-Caveat Lector- November 12, 2000 Cole Inquiry Provokes Bitter U.S. Dispute http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/12/world/12SHIP.html Louis J. Freeh of the F.B.I. is involved in a dispute over the Cole. http://graphics.nytimes.com/images/2000/11/12/world/12ship.1.jpg By JOHN F. BURNS SANA, Yemen, Nov. 11 — A month after the bombing of the destroyer Cole, a bitter dispute has erupted within the Clinton Administration over whether to accept Yemeni limits on the American investigation here or press for a wider ranging inquiry that F.B.I. officials believe could potentially lead to powerful people linked to the Yemeni government itself, American officials on both sides of the dispute say. The dispute has become so heated, according to officials in Washington, that it has featured sometimes personal exchanges between leading American officials on opposing sides. Two of the principal figures in the dispute, with sharply conflicting views, according to those officials, have been Louis J. Freeh, the F.B.I. director, and Barbara K. Bodine, the American ambassador to Yemen. According to a report this week in Al Hayat, an Arab-language newspaper published in London whose reports have accurately prefigured many disclosures in the Cole case so far, the F.B.I. wanted the American Embassy in Yemen to demand that the Yemeni investigation be extended to "social, political and military figures" with close ties to the Yemeni government. The State Department has resisted, American officials say, for fear of alienating Yemeni government officials and souring the atmosphere surrounding the investigation still further, and because of a reluctance to upset an already delicate, strategic relationship with Yemen. The Al Hayat account was indirectly confirmed by an F.B.I. official, who said a critical aspect of the case — whether the bombers had help from powerful figures within Yemen and if so to what extent — was difficult, if not impossible, to determine as long as the Yemeni government decided exclusively whom to detain and interview. Asked about the issue, a senior State Department official in Washington refused to comment, but said it was true that the inquiry needed to go beyond "the first and second levels," meaning who was immediately responsible for the attack, "all the way back to the spider in the web." Despite the strains, senior American and Yemeni officials said in recent days that the dispute over Yemeni limits on the F.B.I. investigation was close to being resolved after weeks of confrontations between senior officials of the two governments. The deal now being worked out, both governments say, would allow the F.B.I. close access to suspects for the first time by permitting its agents to watch Yemeni interrogators by live television relay or through a one-way mirror, and to pass written questions to the Yemenis. The F.B.I. has reacted coolly to the deal, partly because decisions on whom should be questioned would remain exclusively with the Yemenis. But by Friday the dispute appeared to be cooling, with F.B.I. officials saying that the Yemenis, under criticism for their seemingly reluctant cooperation so far, had handed over a large file of transcripts from interviews in the case, and that those, and other new evidence, included valuable details that should help move the investigation forward. On the Yemeni side, the American- educated prime minister, Abdel Karim al-Iryani, said today that American officials were no longer "making an issue" over access to suspects, having accepted that Yemen was doing its best to solve the case and that nobody in the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh was involved. On the contrary, Mr. Iryani said, whoever planned the bombing intended to damage Mr. Saleh and his government's ties with the United States. "We are not hiding anything, and the Americans have accepted that," he said. Still, the new terms for the F.B.I. role appear to fall far short of the free-ranging role the bureau demanded — and the State Department vetoed — in an internal dispute in Washington. The dispute, American officials say, drew in Mr. Freeh, the F.B.I. director, Ms. Bodine, the ambassador, and the White House. Moreover, American officials say, the new arrangements could still fall apart over Yemeni counterdemands for access to information on the bombing that the F.B.I. gathers outside Yemen. The issue, the State Department official said, was whether getting to the people ultimately responsible for the attack, in Yemen or elsewhere, would be more likely to be accomplished by accepting restraints on the F.B.I. that respected Yemeni sensitivities about its sovereignty, or by pressing for much wider access that would alienate President Saleh and other powerful figures in Yemen, and perhaps cause them to become even less cooperative. The State Department official was scathing about the F.B.I.'s demands, saying the bureau lacked experience operating in countries with sharply different cultures, had no understanding of Yemeni sensitivities about "having a large Westerner standing in a room during the interrogation of a Yemeni," and had allowed the urgency of the case to override its judgment. "The idea that you do whatever you like, in spite of where you are, is just silly," the official said. "Not all murder cases can be solved in the space of a 50-minute TV show." Earlier in the investigation, the F.B.I. reacted to what it considered minimal Yemeni cooperation by removing most of the bureau's 150- member contingent in Aden from a harbor hotel and billeting them aboard a Navy ship, the Duluth, 10 miles out at sea. Later, most of the contingent returned to the United States, leaving only 20 agents, many of them deeply disgruntled, cooling their heels at another Aden hotel. Until the transfer late this week of a rich new dossier of Yemeni interviews with suspects, most of the information reaching the F.B.I. came in the form of poorly translated, heavily edited transcripts, some of them days late. In addition, F.B.I. agents visiting safe houses and other locations used in the bombing were forbidden to talk to Yemenis who had met the bombers, and some of those potential witnesses told American reporters later that they had not been questioned by Yemeni investigators, either. According to American officials, one issue that deepened suspicions in the F.B.I. turned out to be a misunderstanding. Days after the bombing, the Yemenis acknowledged to the F.B.I. that they had film of the bombing from a harbor surveillance camera. But when this was handed over, the F.B.I. was furious to find that it did not show the actual bombing and that the sequence it did show, after the blast, had been jerkily edited. Angry representations were made to the Yemenis, who said that the surveillance cameras were set up to be used only as needed, after harbor officials spotted something wrong. In addition, the Yemenis said, the cameras were mounted on stanchions well behind the Cole's mooring point and on the side of the ship opposite the one where attack occurred. The issues behind the dispute between the F.B.I. and the Yemenis could hardly be more critical, either for the prospects of a successful investigation of the attack or for the future of American relations with Yemen, which has emerged as a linchpin of American policy in the region. In fact, the wrangling mirrors policy conflicts that preceded the decision in 1999 to start sending American warships into Aden for refueling — a decision that ultimately led to the Cole bombing, which killed 17 American sailors. That initial policy decision pitted officials in the Pentagon, the State Department and American intelligence agencies who wished to encourage closer ties with Yemen against others in the same agencies who warned of the dangers involved in entrusting the safety of warships to a country that had long been a sanctuary for terrorist groups. So far, both the F.B.I. and the State Department say, the Yemenis have been energetic in finding answers to the first issue in the bombing: how it was done. F.B.I. and Yemeni investigators say they know that the men who guided the skiff that carried the bomb — and who for months monitored American ships entering the harbor — used the names Abdullah Ahmed Khaled Ali al-Musawah and Muhammad Ahmed al-Sharabi, that those were false identities, and that the two men were linked to a network of Islamic terrorist groups that have had bases in southern and eastern Yemen for much of the last decade. But among the critical questions that remain unanswered, F.B.I. officials say, is whether the Islamic terrorists relied on an old network of connections between the terrorist groups and high-ranking figures in Sana, the capital. Those ties were forged in the early 1990's when Mr. Saleh's government was looking for allies in its struggle with a Socialist government that had ruled a separate state in Aden since the late 1960's. In 1994, Mr. Saleh's forces, with crucial support from armed Islamic groups, won a brutal civil war and took control of Aden, but American intelligence reports have shown that the links from that time, despite American-financed efforts by the Saleh government to crack down on the terrorist groups, have persisted. -------------------------- eGroups Sponsor -------------------------~-~> <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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