At The Center Of The Storm Part 12

We have learned that it is not beyond the realm of possibility for a terrorist group to obtain a nuclear weapon. I have often wondered why this is such a hard reality for so many people to accept. In a scene in a book called American Prometheus American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, in 1946 the father of the U.S. atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, describes the specter of nuclear terrorism. Asked in a closed Senate hearing room "whether three or four men couldn't smuggle units of an atomic bomb into New York and blow up the whole city," Oppenheimer responded, "Of course it could be done, and people could destroy New York." The surprised senators then asked, "What instrument would you use to detect an atomic bomb hidden somewhere in the city?" Oppenheimer replied, "A screwdriver [to open each and every crate or suitcase]." Oppenheimer instinctively understood what we learned the hard way: that nuclear terrorism was then, and remains now, a terrifying possibility, and extraordinarily hard to stop.

The terrorists are endlessly patient. The first plans to attack the World Trade Center were made a decade before the Twin Towers fell. The plot to bring down aircraft traveling between the United Kingdom and United States that was thwarted in the summer of 2006 parallels Project Bojinka. How hard is al-Qa'ida willing to work and how long are they willing to wait to pull off the ultimate attack? What was the attack Ayman al-Zawahiri described as "something better" when he called off the 2003 attack on the New York City subway?

One mushroom cloud would change history. My deepest fear is that this is exactly what they intend.

CHAPTER 15

The Merchant of Death and the Colonel

It is not always easy. Your successes are unheralded-your failures are trumpeted.... But I am sure you realize how important is your work, how essential-it is and how, in the long sweep of history, how significant your efforts will be judged.-President John F. Kennedy at CIA headquarters, November 28, 1961

Almost a half century later, President Kennedy's words still ring true. The problem is often of the intelligence community's own creation. We are reluctant to talk publicly about our successes. Sometimes it is even useful to have positive accomplishments misperceived as failures, to throw foreign governments and rogue organizations off the scent.

A couple of successful operations that took place during my tenure, however, did did receive some limited positive public attention. The dismantling of the A. Q. Khan proliferation network and the disarming of Libya's WMD programs are cla.s.sic examples of the kinds of work that can and must be done by American intelligence if we are to avoid a catastrophic future. A. Q. Khan's nuclear proliferation network was a project we focused on during my entire seven-year tenure as DCI. Our efforts against this organization were among the closest-held secrets within the Agency. Often I would brief only the president on the progress we were making. receive some limited positive public attention. The dismantling of the A. Q. Khan proliferation network and the disarming of Libya's WMD programs are cla.s.sic examples of the kinds of work that can and must be done by American intelligence if we are to avoid a catastrophic future. A. Q. Khan's nuclear proliferation network was a project we focused on during my entire seven-year tenure as DCI. Our efforts against this organization were among the closest-held secrets within the Agency. Often I would brief only the president on the progress we were making.

Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, a metallurgist, was the father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. A. Q. Khan, as he is known, studied in Europe and earned a Ph.D. in Belgium in 1972. He worked in the nuclear energy industry in the Netherlands and returned to Pakistan in 1976 to help his country compete with India, which had just detonated its first nuclear device. Khan stole from his European bosses blueprints and information that would give Pakistan a jump-start in entering the nuclear age. (Indeed, Khan was convicted in absentia of nuclear espionage, in a Dutch court in 1983, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality two years later.) During the 1970s and '80s, Khan led an aggressive effort to build a uranium-enrichment effort. So revered was he for his efforts that Pakistan eventually renamed its research facility the Khan Research Laboratory (KRL) in his honor.

In 1979 the United States suspended military and economic a.s.sistance to Pakistan over concerns about the country's attempts to make weapons-grade uranium. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, reports began to surface in the media and elsewhere that Pakistan had succeeded in producing enough fissile material to make its own bomb.

For many years, there were rumors and bits of intelligence that Khan was sharing his deadly expertise beyond Pakistan's borders. His range of international contacts was broad-in China, North Korea, and throughout the Muslim world. In some cases, there were indications that he was trading nuclear expertise and material for other military equipment-for example, aiding North Korea with its uranium-enrichment efforts in exchange for ballistic missile technology. It was extremely difficult to know exactly what he was up to, or to what extent his efforts were conducted at the behest and with the support of the Pakistani government. Khan was supposedly a simple government employee with only a modest salary. Yet he lived a lavish lifestyle and had an empire that kept expanding dramatically.

