Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda (40 page)

But the fears seem justified when authorities in Germany and Denmark: Nicholas Kulish, “New Terrorism Case Confirms that Denmark Is a Target,”
New York Times
, September 17, 2007.

a “monstrous blood bath”: Mark Landler, “German Police Arrest 3 in Terrorist Plot,”
New York Times
, September 6, 2007.

“This looked to be bigger than Anaconda”: Author interview with a senior U.S. military officer, Washington, D.C., 2011.

“It was a big deal”: Author interview with a senior U.S. military officer, Washington, D.C., 2011.

“The threat stream was viable”: Author interview with a senior national security official, 2010.

“If UBL had been there”: Author interview with a senior national security official, 2010.

“Fallon’s view was you’re swatting a fly”: Author phone interview with a former senior U.S. military officer, February 2011.

“There was a lot of concern about how much ordnance”: Author interview with a senior U.S. military officer, January 2011.

“This was carpet bombing, pure and simple”: Author interview with a senior national security official, Washington, D.C., February 2010.

“It went from being a salad to a stew”: Author interview with General Michael Hayden, former director of Central Intelligence and National Security Agency, Arlington, Va., April 8, 2010.

the “trip from hell”: Ibid.

“Mr. President, we’ve seen a merger”: Ibid.

The roller-coaster relations between the CIA and the ISI hit a new low: Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, “Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say,”
New York Times
, August 1, 2008.

“I saw it in longer terms than I think others did”: Author interview with Major General Jeffrey Schloesser, USA (Ret.), Arlington, Va., March 10, 2010.

“The operation made a lot more noise on the ground”: Author interview with a senior national security official, Washington, D.C., 2010.

5. TERROR 2.0

“That AQ ‘ExOrd’ was the first designed against an enemy”: Author interview with a Bush administration national security official, 2010.

“Just like if I want to go to Iraq with the Fourth Division”: Author interview with a Bush administration national security official, 2010.

“A fortress mentality will not work in cyber”: Author interview with Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn, Arlington, Va., January 2010.

“You don’t just deter with costs, but also with benefits”: General Larry D. Welch, USAF (Ret.), U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium, Omaha, Neb., August 12, 2010.

“Deterrence has been a fundamental part”: Author interview with a White House official working on cybersecurity, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“We are looking beyond just the pure military might”: Author interview with General Kevin Chilton, USAF, Omaha, Neb., February 19, 2010.

“States, terrorists and those who would act as their proxies”: Mark Landler, “Clinton Urges Global Response to Internet Attacks,”
New York Times
, January 21, 2010.

“We knew we could pull it off”: Author interview with a senior Pentagon official, 2009.

“The Internet forum is the connective tissue of the global Jihad”: Author interview with a U.S. intelligence officer, 2010.

“General Abizaid was the Centcom commander”: Author interview with a U.S. counterterrorism official, Arlington, Va., 2010.

“this country, over its two-hundred-plus years of history”: Author interview with General John Abizaid, USA (Ret.), U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y., January 12, 2010.

“We invited everybody and their brother”: Author interview with a senior administration official, Washington, D.C., August 2010.

“It is a Sufi sect”: Author interview with a U.S. military intelligence officer, Arlington, Va., 2010.

“When you’re working against terrorists”: Author interview with a senior military officer, Baghdad, 2010.

“Now, if there is a honey pot like that”: Author interview with a former National Security Council official, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“We chased them all over the globe”: Author interview with a senior Pentagon official, Arlington, Va., 2010.

“a knock-down, drag-out interagency battle”: Author interview with an administration official, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“The community is split”: Author interview with Arthur Cummings, Washington, D.C., April 9, 2010.

“There’s your decision space”: Author interview with General Keith Alexander, Fort Meade, Md., September 22, 2010.

“We can take them down for a brief time”: Author interview with a U.S. military planner, Tampa, Fla., April 29, 2010.

“All Al Qaeda products appear to go through”: Author interview with a U.S. operations officer, Tampa, Fla., April 28, 2010.

“We had the ability to hack into their phones”: Author interview with a U.S. intelligence officer, 2010.

“They go into open forums”: Author interview with a U.S. State Department official, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“With the decrease in online postings”: Author interview with a senior military officer, Arlington, Va., 2010.

“They were substantially radicalized on the Internet”: Author interview with Arthur Cummings, Washington, D.C., April 9, 2010.

“There are tens of millions of people playing at one time”: Author interview with a U.S. counterterrorism official, April 29, 2010.

“You know, I could put up filters for every single one of those people”: Author interview with a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, Washington, D.C., February 23, 2010.

6. COUNTERING AL QAEDA’S MESSAGE

“We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists”: President Barack Obama, “A New Beginning,” Cairo, Egypt, June 4, 2009.

A study by the West Point Center for Combating Terrorism: Scott Helfstein, Nassir Abdullah, and Muhammad al-Obaidi,
Deadly Vanguards: A Study of al-Qa’ida’s Violence Against Muslims
(West Point, N.Y.: Center for Combating Terrorism, U.S. Military Academy, December 2009).

“Our view of the speech was pretty simple”: Author interview with Ben Rhodes, Washington, D.C., September 27, 2010.

