Fallout From USS Cole Attack Covers Washington

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 13, 2000 | by Jamie Dettmer

In the wake of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden, officials in Washington are in the throes of blaming each other for missteps that they believe allowed terrorists to carry out the first successful attack on a U.S. warship since 1991.

State Department officials are questioning whether Navy chiefs allowed longer-term strategic plans they have for Yemen to outweigh more immediate threat concerns in a country bristling with terrorist groups. They say a report issued this year by State emphasized that Yemen had become a haven for terrorist groups -- at least one of which is linked to Islamic militant Osama bin Laden.

Pentagon officials have struck back, claiming that the State Department, via the U.S. Embassy in Yemen, was responsible for security arrangements for the destroyer. The State Department is having none of that, arguing that force protection is the responsibility of the military.

In the midst of all the finger-pointing, CIA officials have been keeping a low public profile, fearful that Langley will start being targeted and blamed for an intelligence failure. Some officials there privately acknowledge that there was a lack of response by the CIA to warning signs of increased anti-American terrorist activity in the Persian Gulf.

Along with other Western intelligence agencies, Langley recently received a warning from Jordanian security that bin Laden and groups associated with his Al-Qaiada organization seemingly were refocusing on the gulf and the Middle East with the intention of striking at Americans and U.S.-associated facilities.

According to the respected Paris-based Intelligence Newsletter, French authorities were told by the Jordanians that bin Laden may have managed to bring about a reconciliation between two terrorist groups that had been bitter adversaries: Jamaa Islamiya and Islamic Jihad. The former was responsible for the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center.

News alert! has been unable to discover whether the Jordanian warning was passed on by the CIA to the Navy or the State Department.

Certainly Yemeni authorities suspect that bin Laden had a hand in the bombing of the Cole. On Oct. 18, the country's president, Ali Abdallah Saleh, told Western reporters that the exiled Saudi and Islamic militants who had fought in Afghanistan very well may have been involved.

The attack on the Cole has complicated for the Yemeni president his careful handling of the big-nation suitors, including the United States, who have been courting him with an eye toward utilizing his country's strategic location. The port at Aden is one of the deepest natural harbors in the world and is capable of handling the very largest vessels. More than that, Yemen is ideal as a base from which naval forces can sally forth and quickly reach the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean. To add to its attractions, Yemen controls the island of Socotra, which is perfectly placed for monitoring shipping routes in all three seas.

There have been unconfirmed reports that the Yemeni president recently signed a secret deal with the United States for Socotra to be used as an intelligence base.