Jawbreaker: The Attack on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda: A Personal Account by the CIA's Key Field Commander - Softcover

Berntsen, Gary; Pezzullo, Ralph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307351068 ISBN 13: 9780307351067

Publisher: Crown, 2006

Synopsis

The Book the CIA Doesn’t Want You to Read

Gary Berntsen, the CIA’s key commander coordinating the fight against the Taliban forces around Kabul, comes out from under cover for the first time to describe his no-holds-barred pursuit—and cornering—of Osama bin Laden, and the reason the terrorist leader escaped American retribution. As disturbingly eye-opening as it is adrenaline-charged, Jawbreaker races from CIA war rooms to diplomatic offices to mountaintop redoubts to paint a vivid portrait of a new kind of warfare, showing what can and should be done to deal a death blow to freedom’s enemies.

About this title

About the Author

Gary Berntsen spent more than twenty years as an officer in the Clandestine Service and served in an array of Field Command assignments. He has been awarded both the Distinguished Intelligence Medal and the Intelligence Star.

Ralph Pezzullo is a former journalist, award-winning playwright, and screenwriter, and is the author of At the Fall of Samoza, Plunging into Haiti, and the mystery novel Eve Missing.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

THE ATTACK—7 AUGUST 1998

"Dawn comes not twice to awaken a man." —an Arab proverb


I jumped out of bed by the second ring and grabbed the STU-III secure telephone from the waist-high dresser. The digital clock read 4:23 a.m. in the dark bedroom of our Reston, Virginia, townhouse. My wife, Rebecca, sat up, rubbing her eyes.

"Hello."

A voice on the other end said, "Gary, it's Dorothy in the watch office."

I recognized her voice immediately. Dorothy was one of XXXXXXX officers assigned to my staff in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. Our job was to identify, penetrate and disrupt the activities of Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO)—the Hezbollah's terrorist arm and the most deadly organization of its kind up to that time.

"One second," I said, removing the top of a XXXXXXX by the phone, extracting a XXXXXX key XXXX and inserting the key into the phone. "I'm going secure."

"Ready."

After pushing the "secure voice" button, a small horizontal panel lit up indicating that the encryption sequence was underway. It took fifteen seconds before the screen on the phone read "TOP SECRET."

Dorothy said: "I have you TS."

"I have you TS," I echoed back.

"Thirty-five minutes ago the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi was attacked with a large explosive device," Dorothy began. "Ten minutes later our Embassy in Dar es Salaam was also attacked with an explosive device. I just talked to Chief CTC O'Connell [CTC is the CIA's Counterterrorism Center]. He wants you to come in."

"Do you have numbers on casualties? Did we lose any of our people?" I asked.

Hearing the word "casualties," my wife gasped.

"There have been large-scale casualties, including some of our people," Dorothy answered.

"Thanks," I said. "I'm on my way in."

I turned the key, extracted it, XXXXXXXXXX, carefully reset the top and stood for a moment in the darkness. I was one of our country's most experienced clandestine counterterrorism officers, but news like this still filled me with cold, seething anger. Pictures of the carnage from bombings I'd witnessed in places like Sri Lanka and Nepal flashed in my head.

My wife understood instinctively that something terrible had happened. "Where?" she asked.

Being an intense, aggressive guy, I imagined myself rushing to the scene immediately and grabbing the bombers. But I managed to remain outwardly calm. "Nairobi and Dar es Salaam," I answered. "We've just had two Embassies bombed within thirty minutes."

After nineteen years married to a CIA officer, my wife knew the drill. "Should I pack a bag for you now?" she asked.

I thought of practicalities for a second. "I have to go into the building first. If I fly out I'll come back first and get some things. Why don't you go back to bed?"

"Go back to bed?" she asked, incredulously. "I can't go back to bed now. I'll make you some coffee and start getting your stuff ready."

