h.w. bush and has ronald reagan's white house chief of staff and treasury secretary. he's interviewed about leadership and his career by attorney and historian talmadge boston in this program hosted by baylor university law school. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on c-span3. american history tv on c-span3. every weekend documenting america's story. funding for american history tv comes from these companies who support c-span3 as a public service. on october 12, 2000, two al qaeda suicide bombers attacked the navy destroyer "uss cole" in yemen's adan harbor, killing 17

sailors and injuring 39. the naval criminal investigative service and the fbi led a joint investigation into the bombing. next, the national law enforcement museum hosts two former ncis special agents who share their this is an hour and 20 minutes. >> good evening, good evening. welcome to the national law enforcement museum. we're thrilled to have you tonight. i'm the interim ceo of the fund. and i would like to thank target for making these sponsorships for these wonderful programs possible. [ applause ] i am very happy to introduce steve pomerance, former assistant director, and chief of

counterterrorism for the fbi. thank you. [ applause ] >> thank you. so, i won't even be up here for a minute. i want to welcome you all to the national law enforcement museum's witness program. the series explores landmark events in american history by having the participants in those events speak. tonight we're going to look at the attack on the "u.s.s. cole," often thought of as a precursor to 9/11, a 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. as lori said, i was the chief of counterterrorism at the fbi a long, long time ago in the mid-'80s into roughly 1990. and i can do, and i can stand up

and give you the litany of terrorist attacks, the most people in this business can do, many of which occurred before most of you were born, pan am 103, the marine corps barracks in lebron, bombing of oklahoma city building, and certainly 9/11. we talk about those. they roll off my tongue as if, you know, like reciting the days of the week or months of the year. and we sometimes forget, although we remember the incidents, 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 "u.s.s. 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 are the victims of hate at the hands of pure unadulterated evil. there's 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 terrorism, it's not an abstract. it's thousands of people whose lives were taken, many at an early age, that was totally unnecessary, unwarranted, and the victim of, as i said, of pure evil. i just real quickly want to say one of the things that impressed itself upon me very strongly was my conversation with one of our fbi agents after the oklahoma city bombing. and i caught him in a moment where he was standing there looking at the remains of the building with a very pensive look on his face. so i asked him. he turned to me and i 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 there was a daycare center, a child's daycare 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 there were children inside for some abstract hate reason? and that's, i think, part of the reason that this is the subject matter, including what you're going to hear tonight is so compelling. so i want to also thank target for sponsoring this and mahogany who not only sponsored this event, but they are such friends of law enforcement and do so much for the law enforcement community in this country. and they ought to be congratulated and recognized for that. thank you. thank the guests who you'll hear more about in a minute for giving 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 event, which i know you're going to find fascinating and interesting and compelling. so, with that, let me introduce our moderator jim hanley well-known local tv anchor, and thank you for doing this. and, please, the floor is yours, sir. >> thank you, it's my pleasure. [ applause ] and it's my honor to be with all of you tonight as we look back on the attack on the "u.s.s. 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 "u.s.s. cole." and they're here to share their perspective and their insights with us tonight. we're 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 set 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 12th, 2000, the "u.s.s. cole" an aegis-equipped guided missile destroyer was in the aden harbor off of yemen for a routine fuel 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/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, a 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 co-case agent for the ncis/fbi investigation of the "u.s.s. 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, if you go back on, 12th was a thursday, and i was actually stationed in naples, italy, at the time, and was doing criminal 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 what the information was coming out. 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 we 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 leader in naples would then be flying within the next 24 hours to aden, yemen, to begin on the ship. >> agent mcfadden, were you in the region at the time? i know you had been there for a while. >> i was not. i had just left a tour at the u.s. consulate in dubai with the ncis office and had just started my next assignment for a marine expeditionary unit. was in san jose, california, had just been there ten days and doing work with marine intel and counterintelligence units. the very, very early morning of the 12th of october i received a call in my room, california time was around 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, randy, what, it's 3:00 in the morning. he said, turn on the tv. i turned on the tv, cnn, and 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, ah, we know what that is. and it was flashing out "breaking news government of yemen says accidental explosion." we said uh-uh, intuitively we knew it was al-qaeda. >> could you tell from the video you saw or you just knew? >> just knowing al-qaeda's modis operandi, their goals -- 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 that said get ready, stand by. in fact, my boss at the time, he said pack up a bag for about

