fashion and those then, those piles of, don't know what it is but this definitely isn't it and those belong to the coal. we would take those two piles and then taken back down to the

post blast sifters to then served him again and go back through it. they found all sorts of things in those sifting's from every single deck. so biological material was found, dna that was found was actually coming back to the individuals that hide identified parts of the boat that were recovered from the outboard, outboard motor to the serial number to the parts of the red carpet that was on the deck of the boat. 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 week. and we could not have done our job though if the mastered arms that was on that deck, 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 crow, he was great. convince the captain, please don't clean this or sweep this or watch this, but there was through the ship, when the explosion occurs, diesel fuel rain down on the ship, so the whole ship was covered. so it acted kind of like a sticky material that could collect the evidence that we are looking for as the zouave blast came over the ship. it all just kind of stuck. but then we were able to use that and collecting all the evidence that we needed so lots of pieces, 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 later were examined. >> you interviewed --

is that correct? >> exactly. >> i don't really care if i myths pronounce it you've got a lot of. information and intel for him, tell us a little bit about him and what he told you and was able to tell you? >> sure. and again, with credit to faster boat in 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 negotiation process, finally when we had access, primarily my partner obviously former fbi agent terrifically talented. much more famous partner than me and the partnership and that's ok, he deserves it. when we finally had access to him, he -- has rolled within the local conspiracy and this fit within the al-qaeda did things, very

compartmented centrally controlled organization. only the two mastermind, which will probably get to, we had all the pieces. but he was a trusted associate confidant of the cell taking direction from of ghana stan from al-qaeda central, but he was trusted in the sense that he had been in places like bosnia, he had been to afghanistan, he had these associations. and he was the underlying protegee of the local cell leader. so when we finally had access to him and again for setting the scene of how it was, after all this buildup of months, ali and i were in there for the room, chomping at the bit. the interrogation room was something out of central casting and i kind of more dungeon like an office like. the room was filled with the yemeni officers are waiting to see what was going to happen and right at the point where we are about to start the interview, he had of the am and intelligence service for the

entire south walked into the room and everyone on the yemen side, british star from the old colonial days click their heels and saluted the colonel general and he looked at us and kind of nodded dismissively, because that's a whole other story with the relationship there. and he made a beeline to -- he stepped up and then they kissed right cheek, left chic, right cheek and then the colonel was whispering sweet nothings. and for my part, bang my fist on the table salon, what's going on here? you know, all the same thing. and so the colonel said okay, have at it. and he sat there kind of like, have had it. and that was the start of the interview. but the short of the story over many nights, many days in a row, building reporter, little bit of counting and finding with

the motivators word for corset, even though he is long departed now. because he just did not live 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 is the would videographer which was all very valuable. and one very quick kind of postscript to that because 9/11 inextricably tied this multi muslim country with the yemen coal investigation. after we had to leave the country because a very serious threat. one 9/11 happened, the team was even a much smaller because of the threat but our first order of business from headquarters fbi and furious was to get him by any means necessary, that was actually said, by any means necessarily. so we were able to through

liaison, have him come from eight in tucson and then we had access to him, very early morning of the 13th of september. and he had no idea why -- 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's one after? >> yes sir. he mentioned he was supposed to be the videographer for that day, is there any footage? did he oversleep or something? >> that's right. that's with the investigation, we did not believe him at all because that's not gold, it's platinum if they had that propaganda. but his story was that he woke up for prayers, he put his alarm -- his patron silence because they had a code, one zero one zero 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 men hours taking down, that tape of it exists, never surfaced so i tend to believe that story. >> talk a little bit more about the al-qaeda connection and any collection down the road to bin laden and what we learned after 9/11. >> as i mentioned, with each atf in new york and other fbi colleagues who had intermittent all itch of how pleased africa was pulled off, right from the beginning, they were noticing the same type of trade details, the house that was rented for example the safe house, kind of equivalency yemen style. they say east africa was exactly the same in both locations. so that kind of tactics techniques and procedures combined with all sorts of intelligence, it very early on show that there was a