Although CIA struggled to penetrate proliferation operations and learn about the depth of their dealings, there is a tension when investigating these kinds of networks. The natural instinct when you find some shred of intelligence about nuclear proliferation is to act immediately. But you must control that urge and be patient, to follow the links where they take you, so that when action is launched, you can hope to remove the network both root and branch, and not just pull off the top, allowing it to regenerate and grow again.

In the late 1990s, the section within CIA's Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in charge of this effort was run by a career intelligence officer who once told me that as a child the officer read a book on the bombing of Hiros.h.i.+ma and was awestruck by the devastation that a nuclear bomb could deliver. The book described how the blast from the thirteen-kiloton "Little Boy" bomb, which killed an estimated seventy thousand people, burned the image of three people's shadows onto a wall. The individuals themselves were vaporized. That mental picture was seared into the officer's consciousness and became part of the officer's motivation, years later, to work to keep nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands.

The small unit working this effort recognized that it would be impossible to penetrate proliferation networks using conventional intelligence-gathering tactics. Security considerations do not permit me to describe the techniques we used.

Patiently, we put ourselves in a position to come in contact with individuals and organizations that we believed were part of the overall proliferation problem. As is so often the case, our colleagues in British intelligence joined us in our efforts and were critically important in working against this target.

We discovered the extent of Khan's hidden network, which stretched from Pakistan, to Europe, to the Middle East, to Asia. We pieced together a picture of the organization, revealing its subsidiaries, scientists, front companies, agents, finances, and manufacturing plants. Our spies gained access through a series of daring operations over several years.

What we learned from our operations was extraordinary. We confirmed that Khan was delivering to his customers such things as illicit uranium centrifuges. A. Q. Khan was the mastermind behind proliferation efforts as far afield as North Korea, Iran, and South Africa. We briefed the president on what we had found.

"Mr. President," one of our officers said, "with the information we've just gotten our hands on-soup to nuts-about uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons design, we could make CIA its own nuclear state."

By mid-2003 we had learned quite a bit about locations where Khan's network was producing equipment for uranium enrichment for some of his clients, and we were considering taking action against those sites. Doing so, however, might have dealt a temporary setback to Khan's scheme but would not have prevented it from springing up again somewhere else. We therefore came up with a bold solution that involved a series of carefully orchestrated approaches to the network.

What we uncovered proved that Khan and his a.s.sociates were selling the blueprints for centrifuges to enrich uranium, as well as nuclear designs stolen from the Pakistani government. The network sold uranium hexafluoride, the gas that in the centrifuge process can be transformed into enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Khan and his a.s.sociates provided Iran, Libya, and North Korea with designs both for Pakistan's older centrifuges and for newer, more efficient models. The network also made available to these countries components and, in some instances, complete centrifuges. Khan and his a.s.sociates used a factory in Malaysia to manufacture key equipment. Other parts were obtained by network operatives based in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Khan's deputy-a man named B. S. A. Tahir-ran a computer business in Dubai and used that as a front company for the Khan network, acting as the network's chief financial officer and money launderer.

We had the goods on A. Q. Khan and his cohorts and we had reached a point where we had to act, but there were still some important matters to resolve. It remained unclear to what extent Khan's dealings were known and supported by his own government. It was our job to find out.

Pakistan's president Musharraf had heroically stepped up in the aftermath of 9/11 and helped us fight al-Qa'ida and the Taliban. Now I was about to ask him to help take on a man who had, almost single-handedly, turned Pakistan into a nuclear power and was viewed as a national hero in his country.

You don't make those kinds of requests over the phone, and you certainly don't make them in front of large groups of people. As it turned out, Musharraf was coming to New York City to attend the UN General a.s.sembly, and I requested a one-on-one session with him for September 24, 2003. We met in his hotel suite. It was what we in the intelligence business called a "four eyes" meeting-just the two of us. No handlers, no note takers.