seven to ten days, then head over to yemen to meet the investigative unit of ncis and fbi. it took me about three days to get there, and the seven to ten days turned into about two and a half years. wouldn't trade it for anything. >> how long did it take for if the government of yemen to acknowledge that this wasn't an accident? because 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 sorts of intelligence that pointed to definitely not accident. >> the former ambassador was supposed to be with us tonight, but could not make it. and one of the questions i wanted to ask her before the bombing or at the time of the bombing, what was our

relationship as a country with yemen? >> you would probably know that. >> well, from my assignment in dubai and previously in bahrain, i and my 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 the history, but the relationship between the u.s. government and the unified yemen in 2000 was really just getting underway in making some progress, especially as far as d.o.d. engagement. and, in fact, the refueling 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' forced protection efforts and liaison work was very, very shallow, especially in the south where aden was because the civil war it had experienced up through the mid-'90s and into

the late '90s. so it was a getting to know you kind of phase. i know ambassador bodin's state department had made much more progress up north in the capital. but it might be useful, too, for a scene setter that's often forgot about in that era, i had been going in and out of yemen since 1997 for forced protection counterintelligence work. it was easy to get around there. the threat level was, you know, moderate, let's say. there were more unknowns than knowns. but we knew it was a permissive environment for quite a few various international terrorist groups. but when i arrived on the early morning of the 17th of october, what was going on in the background, if you recall, if you were a follower of the middle east, the former prime minister of israel had just visited the temple and riots broke out as a result of that visit. so what's the importance there?

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, turn 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. >> so, it was my responsibility to work with the fbi and do body recovery off of the ship, as well as do post-blast recovery, any kind of evidence that would come from the ship. so, once we hit the ground, with myself and another, my teammate, we had to mary up with the guys that were coming in from bahrain. as i was telling someone earlier today, ncis, if you've watched 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, what, five or six times that big, if not larger. so, our supervisors look at us as 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 commander 6 fleet allowed us to use his leer jet from naples, italy. we went direct into aden. literally the pilot said, good luck, and turned right around and left us standing on the tarmac with our sea bag full of whatever gear we could put together and a duffle bag of personal gear. and we walked into what was

probably not much bigger than this room as 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. they all have long guns and jeeps, they come rolling off. i'd say aden thought they were being invaded by americans at that point. it was a stand-down. we got in that friday morning, roughly 10:00 or 11:00. we didn't leave the airport until 10:00 or 11:00 at night. and then the yemen is wanted us to convoy so they could control where the americans were having access. as a convoy we left the airport all the way around the bay, dropped the marines where would be considered like a beachhead that controlled access to the "cole." and we all final in again and go to the hotel which was the hotel

where all the american agencies were staying. so that was -- and that was at, what, about 1:00 in the morning was 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, and all of us kind of formalized our information, figured out where we were going next, and then pushed forward. so, myself and three other agents, don thompson, harry richardson and mike marks who was a post-blast expert, went out to the ship with a team of about 15 fbi agents, and we convoyed 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 both when you saw the ship in person. i want to get into evidence collection, how difficult that was. but your thoughts initially when you laid eyes on it. >> did you get to the ship? >> i did. my answer would be much shorter. >> go ahead. >> kathy is very modest about this, but i'll say that the conditions were extraordinarily difficult. 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 farenheit 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. >> 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. 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 up, the fbi, my little duffle bag of gear, i laugh about it now, the fbi literally erected an entire

tent and had plastic rubbermaid tubberware that went the length of it with every piece of evidence collection equipment that you could ever ask for. 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 scowl out to the ship. so you didn't want to touch anything because it's what they collected their garbage in. you get into 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. if it wasn't it would be listing about 60 degrees off the dolphin

and would've made it a little bit more difficult to get on board. 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 meals, 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 crews stayed on the "cole"? and how many roughly are we talking about? >> 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? >> right. >> 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 marks 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 crewmates when they would take them out to the hospitals in germany and to the united states. >> you know, i can remember hearing back that it's tantamount to trike a truck bomb that we saw in beirut. talk about the explosives and the extent of the damage that it did. >> um, 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 mid-ship, if that helps anybody. so the midline of the ship, that

damage 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 where everybody ate. that's where a lot of our victims were. but then there were -- and 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 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. so there are engine compartments underneath the mess decks 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 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. that's what the fbi/ncis team said. this is going to be in the early phases an intelligence issue, an intelligence investigation. so, having the greatest resources 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 is of course the beginning to provide a vector for us from 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, kathy mentioned the ncis senior special agent mike and the late great john o'neill had a briefing very early that morning. because the behind the scenes ambassador bodin's state department were busy negotiating with yemeni foreign ministry, interior ministry, as well as our 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 massive convoy

