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Days later, military strikes would commence. At some point in those initial days, he had the commanding officer of
Enterprise
, Captain James “Sandy” Winnefeld, send me a photograph of a 2,000 pound Joint Direct Attack Munition with writing scrawled on it by the ordnance handlers on board: REMEMBER THE COLE. It brought a big smile to my face as I passed it on to Chris Peterschmidt and several other members of the crew.

In the Pentagon, while everyone knew it, no one outwardly spoke of the fact that already the United States was inserting Special Operations forces and other government paramilitary forces into Afghanistan to attack
and topple the Afghan government, headed by the Taliban, which had given unfettered sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.

In our Joint Staff office, everyone understood that combat operations would result in enemy combatants being taken prisoner. Very quickly, the Department of Defense lawyers, in consultation with the Departments of Justice and State as well as the White House, determined that members of the Taliban and al Qaeda would not merit all the privileges of prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions because they did not meet all of the necessary criteria required under the provisions of the treaty. Those criteria recognize members of regular military forces carrying arms openly and wearing uniforms, war correspondents and supply or maintenance contractors with them, and civilians resisting invasion by an occupying force—not terrorists operating without insignia or any association with a government or state.

Since neither the Taliban nor the terrorists belonging to al Qaeda met these criteria, their capture put them in a unique legal category not clearly defined by either treaty or international law provisions. Eventually, the Bush administration chose to call them unlawful enemy combatants, and within a few weeks determined where to house them—the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The unique irony of my working detainee policy issues on how to fight, detain, and interrogate the same terrorists and their supporters who had launched the attack on
Cole
was not lost on me. I found a great deal of solace and satisfaction in my job as I focused on doing the detailed and thorough staff work necessary to support the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, in his role as the principal military advisor to the President and secretary of defense. It was a common joke around the office that we were expected to toil at least a half-day on the job—0600 to 1800 at a minimum—initially six and sometimes seven days a week as the war effort got organized and kicked off. The enemy was not resting and neither were we.

As the relationship of our office and those working the detainee mission became better defined over the ensuing months, I became exposed to the true nature of the enemy we were fighting. They were ruthless, well trained,
patient, and had no moral restraint in how they brutally carried out their version of warfare. My crew and I had already been exposed to the cruel and amoral nature of the way these terrorists operated under the guise of a religious banner. Now, those who had experienced the September 11 attacks began to comprehend what we had lived through in Aden. The destroyed section of the Pentagon, the obliterated Twin Towers in New York, and the smoldering hole in the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, served as stark daily reminders that we had been a nation at war for years, but only now had come to grips with it and were finally taking action. While I was glad to see the nation finally doing something, it was equally apparent that
Cole
and the crew had rapidly fallen into the shadow of this larger national event, and that the Navy was all too pleased to finally be out of the news as the most recent victim of a terrorist attack.

It was in early 2002 that a Naval Academy classmate of mine, Captain Neal Kusumoto, contacted me about traveling to Newport, Rhode Island, to discuss the aftermath of the attack on
Cole
with those who were preparing, like me just two short years earlier, to assume commanding officer and executive officer positions on ships. These prospective CO and XO courses were taught five times a year. Initially I demurred, with the excuse that I was too busy with Joint Staff work to take time off to impart lessons learned. In reality, I was not yet ready to face discussing the matter in any detail. It was still too painful a reality, and in many ways, I was still debating if I wanted (or needed) to ever talk about the attack again.

Finally, after missing three classes, Neal called me up and in a humorous but blunt manner informed me that he was smarter than me and therefore had graduated higher in the class standings than me, which therefore naturally made him senior to me regarding this outstanding request to teach these new COs and XOs. Sensing where the conversation was headed, I laughed and in August 2002 arrived at the Surface Warfare Officer School in Newport to teach not only the CO/XO course, but also the damage control assistant class held just across the street from the main building. In the future, it would be those young ensigns and lieutenants (junior grade) that would set the damage control standards for their ships. They
had best be prepared, just like Nat Fogg and Sean Dubbs, for what might happen in an instant of time. For the next four and a half years, covering twenty-three classes, I never missed the opportunity to spend several hours with each of those two groups and discuss in detailed and sometimes graphic descriptions what the crew and I did to prepare for and then respond to that terrorist attack. Over time, the department head classes were also included, with those valuable lessons learned gladly shared with them as well.

During the eleven months following the attack on
Cole
, the Yemeni government became more and more recalcitrant and unwilling to cooperate with the FBI in providing evidence and access to suspects, such as al Badawi and a new suspect, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al Quso, who were in custody for their suspected involvement in the plot. Almost immediately after the September 11 attacks, however, the Yemenis became more compliant and offered the FBI unprecedented access to the al Qaeda terrorists in their custody. It was also during this time that the file on exactly who the principal conspirators were in the attack was narrowed down to five key individuals: [Khallad] bin Attash, Jamal al Badawi, al Nashiri, al Quso, and Abu Ali al Harithi. Later interrogations by Soufan and others clearly established that Khallad had also been one of the organizers of the September 11 hijackings. At the end of 1999, he had personally taken two of the hijackers who would crash American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon to a meeting in Bangkok, where he also collected $36,000 he had ordered al Quso and Ibrahim al Thawar to bring him, ostensibly to finance the planned attack on a Navy ship in Aden. Al Quso later confessed to Soufan that he had been ordered to videotape the attack when it took place, and al Thawar was of course one of the two suicide bombers who blew up
Cole
. But the $36,000, Soufan later concluded, “had in all likelihood been used for the 9/11 attack, probably paying for tickets for two of the hijackers” who carried it out. The attack on
Cole
, like the attacks on the embassies in Africa in 1998, was absolutely central to what happened in Washington and New York City on September 11, 2001.
⁷

