Front Burner (2 page)

Now, with
Front Burner
a reality, it is my hope that a crew of heroes who survived the crucible of combat will at last be recognized for what they did to live up to the example of USS
Cole
's namesake, Sergeant Darrell S. Cole, USMC, who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry in the battle of Iwo Jima.

 

 

Kenneth Eugene Clodfelter
Hull Maintenance Technician Second Class
21, Mechanicsville, Virginia

Richard Dean Costelow
Electronics Technician Chief Petty Officer
35, Morrisville, Pennsylvania

Lakeina Monique Francis
Mess Management Specialist Seaman
19, Woodleaf, North Carolina

Timothy Lee Gauna
Information Systems Technician Seaman
21, Rice, Texas

Cherone Louis Gunn
Signalman Seaman
22, Rex, Georgia

James Rodrick McDaniels
Seaman
19, Norfolk, Virginia

Marc Ian Nieto
Engineman Second Class
24, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin

Ronald Scott Owens
Electronic Warfare Technician Second Class
24, Vero Beach, Florida

Lakiba Nicole Palmer Seaman
22, San Diego, California

Joshua Langdon Parlett
Engineman Fireman
19, Churchville, Maryland

Patrick Howard Roy
Fireman
19, Cornwall on Hudson, New York

Kevin Shawn Rux
Electronic Warfare Technician First Class
30, Portland, North Dakota

Ronchester Manangan Santiago
Mess Management Specialist Third Class
22, Kingsville, Texas

Timothy Lamont Saunders
Operations Specialist Second Class
32, Ringgold, Virginia

Gary Graham Swenchonis, Jr.
Fireman
26, Rockport, Texas

Andrew Triplett
Lieutenant (junior grade)
31, Macon, Mississippi

Craig Bryan Wibberley
Seaman
19, Williamsport, Maryland

 

Disbursing Clerk Third Class Adedeji O. Adewunmi

Electronics Warfare Technician First Class (Surface Warfare) Melvin L. Alston

Information Systems Technician First Class (Surface Warfare) Larry D. Bloodsaw

Chief Gas Turbine System Technician (Surface Warfare) Mark P. Darwin

Mess Management Specialist Third Class Joseph C. Davis

Electronics Technician Third Class Russell E. Dietz

Operations Specialist Seaman Timothy S. Eerenberg

Ship's Serviceman Second Class (Surface Warfare) Craig B. Freeman

Electronics Warfare Technician Third Class (Surface Warfare) Johann Gokool

Fire Controlman First Class (Surface Warfare) Douglas J. Hancock

Chief Gunners Mate (Surface Warfare) Mark A. Hawkins

Fire Controlman Third Class Jason S. Hayes

Senior Chief Fire Controlman (Surface Warfare) John M. Henderson

Boatswain's Mate Third Class Frederick H. Ings

Chief Boatswain's Mate (Surface Warfare) Eric S. Kafka

Mess Management Specialist Third Class Elizabeth Lafontaine

Fire Controlman First Class (Surface Warfare) Tremane N. Lide

Gas Turbine System Technician First Class (Surface Warfare) Margaret K. Lopez

Senior Chief Gas Turbine System Technician (Surface Warfare) Keith A. Lorensen

Seaman Apprentice Edward T. Love

Gunner's Mate Third Class Kenya N. McCarter

Gas Turbine Technician Second Class Robert D. McTureous

Ship's Serviceman Third Class Paul P. Mena

Gas Turbine System Technician Fireman Raymond A. Mooney

Gas Turbine System Technician Fireman Andrew A. Nemeth

Damage Controlman Fireman Sean H. Powell

Operations Specialist Second Class (Surface Warfare) Tiffany N. Putman

Chief Quartermaster (Surface Warfare) Michael O. Russell

Postal Clerk Second Class (Surface Warfare) Isadore B. Sims

Hull Maintenance Technician Third Class Jeremy W. Stewart Seaman Kesha R. Stidham

Chief Electrician's Mate (Surface Warfare) Fred C. Strozier

Storekeeper Second Class (Surface Warfare) Sean L. Taitt

Fire Controlman First Class David K. Veal

Chief Fire Controlman (Surface Warfare) Jeffrey M. Vinneau Lieutenant Denise D. Woodfin

Operations Specialist First Class (Surface Warfare) Alonzo W. Woods

O
N THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2000, the guided-missile destroyer USS
Cole
, DDG-67, under my command, was attacked while refueling in the harbor of Aden, Yemen, by two suicide bombers who were members of the al Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden. Because U.S. intelligence had no idea that an al Qaeda cell was present in Aden and planning an attack, we were taken completely by surprise when what we expected to be a garbage-removal barge approached the port side of our ship and blew up. The devastating explosion blasted a hole through the hull amidships, destroying one of the main engine rooms as well as the galley where scores of
Cole
's crew were gathered for lunch. The explosion killed seventeen sailors, wounded thirty-seven others, and took the ship out of action.

If not for intelligence and military failures, the tragedy might have been avoided. As it was, the Navy, my ship, and I were left unprepared to deal with a new kind of terrorist threat that should have become apparent by 1998 at the latest, as a series of coordinated attacks simultaneously destroyed U.S. embassies and killed hundreds of people in Kenya and Tanzania.

