128. Al Qaeda’s Deadliest Plot: CIA vs Pakistan (Ep 3)

15:27Gordon:right and so it gets really at the heart of things so i can understand why the agency would you know would think let's end this thing right yeah i think the u.s mentality is very much like if

15:38David:there's a one percent chance of this happening right we want to eliminate that one percent chance you know we do not want to take any risks i think that is a function of the time and of yeah the culture i guess that came out of 9-11 and the never again idea do whatever it takes to stop bit. And it's really interesting because this plot is being briefed up to the highest levels. You know, Fran Townsend, the Homeland Security Party, is briefing President Bush. And it's in the president's daily brief.

16:07Gordon:Yeah. Which, again, I think it's an interesting case study in the liaison relationship because when you have information that's going to the CIA station in London here, probably, between the liaison with MI5, that's getting turned into intelligence reports that are then being worked up by US analysts for inclusion in PDB articles about this attack plotting. So again, there are elements of the story that are going to show the tension between the two services, but others, I mean, this is the kind of day-to-day cooperation between MI5 and the CIA is very close.

16:42David:It's very close. Very close. The information is going back and forth. So you can see that the US are going to be nervous once they start seeing that idea that this could be an attack targeting the US. And that's where the difficult conversations, I think, start. Because as we said, John Reed, the UK Home Secretary, is like, trust us, we've got it under control. Just give us a bit more time to collect the evidence and to do this. Whereas the US are like, we're not happy with that.

17:14Gordon:Well, there had been some tension, say, in the Tanner-terrorism relationship in particular, right? Where I'm not sure that the US and UK were ever sort of strategically at odds over the issue, but I think there's this question of, well, how do you deal with it? The two legal approaches taken after 9-11 were very different.

17:34David:Redition, culture, you know, these issues have been tense, you know, how far do you go to get intelligence to stop plots?

17:39Gordon:That's right. I mean, there was a case in 2004 where a Libyan national was captured by the CIA based on intelligence from SIS, MI6, and then he's rendered to Libya, where he's presumably not treated well. There's a lot of political sensitivities here in the UK to exactly how you collaborate with the CIA on counterterrorism work.

18:00David:And I think there is an awareness on the UK side at that time that they're staying close to the Americans. That is very much the policy. But also the Americans are willing to do things that the Brits aren't and are in this kind of post 9-11 mindset. So I think that context is important.

18:18Gordon:Hadn't the Cheney team at the White House blown one of your agents as well?

18:25David:I think it was Eamon Dean, who's a really interesting agent within Al-Qaeda. And you do find these cases where the Americans are either using some British intelligence or it's leaking out of Washington into the media and the Brits. And this is a kind of frequent thing over those years. Even after 7-7, some of the details of the bombs were leaked from the American side. And the Brits are kind of, there's a little bit of tension there. But as ever, I guess this is worth saying, the Brits are the junior partner. Americans are producing more intelligence. So the Brits, to some extent, have to kind of deal with it because they know they need to be in that relationship.

19:00David:And that's important. But here on this, it's a dispute. There is a real disagreement here between the two sides.

19:09Gordon:And it's essentially over whether you should move now and just arrest them, roll them up, or wait.

19:16David:Yeah. Because one US official describes the situation as a loaded gun, the idea that these guys are developing these liquid bombs. They want it shut down. And the MI6 team, and you hear this from some of the memoirs from the CIA side as well, are saying, don't rush, give us time. An MI6 official tells Jose Rodriguez, who's an important figure, who's the CIA director of operations at the time. The MI6 guy is reported as saying to him, don't rush to judgment, trust us. to which Jose Rodriguez from the CIA says famous last words. There's a very good book here by Aki Perez called Disruption, which is really good, I think, at recounting from the American side what was going on, because he's an American author, about what was happening on the American side in this plot.