that morning. and we had the fbi hr team, the 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 leads at each site. i and a partner from the jtt and fbi new york who was an nypd detective who worked extensively in the east africa bombings, al-qaeda, nairobi, and tanzania in august of 1998. he and i were the co-team captain leads for the next site, which was actually what we called the safe house. 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, the passenger got out to look. why? because they had several hundred kilograms of high explosives in that boat, and then they could make its way to the port. so, another team, ncis/fbi/jttf new york as well as the jttf in

washington, d.c. went to 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 in the investigation. but while we're on evidence, kathy, can you touch on what you've gleaned from some of the evidence collected? was that a tedious process? you're talking about bins 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 the -- why is that completely out of my head? >> deck. >> the front deck. [ laughter ] of the ship. >> it's a long time ago. >> it was. 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 piles of don't know what it is to this definitely isn't it, and those belong to the "cole." we would take those two piles and take them down to the post-blast sifters to then sift them again and go back through it. they found all sorts of things from those siftings from every single deck. biological material was found. dna that was found, actually came back to the individuals that had identified parts of the boat that were recovered, everything from the outboard -- well, not originally, but outboard motor to the serial number to 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 it definitely becomes part of the evidence that you collect. i just have to say this. we could not have done our job,

though, if the -- didn't convince the captain not to do any kind of cleanup of the scene. so, he was instrumental. he was first class. his last name was crow. 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 it the whole ship was covered. it acted kind of 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. >> you interviewed fad al-kuso. i don't really care if i mispronounce his name. >> spot-on pronunciation. >> you gleaned a lot of information and intel from him. >> we did. >> tell us a little bit about him and what he was able to tell you. >> and, again, with credit to ambassador bodin at 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 my partner, former fbi agent, terrifically talented former, much more famous partner than me in the partnership, if that's okay. he deserves it. when we finally had access to

al-kuso and his role within the local conspiracy, and this fit within al-qaeda's modus operandi of how it did things. very, very compartmented centrally-controlled organization. only the two masterminds which we'll probably get to had all the pieces. but kuso was a trusted associate, 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, afghanistan. he had the protege 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 in a kind of more dungeonlike than officelike.

the room was filled with yemeni officers all waiting to see what was going to happen. and 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 al-ansi. and he looked at us and kind of nodded dismissively. because that's a whole 'nother story with the relationship there. and he made a beeline to kuso. they kissed right cheek, left cheek, right cheek. and then the colonel was whispering sweet-nothings in kuso's ear. and i banged my fist on the table, salam, what's going on here. so the colonel said, okay, have at it. and kuso sat there like, have at it. and that was the start of the interview. but the short of the story over

many nights, many days in a row, building rapport, little bit of guile, little bit of cunning and finding what the motivators were for kuso, 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 post-script to that because 9/11 and "the cole" were inexplicably tied. 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 fed by any means necessary that was actually said by any means necessary, first time i'd ever -- so we were able to through the liaison have him flown out from aden. and we had access to him. very early morning of the 13th of september. and kuso had no idea why i and ali were there. he wasn't really 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. >> you mentioned he was supposed to be the videographer that day. did he oversleep? >> that's the investigation -- we did not believe him at all because that's not gold, it's platinum if they had that for propaganda purposes. but his story was that he woke up for prayers, he put his

alarm, his pager on silence because they had a code 1-0-1-0 when the ship was in place, then he would go up to pick up the camera. but for his part he said he overslept because the pager was on silent. we didn't believe him, but later on in investigation spending quite a few man hours digging down, that tape, if it existed, never surfaced. so we 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 trades, details, the house that was rented, for example, the safe house, kind of equivalent to yemen style town home. east africa was exactly the same in both two locations.

