In November 1996, another Russian spy was found in the CIA ranks. Harold James Nicholson was carrying exposed film and a computer disc with confidential Agency documents when he was arrested by the FBI. For the previous two years he had been working as a teacher at Camp Perry, known as ‘The Farm’, the Agency’s training centre for new agents; prior to that he had been posted to Kuala Lumpur, where he was turned by an FSB officer who Nicholson had claimed he was trying to persuade to work for the CIA — ironically around the time that Aldrich Ames was arrested. Nicholson’s motivation was financial — after he was seen trying to beat a standard polygraph test in 1995, the FBI began investigating his finances, and discovered large sums of money. He eventually pleaded guilty to receiving $180,000 from the Russians and to one specimen charge of espionage, although he had blown the cover of the agents passing through The Farm during his tenure there. Nicholson was a well-regarded agent and many at the Agency believed that he was on the way to becoming ‘a big spy’ for the Russians.
Around this time, the FBI discovered that they too were being betrayed to the Russians — although it wasn’t Robert Hanssen whose treachery had come to light. Earl Edwin Pitts, a senior agent, had contacted the KGB in 1987 when stationed in New York, and for the next five years passed documents to his handler, Rollan G. Dzheikiya. Unfortunately for Pitts, Dzheikiya defected after the fall of the Soviet Union, and became part of a sting operation run by the Bureau to capture Pitts. On his arrest in December 1996, the American claimed he was motivated by rage at the FBI, partly because of his low pay. An investigation into Pitts’ activities made some suspicious that the Russians must have another mole within the Bureau, since they never asked Pitts for anything major. Pitts himself suggested that Robert Hanssen might be a spy. Neither lead was properly followed up, and Hanssen remained undetected.
In a rare demonstration of cooperation between the FBI and the CIA, the two organizations worked together on a four-year manhunt for Aimal Kansi, who had killed two CIA employees outside Langley in 1993. He was eventually tracked down to Pakistan, whose administration allowed the joint task force agents to enter the country to capture him.
John Deutch resigned as DCI in December 1996, and was replaced by his deputy, George Tenet, who, unusually, remained in place after President George W. Bush succeeded President Clinton in 2000 — changes of party in the White House usually led to a new DCI. This provided an element of continuity when major changes were needed following 9/11. Tenet and the CIA would be accused of intelligence failures — and while the criticisms were justified, the Agency did far more in the build-up to 2001 than they have sometimes been given credit for. If information had been shared properly though in the three years before 9/11, the history of the first decade of the twenty-first century would have been very different.
14
THE WAR ON TERROR
It’s easy to be wise after the event. Everyone has 20/20 hindsight, and there has probably been more ‘Monday morning quarterbacking’ regarding the work of the intelligence agencies in the years leading up to 11 September 2001 than any other event in recent history.
In June 2012, many of the key documents relating to what the CIA knew were finally released after a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive, a private business. These were referenced, but not quoted, in the 9/11 Commission’s Report, and, even in a heavily redacted form, show a trail of missed opportunities and interagency bickering that would have catastrophic consequences. Perhaps most worrying of all is the CIA’s own Inspector General report from August 2001, which praised the Counterterrorism Center’s performance for ‘coordinating national intelligence, providing warning, and promoting the effective use of Intelligence Community resources on terrorism issues’ and even noting that the relationship with the FBI was better than it had been in 1994 — mere days before that was conclusively proved to be false.
One of the biggest problems that the CIA and the other intelligence agencies faced when trying to deal with al-Qaeda was the religious fanaticism of its members, which meant it was far harder to infiltrate them. As Agency veteran Robert Dannenberg explained, al-Qaeda operatives weren’t like Soviet agents, who might be persuaded that the American way of life was better by showing them supermarkets ‘because they were driven by many of the same things that we’re driven by: success and taking care of our families’. They did get lucky early on though: Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, described by some as one of the founding members of al-Qaeda, walked into the US Embassy in Eritrea in spring 1996. He had embezzled $110,000 from al-Qaeda and was desperate to defect.
This came shortly after a designated bin Laden unit had been established within the CIA, the first time that the Agency had set up a group specifically to target one person or organization. This ‘virtual station’ operated out of Langley, and was run by Michael Scheuer, previously head of the CTC’s Islamic Extremist Branch, with a predominantly female team. From January 1996 onwards, their aim, according to DCI George Tenet, was ‘to track [bin Laden], collect intelligence on him, run operations against him, disrupt his finances, and warn policymakers about his activities and intentions’. Al-Fadl’s information gave them vital leads regarding al-Qaeda’s plans and hopes. SIGINT operations were put in motion; allies were sought. But even then, not everything was as smooth as it should have been: the NSA and CIA didn’t cooperate over jurisdictional issues.
Following the embassy bombings in 1998, Tenet significantly increased the attention on bin Laden. The CTC carried out a review of strategy, which led to Scheuer’s departure as unit leader and the development of a comprehensive plan of attack against al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, much as what was known as ‘The Plan’ called for a united campaign by the CIA, FBI, NSA and others, this didn’t happen in practice. FBI agents working with the CIA’s bin Laden unit were not allowed to pass relevant information back to the Bureau; the NSA left intercepts of phone calls to the FBI, fearful of going beyond their remit, but the Bureau didn’t obtain the phone records for those who had already been identified as potential hijackers until after 9/11. A briefing by Counterterrorism ‘Tsar’ Richard Clarke briefed representatives of the various agencies about the al-Qaeda threat — but these weren’t passed back properly, and indeed Clarke would suggest the threat wasn’t so pressing at the start of August. In an effort to cope with all the information flowing to the Unit, a new Strategic Assessments Branch was set up — but its new chief only reported for duty on 10 September 2011.
The CIA’s own internal report, following the 9/11 Commission’s verdict that the intelligence community had failed the President, noted that:
Agency officers from the top down worked hard against the al-Qa’ida and Usama Bin Ladin targets. They did not always work effectively and cooperatively, however… If Intelligence Community officers had been able to view and analyse the full range of information available before 11 September 2001, they could have developed a more informed context in which to assess the threat reporting of the spring and summer that year… That so many individuals failed to act in this case reflects a systematic breakdown.
Threats certainly were reported up the chain of command but no one was certain whether the attack would be within the United States or on American interests elsewhere in the world. In June, a briefing suggested ‘operatives linked to Usama Bin Ladin’s organisation expect the near-term attacks they are planning to have dramatic consequences’. A briefing for the President on 6 August was headlined ‘Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US’, but wasn’t treated with the urgency it required, as 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey later told CNN. ‘You were told again by briefing officers in August that it was a dire threat,’ Kerrey said of Bush’s claim that he would have moved heaven and earth if he had been aware ahead of time of the al-Qaeda threat. ‘And what did you do? Nothing, so far as we could see on the 9/11 Commission.’