20:01Gordon:And I guess the US view, if I could take that side for a second, is that if you let the thing run on the assumption that MI5 has it all under control, and importantly, is seeing all of the different players in the plot, that's fine if those assumptions are true. But if you don't have it all covered and you let it run, if one of those people gets on a plane, you just didn't know that they were there, and you miss it on surveillance, you could end up with hundreds, if not thousands, of dead Americans and Brits and everybody else. Yeah.

20:37David:Right? Yeah. I guess that's the American view is, are you really sure you've got that good coverage if you're MI5 across everyone? Are you sure that there aren't other plotters out there? But I guess the MI5 view would be the longer we watch, the more we know about it, the more certain you can be and the more you can uncover any other kind of connections or any other cells. So I think that's where the tension lies between the two sides.

21:05Gordon:I think this is another interesting dynamic in the liaison relationship, is that as you get some of this cooperation fused with tension, when the stakes are this high, it starts to get political. And so we have then PM Tony Blair and President George W. Bush start to talk about this plot in late July. And Blair is actually visiting Washington for a summit. It's one of the topics of conversation. Yeah.

21:32David:And MI5 and MI6 warn Blair ahead of that meeting with Bush on July 28th, that Washington is pushing for action. And they say, we need patience. And the American view is our citizens are planes. So you can see the tension here about the investigation. You've got specific American cities and planes being talked about. So by the start of August, the Americans are really piling on the pressure. And supposedly twice a day, the president would contact Fran Townsend asking, are you comfortable letting the planes fly? Every day, Bush wanted to shut it down, one person recalled. Arrest all these guys, he'd say.

22:10David:This is all from Misaki Peretz's book, Disruption. Fran Townsend, the Homeland Security Advisor as well, is saying, I don't care about convictions in court. We just want to stop this plot. I don't give a shit if it blows the case. That's what one person is quoted as.

22:23Gordon:Yeah, which you'd argue to be a little short-sighted because if you don't actually, if you're not able to convict them, they would then

22:29David:go free. And the Brits are getting angry because they view as this is not your case. They're telling the CIA and counterpart. The liaison does sound really tricky. And Andy Heyman, who's one of the police chiefs at the time in his memoir, he talks about the US authorities have been getting edgy, seeking reassurance that this was not going to slip through our hands. We've moved from having congenial conversations to eyeball to eyeball confrontations. We thought we'd managed to persuade them to hold back so we could develop new opportunities and get more evidence to present to the courts. But I was never convinced they were content with that position.

23:03Gordon:It's also interesting that, I guess, you could assume that maybe the pressure on the US side is purely coming from the politicians, but it does seem the CIA, the security officials, kind of agree with the politicians. Yeah, exactly.

23:15David:I don't think it was just like the politicians. I think the CIA and all the officials in the White House are also in on this. I think the brits maybe think it's just a political thing we can talk to our liaison counterparts and they'll be they'll be real yeah they'll understand and i don't think the brits realized at the time that actually cia you know all these others were also out to do something so i guess this is going to push it towards as we'll see the end game early august tony blair's on vacation so what tony blair's on vacation in cliff richard do you know who cliff richard is no popular singer okay popular singer he has a villa in barbados oh that sounds lovely holiday there it sounds lovely uh it's the

23:50Gordon:Perfect command center to stop a terrorist operation, I'm sure.

23:53David:Eliza Manning and Buller, who we should say is the head of MI5 at the time, is in the UK, but is on leave. So Jonathan Evans, who we've spoken to for our club episode, is the number two. And he's overseeing this. Twice a day, he's briefing the Home Secretary, John Reed. And then Reed, the Home Secretary, briefs Blair, who's in Barbados. They're working up an arrest plan in case they need it. Interestingly enough here as well, there's also talk that the plotters might do a dry run. In other words, they would take the components onto a flight. And actually fly. And actually fly. Okay. Just to make sure they could get through security.

24:29David:So one of them would do it before getting through the whole lot to make sure it doesn't get stopped or spotted.

24:34Gordon:MI5 has gotten hints of that, presumably from the surveillance. That the plotters themselves are mulling over the idea of a dry run or talking with Rashid Ralph.