definitive linked to al-qaeda with his operation. some of the same people that were involved in the east africa were involved in the coal. two of the masterminds for example that was intelligence and they were known to involve in the east africa. >> we talk about hindsight, but not to be cliché, i mean, are there things that people have poured over and said, this could've prevented this or prevented that, something down the road in the future? >> i'd be just guessing. >> i'm in the short answer to that is really a 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 other sunni extremes movements, al-qaeda as an example, or extremely compartmented -- they really know how to keep secrets. so i say that just by way of how difficult it is to have a

human penetration operation northward nation like that. there really is so very modestly sized. much smaller than most folks realize. it will be great to hear pastors perspective, but the geopolitical events and zeitgeist at the time, that was the optimal place for a brief stop for fuel for ships going into the arabian and persian gulf's. that was a national command decision, the big however was our organization and others in the intelligence community, including the cia pointing to their many more unknowns about the security posture so that's the part out of a great tragedy like that, many lessons learned have been derived and change policy for example and force protection posture, a change policy on information sharing amongst law enforcement intelligence agencies. so out of tragedy, a lot of

good has come out of it. >> talk about the relationship, if you both would. the government in yemen get in your way? where the 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 government idle. i really was focused on the ship. so my interaction would be just to and from the hotel to their. and that posture never changed. you could always see, and although we didn't have access to intelligence that was going out, oh two could 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 changed your like all right, they've heard something, there is something changing. then you just have to stay

cognizant of the access to the boat and everything else that we had through those things. >> you know stephen started off the conversation talking about the lives of american sailors who were wounded and died, what was it like to go on to that ship every day and be around them? you talk about how quiet it was? the things never change? were you on their weeks, 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. >> i was a very tight timeline. the ship was in peril. >> when you say you became the target, what do you mean by that? >> so in the evening, it would be one of those times in the hotel that you can actually kind of sit back, have a beer and discuss the events of the

day and kind of unclassified area with other people and i remember looking up, and you look up and there's cnn on the tv and you're like, can you turn the tv up? and they've just now announced, this is how i found out, that the hotel is now a target of a possible terrorist vehicle attack. and so we all kind of looked at each other and said, maybe we need to go have a meeting. and then so 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 sailors. the sailors wanted to help us, at all costs, obviously. tell me will they or and will use the generator to realign the armor meant to actually fire something off. and like yeah, we're not going to do that. >> i'd be nice but --

>> it might feel good right now but -- but they definitely want to help us. so a collection of whatever we could on those ships. as we removed bodies, they were instrumental in putting together friends, basically, that would then as we put flags on every one of the body bags, they would then escort those bodies off the ship to a waiting room, which through you and french cools rue -- so than it would drive them in the boat to our were waiting, makeshift mortuary that we have, until we got him 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, no wayne and what bob alluded to, it's 110 220. it's humid. by day two, i don't wish to

cross you out but they're entomology sets in. so we have flies, we have larva, we have all sorts of things and immediately. the crew began to always assume it's their friends versus we have all of the ships stores that have all those generators that have gone down. there's a lot of food. i was at lunch when they bomb hit. so there was 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. it was the same one from the day-to-day that have pulled in fact if you will. it wasn't until we had the last body off that the captain took that down. the next morning, of fresh and seen one up and fresh attitude

one up. the radios came back on. you could hear people start to clean. we were at that point where different atmosphere was there once all the bodies had been removed. and we are 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 tears and they had pride in it. so i wanted to go back to that. >> thank you for sharing that. bob you talk about the planning. how long have they been planning this. you said they knew exactly what they were doing, it seemed almost like it was a perfect target where it was. >> based on, that it's a great question though, that my overview would include events up to fairly recently for having myself and colleagues access to some of the highly value detainees, including the two most intimately involved with the operation taking orders from afghanistan there in the high value detainees

program. so with the planning was originally, al-qaeda central referred to it as the ships operation in arabic. the original plan was a full prong simultaneous attack at various locations. and another really small port but in al-qaeda fashion, we know this largely from those in the organization who provided the information to us during the interview on interrogation. bin laden himself, with his deputy at the time, decided let's go conservative we. want to get a great hold, whether it's a commercial or u.s. military vessel. and it was part of their land, he staff ruckus and sea and air oh prudence. so as best as the off the thuggish and can tell, you can tell they started hatching the idea at least two years before. the cold was attacked, but they actually were underway in

