The Bin Laden Plot

49 LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

Inside the director’s seventh-floor conference room, it was silent after Harrison and Khalila finished reviewing their trip report with Christine, Bryant, Rolow, and McFarland. It seemed that everyone around the table had prematurely concluded that the prisoner taken from the third floor of the Abbottabad house was Osama bin Laden. The confirmation that the corpse on the bottom of the Arabian Sea was Osama seemed conclusive proof that bin Laden had, in fact, been killed during the Abbottabad raid.

McFarland broke the silence. “It looks like we misinterpreted McNeil’s note. Let’s start over, back at the beginning.” There was murmured agreement around the table, so she continued. “What kicked this issue off were the deaths of Nagle and McNeil, which we associated with the Abbottabad assault. We initially had two theories: the first was that bin Laden had been taken prisoner and those who knew were being silenced, and the second being that the assault team deaths were the work of al-Qaeda, exacting revenge for bin Laden’s death.

“Now that we’ve ruled out bin Laden’s capture, the elimination of the assault team by al-Qaeda is the only theory that makes sense. But there’s a peculiarity. The SEAL deaths occurred at a steady pace for several years following the Abbottabad raid and abruptly stopped a few years ago. Then they picked back up with Nagle and McNeil a month ago. Why?”

Christine answered, “It may have to do with Zawahiri’s death. Al-Qaeda needs a new leader. Perhaps they’ve chosen one, and he’s decided to finish what Zawahiri began. Or maybe there’s a struggle for leadership and one of the contenders is attempting to garner support by terminating the last few assault team members.”

McFarland opened her laptop and pulled up a summary of the potential successors to Zawahiri, which had been prepared for Christine’s briefing at the White House the morning after the attempted assassination of Secretary Verbeck, and displayed it on the conference room monitor on the far wall.

McFarland went quickly through the list, one slide per man.

“Our assessment is that the leading contender for the new leader of al-Qaeda is Saif al-Adel. He would have the resources and connections, plus a strong motive, to complete the elimination of the Abbottabad assault team members.”

Harrison glanced at Khalila, wondering if she had any information to offer. She had just spent an entire day with Osama’s eldest son and had no information worth mentioning? Not even that she had met with him two days ago?

He decided to stay quiet, evaluating how best to proceed with what he knew. As he considered his options, McFarland continued.

“We’re already working the angle that al-Qaeda is responsible for the assault team deaths,” she said. “We’ll keep everyone apprised as we learn more. In the meantime, however, that conclusion doesn’t explain McNeil’s note — 3rd floor desk. Find him. If he wasn’t referring to Osama bin Laden, then who?”

“It looks like we jumped to the incorrect conclusion that McNeil was referring to the reflection in the computer display,” Christine offered. “We should take another look at the video.”

“My thought exactly,” McFarland replied.

She brought the video up on the conference room display and advanced the file until McNeil reached the third floor. Against the back wall of the room was a desk crowded with various items: a computer tower, display, keyboard, several thumb drives, a handheld radio-transceiver in a charger, a cup holding several pens and pencils, three stacks of manila folders, and a few books standing beside each other.

McFarland paused the video, letting everyone study the desk’s contents. Harrison decided to check out the book titles in case they offered a clue, but nothing registered. It was silent in the conference room until McFarland blurted out an observation.

“The radio!”

Harrison focused on the handheld transceiver in its charging stand as McFarland expounded. “That’s a standard-issue CIA radio from the early 2000s. What is a CIA radio doing on bin Laden’s desk?”

“Perhaps it’s a souvenir from a dead agency officer,” Bryant offered. “Bin Laden had a souvenir AK-47 assault rifle in his bedroom, but no bullets were loaded. Maybe the radio is something similar.”

McFarland shook her head. “Look at the charging stand. The green light is on. You don’t keep a souvenir radio charged.”

Christine replied, “Maybe this explains how bin Laden avoided capture those first few years. He didn’t move into the Abbottabad compound until 2006. He evaded capture for five years despite several promising leads, but each fizzled out. Perhaps he was being tipped off.”

“I don’t like it,” Rolow said. “That implies we had a traitor on the inside. Someone feeding information to bin Laden. For what reason?”

“We employ a lot of foreign nationals,” McFarland countered, “especially in that region. This wouldn’t be the first time we assessed their allegiance incorrectly.”

“Where do we go from here?” Bryant asked.

“Let me pull up the operation records,” McFarland replied.

She opened the mission report on her computer and scrolled to an appendix containing a list of items taken from the compound. She read a few of them aloud: five computers, ten hard drives, over one hundred thumb drives and computer disks…” She kept going through the list.

“Bingo!” she said. “Transceiver and charger.” She looked up from her laptop. “It was one of the items taken from the third floor.”

“Why wasn’t the presence of this radio picked up during the analysis of the material harvested from the compound?” Rolow asked.

“The material was collected somewhat haphazardly due to the time crunch, with the assault team having only a few minutes to collect material before Pakistani forces arrived. Anything of interest was shoved into garbage bags, then sorted once the team returned to Afghanistan. I suspect that whoever reviewed the material assumed that a radio from one of the assault team members had accidently been caught up in the compound’s contents. That’d be my guess.”

“So, we have the radio,” Bryant said. “What does that do for us?”

“Every transceiver has a serial number. Find the transceiver, and we’ll know who it was issued to. We can then have a conversation with that person, asking how it ended up on bin Laden’s desk.”

“Where is it now?” Rolow asked.

McFarland perused the report. “Doesn’t say. I’ll have to go through subsequent records. The material from the compound initially came here for analysis, but it’s since been dispersed to various locations. Bin Laden’s AK-47 that Monroe mentioned, for example, is in the agency museum here at Langley. Most of the rest is likely locked in a vault somewhere. I’ll track the radio down as soon as possible.”