that kind of tactics, techniques, and procedures combined with all sorts of intelligence, it very early on showed that 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 masterier minds, 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. 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. >> i mean, the short answer to that, it was 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. and like sunni extremist,

violent extremist movements, al-qaeda as the exemplar extremely compartmented. 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, much smaller than most folks would realize. i mean, it would be great to hear ambassador bodin's perspective. but the geopolitical events, the zeitgeist at the time, that was the ultimate place for brief stops for fuel for ships going into arabian and persian gulfs. the big however was our organization and others in the intelligence community including the cia 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 have been learned and derived. and it changed policy, for

example, and forced 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. the government in yemen, did they get in your way? were they cooperative at a certain point? i'm assuming it didn't start out with a lot of cooperation. i don't know. >> um, 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 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. when the -- 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 cognisant of the access to the boat and everything else that we had through those things. >> steve started out the conversation talking about the lives of 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 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. >> right. >> 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 and kind of an unclassified area with other people. 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 lease this is how i i found out that the hotel was now the target of a possible terrorist vehicle attack. and 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 sailors. the sailors wanted to help us at all costs, obviously. 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

armament to actually fire something off. and we're, like, yeah, we're not going to do that. [ laughter ] >> it'd be nice. >> you might feel good right now. but they definitely wanted to help us. so collection of whatever we could on the ship. they definitely, 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 rib, which the "u.s.s. cole's" 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, it's 110 to

120. it's humid. by day two, i don't wish to gross you out, but their entomology sets in. 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, all those generators have gone down, there's a lot of food. it was at lunch 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 flag that's on the aft end of the shift, 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 down. the next morning a fresh one went up and a fresh attitude approach. the radios came back on, you could hear people start 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 in definitely cleaning it up. >> thank you for sharing that. you talk about the planning. how long had they been planning this? you said they knew exactly what they were doing. 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 till fairly recently for having

myself and colleagues access to some of the two most intimately involved taking orders from afghanistan. they're in the high-value detainee program. 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 in various cities and another really small port by the border of oman. but in al-qaeda fashion. we know this largely from those in the organization who provided the information to us during the 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 were operational in yemen by the spring of 1999. and the goal, again, was -- and not much of this is in the public realm yet. the goal was to acquire 40 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 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. >> against the "u.s.s. sullivan." >> and what happened with that?

>> they sunk their own boat. >> often -- >> but they learned. >> they did. in fact, the cell leader was a man of details. 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 call them the beach boy five. they were terrific witnesses 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 dozens? >> i would say more along the lines of scores. because kind of one of those

unique things for a country like yemen, if not a quirky oddity. they actually place in custody witnesses. and when we asked them about that what's going on, they said they're in our 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 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 a rather complex topic, no tricks. >> and are you working with a translator? >> well, ali was native fluent lebanese/arabic speaker. and i've trained formally in arabic very good with a philadelphia accent.

[ laughter ] so, building rapport, one, it's the training, i have to say our old outfit, high, high value in premium and training in a clinical setting but also a terrific mentoring ojt program for the art and science of interview and interrogation. and to my boss mark fallon who is a champion of that. ali was just a natural people person. so, building 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 instantly? 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 about, if you would, this is a massive team and different agencies working together. and 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 it. everybody's working together. >> definitely. >> you're not working independently. >> oh, no. >> you talk about it, as a layman out there, how you all come together and work together. >> so, wow, okay. so, from just think about 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 -- it's very collaborative. 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, just the stuff that's left. he was getting the stuff for, like, who did you find today or where are you going today? and being able to then connect all the dots. egos aside, there's no room for that in a situation like this. we all -- you're 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're in and out of a location. you do what you've got to do to

make it work. and i don't think -- we didn't have any problems on our teams. >> no. >> cathy mentioned 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. this type of situation was unprecedented certainly for the yemenis, but it was for the united states government and federal law enforcement and the intelligence community. the response was just, as you can gather, we're talking about ncis, atf, fbi. you had 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 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 as to who was who and who was involved in what we were working on. so the eureka moment as far as al-qaeda, setting aside my bias for thinking and knowing it was from the beginning, not long after i arrived, there was compelling evidence and agreement consensus as fbi, cia, ncis, and others at the national level of intelligence that there was the al-qaeda link. now, i know geopolitically there was frustration from the team. geopolitical 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 -- >> and others tried to take credit, but you knew it wasn't. >> that's a good point because 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 agents, special guests. anything we haven't touched on. but you do have to go to the mic, please, if you would. >> since i was close, does an 800-pound elephant in this room, so i'm going to front it. the ambassador's not here. 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 up. 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. the "cole" was one of the -- it was 15 years later, the "cole" incident. but i found out pretty quickly that success or failure that 90% the cooperation you got from the locals in the country that you went to, how much access they gave you, how much cooperation. there were certain countries that spin you around like a $2 top with a pretensive cooperation. so that's the one thing. and the second thing was the state department and how much

