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| U.S.S. COLE ATTACKED | |
 October 12, 2000  |
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A U.S. Navy destroyer in Yemen was bombed in an apparent act of terrorism killing at least six American sailors.
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GWEN IFILL: For more on today's attack, we are joined by three experts. Larry Johnson was deputy director in the State Department's Office of Counter-Terrorism from 1989 to 1993. He is now a security consultant. George Wilson is a defense columnist for the National Journal, and former defense reporter for the Washington Post. And Juliette Kayyem was a member of the National Commission on Terrorism. She is now an associate at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. George Wilson, what can you tell us about how this happened? |
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| Seeking the facts | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: The men on board were helping to tie the ship to the dock. GEORGE WILSON: The men in the little boat were helping to tie up the ship. So it looked just routine. And suddenly this small boat either rammed or sidled up to the side of the ship and unleashed these explosives. So there was no indication that this was going to be anything but a normal docking. And it was not at a pier, which would have been easier. It was at a floating dolphin they call it, which is like a ramp out in the harbor itself, not in a big pier. GWEN IFILL: And they use that for refueling?
GWEN IFILL: You've covered the Pentagon for years. How would you gauge the U.S. response today? GEORGE WILSON: I think that they told us what they knew. I think that they're still a little confused as to who did it and how it was done. But I don't have any sense of cover-up or any feeling that they're not coming through with what they know. |
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| Tracking down the terrorists | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: They certainly didn't hesitate, Larry Johnson, to say that this was terrorism or to intimate very strongly that this was terrorism. From what you know of this, why would they leap to that conclusion? LARRY JOHNSON: Well, this marks an unfortunate new milestone in the field of international terrorism. It's the first boat bomb we've had since we've been recording data on it going back to 1968. Because Osama Bin Laden has been making threats about killing Americans, when you go back over the last seven years, he is the only one talking about killing Americans. Boats like this just don't blow up. It's not like someone was smoking a cigarette or cigar and lit off a bunch of jet fuel.
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| Yemen: ally or foe? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Juliette Kayyem, let's talk about this whole idea of this being a terrorist target. This is Yemen. Was this a dangerous place for this ship to be? Do we have reason to be worried about it? Were we on sufficient security alert?
GWEN IFILL: What do you think about that? JULIETTE KAYYEM: Some sort of Palestinian terrorist group, -- GWEN IFILL: What do you think about that? JULIETTE KAYYEM: -- or is it a third option which is a sort of distract and destroy. I mean -- did a different totally unrelated terrorist group know that we were so focused on the Middle East at this time that they sort of took it as an opportunity to go after us in an area that we were historically unsuspecting. GWEN IFILL: So maybe it's not so much when you say there is a connection to maybe what's going on in the Middle East, maybe it's just a question of our eyes were turned elsewhere and not that Palestinians in Yemen, say, were trying to strike out. JULIETTE KAYYEM: Right. Yemen does not have a large Palestinian population. And it's a very poor country. I think the most significant thing that should occur now in the investigation is going to be the biggest question is going to be how much cooperation are we going to get from the Yemen government. As we learned with the Kobar Towers investigation, we need cooperation from the hosting country. And I think a lot of people in the government felt we didn't get that from Saudi Arabia. We're going to have to interview people in Yemen. Clearly if this small boat took off from Yemen, people in port are going to know things. If we don't get full cooperation from the Yemenese government, then it is going to hinder what we know and what we can find out and presumably our prosecution. |
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| Reconstructing the attack | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GEORGE WILSON: Well, the ship is not as strong is a battle ship. There is not 16-inch steel in this Arley Burke destroyer, but it is a half-inch thick side of the ship, so it was a very big explosion to penetrate a hole that big. But it would be very normal to suspect that a series of small boats were doing what they were hired to do; namely, help dock the ship. So it was a very cleverly planned operation. It was not something thought of last night. And the next question is, well, how do we protect the ships in the future? And unfortunately I think it will happen again because this is the era of asymmetrical warfare. GWEN IFILL: I heard you ask Secretary Cohen that very question today at the news briefing. What does that mean? GEORGE WILSON: Well, if I can't match you gun for gun or ship or ship, I'll find another way to find the chink in your armor. And, attacking a ship covertly like this you don't have to buy an aircraft carrier or a jet fighter; you can make your point and much cheaper and more dramatically now that the world is all wired up together. GWEN IFILL: Go ahead. LARRY JOHNSON: There are things you can do to prevent this. It is uncomfortable and inconvenience for the crew but would I rather have the crew inconvenienced than dead. You put out security patrols that inspect those ships. It's like going through a metal detector at the airport. No ship, no boat gets close to a U.S. ship unless it's been screened and determined no explosives on board -- period. Is it an inconvenience for the crew, yes. Is it going to tax the ship and crew? Yes. But I'd much rather have them tired and cranky than dead, because they can go home tired and cranky and get happy. But when they're dead, they go home in a box. GWEN IFILL: Juliette Kayyem we've come to expect claims of responsibility in cases like this. Should we expect that in this case?