I started by thanking him for his courageous support in the war on terrorism and told him I was now going to give him some bad news. "A. Q. Khan," I said, "is betraying your country. He has stolen some of your nation's most sensitive secrets and sold them to the highest bidders." I went on: "Khan has stolen your nuclear weapons secrets. We know this, because we stole them from him."

I pulled out of my briefcase some blueprints and diagrams of nuclear designs stolen from the Pakistani government. I'm not a nuclear physicist, and neither is President Musharraf, but I had been briefed well enough by my team that I could point out markings on the drawings that would prove that these designs were supposed to be in a vault in Islamabad and not a hotel room in New York.

I pulled out a blueprint of a Pakistani P1 centrifuge design. "He sold this to Iran." Then I produced a design for the next-generation P2 centrifuge. "He has sold this to several countries." Without pause, I laid before President Musharraf another doc.u.ment. "These are the drawings of a uranium processing plant that he sold to Libya."

There could be no doubt about the size and scope of the problem.

Although he later described this as one of the most embarra.s.sing moments of his presidency, Musharraf betrayed no emotion to me. I always found him to be a cool customer, someone who seems to be taking in every word you are saying.

I told him that I knew that since March 2001 he had tried to restrict A. Q. Khan's international travel. Then I gave him a lengthy list of dozens of foreign trips Khan had undertaken despite the restriction. Even as we spoke, Khan was on an international sales trip.

"Mr. President," I said, "if a country like Libya or Iran or, G.o.d forbid, an organization like al-Qa'ida, gets a working nuclear device and the world learns that it came from your country, I'm afraid the consequences would be devastating."

I suggested a few steps we could take jointly to find out the full extent of Khan's corruption and to put an end to it once and for all.

President Musharraf asked a few questions and then simply said, "Thank you, George, I will take care of this."

Not long after returning to Pakistan, President Musharraf twice narrowly averted being killed in al-Qa'idainspired a.s.sa.s.sination attempts.

In December word leaked of a major investigation going on regarding the activities of the Khan Research Laboratory. On January 25, 2004, Pakistani investigators announced that Khan had provided unauthorized technical a.s.sistance to Iran's nuclear program in exchange for tens of millions of dollars. Six days later, Khan was dismissed from his position as "science advisor" to Musharraf, to allow the investigation to continue. Then, in early February, the Pakistani government announced that Khan had signed a confession admitting to having aided Iran, Libya, and North Korea with designs and equipment for their nuclear weapons programs.

Khan appeared on national television in Pakistan on February 4 and, speaking in English, made a three-minute speech. "I take full responsibility for my actions and seek your pardon," he said. He expressed the deepest "sense of sorrow, anguish and regret," saying that his actions were taken "in good faith" but were "errors in judgment." He portrayed his actions as entirely his own. "There was never, ever any kind of authorization for these activities from the government."

The next day Musharraf pardoned him but placed him under permanent house arrest. While we would have preferred to see Khan face trial, and wanted to have U.S. and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) investigators extensively question him about his dealings, the outcome was still a major victory.

In the new world of proliferation, nation states have been replaced by shadowy networks like Khan's, capable of selling turnkey nuclear weapons programs to the highest bidders. Networks of bankers, lawyers, scientists, and industrialists offer one-stop shopping for those wis.h.i.+ng to acquire the designs, feed materials, and manufacturing capabilities necessary for nuclear weapons production. With Khan's a.s.sistance, small, backward countries could shave years off the time it takes to make nuclear weapons.

A small group of our intelligence officers, working closely with our British allies, patiently pursued the Khan network for close to a decade. They succeeded brilliantly. On my next-to-last day as DCI, I went down to the small office and presented medals to the officer leading the effort and the entire team.

What we don't know is how many networks similar to Khan's may still be out there-operating undetected-and offering deadly advice and supplies to anyone with the cash to pay for them. In the current marketplace, if you have a hundred million dollars, you can be your own nuclear power.

The Khan network was closely intertwined with another major intelligence success. Through the work of U.S. and British intelligence, Libya, long a pariah state, had its weapons of ma.s.s destruction programs neutralized without the firing of a shot.