24:43David:Yeah, there's coded references to a rap concert. I mean, Ralph later claims there had been some kind of dry run, but it doesn't look like that had happened at the UK end. And there's some intelligence they're going to do it roundabout by the end of August 11th or around that time. So now the US and UK are kind of worried that people are going to get on board with actual bomb components. And then I guess the problem you're starting to worry is, well, what if they just do it? Yeah, exactly. Michael Hayden, who's CIA director, says this really pushed the needle into the red. You know, so now the U.S.

25:16David:is thinking we are really, really worried about this. Yeah, exactly.

25:20Gordon:And it feels like a point from the American side of the investigation where you just can't take risk any longer. Right. So let's take a break. When we come back, we'll see how something blows the case wide open. eczema is unpredictable but you can flare less with ebglyss a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema after an initial four month or longer dosing phase about four in ten people taking ebglyss achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing ebglyss libri

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27:10Gordon:well welcome back gordon the u.s has lost its patience hasn't it yeah we're usually a very patient country and reasonable and and now we've lost we've lost all of our patience yeah and this

27:23David:is going to be interesting because the US are going to effectively, you could say, compromise the operation, or at least that's an uncharacterial. Hold on. You're already driving it forward.

27:35Gordon:There is some unilateral action. I'm very comfortable when we act unilaterally. It usually goes very well. And now we're going to explain how the US act unilateral.

27:45David:It's really interesting because it all centers on Pakistan. And back to Rashid Raouf, who, as you remember, as the Al-Qaeda facilitator, the kind of contact for the plotters. By coincidence, CIA Director Michael Hayden and CIA Operations Chief Jose Rodriguez are in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, in early August, as this is all coming to a head. They just come from Baghdad. You don't think it was a coincidence? You think they've arrived to do what they're about to do? I do wonder about that. They say by coincidence. I mean, they're coming from Baghdad, and they're going to Afghanistan. So it is plausible this was a prearranged trip.

28:21David:UK police don't know they're there. We told the Barbies that we're here. Okay, okay. I'll give you that one. The CIA has close but difficult liaison with Pakistan and its intelligence service. Is that a charitable way of putting it? That's very charitable, I would say. Yeah. As we'll see from the way that this story unfolds. Because most of Al-Qaeda's leadership had fled Afghanistan after the Taliban had been overthrown, and they go to the tribal areas of Pakistan, which we should say the Pakistani authorities don't have control over effectively day-to-day. They're wild tribal areas. Pakistan has some insight, but not total insight to what's going on there.

29:01David:And the US needs Pakistani help to deal with them. But at the same time, the Pakistanis have their own agenda, including supporting, for instance, the Taliban because As one thing. Yeah, there's one thing. For instance, supporting or having at least a relationship with the Taliban and some jihadist groups because they're more worried about India than they are about anything else.

29:23Gordon:Right. And we should say that at this point in time, in 2006, we're still a year or two away from the alleged drone campaign that the CIA will allegedly run in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Beginning in around 2007, the CIA began. But at this point, a drone campaign, but this is not happening yet.

29:45David:It's not happening yet. And so CIA relations with the counter-terrorist branch of ISI are pretty good. Probably slightly better, maybe, than the Brits have with the ISI. Of course, because the Americans are bigger, more resources. But then there are other bits of ISI, Pakistani intelligence, who are working on different purposes. And so there's always this kind of suspicion between the two sides about what games they're playing. Now, we do have quite a few American accounts of what happens on this visit by the CIA. So let's put those out there, and then we can discuss if we think they're the full story, he says charitably.

30:21Gordon:So people who aren't watching should note that Gordon is looking at me with intense suspicion.

30:27David:So according to the American accounts, CIA Director Hayden, Operations Chief Jose Rodriguez, first of all, they're taken to a military compound, probably ISI HQ, which is just outside of his home. I visited it once. You've gone there? I've been there. If you'd told me before I went there that I'd visit ISI HQ, I'd have thought maybe with handcuffs on and, you know, with a hood on. But actually, it was a very beautifully manicured compound. Really? Where a group of us were kind of briefed on ISI counterterrorism by an official there. It was very interesting. They're absolutely charming, but you also know, absolutely briefed for us, those ISI people that you meet.

