Probe of USS Cole bombing unravels

By Craig Whitlock

updated 11:22 a.m. ET May 4, 2008

Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.

Jamal al-Badawi, a Yemeni who helped organize the plot to bomb the Cole as it refueled in this Yemeni port on Oct. 12, 2000, has broken out of prison twice. He was recaptured both times, but then secretly released by the government last fall. Yemeni authorities jailed him again after receiving complaints from Washington. But U.S. officials have so little faith that he's still in his cell that they have demanded the right to perform random inspections.

Two suspects, described as the key organizers, were captured outside Yemen and are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Many details of their alleged involvement remain classified. It is unclear when -- or if -- they will be tried by the military.

The collapse of the Cole investigation offers a revealing case study of the U.S. government's failure to bring al-Qaeda operatives and their leaders to justice for some of the most devastating attacks on American targets over the past decade.

A week after the Cole bombing, President Bill Clinton vowed to hunt down the plotters and promised, "Justice will prevail." In March 2002, President Bush said his administration was cooperating with Yemen to prevent it from becoming "a haven for terrorists." He added: "Every terrorist must be made to live as an international fugitive with no place to settle or organize, no place to hide, no governments to hide behind and not even a safe place to sleep."

Since then, Yemen has refused to extradite Badawi and an accomplice to the United States, where they have been indicted on murder charges. Other Cole conspirators have been freed after short prison terms. At least two went on to commit suicide attacks in Iraq.

"After we worked day and night to bring justice to the victims and prove that these Qaeda operatives were responsible, we're back to square one," said Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent and a lead investigator into the bombing. "Do they have laws over there or not? It's really frustrating what's happening."

To this day, al-Qaeda trumpets the attack on the Cole as one of its greatest military victories. It remains an improbable story: how two suicide bombers smiled and waved to unsuspecting U.S. sailors in Aden's harbor as they pulled their tiny fishing boat alongside the $1 billion destroyer and blew a gaping hole in its side.

Despite the initial promises of accountability, only limited public inquiries took place in Washington, unlike the extensive investigations that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Basic questions remain about which individuals and countries played a role in the assault on the Cole.

Some officials acknowledged that pursuing the Cole investigation became less of a political priority with the passage of time. A new administration took power three months after the bombing. Then came Sept. 11.

"During the first part of the Bush administration, no one was willing to take ownership of this," said Roger W. Cressey, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations who helped oversee the White House's response to the Cole attack. "It didn't happen on their watch. It was the forgotten attack."

The day after the attack, a planeload of armed FBI agents arrived in Aden. But they quickly ran into resistance from Yemeni officials, who didn't like the idea of foreigners operating on their soil and telling them what to do.

The Cole bombing represented an enormous political embarrassment for Yemen, which had lobbied the U.S. Navy to use the port of Aden as a refueling stop. As the poorest country in the Arab world, Yemen was also unprepared for some of the FBI's demands.

"This is a country that didn't even have fingerprint powder, and now they're dealing with the most sophisticated law enforcement agency in the world," said Barbara K. Bodine, the U.S. ambassador to Yemen at the time. "DNA is a complete fantasy to them."

Bodine said the FBI was slow to trust Yemeni authorities, and kept the U.S. Embassy in the dark as well, hampering the probe. She described the Yemeni government as generally cooperative, but said some officials dug in their heels and "certainly didn't like us."

The FBI was "dealing with a bureaucracy and a culture they didn't understand," she said. "Yemen operates on a different timeline than we do. We had one group working on a New York minute, and another on a 4,000-year-old history."

The FBI and some White House officials, in turn, suspected Bodine was too sympathetic toward the Yemenis. The FBI special agent in charge, John O'Neill, was forced to return to New York after butting heads too many times with the ambassador.

Michael A. Sheehan, then the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, said both sides were to blame.

"Basically, I was in the middle of this thing," he recalled. "I felt both sides were over the top -- the FBI in demanding complete autonomy in a foreign country and State in being too protective of the host country. And eventually it just turned into a clash of wills."

"Sometimes, when you deal with a host country, you can push too hard and it backfires and you get less cooperation," Sheehan added. "We needed to find a middle ground, and we had difficulty getting there."

MORE FROM WORLD NEWS

World news Section Front

U.S. Marines push into Afghan towns Iran cleric: U.K. Embassy staff to be tried 26 killed in Pakistan helicopter crash Interim Honduras leader hints early vote Prosecutors: Demjanjuk fit for trial Protesters in Paris block Yemeni flight   Myanmar denies request to see Suu Kyi Documents reveal chaos of Gitmo’s early days Mexican wrestlers drugged to death FBI: Saddam feared Iran more than U.S. World news Section Front   Add World news headlines to your news reader: