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In USS
Cole
's case, the NCIS agents demanded access to the pier by showing an arrest warrant for the ship's navigator, Lieutenant Ann Chamberlain. When the watchstander responsible for maintaining security on the pier questioned their credentials or the validity of the warrant, the agents threatened arrest for interference with a criminal investigation and were allowed onto the pier. When questioned again at the bottom of the brow by
Cole
's security watch, they again flashed credentials and threatened to have the watchstander arrested. Ultimately, they gained access to the quarterdeck area—which meant that the ship failed the intrusion exercise.

While this showed how vulnerable a ship could be to unauthorized access by a convincingly trained agent, that scenario seemed more akin to what ships might have faced from the KGB or the Soviet navy during the Cold War. As an exercise designed to train shipboard personnel to deal with terrorists, who would likely be armed with weapons or explosives, the drill was hardly realistic.

Notably, there was no training on how to respond to a suicide bomber entering the ship or using a car to ram through onto the pier and attack us by blowing it up. And at no time were any of the ships trained or prepared to defend against assault from the sea. There was no training in how to anticipate or respond to an attack by a boat in the harbor; all threats in the exercise were land based. By the end of the week, every ship had suffered
one form or another of security breach and held training to teach the crew how to counter the perceived threat. At the conclusion of the exercise, the commander, Second Fleet, Admiral William J. Fallon, sent out a message to all twenty Second Fleet ships that had participated, specifically mentioning seven for “noteworthy performance.” USS
Cole
was one of those ships. With the exercise complete and the lessons incorporated into our operating procedures, we looked forward to deployment with a sense of confidence that unwittingly set in place the circumstances for a tragedy.

As the date for the battle group's six-month deployment in late June approached, the commander, Rear Admiral Gary Roughead, had to select two ships from the squadron as “late deployers,” leaving six weeks after the rest. That was because when it came time for the group to move from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf, different types of ships would have to stagger their departures and arrivals to mesh with the operational requirements of the Sixth Fleet and European Command in the Mediterranean, and Fifth Fleet and Central Command in the Middle East, where the tasks included inspections of ships entering and leaving Iraq, and readiness for contingency operations against Saddam Hussein's regime. Admiral Roughead chose USS
Cole
and USS
Simpson
as the late deployers.

We left about six weeks after the rest of the battle group, on August 8, 2000. As expected, it was an emotionally charged morning, with more than a few tears shed by the crew as well as by the loved ones they were leaving behind. When all the lines were pulled in from the pier, the ship sounded a four-to-six-second prolonged whistle blast, and, finally, USS
Cole
was underway with a fully qualified, all-enlisted crew manning every watch position—a new milestone in the Navy's history. Little did we know how soon and how much we would need these added skills.

The Atlantic was calm and sunny during our crossing, and we soon passed through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. Because of our outstanding performance in preparatory exercises we had been cleared to make port visits in Barcelona, Spain, Villefranche, France, Valetta, Malta, and Koper, Slovenia, in the Adriatic, before proceeding to the
eastern Mediterranean to pass through the Suez Canal on our way to the Middle East. Now we were under the operational control of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Commander, Sixth Fleet. Sixth Fleet rules allowed each ship to make its own determination of how many people should remain on board while in port. We decided to err on the side of caution and keep a third of the crew on duty at all times. Everybody else was permitted to enjoy liberty and see the world—which is after all why most had joined the Navy in the first place.

An additional requirement that had crept into the lexicon of overseas port visits was threat conditions. The Navy now had four threat conditions—Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta—with Alpha requiring the lowest level of protection, similar to what the ship would have had in Norfolk, and increasing degrees of security for the next three conditions up to Delta, the highest level of security to guard against an expected imminent attack. In the Mediterranean,
Cole
operated under Threat Condition Alpha Plus, which required increased security around the pier where the ship was moored and in the vicinity of the fleet landing, where the crew left the pier area and went into town on liberty. All measures were coordinated with local police in each port.

Everywhere we went, many of the crew understood how lucky they were to be Americans and wanted to give something to the community. Usually, about twenty to thirty crew members volunteered for community works projects, helping to clean up an orphanage, restore a local playground, or similar activities. They would always have a great time playing with the kids and more often than not they would play a soccer game at the end of the day. It was our way of quietly showing the U.S. Navy to be good ambassadors for the United States. We all also took advantage of the other ways of enjoying ourselves offered by a Mediterranean deployment. At each port visit, arrangements were made to eat at one of the best local restaurants or visit a winery for a tasting. The crew was also allowed to bring local wine and liquors onto the ship for storage in a cool space until we returned home.

Following a last port visit to Slovenia in early September, USS
Cole
conducted so-called presence operations in the Adriatic aimed at the government
of Serbia, which had retained the name Federal Republic of Yugoslavia even though that country had dissolved in a brutal civil war that had seen the worst atrocities of “ethnic cleansing” in Europe since World War II. The Serbian regime, led by Slobodan MiloÅ¡ević, was still in the process of recovering from a NATO bombing campaign from March through June of 1999 that had halted the brutal repression of ethnic Albanians who had declared the independence of the province of Kosovo. MiloÅ¡ević had been warned that if any of his country's naval vessels entered the Adriatic, even within their territorial waters, their actions might be considered hostile and the United States would take appropriate defensive action to eliminate any perceived threat.

For the first time on our deployment, the crew was conducting real-world operations in support of U.S. strategic objectives. While we had certainly enjoyed being U.S. Navy diplomats during port visits, the crew now had a sense that this was what we had really been training for during the past year.

