Gertz writes of how Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Kie Fallis was blocked from issuing a terrorist threat warning that could have saved lives of American sailors killed in the October 2000 bombing of the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen. "Fallis fought hard with an entrenched bureaucracy to have a warning issued about an imminent attack, but DIA refused," Gertz reports. "The reason was office politics: he had dated a woman who wrote an astounding incorrect analysis the month before the Cole bombing, arguing that terrorists were not capable of conducting a small boat attack on a ship. DIA higher-ups said he pushed his analysis to contradict that of his ex-girlfriend. In reality, Fallis had developed a unique methodology that led him to conclude an al Qaeda attack was imminent."
Gertz reveals an internal letter from CIA spies sharply criticized the politically correct policies of CIA Director George Tenet. Numerous other CIA shortcomings and failures are detailed by Gertz.
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Denying and discrediting
Back at the DIA, Mr. Fallis´ heart sank as he received the first report of the attack on the Cole. Disgusted, he quit in protest that day.
Mr. Fallis had recently finished a year with the FBI, investigating the deadly bombings of the Khobar Towers barracks in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, in 1996 and of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. In tracking bin Laden´s al Qaeda network, he found that the terror group was intimately linked to Iran´s intelligence and security services.
Mr. Fallis´ resignation letter sent to the DIA´s director, Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, cited "significant analytical differences" with supervisors. Worse, he said, at least two more terrorist attacks were coming, likely in Bosnia or Malaysia.
"This was a huge intelligence failure," Mr. Fallis said.
He was treated like an enemy as soon as his resignation was accepted. His access to a computer was immediately cut off, his e-mail account deleted. Supervisors refused to speak to him; they didn´t ask why he was leaving.
One DIA security official told Mr. Fallis during an exit interview that the terror division´s leadership was trying to discredit him. Yet his performance appraisal of July 2000 called his previous year´s service "distinguished," the highest rating possible, as did all previous appraisals. An intelligence medal was "in the pipeline." He never got it.
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By May 2000, Mr. Fallis had written a highly classified report on his findings, most based on information gleaned months earlier.
"I obtained information in January of 2000 that indicated terrorists were planning two or three major attacks against the United States," he said. "The only gaps were where and when."
A red flag pointing to the Cole bombing appeared in mid-September 2000 when bin Laden issued the videotape that aired on Qatari satellite television, an Arabic-language news service. "Every time he put out one of these videotapes, it was a signal that action was coming," Mr. Fallis said.