“Roughly one year since Obama’s Cairo address”: Pew Global Survey, June 2010.

An Arab Public Opinion Poll: “Arab Majority Backs Nuclear Iran,” Zogby International, August 6, 2010.

“The Cairo speech, initially at least, was very important”: Author interview with a senior State Department official, Washington, D.C., August 27, 2010.

“What I think we got after that speech”: Author interview with Ben Rhodes, Washington, D.C., September 27, 2010.

“It’s a discrediting”: John Brennan, New York University Law School, March 18, 2011.

But when the
New York Times
disclosed in February 2002: Eric Schmitt and James Dao, “Bush Seals Fate of Office of Influence in Pentagon,”
New York Times
, February 26, 2002.

“You can destroy the people in Al Qaeda”: Author interview with General John Abizaid, USA (Ret.), U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y., January 12, 2010.

“You’re putting your finger in the dike”: Author interview with Philip Mudd, Washington, D.C., February 23, 2010.

“We haven’t killed the innocents”: Ayman al-Zawahri, April 2, 2008.

a growing number of extremist forums are now using password-protected sites: Author interview with Evan F. Kohlmann, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, January 24, 2011.

“Fallujah was a festering cancer”: Author interview with Lieutenant General Thomas F. Metz, USA (Ret.), Arlington, Va., September 27, 2010.

“It was just a missed opportunity”: Author interview with Michele Davis, Washington, D.C., Spring 2010.

“We were struggling with, what does a messaging and ideological battle look like”: Author interview with Juan Zarate, Washington, D.C., March 8, 2010.

“I had the authority to drop a bomb”: Author interview with a senior military officer, Arlington, Va., 2010.

“The main goal was to create a constant drumbeat”: Author interview with Mark Pfeifle, Washington, D.C., March 4, 2010.

In other locations, the messaging was integrated more seamlessly: Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Training in Africa Aims to Deter Extremists,”
New York Times
, December 13, 2008.

“Young men in the north are looking for jobs”: Author interview with Alexander D. Newton, Bamako, Mali, November 2008.

a report issued in October 2003: Steven R. Weisman, “U.S. Must Counteract Image in Muslim World, Panel Says,”
New York Times
, October 1, 2003.

“What terrorists want to do with young people”: Author interview with James Glassman, Washington, D.C., February 15, 2010.

“We were losing the battle”: Author interview with Gonzalo Gallegos, Washington, D.C., Spring 2010.

“This is not a propaganda contest—it is a relationship race”: Judith McHale, “Striking a Balance: A New American Security,” Center for a New American Security, June 11, 2009.

“It’s both microphones and drones”: Author interview with a senior Pentagon official, Arlington, Va., 2010.

“I thought I asked for this a year ago”: Author interview with a senior administration official, Summer 2010.

“I got my butt chewed in that meeting pretty hard”: Author interview with Denis McDonough, Washington, D.C., January 13, 2011.

“If this were easy, people would have done it a long time ago”: Author interview with Ambassador Richard LeBaron, Washington, D.C., February 18, 2011.

“The goal is fuzzing out the militants’ radio broadcasts”: Author interview with a U.S. government official, Washington, D.C., 2010.

“We can either play into Al Qaeda’s narrative”: Denis McDonough, Adams Center, Sterling, Va., March 6, 2011.

“We have come to a realization”: Author interview with John Tyson, Arlington, Va., September 18, 2010.

“This is not about getting them to love us”: Author interview with a senior Department of Defense official, Arlington, Va., 2010.

“It is not always best for us to hammer the counterterrorism drum”: Michael Leiter, speech to the Center for Strategic and International Affairs, Washington, D.C., December 1, 2010.

“The U.S. government clearly has a challenge in terms of messaging”: Michael Leiter, comments from Aspen Strategy Group, Aspen, Colo., June 30, 2010.

“we are farther behind than I would like”: Author interview with Michael Leiter, McLean, Va., November 4, 2010.

“We help make our own luck”: Michael Leiter, speech to the Center for Strategic and International Affairs, Washington, D.C., December 1, 2010.

7. THE NEW NETWORK WARFARE

“But once we showed that slide”: Author interview with Barry Pavel, Arlington, Va., September 28, 2010.

“Obviously, hard-core terrorists will be the hardest to deter”: Author interview with Michael Vickers, Arlington, Va., August 26, 2010.

“It doesn’t take a lot of money to be a terrorist”: Author interviews with intelligence analysts at MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Fla., April 2010.

“If it’s not job number one, then it’s number one-A”: Author interview with a senior military officer, Tampa, Fla., April 29, 2010.

“There are these terror web sites”: Author interview with a Central Command intelligence officer, Tampa, Fla., April 2010.

“Many Hawala buildings have three-hundred-plus separate family businesses”: Author interview with a Central Command intelligence officer, Tampa, Fla., April 2010.

“At Treasury, we used financial information”: Author interview with Juan Zarate, Washington, D.C., August 17, 2010.

“The important person in this chain is the one with the relationships”: Author interview with a Central Command intelligence officer, Tampa, Fla., April 2010.