operational in yemen by the spring of 1999. and the coal, again, -- not much of this is in the public realm yet, the goal was to acquire 40 tons, four zero tons of high explosives and the ultimate was going to be filling a dow, which is their fishing boat in the region, a large dow with high explosives so that with escorts, he'll 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 no prior attempt back in january. >> against the uss sullivan's. >> and what happened there? >> they sought their own boat. >> often it's -- >> but they learned. >> they did, in fact, these leader was a man who details --

would happen this 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 latent with the high explosives that when they try to release it from the trail, it was stuck in the sand and there wasn't enough time 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 him the beach boy five. they were to wreck give -- terrific witnesses. >> roughly how many people were taken into custody and are they still in custody and have some passed on? >> really good question as to how many in custody. >> was it dozens? >> i would say more along the lines of scores because kind of one of those unique thugs who could yoga, to actually place in custody witnesses and when we asked him about that what is

going on, they say they're in protective custody. we said custody, yes because there may be suspicion there. so sorting the witnesses from the actual members involved, they had at least six half dozen that we wanted to access to. >> how do you develop that report with someone? you said it took days and days to build that up. >> while in brief on a complex topic, no tricks. >> we were with a translator? >> we weren't working with a translator because ali was native, fluent lebanese, arabic speaker and i'm trained formerly in arabic and i spent a lot of time, very good arabic with a philadelphia accent. it's effective. building reporter, one is the training i have to say our old outfit, high value and training in a clinical setting, but also

terrific mentoring, o.j. tea program for the art and science of the interview on integration. again, credit to my former boss who is a champion of that. ali, although less tenured than, me let's experienced, he was just a natural people person. so building report is not necessarily bad about tea and biscuits, but it's about getting to things like motivation. when makes an individual take, actually let those things and kind of form up an operational quid pro pro. does that mean is going to give us everything instantly? no. but over the course of time, it's quite effective in building that -- think of it in the terms of the metaphor of the helicopter. certainly in the target. may not be right for the bull's-eye, but it's going to keep circling until you are getting more and more. >> this is a massive team of different agencies working together. i guess that's a priority. i heard you guys mention names

of colleagues and people under you or superiors to. it's a humbling thing, the way you talk about it. everybody is working together. >> talk about it as a layman out there, we may not understand how you will come together and work together. >> wow, okay. so from -- just think my optically of just the ship. there is one team working the dex, one team working to recover bodies that are considered in the drier areas. one team that's in the water. we had a great search out into the bay with fbi and special forces. and literally has people are coming together and telling each other what they find, it's more of a collaborative operation. and then definitely, we were

all very curious of what he was finding out separately from where we were collecting and really our job is just the post is that stuff that's left. he was getting the -- whole who did you find today? or where you go? a big able to then collect the dots. egos aside, there is no room for that in a situation like this. you are there for the ship and i think we all felt that. definitely, you know, you rally around 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 swift, how quickly you are in and out of the location, you do what you have to do to make it work. we didn't have any problems on our teams. >> cathy mentioned about

connecting the dots, do you remember if there was a moment where it's like, this is, it is coming together and the world will soon know what we're finding? i'm sure you have to sit on a lot for a long period of time. >> that's right. to kathy's great points, it really is a massive team effort and this type of situation was unprecedented, and certainly for the amenities, then it was for the united states government and federal law enforcement and intelligence community. so the response was just, as you can gather, we're talking about its fbi, and csis, we also had atf, you have diplomatic security service. you had worldwide leads coming in from various agencies, so it takes a team. now, i know for myself never having been involved in anything that remotely of that size, i was really wondering, how are we going to put to figure? but like kathy 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 debrief's and putting that together.