The tone of the ship immediately grew more serious and calm. We uploaded ammunition into the five-inch gun, readied surface-to-air missiles for immediate arming and firing, loaded torpedoes into the launching tubes, and charged their high-pressure air flasks to be ready for attachment on a moment's notice. Tomahawk cruise missiles were readied for launch on short notice. For several days we operated within areas designated for that purpose, downloading updates for the Tomahawk guidance systems with the most recent priority targets for any such emergency contingencies. With the primary mission of being air defense commander for all Navy ships in the area, USS
Cole
refueled at sea every few days. The ship was on a combat footing, ready for action.

Underway operations continued for the next two weeks, until early October. European Command had been reluctant to release
Cole
until the last minute in order to maintain a large number of Tomahawk missiles in theater to support all possible contingency requirements, in the Balkans or elsewhere. It was finally decided that
Cole
would pass from the operational control of Sixth Fleet and Naval Forces Europe to Fifth Fleet and Central Command on October 9.
George Washington
and
Normandy
departed Fifth Fleet and Central Command early, reporting into the European theater of operations to support the expanding pace of operations in the Adriatic and had arrived several days previously in preparation for
Cole
's imminent departure.
Normandy,
which had been with the
George Washington
battle group that had left for the Middle East six weeks before us, assumed the air defense duties from us on October 6. That afternoon, we conducted our last underway replenishment in the Mediterranean from the USNS
John Lenthall
, which had transited the Atlantic with
Cole
and
Simpson
two months earlier. Upon completion,
Cole
was detached by the commander of the battle group. Our orders were to proceed, alone, through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea and then report for a briefing on our new duties with Naval Forces Central Command/Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.

Under normal conditions, a ship tries to sail at a speed that conserves fuel as much as possible. In
Cole
's case, the best economical speed was around 14 knots. However, because of the delay in making the operational decision about when we would shift from one theater to the next, the timing of our arrival now required a high-speed transit of 25 knots, covering approximately 5,000 miles, and significantly increasing our fuel consumption. In order to keep our fuel reserves above the required minimum of 50 percent, we would need fuel even before we could reach Bahrain. Since the Navy was undergoing a decline in the number of active ships from just shy of 600 in 1986 to only 315 by 2000, there was only one oiler available for an at-sea refueling in the entire 2.5 million square miles of ocean in the Central Command's area of responsibility, and it was up in the Arabian Gulf. So a brief stop for fuel in a local port became our only recourse. Aden, at the southern tip of Yemen, and Djibouti, across the Strait of Bab el Mandeb in Africa, were the only two options. Naval Forces Central Command chose Aden because the intelligence available deemed the threat of terrorism in Djibouti greater than it was in Aden. Besides, Navy ships that refueled in Djibouti did not receive any priority to refuel and were put in rotating order with commercial vessels, sometimes sitting vulnerably at anchor for over twenty-four hours.

We were ordered by Fifth Fleet to conduct a “Brief Stop for Fuel”—as the Navy officially calls it—in Aden on October 12.

After racing across the eastern Mediterranean at 25 knots, USS
Cole
arrived on October 8 off Port Said, Egypt, the entry point for the Suez Canal the next morning. This also marked the transition to the Central Command area of operations, and our force protection security requirements changed. Where we had been under Threat Condition Alpha Plus, we were now moving up to the next step, Threat Condition Bravo. No one was about to take any chances as the ship went through the Suez Canal.

Most of the officers and crew, like me, had never made a deployment to the Middle East; consequently, we needed to be ready for anything that might happen. With that in mind, I had the crew set up our self-defense weapons. As we swung on the end of our anchor and waited to be called into the line of ships to enter the canal, the gunner's mates mounted four .50-caliber machine guns, two forward on the bow and two aft on the fantail and helicopter flight deck area. We also mounted two 7.62 mm machine guns on each of the bridge wings. The MK-38 25 mm chain gun on the starboard side of the ship near the quarterdeck area was similarly readied for action. Ammunition was placed in the small ready-service magazines near each weapon, locked up but available for immediate use. And the crew loaded twenty rounds of five-inch ammunition—artillery rounds five inches in diameter—into the ready-service magazine for the five-inch gun system on the bow. We also unlocked and readied a number of surface-to-air missiles in the vertical launcher tubes, forward and aft, and placed them in a condition that allowed the tactical action officer in the ship's combat information center to immediately insert a key and turn a switch to arm and launch them. To support missiles in flight, the fire control team would have to keep the AN/SPY-1D three-dimensional air-search radar operating despite the closeness to land.

Lastly, we briefed the security teams that would respond to a small-boat attack if one occurred while we were in the Suez Canal. They would remain in readiness on the mess decks and respond with weapons from the security lockers nearby. The crew set the highest condition of combat readiness and survivability with Material Condition Zebra in all compartments on the main deck and below, which meant keeping most hatches
and doors closed so that the ship would be at the maximum level of watertight integrity if it sustained damage from an attack.

The transit passed without incident, and by 1700 on October 9 we were ready to resume cruising at 25 knots down the Red Sea to Aden.

Since we were headed back out into open waters, the threat condition for the ship allowed us to adjust our defensive posture to better reflect our surroundings. We stood down the alert for possible small-boat attack. A Secret message we had received during one of the port visits in the Mediterranean had said that a terrorist organization, possibly al Qaeda, operating in that area had been assessed to be targeting U.S. Navy ships for such attacks, and we had taken precautions at that time. But now that we had left the Mediterranean and passed through the Suez Canal into the Central Command area of operations, this threat was no longer viewed as relevant to the
Cole
.

Unbeknownst to us Naval Forces Central Command had taken that same message and readdressed it to all the ships operating in the region under its control, telling them to be mindful of the threat by al Qaeda and the possibility of a small-boat attack. In what was one of many seemingly benign intelligence shortfalls,
Cole
never received this significant reiteration of the message, since we were still operating in the Mediterranean under Sixth Fleet.