CIA had been having clandestine meetings with senior Libyan officials since 1999. Our efforts were designed to try to resolve issues regarding terrorism and to learn what we could from the Libyans about various Islamic terrorist groups. These meetings, conducted with our British colleagues, were held in several European cities. The Libyan delegation was led by Col. Muammar al-Gadhafi's chief of intelligence, Musa Kusa, who got a master's degree from Michigan State University in 1978. Ill.u.s.trative of the surreal world in which we had to operate, CIA officers found themselves exchanging pleasantries with the man who, by some accounts, was the mastermind behind the Pan Am 103 bombing in December 1988 that killed 270 people.

These contacts continued for several years, up through the time that a Scottish court convicted one Libyan intelligence officer of complicity in the airline bombing and acquitted another. Libya's cooperating with the Scottish tribunal, and other acts, were signs-admittedly faint-that Libya might be looking for a way off the terrorism limb they had climbed out on more than twenty years previously.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Colonel Gadhafi publicly condemned the terrorists actions, calling them "terrible," and announced that the Libyan people were ready to send humanitarian aid to America. That was an interesting sign.

We exchanged some terrorist tracking data with Libya in the aftermath of September 11, but our focus was on pursuing al-Qa'ida in Afghanistan, and so the contacts subsided for a while. Then, in March of 2003, an envoy from Colonel Gadhafi made an informal approach to British officials. He said that Gadhafi was thinking about giving up his WMD programs and asked whether should Libya do so, would the West be willing to ease sanctions on his country.

A senior British intelligence official flew to the United States just as the war in Iraq was starting. I met with him the next day. Five days later, I joined President Bush and British prime minister Blair at Camp David. Blair was accompanied by my counterpart, Sir Richard Dearlove. A "spy's spy," Sir Richard is one of the most skilled and talented intelligence officers I have ever worked with. Extraordinarily thoughtful and articulate, he had instant credibility with political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.

Although the bulk of our time was spent talking about Iraq, we also discussed Gadhafi's surprising initiative. Here we were, just days after launching an invasion of Iraq that was inspired, at least in part, by our concerns about Saddam's nuclear, biological, and chemical programs, and out of the blue, another rogue state wanted to talk about the possibility of coming clean on its own programs.

We debated what Gadhafi's motivation might be. It seemed to us that the Libyans had come to the realization that they had gotten nothing out of their very expensive flirtation with WMD. They were struggling to find their place in the world-Libya was the odd man out in both the Arab and African worlds. You also couldn't discount the effect that 150,000 U.S. troops positioned around Iraq might have on focusing the mind.

Whatever the impetus, this was certainly an opportunity that we could not dismiss lightly. I returned from Camp David and called into my office Jim Pavitt and Steve Kappes, the top two officers in our clandestine service. I briefed them on the opening with Libya and told them that it needed to be handled at a high level and with the utmost discretion. Pavitt and I were up to our ears with Operation Iraqi Freedom, but we had the perfect candidate in Kappes. Steve is one of the most capable case officers I have been privileged to know. Fluent in Russian and Farsi, he had handled some of the toughest a.s.signments that the Agency had to offer. I put the project in his hands and got back to worrying about Iraq. Together Kappes and a senior British counterpart were given the mission for their respective services. They set up a meeting with the Libyans to determine if they were really serious about renouncing their WMD programs.

Kappes and his British colleague flew to a European city in mid-April. Initially, the plan was for them to meet the Libyan intelligence chief Musa Kusa and Libyan diplomat Fouad Siltni in their hotel over breakfast. Steve and his colleague selected a table that allowed them to keep an eye on the entire hotel restaurant. Just before the appointed meeting time, two young men of Middle Eastern extraction walked in. Kappes noted that they had the air of security professionals about them. Moments later, Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, walked into the restaurant. Clearly, this was not a discreet enough environment for sensitive discussions. While Kappes kept an eye on the Israelis, the Brit intercepted the Libyans and took them up to a meeting room on the hotel's top floor. Kappes soon joined them.

Once settled in, Musa Kusa, a tall, well-dressed man, launched into a lengthy canned speech about Libya's position. We had decided not to give the Libyans any written material from the United States in that first meeting, but Kappes conveyed the president's desire that Libya take the necessary steps to return to "the family of nations."