within a few days of the cold attack, there was a massive white board with photographs that were required from various murray needs that as to who was who and well who is involved in what we're working on. so the recommit, as far as al-qaeda, again setting aside my bias for the thinking in knowing it was from the beginning, not long after i arrived, there was compelling evidence and agreement consensus, fbi, cia, and others of 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 former practitioner level. but we knew it was there. >> others try to take credit but you knew that it wasn't. >> that's another great point, we lost because among others,

the 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 to microphones on either side and please, step up if you have a question for our special agent special guests. anything that we have been touched on? but you do have to go to the mic please if you would. >> since i was close. there's an 800 pound elephant in this room, so i'm going to front it, okay? the ambassador is not here, so i might phrase this question, you know where i'm going. i might phrase this question a little 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 often say that, i

was retired by the time this took place. but i was involved early on, in about the mid 19 eighties, there was a lot of that was passed that gave us jurisdiction abroad, federal law enforcement to conduct criminal investigations involving terrorism. that was a new thing for us. and the coal was one of the 15 years later. but i found pretty quickly that failure was 90% the cooperation you got from the locals in the country that you went to, how much access to give, you how much access you, got for certain countries that's been around like a two dollar top with a pretense of cooperation. so that's the one thing. the second thing was, the state department. how much latitude they gave you to operate. in the case of the coal, any mention our mutual colleague of ours, our friend john o'neil

was the fbi agent in charge who passed away in 9/11. he was retired and a month later, he was taking the job of 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 if you've done any more than superficial you know about his dealings with the ambassador who is not here, recognize. it is the elephant in the room. so i ask you to say what you will about how that impacted your investigation. >> yes, well stephen, i know it remains a topic of great interest and what was written about it. i was privy to some of the conversations, and some of the turn 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 the ncis spent a lot of time in yemen but i don't know if there was a single member of the fbi team that was in a yemen, only because it was not part of the mission. so knowing the protocols at the state department or not knowing them, created a natural tension. not to the more important part of it. did it impact the investigation. from my perspective it did not. we were kind of very surprised, that john neil was not allowed in the country. his clearance was denied. his investigative team was back, due to the threat. >> who made the call? >> in any country it's the ambassadors call for diplomatic clearance for government personnel. you again we would have wished it could've 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 about liaison with the negotiation, having spent a lot of my career overseas and in the middle east, you are absolutely right about how important that is whether the host nation is cooperative or not. in short yet is anything but cooperative. the team was working very hard at associate, the government level. we for our part we're working the personal relationship at the ground level and that was really important for getting those things. the big government of yemen may say no, no, cannot, cannot, but on the ground and local level we were making progress. from the liaison, and getting concessions minor enough that it would rise to the level of

the top leadership so that was a really important part of moving the investigation forward. as ambassador boating said in a few interviews, i think that she summed it up as the relationship was quite complex. >> for you hire very professional, talented people. since this is my business i'm sure everyone in the room has great respect for what you did. under the circumstances you just outlined it's even more incredible, the results. you should be applauded and congratulated for what you did. >> thank you. [applause] i appreciate it. that's very kind. i won't speak for kathy but i think the dear lord i had to place an opportunity to work on something like that. but again, talk about that lack

of cooperation and pulling teeth. exhibition every day with the yemen intelligence service to look at evidence. we really got nowhere until deep into 2001 but it wasn't until 9/11 that witnesses up close and personal was a watershed event and -- change overnight. literally. one of the key aspects of this and i believe it is in the book, black banners, we head in meeting, myself ncis. we only had a couple of swat protectors. we were the only one in the country on 9:12. we had a meeting with the head of the yemeni intelligence services, he had a very close relationship with one, -- he was asking how john was. we had heard earlier on the

12th of november that john o'neill was missing and presumed dead. when the general asked about the rather, john, how is he, ali choked up and said john maybe dead. the general started to tear up as well. we he picked up the phone. called the control tower and told them the last yemeni flight was not to leave until they had support. so the corporation after that was just absolutely tremendous. we had access to hype, locating al-qaeda members after that. it was a treasure trove of information post 9/11. >> any other questions? i have several questions. i'll try to limit the ones that i have. just a bit of background on who