31:04David:You know what I mean? They have this a bit charmed by them. Well, but a charmed, but also scared. I remember one guy and he kind of was incredibly urbane and sophisticated. But when I asked him about, you know, but do you kind of torture people here? We'll come back to torture. He said something to me like, we have very different methods from you. And you kind of go, I'll take that as a yes. That was the gist I got.

31:28Gordon:It's a tough neighborhood.

31:29David:Yeah, it's pretty mildly. But they meet, Rodriguez and Hayden meet Kayani, who was the head of the ISA at the time, chatting in a large conference room. Kayani is annoyed at being told Pakistan's not doing enough to fight al-Qaeda. At one point, he mutters to CIA Director Hayden, I'm tired of you Americans saying we're not doing enough to fight the terrorists. This is where Rashid Ralph comes into it, because the Brits have asked for surveillance of him, but it's a bit intermittent because he's mainly in the tribal areas, but he's moving around. Hayden says, well, we'd be interested to know where he was, Rashid Ralph.

32:04This is the account of it.

32:07David:And also, Kayani will kind of suggest to Jose Rodriguez, are you with me? Are you going to kind of support me? And Rodriguez says, yeah, of course. Hayden leaves, goes to Afghanistan. Rodriguez, operations director, stays for more talks, which I also find curious. You know, maybe it's, again, entirely understandable. We'll come back to my cynicism later. I just think that would have been fine.

32:33Gordon:So at this point, Rodriguez is the DDL.

32:36David:It's plausible. That feels like a pretty normal thing. He's flown around in a helicopter tour of the tribal areas, see where the action has happened. I've done that as well. It's very impressive. They come back to Islamabad, brief Rodriguez on the airline plot. He's been on the road for a few days. He says he's surprised by how much has happened. He hears about, for instance, the female police officer in the internet cafe in Walthamstow, seeing Ali write down the US flight times.

33:03Gordon:We should say Rodriguez is being briefed by the CIA at this point, right?

33:07David:ISI is not involved in it. But he's suddenly realizing this is moving on. And then Rodriguez, you're right, that's CIA. And Rodriguez thinks, okay, this is getting serious. Rodriguez meets Kayani, the ISI chief, who says the Pakistanis had learned that Rashid Raaf might soon be traveling from the tribal areas towards a city. And Kayani, this is from Jose Rodriguez's book, Hard Measures, and the title gives you some idea about his mentality. He says, Kayani says, here's an opportunity. Would you support us if we captured Ralph right now? And Rodriguez says, I made an on-the-spot decision. Absolutely.

33:49David:We want this bad guy. It seemed to me that telling Kayani anything else would have undermined the relationship we were trying to build with the ISI. and he says i made the call despite a vague understanding that british authorities were hoping we would not move too rashly against ralph and then he tells this story about after that meeting ends he departs he's heading for a dinner they're in an armored sedan there's a kind of security convoy the CIA's chief of station kind of joins him in the back of the car a phone rings for a Pakistani who's with them. And he's told, Ralph is on a bus heading for one of our checkpoints.

34:29David:We want to capture him. Are you with us? And the colleague turns to Jose Rodriguez and says, what do you think, boss? And Rodriguez says, I said, let's get him. The cautious thing would have been to consult with Washington, but doing so would have been the equivalent of saying no. So Washington never responds instantly.

34:49Gordon:I mean, he also mentions that, I mean, in this sort of acerbic way, we would have wanted meetings, develop position papers, and consult the British. Three things that sound tiresome, right?

35:02David:I think that does give you some insight into Jose Rodriguez, who, let's say, is a more controversial character in the world, controversial hardline character in the annals of the central intelligence agency. His memoir is titled Hard Measures. He was involved in overseeing the kind of enhanced interrogation. I'm using scare quotes there because lots of people call it torture program. I know that's something that he'd deny, but that's his reputation. And his attitude is, I don't want to be in front of a commission or a congressional inquiry explaining why I didn't take the opportunity.