I do not wish to minimize or excuse my own failure as captain to prevent this tragedy. After I oversaw
Cole
's return to the United States and
turned over command to my successor, I wondered whether continuing a career in the Navy was the wisest choice for me, or if it was even possible. Yet despite my doubts, the highest leaders of my service, the chief of naval operations and the secretary of the Navy, repeatedly insisted that it would be wrong to hold me any more responsible than they and the rest of the chain of command were for what had happened to the ship and the crew. After they made that clear, on the day just before the inauguration of President George W. Bush in January of 2001, I was determined to keep working quietly within the Navy to try to ensure that such an attack could never happen again to another ship, another crew, another captain.

So in 2001, with the rank of commander that I had held while I was captain of
Cole
, I found myself assigned to the Strategic Plans and Policy Division of the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, working on United Nations and multilateral affairs. The pace and scope of the work were beyond anything I had been exposed to in any of my previous jobs as a Navy surface warfare officer, but three years in a multiservice assignment was part of the preparation that Congress had mandated for all officers who would eventually be under consideration for promotion to the most senior ranks. The posting to one of the most coveted divisions of the Joint Staff was, to me, the clearest indication I had yet seen that the Navy understood the unusual circumstances of the terrorist attack against USS
Cole
.

During my first few weeks on the staff, one of my former commanding officers, Captain John Russack, whose executive officer I had been on the Aegis guided-missile cruiser USS
Shiloh,
contacted me to see how I was doing. He had gone to work full time at the Central Intelligence Agency after retiring from the Navy, and was now deputy to Charles Allen, a legendary figure and forty-five-year veteran of the agency whose position gave him responsibility for how the CIA collected intelligence worldwide. After John had mentioned our acquaintanceship, Allen became interested in talking with me about what the CIA knew about Osama bin Laden and how it had determined that it was al Qaeda that had planned, financed, and carried out the attack against my ship. Needless to say, I was also very
much interested in meeting Allen and hearing why neither Central Command, which had operational control over my ship at the time of the attack, nor the Navy, nor USS
Cole
had been provided with the kind of information that would have better enabled us to protect ourselves. I also wanted to understand why, after American intelligence had developed evidence that al Qaeda was responsible for the attack on the ship—a classic act of war—and that high-ranking operatives tied directly to Osama bin Laden had directed it, no aggressive retaliatory action had yet been taken against any of them, though their whereabouts in Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime had given al Qaeda sanctuary, were well known. Almost a year after the attack, the Clinton and the George W. Bush administrations had left the issue on the back burner, as far as I could tell.

John and I were finally able to work out a date for the meeting, and I arranged to arrive late to work that morning.

I had never been to the CIA before this day. Driving from Alexandria, Virginia, to Langley, headed up the George Washington Parkway thirty minutes before sunrise, I could tell it was going to be a beautiful day. Without a cloud in the sky, the first glow of the coming sunrise painted the skyline of Washington, D.C., and the white marble monuments across the Potomac a pale yellow glow.

The moment I walked into the front entrance is burned into my memory. On the highly polished floor of the Old Headquarters Building, the CIA seal, inlaid granite measuring sixteen feet across, stood out starkly against everything else around it. The sight stirred my emotions and raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The security guard in the lobby directed me to a phone to call John, who said he would be down in a few minutes. As I waited, I walked around the lobby until I came upon a single gold star in reverse bas-relief in the marble wall on the south side, honoring the men and women who had given their lives for our nation while serving with the CIA's predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services. On the opposite wall were row after row of gold stars representing the men and women of the CIA who had made the ultimate sacrifice. I felt a close bond with these names—to me, the sacrifice of the seventeen sailors on
my ship just one year before was no different from the sacrifices memorialized here on these hallowed walls.

A few minutes later, at 0630, John picked me up and escorted me to his sixth-floor office next door to Allen's. For the next thirty minutes we sat, drinking coffee and catching up, until at 0700 sharp, we went into Allen's office.

The first thing Allen did was apologize for the clearance level of the material he was about to show me, since I had not undergone the extensive background checks and polygraphs necessary for a CIA clearance. But for the next hour and a half, Allen carefully walked me through what the CIA knew about Osama bin Laden and his organization. He began with the coordinated embassy attacks in 1998 and then walked me through the presumed timeline for the development of the plan of attack against my ship. Some of the things I had learned from the FBI's criminal investigators—including John O'Neill, George Crouch, and Ali Soufan, who gathered evidence on the ship in Aden and at safe houses—such as the names of the suspected masterminds and in-country facilitators of the attack, for instance, were not included in the CIA briefing.

What I found most difficult to understand was why the CIA station chief at the U.S. embassy in Sana'a, Yemen's capital, had been unable or unwilling to ascertain that al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations operating in Yemen and throughout the region could pose a threat to ships refueling in Aden. The embassy, of course, was a couple of hundred miles north of Aden, but along with the ambassador, he was supposed to be the in-country expert and, in my view, both had failed the crew and me. But I bit my tongue. At our meeting, Allen and the others conveyed a strong sense of urgently wanting to go on the offensive and bring to justice the terrorists who had committed the atrocity against
Cole
, whoever and wherever they were, and that was more important now.

As the discussion wrapped up, we briefly discussed how magnificently my crew had performed in the aftermath of the attack, taking care of each other and preventing the ship from sinking. I shook my host's hand and said, “You know, Mr. Allen, first, thank you very much for taking the time to go over all this with me. It means an awful lot for me to understand
what our country is doing to try to catch this guy. But, I don't think America understands. I believe it is going to take a seminal event, probably in this country, where hundreds, if not thousands, are going to have to die before Americans realize that we're at war with this guy.”