i am. my name is tom. all my brother was one of the 17 on board the uss cole. one of the 17 that was killed. and just a little bit of background on what you are saying. this is knotty blame game. my information about john o'neil, a little bit of secondhand. he was more in contact with my father. giving him detail the case throughout. the kind of person he is, you know, this when he first heard about the attack his response was probably expletive. he is kind of very, it's true, the reason is that john o'neill, as you know it was al-qaeda who did an attack right when you heard about it. so he was really angry about it. and thus the kind of relationship, the kind of person he is. to keep that in mind, when his

relationship with the ambassador boding for my information, maybe i could be wrong but they did not have to him well at all which is why he was not allowed back into the country to continue the investigation in regards to what happened to my brother. i did have one particular question for each of you. agent clemency said you are right there on november 13th. >> the 11th. >> the attack on the 12th. >> you are recovering evidence as well. what was going on with the probe from october 12 to 13? they start any investigation themselves? or where they just there to try to keep the ship afloat? i know that is pretty much what they did. but they were focused on. keeping the ship afloat and keeping it, going making sure

that no other damage has taken place. i'm kind of curious what was going on in the time between the attack and your arrival. a question i have for you sir. you mention one name. sorry if i got it wrong. he is the latest perpetrator who's killed. but there are several others. born in guangzhou amenable bay, cheri, he's won that would be brought to trial. and he's been told, he's the master might of the attack. i kind of want to know who is the actual mastermind. was he just a gopher? from my information he was. who was actually responsible? >> so talk about the crew. the explosion occurs. it is noon.

they are in the line, getting food, if they are not helping due to some other refueling event on that ship. so part of what helped the ship was actually being in a refilling status. if you understand how they secure the brightening in, or closing compartments help to keep the ship afloat. the crew then actually got all of the injured off of the ship. either crew took care of everything that they define. and then were intimately responsible for helping to keep that ship afloat. not just that one day before we arrived. but the entire time that we were there. two or three times the generator would go down and we would come up to the main decks and wonder what the next movements would be. the color in the captain within

four with the problem was. so they did a lot to keep that ship afloat period. you can't underestimate the work that they do. they help like i said with all of that evidence collection on the deck. and we're concerned about asked for moving their other friends. and getting the remains off the ship. so no, they were intimately involved with maintaining their ship. 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. >> your question about who was the mastermind. your brother and all his shipmates, god rest his soul.

that's a really good question because i guess as it goes, success has many fathers. and it is mostly the press reporting bet the mastermind, if there was a mastermind, think a terms of the military structure or the operation element, that's how it was hatched in afghanistan between bin laden himself, his main deputy, whose taken out in a airstrike not too long after 9/11 and afghanistan. but if there is a operational mastermind or leader that is without a doubt -- who is in guantánamo right now. he was the cold lead with another al-qaeda detainee who's part of the 9/11 five. but who's also very much involved in the lead up to the ships operations. his name is waleed. but natasha is short of a very

rich story. he was arrested in the case of mistaken identity. somewhere in 1999. summer of 1999. bin laden ordered him when he was released from afghan yesterday to go to -- . he wound up going to pakistan, to be muhammad's mean right-hand. he went to the operation of ships to the plains operation. so not only was he the al-qaeda lead that communicated clandestinely with okay decor. he also, we later learned, became the operations chief for all the peninsula, for al-qaeda. in fact it was his henchmen who are coming after us when we were working, we later learned trying to hit us in yemen, then later tried to do a truck bomb operation against -- and santa. he was in u.s. custody ever

since that time. i have to say a editorial comment on my part, he is still not even past preliminary hearings. and leaving procedures in guantánamo. it's a capital case. but we hope that justice will prevail. >> inching closer you said. >> inching closer. yeah. >> need one on the side? >> thank you very much for coming out, and sharing your experiences. for an operation like that when you essentially are working on behalf of the united states wet is the reach in terms of the guidance and the communications that you are getting, when your

deployed like that in terms of are you thinking about this in terms of how much micromanagement are you getting from the stateside, when it comes to being able to focus on your operation and head down and get the stuff down, versus obviously having someone who's gonna be acting as a intermediary back there. how much outreach or how much pushback there was, to you all when you are over there? >> i was just going to say i did not feel at all. we had one supervised 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. the fbi. never fell that we were getting micromanaged at all.

