sir.â
âDo you think you can go over there and help them with this Khobar Towers bombing?â
âYes, sir.â
Oh, brother, Saudi Arabia is the last frigging place I want to be today
.
âCan you leave in twenty minutes?â Ransom asked.
âYes, sir.â
Two of us from the embassy in Bahrain jumped into a car and drove across the causeway as quickly as we could. The scene at al-Khobar was horrific. The bomb must have been massive because it left a crater thirty feet deep, and water was seeping into it from the Gulf. The façade of the building was sheared off, and the furniture had either been vaporized or blown to bits. But there were mattresses everywhere, and when you looked up into this shell of a building, you could see huge bloodstains streaking the apartment ceilings. People had been blown out of their beds, and the force of the blast crushed them against the next surface they encountered. It was a miracle the death count wasnât much higher.
By coincidence, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Stateâs chief spokesman, Nicholas Burns, were in Cairo on a diplomatic trip, accompanied by a CNN crew. After the bombing, they immediately flew to Saudi Arabia. My job was to make sure that Christopher, Burns, and CNN got to a certain palace to meet Prince Muhammad al-Saud, the governor of the Saudi Eastern Province. Then I had to get them to the TV station in Dhahran so they could do their interviews. It was my first encounter with Burns, who would rise to become undersecretary of state for political affairs during George W. Bushâs second term. Unfortunately, it wouldnât be my last.
I LEFT BAHRAIN at the end of July 1996, my two-year temporary assignment over. It had ended with a vivid and tragic reminder of why the Middle East fascinated me. Our scholars in academia and our analysts in government knew so muchâand yet most of them had failed to appreciate fully the strength of a new and dangerous force growing and metastasizing in certain parts of the Arab and Muslim world. Two months earlier, having been booted from Sudan, Osama bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, where he had fought to expel the Soviets in the 1980s and where he now made common cause with Mullah Omar and his Taliban thugs. We would hear more from these lunatics soon enough.
Back at Langley, I began work as a political analyst, supposedly specializing in Iraq. But not quite yet, the bosses said; weâre short-handed and we need you to fill in for three months on a familiar account: Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar. What the hell, I was a good soldier. I saluted and said yes. But three months became six months, then nine months, with no winks or nods hinting at an end in sight. The bosses liked my work, and there werenât a bunch of eager beavers gnawing trees to replace me. It was clear, to me at least, that I could grow very old in this particular job unless I made them live up to their earlier promise. Enough, I said. Either put me on Iraq orIâll have to start looking for work outside the office. It took another couple of months, but they finally delivered.
I started working on Iraq in July 1997 and was told early on that Iâd have to write an important analytical paper if I wanted to be promoted. Fair enough, I said, what do you have in mind? Nothing less than a National Intelligence Estimate, my boss said. Samuel R. âSandyâ Berger, President Clintonâs national security adviser, wanted an NIE that would examine Saddamâs likely intentions over the next year.
An NIE is a big deal; itâs supposed to represent the collective wisdom of the so-called intelligence communityânot only the CIA, but the intelligence arms of the military services, the National Security Agency, and others. This was an opportunity to make a real name for myself, and I felt fairly confident going in, figuring I knew as much about Iraq as anybody in the intelligence community. So I
âDo you think you can go over there and help them with this Khobar Towers bombing?â
âYes, sir.â
Oh, brother, Saudi Arabia is the last frigging place I want to be today
.
âCan you leave in twenty minutes?â Ransom asked.
âYes, sir.â
Two of us from the embassy in Bahrain jumped into a car and drove across the causeway as quickly as we could. The scene at al-Khobar was horrific. The bomb must have been massive because it left a crater thirty feet deep, and water was seeping into it from the Gulf. The façade of the building was sheared off, and the furniture had either been vaporized or blown to bits. But there were mattresses everywhere, and when you looked up into this shell of a building, you could see huge bloodstains streaking the apartment ceilings. People had been blown out of their beds, and the force of the blast crushed them against the next surface they encountered. It was a miracle the death count wasnât much higher.
By coincidence, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Stateâs chief spokesman, Nicholas Burns, were in Cairo on a diplomatic trip, accompanied by a CNN crew. After the bombing, they immediately flew to Saudi Arabia. My job was to make sure that Christopher, Burns, and CNN got to a certain palace to meet Prince Muhammad al-Saud, the governor of the Saudi Eastern Province. Then I had to get them to the TV station in Dhahran so they could do their interviews. It was my first encounter with Burns, who would rise to become undersecretary of state for political affairs during George W. Bushâs second term. Unfortunately, it wouldnât be my last.
I LEFT BAHRAIN at the end of July 1996, my two-year temporary assignment over. It had ended with a vivid and tragic reminder of why the Middle East fascinated me. Our scholars in academia and our analysts in government knew so muchâand yet most of them had failed to appreciate fully the strength of a new and dangerous force growing and metastasizing in certain parts of the Arab and Muslim world. Two months earlier, having been booted from Sudan, Osama bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, where he had fought to expel the Soviets in the 1980s and where he now made common cause with Mullah Omar and his Taliban thugs. We would hear more from these lunatics soon enough.
Back at Langley, I began work as a political analyst, supposedly specializing in Iraq. But not quite yet, the bosses said; weâre short-handed and we need you to fill in for three months on a familiar account: Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar. What the hell, I was a good soldier. I saluted and said yes. But three months became six months, then nine months, with no winks or nods hinting at an end in sight. The bosses liked my work, and there werenât a bunch of eager beavers gnawing trees to replace me. It was clear, to me at least, that I could grow very old in this particular job unless I made them live up to their earlier promise. Enough, I said. Either put me on Iraq orIâll have to start looking for work outside the office. It took another couple of months, but they finally delivered.
I started working on Iraq in July 1997 and was told early on that Iâd have to write an important analytical paper if I wanted to be promoted. Fair enough, I said, what do you have in mind? Nothing less than a National Intelligence Estimate, my boss said. Samuel R. âSandyâ Berger, President Clintonâs national security adviser, wanted an NIE that would examine Saddamâs likely intentions over the next year.
An NIE is a big deal; itâs supposed to represent the collective wisdom of the so-called intelligence communityânot only the CIA, but the intelligence arms of the military services, the National Security Agency, and others. This was an opportunity to make a real name for myself, and I felt fairly confident going in, figuring I knew as much about Iraq as anybody in the intelligence community. So I
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