latitude they gave you to operate. in the case of the "cole." you and you mentioned a mutual colleague o'neill who passed away on 9/11. he was 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 that, how that impacted on your investigation, please. >> well, stephen, 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. 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, only because it was not part of the mission. so, knowing the protocols of the state department or not knowing them was, you know, created a natural tension. now, a more important part of it, did it impact the investigation? from my perspective, it did not. i mean, we were 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? >> in any country that's the ambassador's call for diplomatic

clearance for government personnel. now, 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, 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 bodin and team were working very hard at the sog to government-to-government level. but our part were working the personal relationship at the ground level. and that was very important for getting those things done, where big government of yemen may say, no, cannot, cannot, but at the local and the 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 investigatio forward. as ambassador bodine said in a few interviews, she summed it up as the relationship was quite complex. >> you're all very professional and talented people. i would take this opportunity to say, i'm sure everybody in this room should and does have great respect for what you did, under the circumstances that you just outlined. it's even more incredible, the results you got. you should be admired and congratulated for what you did. >> thank you. >> thanks. >> i really appreciate that, steven. it's very kind.

i would speak for kathy, but i thank the dear lord i was in the place and had the opportunity. to talk about that lack of cooperation and pulling teeth every day with the yemen intelligence service to bring witnesses, to let us look at evidence, we really got nowhere until deep into 2001, but it wasn't until 9/11, it was a watershed event and a change in the yemen government overnight, literally. one of the key aspects of this we had a meeting myself and my supervisor tommy donlin. we were the only ones in country on 9/12. we had a meeting with the head of the yemen intelligence service and he had a very close

relationship with john o'neil, referred to him as the brother in arabic. he was asking how john was. we had word early on the 12th of november that john o'neil was missing and presumed dead. when the general asked about brother john, how is he, ali choked up and said he may be dead and the general started to choke up as well. immediately he picked up the phone and called the control tower and said the last yemen flight was not to leave. the cooperation after that was tremendous. we had access to al qaeda card-holding members after that. it was a treasure trove of information after 9/11. >> any other questions?

>> i have several questions. i'll try to limit the ones i have. just a little bit of background who i am. my name is jamal gunn, my brother was one of the 17 on board the "uss cole." 1 of the 17 killed. just a little built of background, this is not a blame game on anyone. my information about john o'neil is a little secondhand. he was more in contact with my father giving him updates about the case throughout. the kind of person he is, you know this, when he first heard about the attack his response was probably an expletive. he's kind of very -- you're laughing because you know it's true. the reason is because john o'neil probably -- not probably -- he knew it was al qaeda who did the attack. he was really angry about it,

that it was happening. that's the kind of relationship and the kind of person he is. to keep that in mind his relationship with ambassador bodine from my information, maybe i'm wrong, they didn't get along well at all which was why he was not let back into the country to continue the investigation in regards to what happened to my brother. you did go over a lot of information. i did have one particular question for each of you. agent clemmons you said you arrived there on friday and the attack was on the 12th. you said you assisted in body recovery. what was going on with the crew between that time from october 12th? did they start any investigation

themselves or were they there to try to keep the ship afloat? i know that's what they did after the attack. they were focussed on keeping the ship afloat. i'm kind of curious what was going on between the time the attack happened and your arrival. question for you, sir, you mentioned one name -- sorry if i got it wrong. he was the latest perpetrated that was killed. there were several others. one is in guantanamo bay. he's the one we've been waiting to be brought to trial. he's repeated he's the mastermind behind the attack. i want to know who is the actual mastermind. was bedali just a gopher? who was actually responsible?

>> any particular order? >> 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. part of what helped the ship was actually being in a refueling status. if you understand how they secure zebraing in or closing compartments, that 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. they were intimately responsible for keeping 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 on the main decks and wonder what the next movement would be. the crew and the captain would figure out what the problem was. get the generators going. 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. 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. that one generator and their work kept that ship afloat. >> mr. gunn, your question about

who was the mastermind. first let me say we mourn your brother and all his shipmates. god rest his soul. that's a really great question. as the saying goes, success has many fathers. it's mostly loose press reporting, but the mastermind if there was one, think of it in terms like the military structure. that's where it was hatched at al qaeda central in afghanistan between bin laden himself, his main deputy who was taken out in an air strike in afghanistan. if there is a local or operational cell mastermind that's masery who is in guantanamo now. he was a co-lead who is part of the 9/11 five, but was also very

much involved in the lead-up to the ship's operations. he was arrested in a case of mistaken identity somewhere in 1999, summer of 1999. bin laden ordered him when he was released from custody to get back to afghanistan. he went to pakistan to be a right hand man. nasery not only was he the al qaeda lead, he also we later learned became the operations chief for all the arabian peninsula for al qaeda. it was his henchmen coming after us trying to hit us in yemen and