i think that the event was so unique at the time that it was not that anyone that would have happened. so with all of the moving parts i think that they were very thankful for all of the information that we were pushing out. it was a great deal of information. especially from bobs and. but definitely we had a lot that we were pushing out as well. >> that's a really important question because you can probably get the sense and paint this story and the narrative that there's a tremendous amount of pressure on the field element, and the lexicon of the law enforcement, the requirements just flooding in. but here's the big very important part of this. first of, all it was an exceptional relationship between mcas and fbi from top leadership down to the special agents working the case in the field and on ground.

to, the fbi had already established the protocols with the sayoc, so that was up and running, kind of a central brain node back at the fbi headquarters tied in with and csis headquarters at the national security council. but also from my perspective, the single most biggest and big most important ingredient, we are blessed to have tremendous leadership that acted as a filter blocking at the nature that we weren't feeling that professional otherwise pressure to stay focused on the job. you know, we tried to's leap as little as we possibly could because there was so much to be done. but we never planned for, trained for or experienced a situation like this. a larger response to terrorism events like east africa, as i mentioned, but no but the circumstances as occurred with the uss cole attacks so again, from my perspective probably couldn't have work better we,

just had tremendous leadership the entire time. >> go ahead. >> we know that -- [inaudible] humid was not the typical port, where ships were tulane. certainly wasn't the liberty for it and when you look at places like naples and those types of things, the work that was done on the predecessors with the information about the concern about this area, yet

they obviously please put on a lot of great detail the plan that they were able to nail the ship and it didn't come by accident because the service inc. that was done for that ship, if you could expand a little bit on how that plays into this? [inaudible] >> i mean of course, as the event happened, it was self evident. really a very broad complex nick and again, data rich type of situation, but you are absolutely right. really quite unique in post desert storm, desert shield for navy ship. it was designed to be a brief stop for fuel and a logistics note. i know i was involved for some of the advanced force protection and counter intelligence teams with fifth fleet, and going to djibouti

and iraq syria. and then yemen for the top three finalists, command leadership and then experts involved at the end of the day figured that because of the standoff, and i don't mean further irony here, but because of the standoff and the refueling golf, and some 400 to 500 meters from the shore, that there would be a natural standoff from launched weapons mortars of some kind, but what al-qaeda did for its part was really quite ingenious in that exploiting the local cell -- he was actually taken out on an air strike on the 1st of january this year. he was the senior local guy that the masterminds tapped into because they knew him from relationships of ghana stand, bosnia and other places. but he would not know the nuts and bolts of the operation

again, because of the car pun meant to lies a shun. but what al-qaeda was able to do, and wing about yemen and generally if not down to ground level, through those trusted relationships, they would agree that they could hide in plain sight because one of the things i'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen, and i've met a lot of smart people in the community that are convinced that the yemen government was complicit, there's not one scintilla of evidence that has combined way that the government -- and again, that's counterintuitive to how al-qaeda operated and if anything, the government was an enemy of that kind of sunni extremist islam. so my greater point there is that they were able to exploit the conditions, they were able to have a colossal failure that would've otherwise brought a lot of attention but with explosive stuck in the ground in january of 2000, not one police officer or any government official that we know of or aware of it, they were really quite hurtful in

leveraging the cultural intelligence, their knowledge and those sorts of things. now, the other part of it is, my organization to an extent, this ei a responsible for doing country see high cpc threat assessments. to threat assessment at that time talked about the permissive environment for transnational terrorist groups and that there were a lot of pockets outside of the major city of -- and 18 itself of unknowns by the government. so therefore, caveat emptier, as far as port physics and things like that but really there is nothing to definitive that said, warning lights of course don't go to a country like yemen. >> anyone else? any other questions? well, i'd like to thank you both for a fascinating

discussion. [applause] it's just been remarkable in as i we said before, we all owe you a great deal of gratitude for your service. you really make a difference. >> thank you very much. >> and we want to thank you all for coming as well. this is going to be on c-span's website, so if you'd like to see more. thank you for coming out. [applause]

next, on history bookshelf. jeff quinn talks about his book, manchin about the life of cult leader charles manchin. mr. gwen reports on how manchin influenced and motivated the members of the cult he called the manchin family who murdered