That first meeting lasted more than two hours. After some discussion, Musa Kusa essentially admitted that his country had violated just about every international arms control treaty it had ever signed. Then he said that they wanted to relinquish their weapons programs, that we should trust them to do so, and he asked for a sign of good faith from us.

Steve and his British colleague explained the "trust but verify" concept made famous by President Reagan and said that there would be no signs of good faith from either of our two countries until we could get experts on the ground in Libya and verify the extent of the Libyan holdings, and a.s.sure ourselves that the programs were being dismantled.

When Steve returned from the trip, I took him to the Oval Office one morning to brief the president on what had transpired. Although nothing definitive had been accomplished, we had the prospect of making a real breakthrough. We and the Brits started a.s.sembling teams of WMD experts who might go to Libya to inspect their programs.

But the Libyans started dragging their feet. They weren't ready for foreigners to go poking around their weapons programs, it seemed. I flew to London in mid-May to meet with my counterparts. One of the topics of discussion was how to jump-start the process. Later that month, Kappes and a senior British officer invited the Libyans to a meeting in a European capital. Gadhafi's son Saif al-Islam attended along with Musa Kusa.

Saif started to play the role of tough-guy negotiator, telling Steve and his British colleague what the Libyans expected from us before anything would happen on their end. Steve and the Brit allowed the leader's son to go on for a while and then cut him off. "Look," Steve said, "you need to understand that none of that is going to happen. We aren't going to make any concessions until we get our people on the ground and confirm that everything you are telling us about your stockpiles and your intentions is true. Please go back and tell your father that."

Several more months pa.s.sed without progress on the Libyan side. Another meeting was held in August, this time without Gadhafi's son. Musa Kusa invited Steve and his British colleague to come to Libya and meet with Gadhafi himself. President Bush instructed us to make no promises until we saw solid proof of Libyan intentions and evidence that their decision was irreversible.

Steve and his British colleague flew into Tripoli in early September. As is typical in the Middle East, the promised meeting was delayed several times while they waited at a hotel on the edge of the Mediterranean. Musa Kusa warned them that the first few minutes of the meeting with Gadhafi might be "a little rough."

Finally, in the early evening, they were summoned. Musa Kusa himself drove them to Gadhafi's office. Along the way, he found time to work into the conversation that this was the same location that the U.S. had bombed in 1986, allegedly killing one of Gadhafi's adopted daughters.

They were ushered into Gadhafi's large office. Two huge globes sat astride either end of a large desk that featured a modern personal computer. (Steve would learn that Gadhafi spent hours surfing the Web, to keep up with developments in the outside world.) The leader was wearing expensive Italian loafers and a gaudy s.h.i.+rt with a map of Africa emblazoned on it. After brief introductions, the visitors took seats and Musa Kusa put his head down, as if he knew what was coming, and the interpreter pulled out his pad. Gadhafi immediately launched into a loud and colorful diatribe, slamming the West, and the United States in particular, for every misdeed imaginable. The interpreter had great difficulty keeping up with the Arabic words as they flew off Gadhafi's tongue.

Then, at about the seventeen-minute mark in the tirade, Musa Kusa's head came up as if he could tell that the rant was about to end. Sure enough, Gadhafi ran out of steam, took a breath for the first time, and smiled. "Nice to see you. Thanks for coming," he said. And then he got down to business.

We want to "clean the file," he kept saying. Everything is on the table. At one point there was mention of Libya's WMD programs, and that set off Gadhafi, who claimed that he did not have have WMD programs. A discussion followed of exactly what a "weapon of ma.s.s destruction" was, and then they moved on. At another point, someone mentioned that the United States and Britain would want to conduct "inspections" of Libyan weapons facilities. Again Gadhafi was outraged, but eventually it became clear that if our side called them "visits" instead of "inspections," there might not be such a big problem. WMD programs. A discussion followed of exactly what a "weapon of ma.s.s destruction" was, and then they moved on. At another point, someone mentioned that the United States and Britain would want to conduct "inspections" of Libyan weapons facilities. Again Gadhafi was outraged, but eventually it became clear that if our side called them "visits" instead of "inspections," there might not be such a big problem.