The
Cole
families continued to undergo a series of highs and lows as the war dragged on. While those responsible for attacking the ship were
being killed or captured, it was usually seen as being done in conjunction with the larger picture of September 11 taking the stage, front and center. Given the overwhelming publicity surrounding the September 11 families, along with the extensive benefits and financial compensation received by them, the
Cole
family members were put in an awkward position. They did not want to be seen as whiners but they also did not want to be forgotten by the nation, while the Navy had urged them to move on. The crew and families never complained, but it was always a source of friction, especially because they were kept at arm's length and at times ignored by the Navy in the process.

On a good note, the FBI meticulously continued to build their case and make steady progress so that eventually justice and accountability could be meted out to the perpetrators. Among the first apprehended by the Yemeni government was al Badawi, who had bought the truck and trailer used to launch the boat full of explosives and transported them to Aden. It was a particularly hard blow to all the crew and their families to learn that al Badawi had escaped from custody in Yemen in April of 2003. Many took the news of his escape as a sign that the U.S. government was unwilling to pressure President Saleh to hold al Qaeda terrorists in his country accountable for their actions.

Unknown to the crew and families but related to my work on the Joint Staff, I was quietly briefed in early 2003 that in a highly classified operation, the CIA, operating under a Presidential Finding by President Bush, had conducted a targeted operation in Yemen that had killed al Harithi, along with five other al Qaeda operatives, in an RQ-1 armed Predator remote-controlled drone strike with a Hellfire missile. It was the first operation of its kind, and while the crew and families could not learn of this blow for vengeance for several more years, I certainly enjoyed the deep sense of satisfaction that action was finally being taken on our behalf.

Unfortunately, the Yemeni government continued to prove its ineptness as a reliable partner in the War on Terror. Al Badawi was recaptured in March 2004, and at his trial by a Yemeni court in September 2004, along with other participants in the plot to carry out the attack, he and al Nashiri
(in absentia) were convicted and sentenced to death by Yemen. The other four defendants were sentenced to five to ten years' imprisonment. After hearing his sentence, al Badawi was allowed by the Yemeni government to declare, “This is an unjust verdict, this is an American verdict. There are no human rights in the world, except for the Americans. All the Muslims in the world are being used to serve American interests.”

Another key piece of information not readily available to the families was the fact that the U.S. government had been—quietly and not so quietly, as in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—rounding up key leaders of al Qaeda and removing them from the global battlefield. One of those was al Nashiri, who had been captured by U.S. forces in early 2002 and was being held by the CIA at an undisclosed location when that trial in absentia took place in Yemen. It was not until September 6, 2006, that President Bush announced that fourteen “high-value” detainees being held in CIA custody, including bin Attash and al Nashiri, were transferred to the intelligence and detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to await justice.

Unfortunately, politics once again intruded into the process of holding terrorists accountable for their acts, and the families' sense of justice was again delayed. In 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which was subsequently updated in 2009. Although al Nashiri and bin Attash had been held in U.S. government custody for years, when President Obama took office, he upended the entire process on January 22, 2009, his first full day in office, by signing three far-reaching executive orders:

The
Cole
families were devastated. The entire process of military commissions came screeching to a halt and was to be held in abeyance until the “review” was completed over the course of a year, continuing a series of blows for the long overdue justice for their loved ones. With many delayed proceedings, after being at times seemingly ignored throughout the Bush administration, they felt justice would be even further jeopardized with the very real possibility that now the Obama administration might dismiss charges entirely against those who had so ruthlessly killed their sailors. That was precisely what seemed to be happening when Attorney General Eric Holder, in a tortured twist of legal maneuvering, dropped all charges against al Nashiri in an effort to stymie the Military Commissions process.

In a feeble effort to mitigate the political damage and fallout that was rapidly building from the
Cole
and September 11 families, who had already suffered multiple setbacks and delays in the intervening years, President Obama offered to host a meeting on February 6, 2009, in an attempt to explain the rationale for his recently signed executive orders. With no idea of how to contact the September 11 and
Cole
families, the White House initially relied on contacting only those families who had been supportive of the President's campaign. At first, there were not even families of firefighters who died at the Twin Towers invited to the meeting. The
Cole
families were a much more bonded group and all that could be reached, given the short notice, were invited.

The press, however, had already gotten wind of the fact that the administration was planning to drop charges against al Nashiri as a prelude to abandoning the Military Commissions process and trying all the terrorists in the Federal court system. In order to exercise as much control over the attendees as possible and minimize adverse media exposure, the White House waited until there was less than forty-eight hours before the meeting to extend invitations. Oddly, the Navy, which had been tasked with maintaining the database of family contact information, was unable to provide it to the White House when asked. Apparently the Bureau of Personnel had failed to maintain an up-to-date list. Thankfully, the Military
Commissions prosecution team had been in recent contact with the family members to keep them informed about the impact of the President's executive order, and was able to provide the contact information to the White House. Although I had not suffered the direct loss of a family member, I too was extended an invitation to attend the meeting.