later do a truck bomb attack against the embassy. he was captured in dubai in 2002. an editorial comment on my part in a big, big way. he's still not even past preliminary hearings and legal proceedings in guantanamo. not even close to trial. it is a capital case, but we hope justice prevails. >> inching closer. >> anyone on this side? go ahead. >> for an operation -- first, thank you 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 the guidance and the communication that you're getting when you're deployed like that in terms of -- how much micromanagement are you getting from stateside versus having to -- obviously you have someone acting as an intermediary. how much outreach was there 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 focussed on our mission with no interference. always obviously information being fed back to washington, d.c. and our head quarters 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 -- 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. it was a great deal of information, especially from bob's end, but definitely we had a lot we were pushing out as well. >> that's a really important question because, as you probably get the sense and paint the story in the narrative, there's a tremendous amount of pressure on the field element. the requirements are just flooding in. 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. two, the fbi has established the protocols. that was up and running, the central brain node back at fbi headquarters tied in with ncis headquarters. the single most important ingredient we were blessed with tremendous leadership to make sure we weren't feeling professional pressure, to stay focussed on the job. we tried to sleep as little as we possibly could. there was just so much to be done. we never planned for, trained for or experienced a situation like this. yeah, large responses to terrorism events like east

africa, our towers, but not with the circumstances as occurred with the "uss cole" attack. again from my perspective, probably couldn't have worked better. we just had tremendous leadership the entire time. >> go ahead. [ inaudible question ] >> we know about the questionable threat assessments that were submitted out to the navy. >> right. >> if you could elaborate on that, leading up on this event. yemen was not the typical port for our sailors and ships to pull into. it certainly wasn't a liberty port. when we look at places like naples and rota and those type

of things, the work was that we put out the information that we were concerned about this area. yet they went into a lot of great detailing in their planning 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, in that particular port -- if you could expand a little bit about how that played into this, because it was questionable, to say the least. >> 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. it was designed to be a brief stop for fuel.

i know i was involved for some of the advanced force protections in counterintelligence teams in fifth feet. then yemen was one of the top three finalists. command leadership in the experts involved at the end of the day figured that because of the stand off -- i don't mean for there to be any irony here, but because of the standoff and the refuelling dolphin, there would be natural standoff from launched weapons, mortars of some kind. but what al qaeda did, for its part was quite ingenious in that exploiting the local cell, jamal -- he was taken out in an air strike the first of january

this year -- he was the local mastermind because they knew him from other places but he would not know the nuts and bolts of the operation because of the compartmentalization. they knew to a degree they could hide in plain sight. it's been written and i've met a lot of people who insist the yemen government was complicit. that's counter intuitive to how al qaeda operated. again, the government was an enemy of those kind of extremists. so my greater point there is, they were able to exploit the conditions, they were able to have a colossal failure that would have otherwise brought a lot of attention -- a boat with

explosives stuck in the sand in january of 2000, not one police officer or any government official that we know of were aware of it. so they were really quite artful in leveraging their cultural intelligence, knowledge and those things to pull it off. the other part of it, my organization, to an extent the cia, responsible for doing country ci, ct threat assessments. the threat assessment at the time talked about the permissive environment for transnational terrorist groups and there were a lot of pockets out of the major city and unknowns by the government so therefore, as far as port visits and things like that. but really there's nothing definitive that said warning lights, don't go to a country like yemen. >> anyone else have a question?

well, i'd like to thank you both for a fascinating discussion. thank you. [ applause ] >> for sharing the stories that only you two can share with us. it's just been remarkable. as we said before, we all owe you a great deal of gratitude for your service and all you did to make a difference. >> thank you. >> thank you. we want to thank you for coming as well. this is going to be on cspan's websites, so if you'd like to see more or refer someone to it. thank you for coming out. weeknights this month we're featuring american history tv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on cspan3. tonight we look at cabinet secretaries.

james baker served as secretary of state for george h.w. bush, as well as ronald reagan's chief of staff and treasury secretary. this program will be hosted by baylor university law school. watch tonight beginning at 8:00 p.m. eastern and enjoy american history tv every weekend on cspan3. american history on c-span3, every weekend documenting america's story. funding for american history tv comes from these companies who support c-span3 as a public service. next on history bookshelf, jeff guinn talks about his book "manson," about the life of