She leaned back in her chair, pleased at what she had deduced.

“Great job, Tracey,” Christine said. To Rolow, she asked, “What’s next?” He had scheduled the meeting to discuss several topics.

“Tracey has an update on the SecNav issue. Nothing on Mixell yet, but the review of the UUV data turned up something interesting.” He turned to McFarland.

“It’s not a lot to go on,” she replied, “but we found an Iranian communication referencing a pending receipt of a priority shipment from SI. There are a lot of companies with the initials SI, but given that the UUV and SecNav appear to be linked, and that her brother is Dan Snyder, a reasonable conclusion is that Iran is expecting a shipment from Snyder Industries. However, we’ve searched all ship manifests leaving the U.S. mainland for the last six months, and nothing from SI to Iran has been logged.”

“You think it’s off the books?” Bryant asked.

“That’s what we’re going with for now. It’ll take a while, but we might be able to discover what was shipped, or at least verify a shipment occurred. Once we know more, we can discuss how to proceed.”

“Anything else?” Christine asked.

“I think we’ve covered everything,” Rolow said. “We’ve got three leads to follow: assess whether al-Qaeda leadership is responsible for the assault team deaths, locate the radio on bin Laden’s desk, and figure out what SI shipped to Iran. Harrison and Khalila will resume their original task of tracking Mixell down; perhaps we’ll get some useful information out of him if we can take him alive.

“In the meantime, Jake and Khalila will have a few days off. They did some good work in Kuwait, despite their disregard for clearly established protocols.”

He lent a hard stare toward Khalila, who hadn’t said much during today’s briefing. She’d met with Rolow before this meeting; Harrison had spotted her leaving the DDO’s office, a glowering look on her face.

As far as a few days off went, the timing was excellent. Maddy had a gymnastics competition this weekend in Maryland, one of a half dozen national meets her team participated in each year, and she and Angie were flying in early to see the sights in D.C. He’d be able to spend a few days with them.

“Thanks for the room at the Intercontinental,” Harrison said to Rolow. Upon accepting the agency’s job offer a second time, the DDO had arranged a room for him at the upscale hotel in southwest D.C., where the agency kept a block of rooms reserved for its use, until Harrison rented a place somewhere.

As the meeting wrapped up, Harrison’s thoughts returned to Khalila’s meeting with Abdallah bin Laden and his three companions, which she had failed to mention. It was a delicate issue. He had promised Khalila that anything he learned about her would be kept to himself. But his concern about her loyalty to the CIA was growing. He needed to put his doubt to rest, determining whether or not he could trust her with more certainty. If she really was working more with al-Qaeda than the CIA, the agency needed to know.

Christine stood, signaling the meeting was over. Khalila was the first to depart, striding down the hallway toward the elevator. She was clearly in a mood following her meeting with the DDO.

Harrison took advantage of Khalila’s departure and approached Christine as the others filed from the room.

“Do you have a moment?” he asked.

“A few,” she said.

Harrison closed Christine’s door after following her into her office. She noticed the precaution, but kept quiet as she settled into the chair behind her desk. As he stood before her, searching for the best way to start, she gestured to the chairs before her desk. He took a seat, then began.

“I’m not really sure about Khalila,” he said, “regarding where her loyalty lies.”

He went on to relay what Khalila had told him on their trip to Syria, when she explained how she moved freely about Langley without drawing suspicion from her Middle East contacts; that she provided information to both sides, although the information she was allowed to provide to the other side was screened and approved by McFarland.

Christine listened intently until he reached the salient part. “Khalila met with Osama’s eldest son, Abdallah, two days ago in Kuwait.”

“Really,” Christine said. “You think she would have mentioned that.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s not damning information, though,” Christine added. “That’s her job — to cultivate relationships beneficial to the agency, and gaining access to the bin Laden family and their associates would be pretty high on the list of agency desires. Perhaps they discussed nothing of relevance to our meeting today.”

“That’s possible,” Harrison said. “But I also got the feeling there’s something going on between Khalila and Abdallah. When they met, they seemed a bit… chummy.”

Christine smiled. “That’s not an indictment either. Khalila is a beautiful woman, and men tend to be a bit… chummy with women as attractive as she is.”

Harrison had to admit that Christine was right, and she would certainly know firsthand. She had fended off guys interested in her the entire time they dated.

He assessed Christine’s responses thus far. The conversation wasn’t unfolding as he had expected, with Christine pointing out the lack of concrete evidence that Khalila shouldn’t be trusted.

“However,” Christine said, “I have my doubts about Khalila as well. There’s definitely something about her that the DDO is hiding. But unless you’ve got something else, there’s nothing specific for me to look into.”

Harrison recalled the video he had recorded outside the Al Hamra Tower, when Khalila introduced herself to Abdallah and the three men, then talked for a short while before heading into the building. He was too far away for the recording to pick up the conversation, but the agency might have the tools to determine what was said.

“I have a short video of when she met with Abdallah and three other men. It’s from across the street, but perhaps you can decipher what they discussed.”

“Send me the video,” Christine replied, then picked up her phone and dialed Tracey McFarland.

When Tracey answered, Christine said, “I’ll be sending a short video over with a meeting between Khalila and four men in Kuwait. I’d like you to identify the men and augment the audio, if possible, to determine what was discussed.”

“No problem,” McFarland said. “How urgent is this?”

“Sooner rather than later,” Christine replied. “But don’t bump anything critical.”

“I’ll get someone working on it as soon as I have an opening.”