35:34Gordon:It is interesting how this Pakistani benevolence to go after Ralph came together so smoothly while the CIA was out there.

35:42David:Yes. So this is all despite the fact, we should be clear, that the Brits have said, hold off arresting Ralph. We need more time to collect information. That has been the request from Tony Blair to George W. Bush. Rodriguez says he didn't know about the presidential conversations with Tony Blair and he only had a vague idea. The Brits didn't want them to arrest Ralph. I don't know. What do you think? I'll say what I think. I think these memoirs are disguising the true thing of what happened, which is I think the Americans decided they wanted to do it. Rather than the Pakistanis coming and going, oh hey, there's an opportunity, I think the Americans said, we want this guy out.

36:28David:We don't care what the Brits think. We want this operation rolled up, our way of doing it. They're not moving fast enough in London. and they're not listening to us saying, roll it up. So we're going to shortcut this by getting the Pakistanis to arrest Ralph.

36:42Gordon:I think that's probably not so far from the truth. What I guess I don't understand, though, is if you arrest Ralph, there's a world where the plotters stop. There's also a world where that accelerates. The attack has a risk, right? There's a risk attached to it, which does make me wonder if at least pieces of what jose rodriguez is saying here is true which is that maybe there is a not a complete picture on his side of the conversations that had happened between

37:15David:bush and blair yes that is possible yeah jonathan evans and you know michael hayden because we should say that the reason why this is and we'll come back to this a bit later but but this is so and significant arresting Ralph is we talked earlier about how Ralph was in daily constant contact with Sarwa and Ali in London. So they are constantly talking to each other about the bomb, about plans, about the timings. I mean, you know, Ali's kind of there constantly communicating with him about the other. So as soon as you arrest Ralph, you're tipping the hand that they - Yeah, because others go dark.

37:52David:They'll go dark. Yeah. Michael Hayden, CIA director, says ISI did not want to move against Ralph without American support. and cover. But I have to say some Pakistanis suggest that it was the Americans pushing for Ralph's arrest during the meetings, including the one between Hayden and Hayani.

38:08Gordon:I think that makes the most sense. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me that the Pakistanis would say, oh, we could do this for you now. We could do this for you now. I mean, there must have at least been a set of conversations that happened where the Americans bring up Ralph. And then the Pakistanis realize, oh, this guy's they want the americans and we can demonstrate our value by arresting him and that

38:31David:feels like the more the more i mean there was some u.s reports i read which even said the u.s had threatened to render ralph themselves if the pakistanis didn't pick him up andy hayman the uk police chief also says he thinks you know the u.s is his words lost their nerve and triggered the arrest in pakistan and it's interesting because the cia will try and blame what happens on the Pakistanis and suggest it was their fault and not a US decision. It's very interesting because the person who has to come into MI5 and MI6 in London and tell them that what I think a lot of people think is a bit of a half-truth or a non-truth, that it was the Pakistanis' fault and not the Americans, interestingly enough, is the CIA head of counterterrorism in London, which is Jennifer Matthews, who we talked about in a previous episode, who dies in the host bombings.

39:23David:Yeah, the series we did on the coast bombings. Yeah. And she was very direct and uncompromising generally, but some Brits, I think, will later almost feel sorry for her because their view is she's being sent to come into MI5 and MI6 and basically tell them an untruth, which is this is all the Pakistani sports, when I think they view it as an American decision. So anyway, that is the issue. So in Pakistan, Jose Rodriguez was supposed to be out for dinner. They scrapped plans for dinner. They set up a command center to get a live feed of the forces providing a blow-by-blow count of the arrest of Rashid Ralph.

40:01David:And he says, the capture was carried out by Pakistani troops with CIA officers providing high-tech assistance nearby. Again, that strikes me as the fact they had a CIA team nearby ready to go also suggests this was, you know, not that, oh, he happens to be here.