Using the encrypted phone, I called one of my branch chiefs, Ted—an FBI agent assigned to CTC. The CIA and the FBI, in the spirit of cooperation, had begun placing officers in each other's counterterrorism units, and Ted was one of the first FBI detailees.

Ted was one tough guy. Prior to joining the FBI, he'd been a Maryland State Police officer. While working undercover, he infiltrated a motorcycle gang suspected of major criminal activity. One night, they got suspicious, dragged him into a deserted field on Maryland's Eastern Shore and stuck a gun to his head. Ted didn't lose his cool. Not only did he talk the gang out of killing him, he eventually locked up sixty of them for crimes varying from grand theft, to drug trafficking, to murder. At the Bureau, he played a lead role in a number of important counterterrorism investigations, including the Iraqi attempt to assassinate former President George Herbert Walker Bush after the Gulf War.

He was the kind of officer I wanted at my side in a crisis. I quickly filled him in.

Then I jumped in the shower, skipped shaving and got dressed, foregoing a jacket because it was going to be a hot, humid August day. Exiting the bedroom, I ran into my seventeen-year-old daughter, Alexis, on the landing. The sound of my moving around had roused her.

She asked, "Dad, what's going on? Why are you guys up so early?"

There was no point trying to hide the truth. Alexis already knew that I was one of the CIA's senior counterterrorism officers, but her thirteen-year-old brother, Thomas, thought I had a desk job at the XXXXXXX.

"There were some attacks on our Embassies in Africa so I need to go in early," I told her.

"Are you going to Africa?"

"Maybe, sweetheart, but not right now."

After a quick cup of coffee and kisses for my wife and daughter, I started out the door. Over my shoulder, the first reports of the bombings aired over CNN.

Standing outside our townhouse was my maroon 1987 Chrysler K station wagon—the car my son and daughter teasingly called "the red rocket." No, it wasn't an Aston Martin or a Land Rover equipped with surface-to-air rockets, but it got me where I wanted to go. My wife and daughter got the new wheels.

I'd taken this route so many times I could drive it in my sleep: down the Dulles toll road, onto route 123, a sharp turn into CIA headquarters twenty minutes later. At this hour of the morning the vast parking area was almost empty, except for vehicles belonging to members of the watch office and Directorate of Intelligence personnel who worked on the President's Daily Brief.

Passing through the CIA entrance, I swiped my badge over an optical reader and punched in my security code. My watch read 5:05 a.m. as I entered an elevator of the oldest wing of the three-building complex and hit five.

The Crisis Center consisted of two large rooms—one packed with communications racks with radios and multiple workstations to monitor Counterterrorism Center (CTC) developments around the world. The second room housed a large conference table and chairs.

CTC is part of the CIA's Directorate of Operations. The rest of the CIA's XXXX employees are organized under three other directorates: Science & Technology, Intelligence and Administration. Most of them are analysts, scientists and administrators.

The Directorate of Operations (DO) is the place that employs clandestine case officers like myself. Back in the mid-'90s the Clinton administration had reduced the number of operations officers by twenty-five percent. The DO is responsible for collecting human intelligence and running operations against 6 billion people and governments around the globe who want to harm the United States.

The FBI, for purposes of comparison, has approximately 10,000 field officers (special agents) covering the United States. There are one thousand FBI officers assigned to New York City alone.

You could say that working for Operations is challenging. Most of my closest colleagues are type-A individuals who won't back down from anyone or anything. We accept the fact that we live in a hard world and deal with that reality. It's dangerous work.

In the past, I've stopped dozens of bombings and assassinations overseas. I've also hunted down and captured terrorists from various groups. These are CIA successes that were never reported in the news.

When we're portrayed in the media, ninety-five percent of what's said or written is dead wrong. Books like Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger where the Deputy Director of the CIA personally hunts down terrorists—ridiculous. Movies like Three Days of the Condor where CIA operatives assassinate members of the American Literacy Historical Society—disgusting!

Edition details

• Publisher: Crown
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0307351068
• ISBN 13: 9780307351067
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 360