The meeting lasted for about two and a half hours. It ended without any conclusion other than Gadhafi saying, "Work things out with Musa Kusa." On the way out of the office, however, the visitors were informed that Gadhafi's son Saif, who had not been present in his father's office, wanted to meet with them right away. They were driven to Saif's beach house, where the staff had apparently taken the living room furniture and placed it outside on the Mediterranean sand. By now it was around midnight, and they enjoyed a very late dinner and informed the Libyan leader's son about the state of play.

On returning to the United States, I took Kappes down to brief the president once again. I knew Steve would neither oversell nor undersell the situation. He gave the president his a.s.sessment that the Libyans had multiple reasons for wanting to do a deal now. Their fear of Islamic extremists is as large as ours, he explained. If they can find a way to get back into the good graces of the West, the Libyans could send their brightest kids to American colleges, and they could attract major oil companies to help foster the economic prosperity that was eluding them. Still, he said, the Libyan's track record was such that they would likely get cold feet before the deal was done.

The matter was still extraordinarily closely held. I briefed Colin Powell about what we were up to, and we told Rich Armitage and Bill Burns, the State Department's chief official working on Middle Eastern affairs. If this effort ultimately succeeded, it would be their job to work on normalizing relations with Libya.

Then, in the fall of 2003, elements of our two success stories-A. Q. Khan and Libya-merged. Through our operations against the Khan network, we learned that a s.h.i.+p of German registry, called the BBC China China, was carrying centrifuge parts bound for Libya. After it pa.s.sed through the Suez Ca.n.a.l, we worked to have the s.h.i.+p diverted to the Italian port of Taranto, where it arrived on October 4. There inspectors found precisely manufactured centrifuge parts in forty-foot containers listed on the s.h.i.+p's manifest as simply "used machine parts."

While we were delighted that we had intercepted the s.h.i.+pment, we were reluctant to make too big a deal of it at the time, hoping that we could use the incident to drive home to the Libyans that we knew all about their plans and to give them greater incentive to renounce all their WMD.

The Brits dispatched their senior officer to inform Gadhafi before the seizure hit the press. The Libyans claimed that the s.h.i.+pment had been arranged long before the current secret negotiations began and that the people responsible for monitoring it didn't know about an impending decision to renounce WMD.

Few U.S. government officials were aware of the "backchannel" negotiations taking place with the Libyans. Some prominent people who were not aware of the secret talks wanted to trumpet the seizure. We learned that then undersecretary of state for arms control, John Bolton, planned to hold a press conference to cite the incident as a great success for the president's "Proliferation Security Initiative," a two-year-old program to foster international cooperation on limiting illicit arms s.h.i.+pments. In truth, catching the BBC China China had almost nothing to do with that program. We were concerned that if U.S. officials launched into the typical and well-deserved Libya-bas.h.i.+ng language, Gadhafi might cancel the whole deal out of embarra.s.sment. had almost nothing to do with that program. We were concerned that if U.S. officials launched into the typical and well-deserved Libya-bas.h.i.+ng language, Gadhafi might cancel the whole deal out of embarra.s.sment.

We called Rich Armitage, one of the few State Department officials aware of our ongoing efforts, and got him to direct Bolton to stand down. The order was understandably mystifying to Bolton and resulted in his calling Kappes and chewing him out for not coming directly to him.

After the Libyans finally gave us the blessing for inspection teams to visit their country, a handful of CIA weapons experts flew from the United States to the United Kingdom to pick up their British counterparts. On October 19 they traveled to Tripoli in an unmarked airplane. The sight of a jet labeled "United States of America" landing there was something neither the Libyans nor we were ready to explain. Just before touching down, the aircrew told Steve Kappes that Tripoli was refusing to grant landing rights. No one knew whether this was a bureaucratic screwup or if the Libyans had once again gotten cold feet, so Steve told the crew to tell the tower to call Musa Kusa if they had any questions about their arrival. Within minutes, landing approval was granted. Steve thought it was a good thing that the Libyans were keeping the team's arrival under wraps. But, as the plane taxied toward the terminal, Steve looked out the aircraft window and saw a marching band taking up positions. It turned out that there was no reason to worry-the band was present to greet some other arriving dignitary-and the CIA plane parked at a remote location.