40:22Gordon:Let's take him. It makes it sound a little bit less spur of the moment. Although the agency would have had lots of resources in Islamabad.

40:29David:Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe. So Ralph is asleep at the back of a bus. It reaches a checkpoint by a railway track. He opens his eyes and he looks out the window and he can see armed police, including plain clothes police, waiting. The bus stops. They come towards the bus. Ralph realises at that point he's in trouble. He actually wonders at first if it's something that Ali and the guys in the UK have done which has compromised him and led the authorities to him. But actually he realises he'd left his own phone on which allowed him to be tracked, which is how they get to it. He tries to turn it off.

41:05David:It's too late. The officers come to the back of the bus, quickly see it's him. They cuff him, hood him, take him to a van and to an army camp. That is it for the moment, for Rashid Ralph, for the moment.

41:18Gordon:And Jose Rodriguez writes in his memoir that he called Langley and told his chief of staff, who was director Gina Haspel, what had happened. And And he says, you know, I asked Gina to go down the hall and brief the then deputy director, Steve Kappas. She called back minutes later. Steve is livid. He wants to know why you let the Pakistanis conduct the takedown. Because I agreed with them, was my simple answer, is how Jose Rodriguez describes that. And, you know, Gina says that the Brits are insistent on following the leads in the case a while longer to see who else might be implicated. President Bush apparently told Prime Minister Blair a few hours earlier that we would move slowly on this plot, she said.

42:02Gordon:I would imagine that over at Thames House, there was some consternation.

42:08David:I think there would be. At CIA, it sounds like there's consternation because Rodrigo says, all hell broke loose at my headquarters. I was glad to be in a war zone. So it does suggest whether it was Rodriguez himself, but it's going to be absolute fury from the Brits. The Americans are slightly, you know, this is bad, but it's bad because they know how angry the Brits are.

42:31Gordon:So the fact that the deputy director of the CIA is furious about this suggests to me that what may have happened is Jose Rodriguez goes out for liaison meetings with ISI. There's going to be a whole bunch of different items on the agenda. One of those things might have been Rashid Ralph, which may have just been a discussion about him. And then when the Pakistanis realize that this is interesting, as you're sort of doing the wheeling and dealing, because these meetings are sort of commerce.

43:01David:Yeah.

43:02Gordon:If Rodriguez is suggesting that this guy is valuable and the Pakistanis think, well, we're already watching him and we don't care about handing this guy over, potentially, he becomes immediately in that commerce, that sort of bargaining chip. And all of this could be going on without any knowledge, certainly in London or back at headquarters in Langley. Yeah. And it could just happen. Yeah, it could do.

43:28David:So that's the charitable view, which is basically Rodriguez and the Pakistanis making their move, being only half-sighted of what the higher-ups was. It would explain why Capas was furious. Yeah. Or, yeah, if you're going to buy that account. I still think maybe there was a bit more of it. You're so skeptical. But Rodriguez says himself, it was better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. Yeah. That's very Rodriguez. guess. But as we said, the problem is Ralph is in such regular contact with the plotters. When he breaks contact, the fear is they'll know something is up. Just at that moment, Rashid Ralph is being arrested.

44:06David:Some of the plotters are recording what are believed to be martyrdom videos in that Forest Road flat. And the Americans have kept the Brits in the dark about this plan to arrest Ralph. So the Brits have no idea Ralph is approaching the checkpoint that he's going to be arrested. They don't know anything that's going on. And when they find out, that is going to cause them to hit the panic button in London.

44:31Gordon:So we're there with the Brits slamming the panic button and the special relationship in tatters. Let's end the third episode. When we come back next time, we will see how it all comes together and how the special relationship really is able to mend all wounds. Isn't that right, Gordon? I think we'll see how difficult it really gets. That's right. But if you don't want to wait, don't wait. Go and join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Get that last episode right now. Binge the whole series and also get access to our two-part interview with Jonathan Evans, who was overseeing this operation at MI5 at the time and has some really amazing insights into how it all went down.

45:16Gordon:We'll see you next time.

45:17David:See you next time. Thank you.