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| The possibility of retaliation | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: One of the things, obviously, we're hearing they are going to do is investigate. The other thing that both Secretary Cohen and Secretary Albright intimated today is that - and the President -- is that we would strike back. JULIETTE KAYYEM: Yes, I think we don't know yet if there was any state that sponsored this terrorist incident. I don't think that anyone has that information yet. Certainly if this was state sponsorship, we would clearly be able to attack that state. State sponsorship of terrorism has been decreasing though, and if we take away the last two weeks, a lot of the Arab countries are getting out of the business, especially with the new leadership in the Arab countries. So this may be a rogue group, a group that it would be very difficult to plan a targeted site. I've heard throughout the day, everyone mentioning Osama Bin Laden as the sort of, you know, inevitable person that we go on to. And his movement right now, I would say, is probably severely restricted. And we should probably... might start to think of different possibilities. GWEN IFILL: George Wilson, what are the possibilities that are open for the United States Government in terms of retaliation?
GWEN IFILL: And how long does it take to undertake the kind of investigation you're talking about or make the kind of changes, security changes you're talking about, Larry Johnson? LARRY JOHNSON: Security changes can go into place tonight. It's very simple to put those security changes in place tonight. The investigation, they could go two or three years or longer without finding out who is responsible. In the case of Pan Am 103, we didn't really get the break in that case until 1990, almost a year and a half after the event. In the case of Dhahran, there is still a lot of suspicion about who was responsible, but no hard proof. So I think trying to retaliate without clear, convincing evidence is a stupid policy. We're better than that. We need to have clear evidence. And as George correctly noted, the retaliation after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in East Africa in August of 1998, it may have made us feel better, but we hit the wrong targets. And if we're going to be a great country, we can't afford do that. GWEN IFILL: George, a final question, how off guard were we caught by this? How surprised did they all seem to be today at the Pentagon?
GWEN IFILL: George Wilson, Larry Johnson and Juliette Kayyem, thank you all very much. |
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GEORGE
WILSON: Well, it happened in a way which would be very hard for the
crew to detect. The small boats are needed for this particular mooring
operation, to carry the lines from this destroyer, which is longer than
a football field, into the mooring buoys, which are posted around the
perimeter of the ship. So there was no reason to suspect that one of
these boats, which was assisting the operation and was carrying ropes
would be a terrorist inside. 
GEORGE
WILSON: Right. They were going to refuel and then they were going to
go on and patrol the Persian Gulf to see what contraband if any was
getting into Iraq. 
So,
from this point forward it's an investigation. We should not accuse
and then punish someone. We have to collect the evidence and determine
who is responsible; and in that regard, the first step, they're going
to go over photographic imagery from the satellites to find out, to
see where the position of that boat was, to see if they can track that,
all kinds of signal intelligence. They're going to talk to people both
that are on the scene there as well as that may be in jails here in
the United States who might have some connection that can tell them
about what was going on. In addition, they're going to look for the
forensic evidence. Unfortunately about the bomb scene, a lot of the
debris has sunk or it's scattered in the water, but you have residue
on the ship. They'll be able to step the type of explosive; they'll
be able to tell the size of the explosive. 
JULIETTE
KAYYEM: Specifically to Yemen, I don't think that we had any reason
to be particularly concerned. That it is in the Middle East and close
to Saudi Arabia is relevant, however, given what is going on with the
Middle East conflict in the last two weeks. We do have to leave open
a possibility it was not terrorism. But if it was, then two things flow
from that. Is it specifically related to the events in the Middle East
in the last two weeks? 
GWEN
IFILL: George, let's back up a minute. Tell me about the ship. As described,
two fellows come up in the boat, put some plastic explosives on their
side or whatever they did, blow themselves up and blow this huge hole
in the side of the boat. How can that be? How does that happen? Are
these ships not that strong? 
JULIETTE
KAYYEM: Actually, claims of responsibility have decreased in the last
couple of years with terrorist incidents so it may be that we will never
know exactly who did this. I mean, certainly the intelligence, we're
going to have to go back from this moment and determine what intelligence
we had leading up to this point that could help us in the investigation,
and this is going to tax American agencies. We're going to have the
FBI, the State Department, the CIA -- a lot of folks over there at this
stage, and a lot of information will have to be shared to determine
the best route or course for the eventual prosecution if it occurs.