Just as we had kept the Libyan initiative a closely held secret in the United States, it was an especially big secret in Gadhafi's country, too. Kappes, his British counterpart, and their teams were taken to a compound where a large gathering of local officials had been a.s.sembled. Kappes could tell that the Libyans had no guidance on what to say to the visitors. They appeared frightened and may have thought that the whole exercise was a loyalty test by the Great Leader to see who could keep the tightest jaw. Slowly, over a period of days, the Libyans finally figured out that they were supposed to reveal what they knew, and that this was not some kind of trick.

On October 21, after two days of limited progress, Gadhafi asked that Kappes meet him alone. Back in his big office, the colonel proceeded to launch into another signature rant. After a while he stopped and asked if the United States would really fulfill its commitments if he renounced his WMD programs. "Yes sir, the president is a man of his word," Steve told him. "But if he feels his word has been dishonored...well, he is a very serious-minded man." Gadhafi just kept repeating that he wanted to "clean the file, clean the file."

After a few days, things bogged down again. So Steve and his British colleague used the tried-and-true "pack our bags" routine. They ordered the weapons inspectors to pack up and called for their aircraft to come collect them. Musa Kusa sighed. "You guys are such a pain," he said, but then ordered increased openness, and the bags were unpacked.

Progress was slowly being made, with the Libyans showing the U.S. and British inspectors how far along they had been on various weapons programs. In many cases, the Libyans tried to conceal parts of their programs, not knowing how much we already knew. They'd show us their Scud B missiles, and we would say, "Fine, now where are your Scud Cs?"

When our inspectors were shown a storage facility for highly toxic chemicals, they were stunned. The surprise was not that the Libyans possessed the deadly chemicals, but that they were stowed in large plastic jugs and the Libyans' sole safety precaution was to hold their noses when they entered the facility. The Americans quickly backed out and donned complete body-covering chemical defense suits before reentering the storehouse.

The process of inventorying the various programs took several months. The Libyans were most uncooperative on the nuclear account, however. They had no idea how much we already knew about their program.

In late November 2003, Steve and his British colleague invited Musa Kusa to a meeting. "Look," they said, "we know you guys purchased a centrifuge facility." About this time the Libyans realized that there was no turning back. Having started to tell us about their programs, they had to complete the effort, given what we already knew.

In fact, we knew virtually all there was to know about their program due to our operation against the Khan network. It was like playing high-stakes poker and knowing your opponent's cards. In this case, the stakes were the complete and peaceful disarmament of a nuclear weapons project that would eventually have given the colonel a nuclear weapons capability.

Sometimes we knew more than the Libyans themselves did. At one point we told them, "Hey, we know you guys paid a hundred million dollars for all that stuff from A. Q. Khan." There was a puzzled silence on the other side. "A hundred million? We thought the price was two hundred million!" Apparently, someone had made a heck of a profit on the side.

By mid-December enough progress had been made that the deal would soon become public. Even that was a carefully orchestrated dance; Gadhafi would first announce to his own people that he had decided to renounce his WMD programs. Then Prime Minister Blair was to make public comments welcoming the news, to be followed by remarks from President Bush. The timing was tightly negotiated for December 19. And then, at the last minute, word came from Libya that the colonel wanted to delay. Uh oh, we thought. He is about to pull the rug out from under this deal. But the explanation turned out to be a simple one. The Libyan national soccer team was playing on television that night, and Gadhafi didn't want to annoy the fans by breaking into the coverage of an important game with an announcement about something most Libyans didn't care about, weapons of ma.s.s destruction.

PART III.

CHAPTER 16

Casus Belli

One of the great mysteries to me is exactly when the war in Iraq became inevitable. In the period after 9/11, just as in the months before it, I was singularly obsessed with the war on terrorism. My many sleepless nights back then didn't center on Saddam Hussein. Al-Qa'ida occupied my nightmares-not if if but but how how they would strike again. I was wracking my brain for things we could do to delay, disrupt, or-G.o.d willing-prevent an attack. Looking back, I wish I could have devoted equal energy and attention to Iraq. Given all the mistakes that would eventually be made, Iraq deserved more of my time. But the simple fact is that I didn't see that freight train coming as early as I should have. they would strike again. I was wracking my brain for things we could do to delay, disrupt, or-G.o.d willing-prevent an attack. Looking back, I wish I could have devoted equal energy and attention to Iraq. Given all the mistakes that would eventually be made, Iraq deserved more of my time. But the simple fact is that I didn't see that freight train coming as early as I should have.

Not that there weren't rumblings from the very beginning of the Bush administration. Many of the incoming senior officials had been heavily involved with Iraq when they were last in government. Not long before the inauguration, d.i.c.k Cheney had asked departing defense secretary William Cohen to give the incoming president a full and complete briefing on Iraq and the options involved. To me, it was both natural and appropriate to want to bring the new president up to speed on what continued to be a th.o.r.n.y issue for the United States. Our air crews were patrolling Iraq's no-fly zones at considerable risk. Meanwhile, the UN sanctions against Saddam were steadily eroding.

From the beginning, too, it was evident that the vice president intended to take an active interest in the workings of CIA and in the intelligence we turned out. Many media accounts, and indeed some of the court filings in the Libby case (in which the vice president's former chief of staff was found guilty of perjuring himself regarding the Valerie Plame Wilson leak matter), have contended that there was some kind of war between CIA and the Office of the Vice President. If there was a war, it was one-sided and we were noncombatants. At the time, I viewed the vice president as enormously supportive of intelligence, helping us get the resources we needed. Because of his past service in government, he knew a lot about our business and was never shy about asking tough questions. I welcomed them. Tough questions should never be a problem-so long as you don't change the answer from what you believe to what you think the inquisitor wants to hear. And we never did.

Sure, some of our a.n.a.lysts, junior and senior, chafed at the constant drumbeat of repet.i.tive queries on Iraq and al-Qa'ida. Jami Miscik, our senior a.n.a.lyst, came to me one day in mid-2002 complaining that several policy makers, notably Scooter Libby and Paul Wolfowitz, never seemed satisfied with our answers regarding allegations of Iraqi complicity with al-Qa'ida. I told her to tell her a.n.a.lysts to "quit killing trees." If the answer was the same as the last time we got the question, just say "we stand by what we previously wrote." But if there was any evidence of collaboration between Saddam and terrorist organizations, it was important to know, just as it was important to know if there was a nexus between terrorism and WMD, another of the vice president's deep concerns.

The focus on Iraq by senior Bush officials predated the administration. Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, and Richard Perle were among eighteen people who had signed a public letter from a group they named "The Project for the New American Century" calling for Saddam's ouster. It is often forgotten, but regime change in Iraq was also the explicitly stated policy of the Clinton administration, and was the goal of the Iraq Liberation Act, pa.s.sed by Congress in 1998. One hundred million dollars was appropriated to the State Department for the express purpose of seeking an end to Saddam's regime. This policy emerged in the aftermath of a failed 1996 covert-action program and was announced to the world. Most important, the U.S. government's intention to bring about regime change in Baghdad was proclaimed to the long-suffering people of Iraq. America's promise to topple Saddam remained the law of this land from halfway through Bill Clinton's second term right up until U.S. troops invaded in March 2003.

At the start of the Bush administration, Secretary Powell in particular pushed the notion of introducing "smart sanctions." In meetings early in 2001, he noted that the United States was getting killed in the court of public opinion by the incorrect impression that UN sanctions were causing the starvation of Iraqi babies. To restore our public image, Powell urged new sanctions that would more clearly be focused on military-related procurement. Other senior administration officials argued that this would only increase Saddam's opportunities to evade the sanctions, refill his coffers, and restore his weapons programs. Powell did eventually gain approval for the "smart sanctions," but this was rapidly overtaken by other efforts within the administration.

On February 7, 2001, little more than two weeks into the new administration, Condi Rice chaired a Princ.i.p.als Committee meeting in the White House that focused on Iraq. My deputy, John McLaughlin, sat in for me that day. Like many meetings in the early days of the Bush administration, this one appeared to be intended to gather information and to a.s.sign bureaucratic missions so that a government-wide policy could later be developed.